November 16, 2012 – SkyTrain On The Fritz Again – So What Else Is New!
When ones builds with a complicated gadgetbahnen, with all the bells and whistles that come with an automatic (driverless) transit system, one forgets at the time of purchase that gadgetbahnen age very poorly and as they grow older, they become very stubborn to operate. Sadly, the warranty for SkyTrain is long over and it is the suffering transit customer and more so, the suffering regional taxpayer that must pay for political and bureaucratic silliness.
It all boils down to this; when one buys an Edsel, one can hardly think that they can operate it on the cheap.
As SkyTrain ages, the more it will break down and the more it breaks down, the more inconvenient it becomes and the more inconvenient SkyTrain becomes, the more transit customers go back to the car, if they can.
SkyTrain problem causing system-wide delays
The problem is at Scott Road station
News1130 StaffNov 16, 2012 07:17:43 AMSURREY (NEWS1130) – There is a problem with a train, possibly a fire, at Scott Road station. TransLink says this is causing temporary delays across the system.Trains are single-tracking between Columbia and King George. Although service to the Millenium Line has been restored, there are still large crowds at the stations.The Canada Line is not affected.
I just read on the news that Translink wants to buld a third sky train platform. Dummies, I wish they would listen to the people writing this website.
Zweisystem replies: I wish that TransLink would listen as well.
News flash. No form of transportation with perhap the exception of walking is 100% reliable. Highways are often backup for hours due to collisions. How about reporting on that instead of always picking on SkyTrain.
At least this type of tragedy that delays LRT for hours is far less likely to happen with grade separated transit.
http://blogs.sacbee.com/crime/archives/2012/11/early-morning-light-rail-train-fatally-strikes-person-in-midtown.html
Running trains at grade at speeds above 30kph in urban areas is dangerous and not very reliable.
Zweisystem replies: Ah for a transit system being touted as a “wonder system” with no faults, well it suffers problems like all other transit systems.
Your comment, “Running trains at grade at speeds above 30kph in urban areas is dangerous and not very reliable.” is so silly, especially that modern LRT is more reliable than SkyTrain. Really Richard read a book or something, your cherry picked anti-LRT rhetoric is laughable.
News Flash Richard, no one buys SkyTrain anymore.
Of the last ten posts on this blog, only one actually touts the benefits of passenger rail (the quick restoration of service after Hurricane Sandy), and one other brings forward a technology option for new lines (pre-fab track for Broadway). Of the remainder, one calls the mayor of Toronto names (which he probably deserves, but has nothing to do with rail for the valley), and the rest are rants against TransLink.
I want passenger rail for the valley. Can’t we do that without attacking SkyTrain?
After reading the Leewood Study I was inspired. I wanted to get the cities moving on this. I wanted to figure out if there was a way to make it happen sooner. I was looking up options for vehicles – turns out they were going to rebuild some Budd RDCs for the Toronto airport Blue22 line, but they’re going with something else instead, which means somebody somewhere has a bunch of Budd RDCs for sale. I wanted to volunteer with the FVHRA in the hopes of making the Surrey to Cloverdale run such a success this spring that it becomes evidence to support bringing back an all-year all-day train service. Heck, I wanted to build a railbus and some trackside shelters and ask SRY if I could run the thing myself. In summary, I had hope.
After reading about how SkyTrain is an abomination seven times over, I wanted to walk away. I see the passenger rail movement shooting itself in the foot, because we become open to retaliation from the pro-SkyTrain-everywhere folks (who are just as wrong as pro-rail-everywhere). They can play this game too:
1) Yesterday’s incident was an overheated wheel — a ‘hotbox’ — which isn’t exactly unknown on heavy rail.
2) If such a hotbox had happened on the single track Fraser valley line, service wouldn’t be disrupted, it would be halted entirely.
3) Last week in Pennsylvania, a light rail train derailed, causing service disruptions for two days.
4) Today in Egypt, a heavy passenger train ploughed through a school bus at a crossing, with 49 fatalities and still counting.
SkyTrain makes sense for some parts of town. Passenger rail makes sense for some parts of town. We really can have each one where appropriate. And I’d like to see more focus on the benefits of having such a system.
Please. I’m begging you. We need this train. Work for passenger rail, not against everything else.
Zweisystem replies. In the lower mainland, building passenger rail is a political football and SkyTrain is the game of choice. SkyTrain is built to move money, from government to friends of government, not to provide better transit. If one want ‘valley rail’ we must expose SkyTrain for what it really is, an over priced gadgetbahnen that has not, despite a well over $8 billion investment, attracted the motorist from the car. SkyTrain, with a well oiled PR machine, the anti LRT (and rail for the valley) rhetoric continues.
