JOHN RUSTAD’S HIGHWAY TO HELL
This will be John Rustad’s highway to hell. The Conservatives, true to their ignorance of all things transit, have set forth a program, that if implemented will cost tens of billion of dollars, yet do little, if anything to alleviate congestion and gridlock.
In fact it will create massive gridlock in the region.
It is called induced demand and the more road space one creates, the more traffic that will use it, creating even worse traffic congestion and gridlock!
What about the cost of the Conservatives electoral promices?
Expanding Hwy 1 to 6 lanes to Chilliwack will cause massive gridlock elsewhere and cost in the region of $10 billion, based on current expansion costs on Hwy.1 to Abbotsford.
Expanding the Patullo Bridge to six lanes of traffic is a fools game because where will the traffic go? The road system is saturated on the New Westminster side. I cannot even guess the total costs for that, somewhere between $6 billion to $10 billion, based on new roads in New West.
The same is true for the 2nd Narrows Bridge, where an expanded bridge will create major traffic gridlock elsewhere and again the the estimated cost of this is somewhere around $10 billion, give or take a few billion.
Rustad’s Conservatives follows the BC Liberal’s false meme about the Massey Tunnel replacement, yet fail to understand that the “induced capacity” will create massive gridlock in Richmond. The total costs (full package including road and highway construction), somewhere around $10 billion.
Extending SkyTrain to Newton forgets some important factors, one being the cost to extend the Expo Line to Langley is costing around $400 million a km. (by comparison LRT can be built for about $40 to $50mil/km (cost depending on the amount of engineering required) and have a higher capacity as well. So, 6 km of SkyTrain will cost $2.4 billion in today’s money……but as the province is still trying to source the additional $3 billion to complete the light metro to Langley, I think this is more politcal hot air than sound planning.
Oh by the way, you better build this quick as Alstom is going to pull the plug building the Movia Automatic Light Metro (MALM) trains that operate on the Expo and Millennium Lines and being a proprietary railway, no one else makes this antique anymore.
For you information Mr. Rustad, the Rail for the Valley Leewood Plan for a modern DMU service from Marpole to Chilliwack, using the former and still in use BC Electric Interurban route, servicing 10 major destinations, offering a maximum of 3 trains per hour per direction, would cost around $2 billion. So we can build 130 km of RftV regional railway, cheaper than 6 km of SkyTrain!
Here is a hint, we can build the RftV/Leewood Plan for $2 billion and save $8 billion by not making the Hwy, 1 six lanes to Chilliwack. This is called fiscal prudence, or are the BC Conservatives like the NDP and toss fiscal prudence out the window to win votes!
What we see from Rustad’s Conservatives is a platform based on classic “BC Blacktop Politics”, where rubber on asphalt solutions that worked well in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, but not so much in the 2020’s, where expanding the road system, expands traffic chaos. We see a childish wish list from politicians who like playing cars and offer simplistic road solutions for very serious transportation issues.
Oh by the way, the minimum cost for Rustad’s promises?
Just the a fore mentioned items, over $40 billion (accounting for future inflation and cement cost increases) and the whole package, double it. Just add it to the current provincial deficit of $170 billion – easy peasy ain’t it!
So John, where is the funding? What taxes are you going to increase to fund this? What hospitals and schools are you going to close to fund this? Don’t know?
Just promise away John, because like the NDP you are a party of back of an envelope promises and nothing more.
https://cityhallwatch.wordpress.com/2024/10/06/bc-2024-election-transit-policy-critique-davidowicz/
A Skytrain line (a branch of the Expo Line really) is such a bad idea. I’m sure it’s a political red herring. An election based distraction at best.
The Expo Line is already effectively a “Y” shaped line with the main branch being extended to Langley at very high cost with, very low utility. Another branch to Newton forming essentially a trident or tree branch and trunk based line, not only greatly waters down the capacity of the trunk portion, It also greatly increases operational complexity of the entire network. Which by definition increases operating costs.
