No SkyTrain For Surrey For A Decade
Don’t shoot the messenger.
Didn’t old Zwei didn’t try to warn everyone, the Mayor of Surrey’s juvenile anti LRT crusade may mean no SkyTrain in Surrey for ten years or more and if Bombardier closes down production of SkyTrain cars, could mean no SkyTrain period.
The indoctrinated believers, will still demand the obsolete SkyTrain, and spread lies and deceit about light rail at will.
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth.’ — George Orwell, 1984
This is SkyTrain’s foundation, the same sort of foundation for pyramid and ponzi schemes.
With our politicians so inept; so ignorant about regional transit, the countdown for a complete fiasco, which will make the FastFerry fiasco, a mild child’s game.
The following is from our Mr. Cow, read and weep.
1 ALL FEDERAL CAPITAL TRANSIT FUNDING IS P-3! You can’t have federal funding without it being private public partnership. This policy started under Harper in 2009 and was continued under Trudeau’s Liberals.
2 Considering after spending $50,000,000 in engineering and planning and another $20,000,000 in pre-construction costs for the LRT, and the end result being nothing, I would be pretty pissed.
3 In exchange your getting, a line with no Federal funding (all your federal LRT money was officially shelved by the Infrastructure bank in Ottawa yesterday), until a new Environmental Assessment is done and a new P-3 framework set up.
4 No guarantees that senior levels of government will even fund the more expensive Skytrain project.
5 A minimum of 4-5 years, probably longer, before construction can even begin.
6 On top of it all, you are getting inferior Skytrain operating technology that’s more expensive to operate than LRT.
7 When the project is ready it will be competing for funding for stage 2 of the Broadway line and the total upgrade of the original section of the Expo Line. You will loose to both those projects.
8 Skytrain technology could be completely out of production by the time the Langley extension is ready. Bombardier is laying off 5000 more workers, 2500 in Quebec, from both the rail and aviation businesses. 8 Rail plants in Europe will be shut down as well. This means a much lower production capacity for rail vehicles.
You have been scammed! You won’t get anything for any Surrey line for a decade.
Rick, you email is a spammer email, thus I must assume you are a troll.
Thus, you will not be allowed to post after this.
I let the two posts stand to confirm you are a troll.
The Broadway Subway will be delivered by the Government of BC, in partnership with the Government of Canada, TransLink and the City of Vancouver. The Province, as the owner of the existing SkyTrain system, will carry TransLink’s work forward in delivering the Broadway Subway project. Upon completion, it will be fully integrated into the regional transportation network and operated by TransLink.
Construction for the Broadway Subway will begin in 2020 and is expected to be complete by 2025. Once complete, the Broadway Subway will bring fast, frequent and reliable SkyTrain service to one of the busiest destinations in the region.
On opening day, the Broadway Subway will be able to carry more than three times the current capacity of the 99 B-Line bus service. Travel time between VCC-Clark and Arbutus will take 10 minutes, and a passenger embarking at Lafarge Lake-Douglas Station will arrive at Arbutus in 46 minutes — one train, no transfers, no traffic congestion.
Zwei replies: More bullshit from a bullshit artist. Who is going to take it? How many people from Coquitlam are going to UBC? Not very many. On Sunday last, Translink was operating 2 car trans every six minutes!
Peak hour capacity of the 99B Line bus is 2,200 pphpd, based on 3 min headway’s and golly gee whiz, a $3.5 billion subway is going offer three times the capacity? That is still 8,000 people less than the North American standard for building a subway!
Go back and read your picture books.
“On Sunday last, Translink was operating 2 car trans every six minutes!”
Are you serious?
I went to Coquitlam on Sunday in afternoon, the train was every 3 minutes. Coming back at 8pm, it was still every 3 minutes.
Millenium line is a very comfortable route. The stations in Port Moody and Coquitlam are the best. There is both up and down esculators. Other stations only have up esculators which force seniors to use the elevators.
Expo line to King George has same schedule. Expo line is two routes to King george and Production way stations.