To answer your questions.
1 & 2) No service would not have been disrupted as a driver would have detected a hotbox (if that was the real problem) and taken the car out of service on a siding.
3) So what is your point? There are well over 500 tram, LRT and light railways in operation around the world and I am sure you can cherry pick some negative news.
4) Yes the accident in Egypt is tragic, but when bus drivers ignore signals at grade crossings, tragedy occurs. In BC all buses are required to stop at all unprotected grade crossings to prevent such an accident. There are 10’s of 1000’s grade crossings around the world and if one obeys the rules, no problems.
Here is the problem, if we keep building with SkyTrain, no LRT, no rail for the valley. We must slay the SkyTrain dragon before we can enjoy good transit in the Fraser Valley!
One thing opponents of LRT never consider is that the majority of surface LRT accidents is the result of the victims not paying attention, or disobeying traffic signals. But of course, it’s easy for opponents to portray a vehicle on a fixed guideway as being a danger to citizens.
ART technology is a joke. It’s technology derived from a failed Maglev venture in the ’70s. The technology is over 30 years old, and not many have been sold. Hell, Vancouver picked conventional rail technology for the Canada Line. There are case where grade-seperation, be it LRT, or metro makes. The only enviroment where Skytrain can be viable is as a people mover system in airports.
Zweisystem replies: Very few people know that the ART/ALM/ALRT/ICTS system can trace it roots back to a Krause Maffie MAGLEV, powered by LIMS (the wrong sort), that could not operate on curves!
Nelson Eisel,
Nicely worded, although I doubt it I hope your comment affects a bit of change.
Zweisystem replies: As long as the SkyTrain Lobby including Rico distorts the truth, Zwei will always be here to correct the deliberate misinformation.
Funny Zei, the main reason I bother posting here is to correct the misinformation you put out (if you stuck to supportable positive positions I would never need to comment). Strangely enough I am usually able to find sources to link to…as opposed to your standard, everyone knows that or our man in Europe talked to the transit agency (but obviously did not feel he could use his name or provide a link)….
Zweisystem replies; Here is the problem Rico, you get your information from a Skyscraper page or the SkyTrain lobby and Zwei gets his information by REAL transit experts or the industry. Herr Goebbels himself would not be more proud on how the SkyTrain Lobby repeats lies so often that they become fact in the minds of people. The truth has been so perverted in Vancouver that fiction is taken for fact and fairy tales are taken for truth.
REAL transit experts or the industry have names and linkable sources, provide a link to your sources and most of my issues with you dissappear.
Zweisystem replies: Real transit experts don’t work for TransLink, nor do they rely on links, because they are experts. Only those trying to deceive, rely on links.
You do know that there are plenty of sources out there in the big wide world that are not Translink don’t you? You also realize that citing sources is how people check the accuracy of claims? Only those with nothing but hot air to back them put out horse pucky like, ‘Only those trying to deceive, rely on links.’ Every peer reviewed scientist in the world is apparently out to decieve……
Zweisystem replies: And now Rico, here is the real story……the RftV blog, vetted by professionals, gives an opinion. The facts given, with those opinions are based on established transit fact; does one need a link when one claims that the Earth is round?
The SkyTrain Lobby, weaned on deliberate misinformation and anti-LRT rhetoric, just can’t handle the criticism and are reduced to screaming liar, liar, pants on fire.
Liar, liar pants on fire……the problem is you tend to say the earth is flat and for that you need a link or a source….maybe not all the time in the article but when questioned and certainly if the only sources findable on line contradict what you say (and posting a link or source is much more convincing than saying everyone who disagrees with you is part of the Skytrain lobby)….As for being vetted by ‘REAL’ transit experts I am sure there are plenty of your comments that no transit professional would touch with a ten foot pole, I assume that is why they remain ‘unnamed.’ (I should note most of the articles are fine, it is usually your introductory commentaries that are reality challenged…and of course not all the time)….anyways why not link to sources, your ‘REAL’ transit professionals should have easy time getting you the sources for claims you wish to make as long as the claims are based on reality.
Zweisystem replies: As Zwei has forgotten more about transit than you have ever learned, I think your criticisms are a more than a bit “rich”. The purpose of this blog is twofold, to support the reinstatement of the interurban service from Vancouver to Chilliwack and to correct years of deliberate anti-LRT propaganda that has been spewed in the region. The refusal by many to accept modern light rail practice, despite the fact that the light-metro concept has been discredited over a decade ago, is more than disturbing.
