Memo to the M.O.T. – Time to Reread The Leewood Study – Updated
First posted by on Saturday, May 2, 2020
Now fifteen years old, the Leewood Study, done by Leewood Projects (UK), to assess the viability of reinstating a passenger rail service from downtown Vancouver to Chilliwack via the former BC Electric R.R. route, is worth a revisit.
The Leewood Study brought a fresh set of ideas to the planning table, something the establishment did not like, because the establishment planned for failure. Just recently, Zwei was informed why the government would not consider reestablishing a 130 km Marpole to Chilliwack regional railway, connecting Marpole to Chilliwack via the former BC Electric interurban route, was because it would attract more new customers than the current $7 billion, 16 km Expo line extension to Langley. The Rail for the Valley/Leewood Plan would service a minimum of 10 major destinations, unlike the light-metro extension.
The major destinations served along the $2 billion, 130 km route would include:
- Marpole – Vancouver terminus and 20 minute transfer to YVR.
- New Westminster.
- North Delta at Scott Road
- Central Surrey
- Cloverdale – Front door servcie to KPU campus and the new hospital.
- Langley – 10 minute walk to KPU campus.
- Front door service to Trinity Western University and 15 minute commute to historic Fort Langley.
- Gloucester Business Estate.
- Abbotsford – 2 stops and 20 minute commute to YXX.
- Yarrow/Sardis – 20 minute commute to Cultus Lake
- Chilliwack
The Leewood Study brought the word TramTrain into the local lexicon, but the genius of TramTrain has been lost on politicians and bureaucrats who still want to plan for ruinously expensive, photo-op friendly light metro in Metro Vancouver.
A modern European diesel TramTrain in operation on a country branch line
This brings us to this weeks release of the Vancouver Island Corridor Study, which gave a sobering cost of renewing the railway, but woefully deficient on providing a sound basis for any sort of passenger rail.
Time wasted on “commuter rail” is almost laughable if it were not so sad as commuter rail is only viable in major conurbations.
To be successful, a new and fresh look must be taken at proven methods of offering an affordable passenger rail service, as the establishment does not want any sort of rail transit, preferring buses and new highways.
In BC, politicians do as lobbyists want!
Vancouver Island Corridor Study
The Vancouver Island Corridor Study is a voluminous tome that lacks a coherent objective.
The study pinpoints the costs of rehabbing the line, but a 50% contingency, points to the fact those doing the study did not do a lot of homework.
The failing of the study lies in the fact it is using 19th century passenger rail solutions to solve 21st century problems.
It won’t work.
Creative thinking was desperately needed, but was absent, as the those doing the study reverted to old methods, tarted up as new.
TramTrain is a solution ready made for the E&N, yet not even a hint of this modern evolution of the interurban, which saw service in Victoria, years ago. Interurban Road in North Victoria/Saanich is a reminder of trams long past.
A tram-train is a light-rail public transport system where trams run through from an urban tramway network to main-line railway lines which are shared with conventional trains. This combines the tram’s flexibility and accessibility with a train’s greater speed, and bridges the distance between main railway stations and a city centre.
Direct (no transfer) service has dramatically proven to attract ridership.
The ability of TramTrain to bring customers direct to the city centre has been a proven winner where used. The bonus is that TramTrain has proven to attract the all important motorist from the car.
New Jersey’s River line’s TramTrain operation using diesel light rail cars.
A TramTrain service linking downtown Victoria to Langford, through the extremely congested Malahat, to Duncan, Chemainus, Ladysmith and Nanaimo, with on street running in Nanaimo (possibly to Departure Bay) would be a winner.
Future operation would extend to Courtney and Port Alberni!
Using TramTrain would leave plenty of pathways for freight and tourist services.
It would be best that BC’s Ministry of Transport, dust off the Leewood Study and reread it as it gives affordable answers that their overly complicated, yet extremely dated study does not.
There is an even a more pressing need to build LRT|streetcar (tramtrain): the housing affordability crisis.
We’re building lots of ‘housing,’ yet none of it is affordable. That must change.
A.I. reports median household incomes in our region this way:
The median household income in Greater Vancouver was $90,000 in 2021. The median household income in the Fraser Valley was $86,000 in the same year. Abbotsford, which is part of the Fraser Valley, also had a median household income of $90,000.