Zwei replies: I timed it at a train every 6 minutes, but a 2 car train every 3 minutes only doubles capacity to 4,000 pphpd, far less than could justify ab elevated light metro.
This from the Daily Hive.
TransLink accelerates full order of 80 new SkyTrain cars by 2020.
Relief from overcrowding on all three SkyTrain lines will be coming in a few short years after TransLink updated its plans this morning for new train orders.
During a media event at the Canada Line’s operations and maintenance centre near Bridgeport Station, the public transit authority announced it will accelerate its order of train cars by ordering 80 cars that will arrive by late-2020.
“With the very strong demand in our system and the crowding that exists, we want to make it a priority to get relief for our customers as quickly as possible,” said TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond. “We’re able to do this by accelerating some of the federal money that was planned for later expenditures, so we have a very strong commitment from the federal and provincial governments to help us make that happen.”
This means the Expo and Millennium lines will receive 28 new generation Bombardier Mark III cars by early-2019 – as previously announced as part of the Phase One train expansion plan – and an additional 28 additional Mark III cars by the end of 2019 for a total of 56 new Mark III cars.
This second batch will come three years ahead of schedule, as it was originally planned as part of a Phase Two order of 72 cars between 2022 and 2024 to add new capacity in time for the opening of the Millennium Line’s Broadway extension and replace some of the aging Expo-era Mark I cars, which will be gradually retired beginning in 2026.
However, passengers on the Canada Line will have to wait about a year longer than previously planned for more cars on the system between downtown Vancouver, YVR Airport, and Richmond. An order of 24 cars for the Canada Line was scheduled for late-2019, but those trains will now arrive by the end of 2020 instead.
TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond stated today the trains will be manufactured by South Korea’s Hyundai Rotem, which also built the Canada Line’s first 40 cars. The order was recently finalized by the Canada Line’s private operator ProTrans BC, a division of SNC Lavalin.
The new cars will increase capacity on the train systems significantly, with a 10% increase on the Expo Line, 23% increase for the Millennium Line, and 30% increase for the Canada Line. It is equal to a capacity increase of 8,200 passengers per hour per peak direction on all three lines.
“This is a very significant capacity improvement to SkyTrain. This means greater comfort and convenience for our customers, and they will see the difference during their commutes as they are experiencing crowding now,” continued Desmond. “There will be shorter wait times on the system.”
“More SkyTrain cars means increased frequency, reducing pass-ups and wait times for our customers. Our customers during certain portions of the day at certain stations are often being passed up by overcrowded trains.”
These orders will cost a total of $298 million from the Public Transit Infrastructure Fund, with $210 million for the order for the Expo and Millennium lines and $88 million for the Canada Line. The federal government is funding 50% while the provincial government and TransLink are coming in at 33% and 17%, respectively.
New trains are needed to meet rapidly growing demand on the SkyTrain system, which is partially fuelled by new redevelopments around stations and the 2016 opening of the Evergreen extension.
Last year, the Expo and Millennium lines saw a 12% increase in ridership while the Canada Line had an uptick of 6%. Overall, the transit system saw record ridership growth in 2017.
Zwei replies: The Hive is notorious in it’s anti-LRT and pro SkyTrain rhetoric. Much of the information is just not fact, but opinion, packaged as fact.
The ridership increases are actually boarding’s and the Evergreen Line caused more transfer to be made, hence more boarding’s. SkyTrain is close to capacity and cannot handle such large ridership growths.
The last is old news, the current SkyTrain MK.2 order will finish at the end of 2019. They need the cars because the MK.1 cars are worn out.
Mark, we know you are shilling for SkyTrain, but really, packaging old news as new news is a wee bit tiresome.
Mark is clearly lying about trains arriving every 3 minutes. Translinks own schedule says every 6 minutes Sunday afternoon and every 6-10 minutes early and late Sundays.
Zwei replies: Thank you for the clarification. As I live south of the Fraser it was my first time to view the Evergreen extension and I was taken aback by the 6 minute headway’s and those small 2 car trains.