Real transit professionals tend to work for private companies, specializing in transportation planning, unlike the career bureaucrats here who like to pretend that they are and spend most of the time weaving nonsense like out local densification debate.
You claim that you have forgotten more about transit than I have ever learned. I think it explains a lot, everytime you learn something that you don’t agree with you forget about it….resulting in you knowing very little despite learning a lot….of course it may also be the onset of dementia. Maybe you should try some omega 3 oils I understand they are good for memory.
Despite the fact that I don’t like the interurban route Light Rail is a good technology (not for Broadway but a lot of other places). Focus on truthful stories about Light Rail instead of bashing every other transit technology and I think you will find a more willing audience.
Zweisystem replies: Oh yes Rico, the old fall-back position, I like LRT but………….. not for the old interurban route or for Broadway, sounds like the old bigot’s phrase; “…………some of my best Friends are black”. So it is not OK to say that SkyTrain has proven to be obsolete like the Edsel? Or, that in 2012, modern LRT can operate faster, carry more people, at a cheaper cost?
See Rico, there is a reason no one buys with SkyTrain, it is too expensive for what it can do, everything else is mere window dressing. Unfortunately, your arguments are found wanting, except for Metro Vancouver, which politicians believe in pixie dust and taxpayers with endless pockets of money. By the way Rico, the RftV blog has several real transit experts who vet the blog and are very quick to point out any errors, something that TransLink and the SkyTrain lobby are willing to do.
On the old interurban route past Langley my issue is the route not the technology. On Broadway a Skytrain extension seems to be the best option. LRT can carry as much or more than the Skytrain CURRENTLY carries. LRT can be fast. LRT cannot be fast and carry a lot of people on a corridor like Broadway unless it is grade seperated, in which case you have a metro. The ‘cheaper’ cost is debatable. Clearly Calgary has a lower cost per rider but I don’t know any other non legacy North American LRTs with lower costs per rider (feel free to provide sources to some I don’t know everything and there may be one or two).
Zweisystem replies: Sorry Rico, you don’t get the concept, in fact the SkyTrain Lobby have never quite understood the transit issue in the first place and why they keep inventing new “facts” to support the “wunder system”.
Rico or Richard or whatever your name is, you and your management still have not got it after years of spamming this blog .
You troll this blog and your posts are always the same – speed.
The issue is capacity and moving people, not moving money at speed as you and Translink continually state.
Posting Links and sources would not change anythink Rico, because you & your Translink controllers would not want to read any report that confirmed what the transt/transport experts in BC, Canada, Europe & the US have been correctly saying for ten years
Tranlink is not about providing RELIABLE TRANSIT FOR THE PUBLIC; it’s about cronyism corruption and making huge profits for it’s friends & political masters.
Rico a Troll, a very dishonest and disfunctional Troll.
Zei, feel free to actually post facts to dispute what I say instead of just telling me I make up facts…actually isn’t that what I started out asking you to do?
Rowley Banks, speed is not the only thing to measure but it is important. To exagerate would you take a trip by transit that took an hour more each way than a car? How about 2 minutes. Clearly speed matters, or more percisely total travel time matters. So does reliability, if you have an important business meeting on Broadway but for some reason you left late and now you must get to your meeting without any delays would you take the Skytrain or the surface LRT that still has to interact with traffic and pedestrians at least at intersection? By the way that was a defence of the reliability of Skytrain not a statement that LRT is unreliable because LRT is reliable, only Skytrain is more reliable. Since Zei does not know enough to link to sources you could find sources to dispute comments made by me or Richard or whoever instead of just saying we are part of the Translink lobby, like I tried to tell Zei the internet is a big place and Translink is a small agency so if a source exsists to support Zeis position you should be able to find it and post it.
Zweisystem replies: Could be that I am not employed by TransLink to write anti-LRT posts all day. In fact so much what I say is common knowledge and do not require links, like the “Earth is round”, which would still mean nothing if you believed the “Earth is flat”.
Rico, you disfunctional half-wit, if you could just be bothered to listen and see what other say & write, you might just understand what is being explained to you.
Do you by any chance suffer from Asperger’s Syndrome?
It might explain why you repeat your request, despite having been given an answer
Zweisystem replies: Rico, this is enough. You are welcome to post but your continually crying liar, liar is tiresome.
@Rowley Banks, you took the words out of my mouth.