Notes From The Past

The preceding graph is from the late 1980’s and adjusted for 2024 Canadian dollars:

San Diego: $10.25 million/km

Portland: $20.25 million/km

Nantes: $25.15 million/km

Calgary: $30.26 million/km

VAL: $56.7 million/km

SkyTrain: $66.82 million/km. Please note, the current 16 km Expo Line extension to Langley is now costing in excess of $375 million/km or put another way, the 16 km Expo Line extension to Langley is costing over five and half times more per km than the adjusted original Expo Line!
The 5.7 km Broadway (subway) extension to the Millennium Line, is now costing over $700 million/km or, again put another way, is costing ten and a half times more than the original Expo Line!

The following is from a German engineer who has worked in Vancouver and his take on our SkyTrain light metro system is more than interesting. The following is from an exchange of Emails from 2013.

The facts:

Skytrain is operated at a maximum frequency of 120s with trainsets of a
maximum length of 72m or 68m on the Expo and Millenium line, resp. just
42m (!) on the Canada line.

100m trainsets at 90s resp. 60s frequency are perfectly feasible with
light rail operated on sight. As demonstrated in the “real world”. By
examples given here on this list.

BTW: They claim that the Canada line would have a capacity of 15,000
pphpd. With platforms of 50m length (for 63m three-car trainsets?) and
a frequency of 120s, using the figure of 5 pass/m my pocket calculator
tells me it’s

50m/train * 5pass/m * 30trains/h = 7,500pphpd

NewMath. 2+2 equals 8 for them.

With the actually usable two-car sets it’s

42m/train * 5pass/m * 30trains/h = 6,300pphpd

With that strange idea to use 50m platforms for 63m trains it would be:

63m/train * 5pass/m * 30trains/h = 9,450pphpd

But that would be obviously impracticable in reality since the doors
at the ends of the cars wouldn’t be usable. Try to do that during rush
hour.

Conclusion: Like all of those driverless “mini metros” Skytrain is just
yet another ridiculous and hideously expensive gadget that’s unable
to cope with anything that deserves the designation “passenger volume”
in an agglomeration of 2.3 mio inhabitants.

Sincerely,

Jun 14, 2013

Zweisystem: “WHAT IS THE POINT OF DRIVERLESS RAIL CARS ?”

Good question. >;->

Back in the 60s and 70s of the last century, they had this idea to
reduce transit cost by replacing drivers with automation.

The operators and municipalities over here didn’t care for construction
cost for the required grade-free infrastructure (i.e. tunnels) because
these were highly subsidized (by 90%) by the federal and state
governments. Just like what you wrote about the case of the people
mover at Detroit.

Unfortunately for the taxpayers and farepayers, they didn’t
consider operating and maintenance cost of that infrastructure.


RATP (Paris) once admitted that their driverless subway line 14
(meteor) doesn’t require a single person less staff to operate than a
conventional subway line with manual operation. And I even doubt
whether they count in the maintenance staff for the platform screen
doors. Because I happen to have worked once for a company that did such
maintenance and it was a money-printing business for them.

Another operator once admitted that the electricity bill alone for all
those escalators and lifts, for lighting and ventilation of those tunnel
stations is higher than the electricity bill for the subway trains. The
same applies for maintenance of all that equipment. It’s a hopeless
money-sink, as numerous operators of “heavy rail”-style “light rail”
systems with tunnels and grade-free infrastructure over here now start
to figure out.

And now, quite a lot of that expensive equipment in those tunnels and
stations that was once paid with federal and state subsidies has
reached the end of its lifespan and needs to get replaced, while after
~40 years in operation, even the tunnel structure needs expensive
repairs in some places and at the same time, municipalities and
operators are broke.

Like in Lausanne (Switzerland), where they built a driverless
rubber-tyred mini-metro using “trains” consisting of single married
pairs of 24m*2.4m, based on the claim that streetcars/LRVs couldn’t
climb the 11.5% grade – which is nonsense as lots of examples cited on
this list have shown or are still showing. And then they had to install
electric heating of the rolling surfaces with a power of several kW per
m, over several km. At temperatures below 0°C, they’re wasting more
electricity for heating the guideway than for traction power.

BTW: That maglev gadgetbahn called Transrapid also would have required
electric heating of the guideway for operation below <0°C.

Zweisystem: “Detroit reports the same for their Sky-Train but they do not have rail to compare with. Sky Train costs more than buses.”

Which in turn cost more than streetcars or light rail.

Zweisystem: “Vancouver claims Sky Train costs no more than C-Train in Calgary but C-Train has operated well and cost far less to construct. Vancouver has very high ridership with no freeways allowed in the city so is a special case.”

A light-rail system running at grade would have at least as much
ridership. Already since for the same money, you could build a vastly
more extensive network.

Sincerely,

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