Is TGV Coming To The North Shore?
Yesterday’s NDP pre election telly-op on local television stations of the standard TransLink fare of having five options for rapid transit to the North Shore showed some very strange animations.
Instead of animations of SkyTrain trundling through tunnels, it showed TGV style trains instead.
One wonders if the NDP are going to have surprise announcement of 300 kph TGV trains whisking transit customers from Waterfront Station to Lonsdale?
So, is the NDP secretly planning for TGV or high speed trains or was it all a pre election photo/telly-op, using cheap props because in reality any rapid transit to the North Shore is a minimum of 30 years away?
“Is the NDP secretly planning”?
Its hard to think so. There are two tracks of thought that if they were planning, you’d think we would be seeing movement on.
The first is the one that takes one to the places you have never been before. Where the risks may seem a little bigger at the start. But where the rewards are likely to propel BC to a new future.
The list is long. New technologies, like renewable energy, rare earths, and energy capture. Here, investment is needed in schools and small start-ups.
But this is a transportation blog, so the second track takes us to correct errors made in the past. And here too the list is long. We still have jammed-up freeways; two rail technologies kneecapped at or below 15,000 pphpd; and neighborhoods without pedestrian oriented districts and human scale urbanism.
Perhaps the biggest constraint on movement is the ferry system itself. You’d think the NDP would have enough eyeballs around the Great Salish Sea to come up with a 21st century answer there.
If you’ve ever visited San Francisco Bay, like I have, you’ll be familiar with the 2 hour journey from San Jose to ‘Frisco. More or less like Campbell River to Vancouver. Except that there are a few things surrounding San Francisco Bay that you see along the way, that you don’t see here. Tesla in Fresno; Apple in Cupertino; Berkeley; Standford in Palo Alto; and Silicon Valley. I mean, they built A-bombs and computers there.
This is not the NDP that gave us free dental, ICBC (back then too, it was impossible for an 18-year old to afford insurance), and the SeaBus (when that was an eye-popper). At the same time that the Barrett NDP were dancing on the cabinet table in Victoria, a very progressive TEAM council was building South False Creek, the Law Courts, and Granville Island. While some of those projects were Pierre Trudeau federal, the connections to provincial and local government were key.
I’m not a great fan of the Evergreen Line. Folks here can tell that tale. But announcements like this should be treated with delicate analysis.
There is a tunnel there we can use. That should be enough for now. Back to ‘stay on focus’ and bring in the Olympic tram/train.
Zwei, I doubt that the video that you refer to was provided by the provincial government. Here is the provincial government’s webpage on the matter: https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2020TRAN0144-001729
I do not see anything like that video on that page. I suspect that that video was put there by one of the media outlets that covered the press announcement. They are always doing that.
Zwei replies: The videos were released by TransLink
HST/ TGV could unite various regions in BC, Alberta, Washington State. SkyTrain or Train/Trams are not for long distance Inter City Transit. Yes we need better Inter City Bus Services connecting Southern BC, Fraser Valley, Vancouver, Squamish, Whistler. PSL was sold after 55 yrs and private companies have not served us well.
Buses are the short term answer, other forms of mass transit should be investigated