SkyTrain for Surrey Implodes
Being an advocate for better transit in the region is no easy task, made all the harder by those who pretend they know better.
Zwei has spent thirty years in the transit wars, starting with the aborted Vancouver monorail scheme in 1986. Since then I have consulted with real transit experts from companies such as Siemens, AdTranz, ABB, and with transit operators in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, Portland and overseas, about various transit issues in Metro Vancouver. I also have been a thirty-two year member of the Light Rail Transit Association, drawing on the expertise of the many professionals who belong to that organization.
I was mentored by the late Des Turner, a retired chemical engineer who returned to university and earned a Masters degree in Planning and who, by dogged research, got to the bottom of many transit issues.
From my knowledge and connections, I was able to get the Leewood Study for the Rail for the Valley group in their quest to reinstate the former Vancouver to Chilliwack interurban.
I have been a supporter of light rail using fact and current news and much to many people’s dismay, able to dispel many erroneous assertions that have been made about LRT. So much so that it has not earned me many friends, especially with civic politicians and bureaucrats.
To this end I have been threatened with libel in two instances. The defense for libel is “truth” and with the facts at hand, those threats disappeared very rapidly.
I find the following very disturbing.
Daryl Cruz: And the end of the day, we are here as a voice for citizens to raise.
Reporter: So, you do not think it’s irresponsible of you to put out information that’s just not true without double checking your facts?
Daryl Cruz: Well, we are an advocacy group.
To be a credible, an advocacy group needs to be honest, not only with the public and media, but with themselves.
Unlike Rail for the Valley, SkyTrain for Surrey has lost all credibility.
Surrey transit blog shares misinformation on LRT and B-Line plans
Vancouver, BC, Canada / News Talk 980 CKNW | Vancouver’s News. Vancouver’s TalkPosted: February 25, 2016
You can not always believe what you read on the internet.
A blog titled SkyTrain for Surrey has been getting a lot of attention after claiming that plans for bus rapid transit to South Surrey and White Rock have been axed.
Blog claims untrue
Maps featured in SkyTrain for Surrey blog. City says map used has title cropped, and meant to only show LRT stations.
Surrey’s Rapid Transit Manager Paul Lee says plans for a B-Line are still there.
He says it may be confusing for readers of the blog, because it uses a map of the city’s light rail plan NOT the regional rapid transit plan.
The map that we have seen has been cropped, and the title of the map is missing so when people look at it with no context, they simply see those lines on the map.
Lee says the map was just never intended to show all the other portions of the regional transit plan, like the B-Line to South Surrey and White Rock.
When asked if the map, as presented in the blog, is misleading, Lee says it would appear to be.
The original map that was cropped, can be found here.
Blogger defends right to make claims
For his part, the blogai??i??s creator, transit activist Daryl Dela Cruz says itai??i??s not his job to double check the facts he publishes on his website.
And the end of the day, we are here as a voice for citizens to raise.
ai???So, you donai??i??t think itai??i??s irresponsible of you to put out information thatai??i??s just not true without double checking your facts?ai???
ai???Well, weai??i??re an advocacy group.ai???
The City of Surrey says the current plan for rapid transit in the area continues to include LRT and a B-Line, and has not changed since it was approved by the Mayorai??i??s council in 2014.
Hey Daryl, welcome to the human race, you are an inexperienced kid who lost his perspective and began to truly believe he headed a political movement not just a blogger whom blogs about his preferred rapid transit technology. Daryl made a very dumb but public mistake. He is very young, passionate and became over zealous, because he didn’t ask some basic questions. He thought he saw an issue he could actually be the first person to “break” to the public. He didn’t ask about his source material and whether it was actually important that, it didn’t have the planned BRT lines on them, especially since they were advocating the use of another form of transit technology like LRT! So a pro LRT website, run by Surrey politicians didn’t have planned BRT lines on them, so what! Think about it for a second first, kid. All he should have done was, ask Translink or the City of Surrey if the BRT lines had actually been removed from the area’s rapid transit plan or not, “no, ok thank you!” Problem solved.
I think he truly fooled himself. He was on TV recently, being interviewed on the local Global TV Network affiliate in Vancouver. I think he believed he had reached that next level of publicity, not just that he had been put on TV to fill time in the remaining part of lightweight morning news show with the standard, insert local political issue here, type of interview. One of the problems of being on TV in this era is that, if you get mentioned enough by media and actually appear on screen being interviewed there is a tendency to think that you are now the leader of a legitimate movement. He clearly crossed the line when his need to respond as an advocate of his cause, due to a perceived but unfortunately, not real slight or affront to his preferred transit ideas, was stronger than doing the boring job of stepping back, and checking whether all of this was actually really important! This above all is a clear sign of his age an inexperience. By not admitting,”look I screwed up, deal with it!” By effectively doubling down on top of that mistake in front of the press, while then clearly making another at the same time, the result being, the press is now publicly questioning his personal integrity and the usefulness of all the information on his website, is a pretty hard blow for a kid of the 21st century considering he did this in all in one day. Assuming he has slow down long enough to actually realize all of this. Stand easy son, take a breath, I’m sure your are not a bad person, you just screwed up.
Daryl DC needs to tone down the propaganda from TransLink. He’s insulting and Machiavellian. Here are some of his comments in The Tyee on transit. Ironically, Daryl DC is accusing Patrick Condon (UBC professor) of misleading readers:
“Daryl Dela Cruz > PCondon • a month ago
And what’s so special about your research? [Patrick Condon’s, UBC professor]
You’ve compiled a number of different light rail system capital costs, from countries with numerous localized differences in labour laws, work schedule expectations, material costs, acquisition costs, logistics costs, varying land values, differences in local terrain, difference in currency value and differences in economy. You don’t even account for right-of-way differences or measure grade separations. It’s clever how you’re trying to sneak this past unsuspecting readers, but almost none of the systems on the list would create the overall transit improvements to constitute being considered “rapid” transit. These are streetcar systems, not higher-order LRT systems with a focus on improving mobility.
And that’s the problem. Your “research” is typical of Metro Vancouver LRT supporters who seem to almost always want to simplify this argument, and in doing so leave out the critical data, which is why people are being misled. [Comment edited for violating guidelines. -MOD]”
“Daryl Dela Cruz
Condon has a number of problems, but it all really comes down to his denial. I’d be willing to bet that if we planned like other Metro systems we’d be far worse off than we are right now. Say what you will about our SkyTrain system but Vancouver’s rapid transit growth actually lead Canadian cities, including those that built with Light Rail (see http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/….
Among North American cities, only Toronto and New York are doing better -we have the third highest transit riderhsip per capita; and SkyTrain has the highest ridership per km for any system that isn’t “heavy rail”. SkyTrain isn’t a holdback to transit expansion; it’s a catalyst. It’s responsible for how our region-wide network can be so big even though our population is relatively really small. Take away SkyTrain, and in exchange we would need freeways like other cities have built to manage congestion.
In short, Condon is wrong about everything he says. He’s a landscape architect trying to speak on transportation issues and massively failing. What he is conducting is an unresearched, unjustified attack on SkyTrain.”
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/01/25/Bad-Transit-Projects/
Uh, okay, Daryl DC “the authority on public transit” is attacking Patrick Condon, UBC professor? By the way, thanks for sharing the informative LRT link:
http://www.lrta.org/