Although there are many mainline railways that operate with even more branches running off a common trunk line, these lines have two extra capabilities that aren’t generally put in a vast majority of existing Metro, Light Metro and even most LRT lines. The ability to have very large mainline railway passenger platforms means trains of varying length can efficiently use the entire platform frontage, thus making it easier for passengers to board and or efficiently separate passengers needing to board train models from multiple producers and multiple different railways.
The height of a pltform door for example was a major hinderence for both the UK’s early attempt at a Tram-Train concept and Karlsruhe’s Tram-Train tunnel stations. Due to there being no national or international standard for LRV door height. A longer platform allows you to get multiple height passenger platforms. This standardisation does exist with mainline railways and nearly all vehicle producers. Every Skytrain regardless who makes them, must now conform to nearly all of the physical constraint that were introduced in UTDC’s Mk. 1 trains, forever. This means really expensive trains when there’s only one producer.
Secondly, main line railways can mitigate the capacity and operating cost issues of crowded trunk lines because it’s much cheaper to build tailback tracks and extra station platforms (a short 3rd track on a 2 track railway or at a 3rd track at a station).
When Ottawa’s West LRT extension opens up, during hours of very light use one or both branches of the LRT operating west or south of Lincoln Fields Station can turn back LRV’s from either direction, instead of forcing through service at all hours. Ottawa’s LRT can do this because we understood from the beginning (because of our Bus Transitway experience) that capacity limits are deadly for any rapid transit service.
Mainline railways as a rule have this extra capacity and thinking virtually baked in from the beginning because freight based services need to maximise capacity for profit immediately. Thus many North American railways have ample space sitting unused for exactly this purpose to reduce bottlenecks, whether there’s passenger service or not. Skytrain because of cost and the whole concept of a Light Metro system doesn’t do this by design.
Zwei replies: I agree about the SkyTrain extension to Newton as it seems to be a “back of an envelope” decision for the battleground city of
Surrey seats in the next election.
So much misinformation here.
That new bridge in new Westminster was designed to be up to 6 lanes. It will only start with 4 and upgraded later.
The government promised a new 10 lane bridge to Delta and then the stupid NDP cancelled it because they wanted to use union labour that increases the cost to over $4 billion.
The bridges in north Vancouver are congested because people are forced to merge. Merging creates traffic to back up.
Just look at the 8 lane Granville bridge in downtown. It is never congested because it is well-designed because traffic does not need to merge.
The new port man bridge moved the merging further east to Langley. This is where the highway goes from 8 lanes to 4 lanes.
It was really dumb to get rid of the tolls. Tolls pay for the new bridges over a couple of decades. Lion’s gate was a toll bridge. Coquilhalla was a toll road. Tolls completely recovered the cost of constructing them.
If we kept the tolls, then we could afford more and better public transit. BC needs better transit outside the metro Vancouver.
Tolls are quite common in Europe and not very expensive.
Zwei replies: I see the Conservative trolls have read the post and now in over-drive. So much misinformation in your reply, that one has to take it for what it is, “alternative facts”.
Actually, all bridges and the tunnel were tolled prior to 1964, except for the Fraser St./#5 road bridges and were the tolls were removed by the then social Credit government as a reelection ploy. In fact later research showed that tolls were vastly over-sold for what money they made.
The Port Mann bridge tolls were a financial tool for the private company collecting the tolls than anything else and the social damage the tolls did were huge, something that the politcans ignore. Collecting tolls has nothing to do with transit, which is a separate entity.
Basically, you haven’t a clue what you are talking about.
I am not a conservative troll and do not like the party. BC should bring back the liberal party.
I did not know every bridge before 1964 had tolls.
I do know Lions gate bridge was built by a British properties developer for $6 million and collected the same amount in tolls. They later sold the bridge to BC for millions.
I read about the highway 5 and 5a on Wikipedia. It cost $848 million. In 2003, Gordon turned over toll collection to a private company, then after strong opposition eliminated tolls in 2008.
Tolls can be effective to pay back costs if done right.
Norway has a lot of toll roads and their landscape is similar to BC. Norway has a very good transit network, with a rail line going north of the Arctic circle.
Zwei replies: Oh, I think you are.