Rail for the Valley’s Letter To The Mayor’s Council On Transit

I have been involved with transit issues in the lower mainland for 40 years. I am also the person responsible for the Leewood Study, an independent study by Leewood Projects UK, about the viability of reinstating the former Vancouver to Chilliwack interurban service with modern TramTrain or light diesel multiple units, on behalf of the Rail for the Valley group.
The Leewood Study, published in 2010, is all the more important today, with an ever growing Fraser Valley population combined with the massive escalating costs of building with Light Metro, will make any thought of future extensions financially impossible.

Rail for the Valley: www.railforthevalley.com/

TramTrain: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tram-train

Leewood Projects: leewoodprojects.co.uk/

Leewood Study: www.railforthevalley.com/studies/

The Lower mainland has a very expensive transit problem, called TransLink, which has a spending problem and not an income problem. This has resulted in TransLink demanding a further $600 million annually, threatening drastic cuts to the regional transit service. TransLink willfully squanders money on prestige transit projects, such as the SkyTrain light-metro system, which no transit authority has copied the Vancouver model!

It is time, regional politicians show some backbone and vote no to the demands of this ponderous and grossly inefficient bureaucracy because they will always come back, demanding more and more money, to hide their incompetent and extremely expensive transit planning.

The current expenditure of at least $16 billion, extending the Millennium and Expo Lines a mere 21.7 km is a combination of professional misconduct on the part of TransLink and the Provincial government and willful ignorance by the Mayor’s Council on Transit.

This $16 billion expenditure confirms Bent Flyvberg’s Iron Law of Mega-projects specifically addresses why politicians are obsessed with infrastructure at any cost.

“…the “political sublime,” which here is understood as the rapture politicians get from building monuments to themselves and their causes. Mega-projects are manifest, garner attention, and lend an air of proactiveness to their promoters. Moreover, they are media magnets, which appeals to politicians who seem to enjoy few things better than the visibility they get from starting mega-projects. Except maybe cutting the ribbon of one in the company of royals or presidents, who are likely to be lured by the unique monumental and historical import of many mega-projects. This is the type of public exposure that helps get politicians re-elected. They therefore actively seek it out.“

It is time TransLink stop its deliberate gambit of confusion with Metro Vancouver’s rapid transit system, which has led to decades of dubious transit projects, costing two to three times more than they should, by continuing building with an obsolete proprietary light metro system, locally known as SkyTrain.

Metro Vancouver’s light-metro system, called SkyTrain, is a name chosen via a radio contest in 1985 and is common name with many other elevated railways and proprietary transit systems that have no relation with Vancouver’s operation.

Vancouver’s SkyTrain light-metro system is made up of two distinct railways:

• The Canada Line, a conventional railway, built as a light metro and uses ‘off the shelf’ Electrical Multiple Units (EMU’s) currently supplied by ROTEM of Korea.
• The Expo and Millennium Lines operate an unconventional, proprietary and often renamed light-metro system, now called Movia Automatic Light Metro (MALM), whose cars are only built by Alstom, after they purchased Bombardier’s rail division. No other company offers a compatible vehicle that will operate on the MALM lines. This raises important questions with the so-called bidding process with car replacement because no other company produces compatible cars!
  

The MALM system uses Linear Induction Motors (LIM’s) and is not compatible in operation with any other railway except its small family of now six systems. In total seven systems were built but Toronto abandoned theirs last year. 

Vancouver is now the sole customer for MALM, as it is the only operator currently expanding its system.

A technology bias exists at TransLink. Internationally the MALM system is considered obsolete, as it costs more to build, operate and maintain than conventional light rail. Cities that built light-metro, such as Ottawa and Seattle, use light rail vehicles, as they are much cheaper to operate and far more flexible in operation. In today’s world, modern light rail greatly outperforms the MALM light-metro system at a significantly lower cost.

TransLink continues to use this cunning method of manipulating analysis to justify SkyTrain in corridor after corridor, and thus succeeds in keeping its proprietary rail system expanding.

Gerald Fox, Noted American engineer, retired.

TransLink’s well oiled propaganda machine, churning out ”fake news” and “alternative facts” has created the local SkyTrain myth. The SkyTrain myth has fueled the SkyTrain Lobby, which repeats TransLink’s fake news and alternative facts, so much so that politicians and the public have come to believe the SkyTrain myth.

The Broadway subway is testament to the power of the SkyTrain myth. Funding for the now $4 billion Broadway subway (this cost will be announced after the provincial election) was based on a foundation of half truths and questionable planning.

The accepted standard for building a subway is a transit route with traffic flows in excess of 15,000 persons per hour per direction (pphpd), yet peak traffic flows on the 99B Line, which will be replaced by the Broadway subway to Arbutus, is about 2,000 pphpd, based on 3 minute peak hour headway’s.

