From the Georgia Straight ~ Light rail and B-Line combo better than Broadway SkyTrain?
Zwei doesn’t quite agree, but then in BC everyone seems to to be at least 40 years behind when talking about public transit.
Transit should operate on the surface, to give the transit customer the best options. It is not speed of the transit service,Ai?? rather it is the ambiance and ease of use that attracts customers to transit. The speed issue is dishonest as it is not the speed of transit that is important, but the speed of the overall journey, doorstep to doorstep that is.
One should seriously consider the following, despite over $9 billion spent on three mini-metro lines, the mode share of autos in the region has remained at 57% for the past 20 years! During the same period, the region saw 700,000 new drivers and transit ridership has only grown with the population.
The shrill anti-LRT rhetoric, so often repeated, omits the the singular fact, no one buys SkyTrain anymore, very few cities use light-metro and no one has copied BC Transit and TransLink’s transit planning since the first SkyTrain was forced onto the region in 1980. Yet we continue to follow the dead end transit so loved by politicians.
The problem is simple; the Fraser Valley taxpayer has subsidized Vancouver’s expensive transit regimen and when the Fraser Valley needs good transit to help alleviate growing congestion, Vancouver wants more to build a needless and extremely expensive subway that will not, as it has not in the past, offer an attractive alternative to the car.
Light rail and B-Line combo better than Broadway SkyTrain?
by Stephen Hui on Apr 30, 2014
As Vancouver hurtles toward a civic election in November, Mayor Gregor Robertson is on record as supporting a proposed $3-billion subway line in the Broadway corridor.
ai???Heai??i??s wrong on probably four or five fronts,ai??? Adam Fitch, a planning technician for the Thompson-Nicola Regional District, told the Straight by phone from Kamloops.
Fitch, a former Vancouver resident, has a cheaper, off-Broadway solution to the overcrowding on the 99 B-Line buses. First of all, he suggests extending the Millennium SkyTrain line to the Great Northern Way Campus. From there, a new light-rail line would carry passengers to the University of British Columbia, using existing rail corridors and road medians for 80 percent of the way and tunnels for the rest.
On Saturday and Sunday (May 3 and 4), Fitch will give free bike tours of the proposed route as part of Janeai??i??s Walk, an annual event inspired by the legacy of urbanist Jane Jacobs. He envisions the light-rail line meeting up with the Canada Line at Olympic Village Station, using the Olympic streetcar route and Canadian Pacific Railway corridor, and taking West 16th Avenue to the Point Grey campus.
According to Fitch, compared to a tunneled SkyTrain line, light rail would involve one-quarter the cost and half the construction time, while also not taking away any traffic lanes. With double-decker trains and gated crossings, he believes this solution could offer the same capacity and speed as SkyTrain.
Zwei’s note; No one builds doubledecker trams, nor to road intersections needs gated crossings, which goes to show that Mr. Finch is somewhat out of date. As for capacity, LRT trumps SkyTrain, always had and always will.
ai???I think the reason that the B-Line is so congested is because of people going out to UBC,ai??? Fitch said. ai???They just want to get to UBC as fast and efficiently and pleasantly as possible. They donai??i??t care whether theyai??i??re on Broadway or on 16th. And, if you did what Iai??i??m talking about, then you could keep the B-Line on Broadwayai??i??maybe even improve it.ai???
Vision Vancouver Councillor Geoff Meggs told the Straight the B-Line is at capacity, as predicted by a 1999 study of the Broadway corridor.
ai???This proposal doesnai??i??t offer any benefit to the second-largest business district in the province,ai??? Meggs said by phone from City Hall.
http://www.straight.com/news/636586/light-rail-and-b-line-combo-better-broadway-skytrain?comment_mode=1#add-new-comment
May 3-2014
My last comment in the Georgia Straight was censored. Maybe if I paid the Georgia Straight thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in transit advertising every year, I could fabricate my own fictitious reality about transit by TransLink reducing carbon emissions, too. Georgia Straight like the Vancouver Sun isn’t about to bite the hand that feeds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwhBRJStz7w&list=RD31jenMJ0UOc
In the past, I’ve done conservative calculations showing that all the extra CO2 emitting and soot blowing diesel buses used for BRT (bus rapid transit, such as the 99 B-Line operating in Vancouver) and ST (sky train) make transit by TransLink pollute more than if we didn’t have transit here. These calculations were too forgiving.