The price of an affordable house according to CMHC should be 30% of gross household income. In round figures, that is a 3 year salary. So, in 2021 dollars: $258,000 to $270,000 for a 1,600 SF house—I can see the lines forming around the block of folks ready to put a downpayment on that house ($13,500 for first timers, $54,000 for everyone else).
In urbanism, we describe the ‘median home’ as a 1,600 SF house with 600 SF finished (equivalent of a 1 BR apartment (a 2 BR in the Broadway Plan!) and 1,000 SF unfinished to be completed as DIY. We expect family members can add value with DIY, during periods when they are not employed in the labor force.
At $165 per square foot, it is going to require innovation to bring those products to market. However, as long as the tramtowns and neighborhood projects build on government land, contract on title can keep the value of the land off the sale price of the house (see GAHP below).
Here are my numbers for Zwei’s tramtrain or LRT|streetcar, from North Vancouver to Chilliwack:
• Queens Rd. North Van to Granville Island (9.1 km):
— 3.2 km Queens Rd to Lonsdale Quay (3.2 km)
— Lonsdale to Waterfront (3.4 km tunnel)
— Waterfront to Granville Island (2.5 km Burrard Street tunnel—downtown gets a subway under Burrard Street).
• Arbutus Corridor to New West (32 km)
— Granville Island to Marpole (12)
—Marpole to New Westminster (20)
• BCE RoW (Surrey – Chilliwack 98 km, 85 km + Livingston-Pratt corridor)
— Government owns 30% wheelage on the NW Railway Bridge (I’m told by experts)
— Scott Road to 184th (20 km)
— Pratt-Livingston Corridor (13)
— Langley to Chilliwack (65)
Total Route:139.1 km
Construction costs for that route are very reasonable. The Pratt-Livingstone corridor is to be upgraded by the lease holder as terms of lease, at no cost to government. The service would cross the Fraser on the NWRR bridge. And there are many places east of Langley where the route could be designed signal track with passing loops (like the 2010 demonstration during the Olympics at South False Creek and the Leewood Study).
• Broadway Skytrain Tunnel ($600 million/km contract price; we expect overruns)
• Langley Skytrain ($450 million/km estimate; we expect increases)
• Kitchener-Waterloo Line ($54 million/km 2025$CAD)
In round numbers, we can go to Chilliwack for 1/10 the unit cost of building the Broadway tunnel to UBC (8.33-times cheaper compared to guideways).
— 119 km to Chilliwack (not including the L-P corridor) = 14.3 km Skytrain in viaducts
— 6 km Burrard Inlet/Burrard Street tunnel = 7 km UBC extension
Although I am impressed by all the destinations served by the BCER, here is where I keep my eye fixed:
— Every 2.4 km (1.5 miles) on the 139 (87 mile route) we can build a new tramtown.
That’s 58 + 1 sites, let’s call it 60 stops and 60 tramtowns at 9,000 souls each or a total line capacity of half a million population.
The stops are at 2 km distances or sometimes less (in urban footprint).
— Each tramtown has a fixed footprint of 120 acres and houses 9,000 souls in cottages (50% of the new town footprint), row and courtyard houses (the other 50% of the footprint).
—In urban footprint we can infill with the same human scale products that build in the tramtowns. The footprint for neighborhood intensification, however, is based on a 12-minute walking radius from the rail transit stop (0.625 miles or 1 km). That radius, yields an intensification footprint of 800 acres.
That’s important, because it means less disruption from construction in the neighborhoods. If the neighborhood intensification footprint is 6.7 times larger than the tramtown, then the amount of construction, and the density of buildout over the entire neighborhood, will be 6.7 times less.
So, instead of an average of 30 units/acre in a tramtown, the neighborhoods will infill at a rate of 2.5 units per acre. Or one new house every 6 house lots.
I will be reporting on this in more detail over the summer.
The critical component is that each of these new units can be delivered as GAHP: guaranteed affordable housing in perpetuity. That will finally end the housing crisis.
However, the build out requires an LRT|streetcar line to support it. And the existing BCER is the obvious choice.
The strongest case we can make here is that the Skytrain Loop is full going downtown, so a Lonsdale Quay to Chilliwack line would provide a much needed boost of 30,000 pphpd under Burrard Street.
These type of projects must build in all major Canadian centers, where today transit projects are 20 km long and not the 200 km reach possible with LRT|streetcar.