Before Bombardier’s rail division was sold to Alstom, Bombardier publicly stated on its website “that it doesn’t recommend the Skytrain technology for peak period passenger levels below 8000 passengers/hour/direction“. According to Thales news release, regarding winning the $1.47 billion resignalling of the Expo and Millennium Lines; “When the programme is fully implemented, the Expo Line will be able to accommodate 17,500 passengers per hour per direction, and the Millennium Line  (Broadway Subway) will be able to handle 7500 passengers per hour per direction, a 32% and 96% increase respectively.“

For added taxpayer insult, in the late 1940,s and early 1950’s, the Toronto Transit Commission were operating coupled sets of PCC trams on select routes, offering a maximum peak hour capacity over 12,000 pphpd, yet the Millennium Line will be limited to a maximum capacity of only 7,500 pphpd!

TransLink’s two top planners were fired for their opposition to the subway, by publicly stating the obvious; that there wasn’t the ridership on Broadway to justify a now $4 billion subway.

TransLink quite happily lets people believe that Broadway is the “most heavily used transit route in Canada“, but claims “This is our region’s most overcrowded bus route.”, instead when there is a threat of professional or legal accountability.

“The problem with TransLink is that you can never believe what it says; TransLink never produces a report based on the same set of assumptions.”

Former West Vancouver Clr. Victor Durman, Chair of the GVRD (now METRO) Finance Committee.

The former Mayor of Surrey’s flip flop from LRT to SkyTrain was also predictable, as the bureaucrats at TransLink did their best to ensure this would happen.

The well oiled SkyTrain Lobby was in full force with every bit of classic fake news and alternative facts they could muster, yet ignored the fact that MALM (SkyTrain) is now considered obsolete internationally and only seven such systems have been built in the past fifty years.

The original claim that a SkyTrain extension from King George station to Langley City could be completed for $1.65 billion, was later exposed to be false, yet no action was taken and today the cost of the 16 km Langley extension is now said to cost $6 billion or $7 billion if one includes the Operations and Maintenance Centre #5. The OMC#5 is needed for the proper maintenance of the new Mk. 5 – five car train sets.

With the politcal promise to complete the proprietary MALM railway to Langley at a cost of $7 billion, another very costly issue arises.

The aging Expo line is desperately in need of an additional major rehab. This rehab includes a major overhaul, including an expanded electrical supply and all the switches being replaced with higher speed switches to permit faster operation and increased capacity. Stations must be rebuilt to deal with the higher customer flows which come with a higher capacity and is said to cost between $2 billion to $3 billion and must be done before the extension to Langley is built.

The real cost of the Langley extension will continue to rise.

How is this to be funded?

The combined annual operating costs for the Broadway subway and the full Expo Line to Langley will now exceed $70 million annually.

How is this to be funded?

Is a $16 billion expanding MALM 21.7 km a good investment, especially when one considers the lack of ridership to support such an investment?

By comparison, 2024 cost for The Rail for the Valley’s Leewood Study, for a 130 km, Marpole (Vancouver) to Chilliwack passenger service, using the BC Electric rail line, servicing North Delta, Cloverdale, Langley, Abbotsford, Sardis and Chilliwack and connecting the many business parks, universities and colleges along the route, will cost under $2 billion. Or rehabbing the 230 km E&N Railway to the same standard of the RftV/Leewood Plan costing around $3 billion.

TransLink does not support the Leewood Study’s 130km Marpole to Chilliwack rail service because it would outperform their now $7 billion, pygmy 16 km extension to the Expo Line.

“But, eventually, Vancouver will need to adopt lower-cost LRT in its lesser corridors, or else limit the extent of its rail system. And that seems to make some TransLink people very nervous.”

Gerald Fox

  TransLink has a spending issue, not an income issue and major rethink must be done on how we provide an affordable regional rail system. Metro Vancouver’s light-metro system has been well studied, yet those cities who have done so, have invested in light rail instead!

Why, in an era of unprecedented investment in regional rail transit, has no one copied Vancouver’s light metro system, including the exclusive use of the proprietary MALM system?

Of the seven systems built in the past fifty years, Toronto has abandoned their version of MALM and Detroit’s version only survives because the operating authority literally attended the TTC’s “transit garage sale” and purchased all the spare parts and equipment they could!

Two of the later versions of SkyTrain built in Malaysia and Korea have embroiled both the then patent holders, SNC Lavalin and Bombardier in legal proceedings, including charges of bribery.

The system serving JFK Airport, failed a peer review by the American Federal Government which withheld funding and to save face for Bombardier Inc., the Canadian government, through the Overseas Development Bank, funded construction.

It is time to put an end to MALM expansion or the provincial government and current mayors, will become like Marley’s ghost, dragging an ever longer chain made of empty cash-boxes, IOU’s, red ink, bare purses and increased taxes wrought in union made steel, election, after election for decades to come.

Remember the FastFerries?

Today, TransLink continues to be toxic with taxpayers and extending MALM to Langley will make TransLink and all who supported the gold-plated extensions radioactive politically, on a Chernobyl scale.

It is time for the Mayor’s Council on Transit to show some fiscal backbone and say no to TransLink’s demands for more money. All TransLink is doing, as it has always done, is doing the same thing over and over again ever hoping for different results, funded of course, by an increasingly paupered taxpayer.