Now, I’m going to prove conclusively based on indisputable logic and real TransLink data that: transit by TransLink is a massive atmospheric polluter and CO2 emitter in relation to cars. In coming months, both the COV and TransLink will be held accountable for taxing residents to create numerous and redundant high paying transit jobs under the pretence that transit is reducing carbon emissions and road congestion, during off peak hours. There will be a class action lawsuit to recover all the money collected by TransLink under the gas tax based on the false notion that transit by TransLink reduces CO2 emissions. I’m going to do whatever it takes to wipe the maggots at the COV and TransLink off the face of the earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dscfeQOMuGw
Proof
Anyhow, let’s get back to the main point of contention: TransLink admits that only 14% of the population uses transit on a weekday. On a Sunday or holiday, this drops to a paltry 4% of the population. Regardless, TransLink still operates lots of extra diesel buses at very high frequencies to get transit users to BRT and ST having stops which are too far apart to walk to in a reasonable amount of time or simply too far apart in distance for some mobility challenged transit users to reach by foot. If TransLink did not operate extra diesel buses to make BRT and ST possible, BRT and ST would crash and burn.
These extra diesel buses are referred to as the frequent transit network (FTN). Geoff Meggs who is a councillor at the City of Vancouver has nothing but rapturous praise for FTN. In Vancouver, FTN is essentially a secondary transit system in operation in parallel to the primary BRT and ST network. He claims that FTN takes cars off the roads. In fact, FTN merely leads to longer commutes from existing transit users. Commuters generally live 30 minutes from work or school. Increasing the speed of transit allows transit users to live in Richmond and still reach some destinations in Vancouver in 30 minutes, for instance. As the statistics show, there is no decrease in driving with BRT and ST which are in operation to increase the speed of transit under the false theory that fast transit results in fewer drivers on the roads. Both BRT and ST just increase transit costs.
Metro Vancouver has a population of 2.4 million and 14% of the population (336,000 people) use transit on any given weekday. Are we all in agreement? If not speak up, now.
How many trips that a transit user makes or the number of buses or trains boarded by a transit user doesn’t matter in terms of the density of people on transit per kilometer of distance travelled. For example, if there are 10 people on ST and no people on the diesel bus travelling in parallel to the ST, as far as CO2 emissions go, the density of people on transit is the same as 10 people per kilometre travelled on the diesel bus. Agreed? If not, tell me what you think it is.
Understanding the concept of density is fundamental to where I’m going with this. An understanding of numerical integration wouldn’t hurt, too. Notwithstanding, SeaBus comprising only about 2% of the ridership on transit, it does not matter whether someone is riding on a diesel bus in parallel to the electric ST or on the diesel bus – the carbon emissions for transit by TransLink are the same. Similarly, it does not matter whether someone is on the 99 B-Line diesel bus or the zero emission electric No. 9 trolleybus operating in parallel to the 99 B-Line – the carbon emissions by transit are the same. We are concerned with how many people are on transit over the day and how many kilometres the diesel buses travel over the day.
Here goes
Daily, diesel buses travel about 100,000 kilometres (km). Daily, these diesel buses can carry no more than 336,000 people, 14% of the population taking transit. So what, if no one takes these diesel buses and everyone takes ST, instead? These diesel buses are still running around on the roads and generating CO2 alongside the ST. In the morning along SW Marine Drive, hundreds of buses travel (not in service) without any passengers from the bus garage in Richmond to UBC in order to reach the origin of their routes, for instance. You have to numerically integrate these kilometres travelled without passengers along with all the kilometres travelled with passengers to get the average density of people on the bus per kilometre travelled. Let’s do it, to see!
