Lysenkoism – TransLink’s Doctrine
The SkyTrain Lobby Is Watching You!
Lysenkoism: describes the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social or political objectives.
Transit is about moving people, not building high rise condos and towers!
Really, not in Vancouver, where the SkyTrain light metro system is designed to shape land use, ensuring big profits for politcal friends and insiders.
Ignoring the fact that the proprietary SkyTrain mini-metro system has been rejected by transit planners around the world as being extremely expensive for what it does and just being poorly designed, many local planners and engineers still hail SkyTrain as a ‘wonder system‘ despite the fact that only seven such systems have been built in 44 years and only three are seriously used for urban transport.
Ignoring facts has been the mainstay of TransLink, countless provincial ministers of transportation, professional engineers, planners and academics, in transit debates and regional transit planning in general. Why have so many people have stained their reputations, supporting a proprietary mini-metro, when the rest of the world has moved on, relegating SkyTrain as a historic footnote?
There are two reasons for so many local so-called professional and academic people remain willfully blind on regional transit issues.
- Many people have made small fortunes by supporting SkyTrain and the SkyTrain planning and building process. Making large sums of money by doing very little is a very hard habit to give up, especially when the taxpayer is footing the bill.
- Many people have just been bamboozled by the SkyTrain lobby and are embarrassed to acknowledge it. Like sheep, they continue to baa, baa, the SkyTrain line for fear that they would be shown ignorant of transit issues.
Greed, ignorance and fear are the main ingredients of our regional transit planning and until that changes, the powers that be will still plan for SkyTrain. The continued building and operating SkyTrain is bankrupting TransLink, taxes will continually rise, further feeding greed, ignorance and fear.
Lysenkoism is the doctrine and it is practiced by the provincial government, Metro Vancouver and TransLink.
There is so much misinformation in the following comment that I have to comment on each faux pax.
Insemnity is doing the same thing over and over again. Like you are doing in this blog. The only one that has been distorting facts is Mr Zwei about the skytrain.
Is that the best you can do? One wonders why you take the time, unless your bosses tell you to do so.
Low capacity Due to BCRTC PP3[]M vs Manufacturer PP6[]M Perception Less capacity to Metros car or LRV.
First of all, I haven’t a clue what you are talking about, oh that bureaucratic double speak, babble beats brains.
High frequency more maintenance BCRTC realistic metric MK Series ton wear on rail section. Once it hits a certain of x rail Re profiled or replaced. Lightweight construction MK Serious car up 21 ton vs Metro car 26-32 ton at Lower frequency = Same capacity with more frequency on the SkyTrains. Less wear on the rails is SkyTrain every time. Other transit agencies time and frequency to schedule maintenance for rail replacement or repro filing.
Again more babble, as the rails have been replaced once in the 1990’s, I would say the small wheels on the cars, revolve faster and more times than a larger wheel, causing more wear.
There is only 6 System to existing in Operation. 3 Well planned Rapid transit systems being BCRTC, RapidKL and Dubai metro.
Again, you use abbreviations to confuse, but both TransLink and the Kuala Lumpur are established systems, with Kuala Lumpur having three different (4 if you count their planned regional railway) transit systems and the extension you claim is for their conventional light metro system. Dubai’s system is also a conventional system and not powered by LIM’s. Remember Bombardier’s MK.2 cars use the Innovia body shell, as does their monorail system and the conventional system in Dubai.
Author Implementations is TTC Shortline in Semi-automatic operations and Pour to no maintenance. The Detroit people mover one way loops are failures on Detroit planners. AirTrain in NYC Private venture with the airport and New York port authority to spikes MTA. CNR make copycat system(no expression).
The Detroit system was more of a “show case” system for ICTS, that was supposed to revitalize the decaying city centre. It didn’t work well and is now more of a tourist attraction than anything else.
LRT Maintenance compared to Skytrain or metro is lol.
The major purpose EXPO 86 make Vancouver a destination and show off canadian inventions. SkyTrains a bi-product of hosting EXPO 86. This means SkyTrains and development go hand-in-hand. More people living near transit more efficient than adding more lines.
Ha, ha, ha, thou jests! ICTS used obsolete technology cast off from Krauss Maffie’s Transurban maglev. The Ontario government created a crown corporation to sell the thing, which later was converted to a proprietary railway. The tech was all German I am afraid.
SkyTrains not proprietary 1 assembler/ manufacturer MK Series. Lot components manufactured in BC, an exception computers equipment. ART Available Globally but disadvantage High capacity, Importing replacement parts, Supporting foreign nation, ATC Cost, Safety and regulatory Issues(Levitating trains and Automatic operations or type frequencies below 5 minutes). Local city planners or Transit planners choosing a domestic option to boost their own economy.
The trains on the Expo and millennium Lines are indeed proprietary and one of the big reasons it failed to find a market. TransLink and the provincial government are very prickly on this subject because to admit the system ism proprietary, means the bidding process for new cars would have been illegal. Notice, no one makes compatible cars!
Crowning achievements of the sky train so far:
1 3 busiest transit System in North America( Canada and USA).
(Not based on independent ridership numbers as TransLink uses “boardings” and not linked trips. Aslo, the system is designed to feed bus passengers onto the R/T system and TransLink double counts ridership.)
2. First fully automatic metro in the world
(Er, no, London’s Victoria line opened in 1968 has that award)
3. Longest automated metro in operation.
(Sadly due to the huge cost we could have had a light rail network 3 to 4 times as large and that would be something to brag about.)
4. Most KM of fully automatic trackage.
(you just repeat yourself and I would suggest the the UK’s Cross Rail now has that distinction.)
5. Both SkyBridges having awards.
(Everyone gets awards these days, meaningless.)
6. Most frequent metro service in the world at 90 sec Headways.
(Meaningless, the small trains demand close headway’s, yet close headway’s drive up maintenance costs.)
Translink is focused on provincial mandate to priority local and Cross town trips.
There is no such mandate, rather it is the provinces wish to use SkyTrain fro photo-ops and 10 second sound bites at election time. To admit that we have gotten it all wrong would be politcal suicide.
The whole tire point of construction is to make money. Location location is great for businesses to be located at busy thoroughfare. Lower mainland has been a hot real estate market with anything being limited supply available units on the market and Very few options of living
accommodations.
So? This sounds like more bureaucratic babble.
SkyTrains Fan, Most got them Information of SkyTrains documentary. Say Translink “Skytrain documentary relevant still” People like me who want to see why other cities didn’t want to build the skytrain and countless hours reading PDF. Rest of the public likes to look at mountains out front window skytrain. Or people that never wrote it and complain about it.
Over 200 new LRT lines built since Skytrain was first marketed tells the tale and today it is entirely obsolete for the 21st centruy.
Like Came across today:
https://www.bcgreen.com/~samuel/green/GREER_Rep-SkyTrain_April_12_1999.pdf
https://bcombudsperson.ca/assets/media/Public-Report-No-08-Skytrain-Report.pdf
Have you ever been on the Broadway buses?
Every day they are so crowded. Buses are often delayed because they are so crowded.
The 99 bus has frequency up to 3 minutes and still crowded.
The sky train is expensive and is needed on Broadway.
Yes, some development does happen near stations, which leads to more crowding on the trains. I do not support this.
The people opposed to sky train should try using the bus on Broadway every day for at least a month.
The benefit of extending sky train is a single line from Vancouver to Coquitlam with no transfers.
There should be a new rail line from Marpole to New Westminster and maybe extended to Chiliwack. This would benefit people going to airport from the east.
Zwei replies: Show me the money. With the Langley extension in jeopardy due its escalating costs, which are now over $4.5 billion just for the guideway and the push for the Broadway subway. There will be no extensions to the Expo and millennium lines until 2040 and by that time, SkyTrain will have ceased production.
@Odell 20 buses per hour is nowhere near the threshold for a tunnel. You really need Ottawa levels of bus traffic before tunnels start making sense. Albert and Slater Streets in Ottawa (a couplet of one way streets with the bus lanes for the Central Transitway) generally at peak had 180 to 200 buses per hour per direction, approximately 10,700 p/h/d. This is what it looked like.
https://austinrailnow.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/0_arn_otw-bus-brt-congestn-2011-z_flickr.jpg
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Slater_Looking_East_1.JPG
20 buses per hour is easily handled by a surface Busway, which looks approximately like this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitway_(Ottawa)
https://dewi.ca/trains/busway/pix/BWAY3.jpg
Zwei replies: Thank you!. Far too many people equate crowed buses on the 99B on Broadway for the need of a $2.7 billion subway.
I will first preface this with a “warning” Odell uses a rail for the van Email address, which only trolls use and with the amount of spam, threats, directed my way and other nasty bits of phishing Emails, that Odell is probably on the pay of Translink to spread their misinformation.
All I can say you do not have a clue, nor are really listening. Like most at TransLink, they reside in a dreamworld where facts and reality just does not exist.
Oh yes, just a note, Translink is the taxpayer and this taxpayer is maxed out.
@haveacow. You are funny. Vancouver is a much bigger city than boring Ottawa. Metro Van has 2.6 million. Metro Ottawa has 1 million. Translink has over 400 million ridership. Ottawa transit has 70 million rider ship.
Broadway is part of the major transit network in Metro Vancouver.
200 buses per hour mean a bus every 30 seconds. That would create a lot of congestion a bus stops.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Slater_Looking_East_1.JPG
This picture is of a line of parked buses in Ottawa, and if you look close at the picture, the buses are empty.
Ottawa buses have a reliable problem.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/40-per-cent-of-busiest-oc-transpo-buses-not-on-time-report
Broadway extension will replace two bus routes, The #84 and #99 on two streets.
Zwei says show me the money for Langley extension.
https://www.ticorp.ca/projects/surrey-langley-skytrain-project/
Funding for the project includes $2.476 billion from the Province, $1.306 billion from the Federal Government, with local government contributing the remainder.
They do say the estimated cost is 4.01 billion. The actual cost could be different. Translink will pay the difference.
Zwei replies: if you read the press release, it now seems just the guideway costs $4.01 billion and the track, the electrics and stations are not included. I think I will use that one for another post.
Sorry not empty buses Odell, that’s Slater Street at peak those buses are full. We lived that twice a day (morning and afternoon peak) here in Ottawa for 30+ years. 185-200 buses/hour/direction, moving 10,500-10,700 p/h/d at the height of the peak. This happened twice a day, 5 days a week for 30+ years. It ended in 2019 when the Confederation LRT Line tunnel was opened under downtown Ottawa. In 2019 our Transitways moved 240,000 per day, the entire transit system only moved 325,000 per day. That’s why our LRT system is built to Light Metro standards. LRT tech allows you to cheaply operate at high capacity and low capacity rights of way with the same vehicle. Skytrain can’t dream of doing that. That’s one the reasons very few ever bought it.
Our LRT was cheaper to build and it can easily move more people than the Skytrain can. All while having design choices that allowed for cheap capacity upgrades. This is one of the major issues with the Skytrain its too costly to effectively upgrade its capacity. Spending roughly the same as Vancouver, you get 16km of Skytrain, we get 44 km
After the Mk. 5 Skytrains are added that’s it, unless big expensive upgrades come you are stuck at that level. Operating with greater frequency is going to be a big problem for you due to its built in inefficient design, building and technology choices.
The Central Transitway using painted bus lanes in the downtown core on Slater Street (Eastbound direction) and Albert Street (Westbound direction) as well as fully physically segregated heavy capacity busways (known as Transitways) in the burbs. The Provincial government on multiple occurrences wouldn’t pay the exorbitant cost of below grade Transitways (tunnels) in downtown. That right of way became one of the busiest BRT rights of way in the western world. Only being exceed by Latin American cities like Bogata, Quito and 2 Brazilian BRT systems (with developing world conditions and operating allowances).
Cost is paramount to us, we are stuck with over 40% of our rapid transit building/capital costs, unlike Vancouver. Don’t worry you will find out how overly expensive your Skytrain really is when the Federal infrastructure money ends after the next election. The coming Conservative federal government is profoundly anti-transit.
Most cost conscious politicians only supported Skytrain because its driver less operations, effectively allows you to legally, UNION BUST! I have spoken to many of your local politicians both current and past, the only reason they supported Skytrain is it allowed them to crush workers and unions, all under the guise of keeping taxes down..
One just cannot talk costs with the locals because cost of transit is heavily censored. Good god, the locals still think driverless operations means there are no operational costs at all!
Just recently, replying to a Facebook post by a well know Vancouver politician, about how good SkyTrain was, the author said everything I wrote about the costs for SkyTrain as false because Skytain had no drivers, therefor free to operate!
Just do not mention the now over 300 attendants @ $39.95 per hour, basic wage, who work on the Expo and millennium Lines!
The other refrain is that it is also the safest transit system in the world but do not include the over 110 people who died by suicide. Yes, and do not mention Edmonton of Calgary because no one dies by suicide on their systems.
I recently sent a concise history to a Postmedia reporter who inked some erroneous items about SkyTrain, who replied he had no time to read it and anyways, he gets all his info from TransLink!
Most people in Vancouver firmly believe that the Broadway subway will solve all the transit ills on the said street because everyone will use it.
Talk light rail and wow, one would think these things kill dozens of customers daily.
Oh, I forgot, the Ottawa LRT is deemed a failure on our side of the country, with most politicians citing as a failure of light rail. Just try to set the record straight and you are deemed a loony.
It is the sad state of affairs that exist in Metro Vancouver today and with the media talking out of its collective hats, i see no change.
Nice to know I’m a Looney! Wow I have reached that age, I gone from urban and transportation planner/transit professional to “old crank” status. I’m so proud !
Zwei replies: Over the years I have been called “trolley-jolly” and at a public meeting 20 years ago a TransLink manager loudly proclaimed I was the “idiot savant of transit”. Obviously he did not know what an idiot savant is, the audience did!
Just thought people in Vancouver should know this. The public corporation that runs Detroit’s People Mover (a one way Skytrain like loop of track in downtown Detroit, that uses Mk. 1 Skytrains) is purchasing several of the now retired cars from Toronto’s former Scarborough RT Line (Line #3) , again these are Mk. 1 Skytrains with a driver’s cab. Does everyone understand what this means?
The TTC’s garbage is a better deal financially for Detroit’s People Mover than buying a new Skytrain!