Owing to the crazy number of service hours to keep BRT and ST moving in Metro Vancouver, the average density of people on the diesel bus per kilometre travelled is about 336,000 people / 100,000 km = 3.4 people on the diesel bus per kilometre travelled (5.4 people on the diesel bus per mile travelled if you prefer US units). If you are going to compare the CO2 emissions of the diesel buses to the CO2 emissions of cars, you have to compare the diesel bus getting about 3.5 mpg to the car getting about 27.4 mpg on average.
Let’s do it: 5.4 cars with 5.4 drivers (one is a midget) over one mile consume 0.2 gallons of gasoline (5.4 miles / 27 mpg = 0.2 gallons). One diesel bus over one mile with 5.4 passengers consumes 0.29 gallons (1 mile / 3.5 mpg = 0.29 gallons). Another, thing, diesel fuel emits about 10% more CO2 than gasoline. So, the 0.29 gallons of diesel fuel by the diesel bus is really 0.32 gallons of gasoline. Ouch.
I smell class action lawsuit. If you assume that everyone on transit will or can drive, transit is still 60% (0.12 / 0.2 = 60%) more CO2 generating than if everyone on transit here, drove. Maybe I missed something. What do the TransLink trolls on this site think about the calculations?
Uh huh. Give it some thought.
When this song came out in 1994, 57% of the population drove here. Nothing, has changed since.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgSPaXgAdzE
Let’s end things with a melancholy soft song…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xf-Lesrkuc
May 4-2014
To clarify my last comment, the 100,000 kilometres (km) for the diesel buses is the one-way cumulative distance traveled by all the diesel buses, as well as hybrid-diesel buses. It is implied that diesel bus refers to hybrid-diesel bus too as the the fuel mileage of the hybrid-diesel bus is only marginally better than the fuel mileage of the regular diesel bus used by TransLink.
Generally, on most bus routes for most of the time, the number of people on the bus builds up incrementally along the route. This build up on average is linear or can be regressed statistically to a linear value.
If you plot the cumulative people taking conventional transit daily on a weekday (336,000 people on the sky trains, trolleybuses, hybrid-diesel buses and diesel buses in Metro Vancouver) on the y-axis against the cumulative distance traveled by all the diesel buses on the x-axis, the slope of the line is the incremental change in the number of people taking transit for each kilometre of distance traveled by the diesel buses. This slope is 3.4 people per kilometre of distance traveled by the diesel buses: previously stated as the density of the people per kilometre traveled by the diesel buses.
So, this raises the obvious question, to reduce CO2: incrementally, is it better to have 3.4 people drive and stop the bus in its tracks or to have the 3.4 people take the bus and park their cars? Owing to BRT and ST, it appears to be the former here to reduce CO2.
Over the typical 15 km bus route, the average number of people who board the bus is 51 people (3.4 people/km * 15 km = 51 people). This agrees with the reality observed on the buses. There are the occasional exceptions during peak hours for certain atypical bus routes such as the 99 B-Line route where the slope is essentially flat with almost everyone tending to board at the beginning of the route. Then again, on the other routes in parallel to the 99 Bee, the slope is flat for the route and practically no one is on the bus for the entire route distance, and everything balances out to a slope of about 3.4 on average for all bus routes.
If TransLink did not operate ST and BRT, the FTN would not exist and the cumulative distance of the diesel buses would be much less. This would increase the slope for all bus routes from 3.4 to a higher value, and transit here would not emit more CO2 than if we did not have transit. Sadly, TransLink has gone berserk and is operating too many 99 B-Line diesel buses on the trolleybus routes and too many diesel buses along the ST line routes. Hope this clarifies things for everyone.
I’ll be bringing this to the attention of the TransLink Commissioner and will keep everyone apprised of his response. I expect waffling by TransLink and this will lead to a class action lawsuit to make TransLink de-waffle its response. It promises to be a fun time for everyone at TransLink.
Most Marvelous TransLink wants to fight? Let’s see if it can beat this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPkyPdubqDs