The Real Evergreen Line Story
The Evergreen Line, with only seven stations will do very little
for local residents, who will find the car the only practical means of transportation.
The Evergreen Line is the unfinished portion of the old Broadway-Lougheed rapid transit project, but to true BC standards, all transit lines must have a media savvy name and the Evergreen line was chosen.
What is so disturbing is the influence of the somewhat disgraced former Vancouver mayor and Premier, Mike Harcourt in forcing SkyTrain, instead of light rial for Evergreen Line. As noted before, Mr. Harcourt meddling in transit affairs is akin to a child trying to play electric trains for the first time, without reading the instructions first.
With the former Social Credit government forcing SkyTrain onto the region, instead of light rail and the NDP flip-flop from LRT to SkyTrain for the Broadway Lougheed project has probably forced the taxpayer to spend easily $5 billion more for SkyTrain, than modern light rail.
The article also demonstrates, that the Georgia Straight, a weekly entertainment newspaper, has never been afraid to print the real story about rapid transit in the region, unlike the Vancouver Sun and Province!
What Bob Matkin’s news item does show is that where SkyTrain is built, SNC Lavalin is soon to follow and where SNC goes, trouble follows.
The real Evergreen line story:
Evergreen Line surprises delay rapid transit to Port Moody and Coquitlam
by Bob Mackin on November 26th, 2015
The Evergreen Line is being built with a tunnel-boring machine named Alice, but sheai??i??s experiencing a great deal of difficulty in reaching her destination.
When Premier Christy Clark christened the Evergreen Line tunnel-boring machine ai???Aliceai??? on March 7, 2014, she honoured Canadaai??i??s first female geologist.
Alice Wilsonai??i??s legacy includes the 1947 childrenai??i??s textbook The Earth Beneath Our Feet, but whatai??i??s going on with the rapid-transit project above and below Port Moody and Coquitlam recalls another Aliceai??i??one who fell down another hole in the ground into a bizarre ai???wonderlandai???.
Like the White Rabbit, who was late for a very important date, the government revealed late one Friday afternoon last February that Alice was tunnelling slower than the advertised eight metres per day. The summer 2016 opening was delayed to fall 2016. At this yearai??i??s September 25 board meeting, TransLinkai??i??s vice-president of engineering and infrastructure management, Fred Cummings, revealed that Alice had been stalled for five months and finally restarted the previous week.
Asked if he knew when the $1.43-billion Burnaby-to-Coquitlam Millennium Line extension would open, Cummingsai??i??s reply might have flattered Aliceai??i??s Adventures in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll himself: ai???Depending on how the boring goes, that will determine when the service date is. We donai??i??t have a date for that yet.ai???
depressing
Does anyone have a graphic or picture regarding the Evergreen Line tunnel’s depth profile. I find it difficult that a tunnel little more than 2000 metres in length must have a maximum depth of 50 metres or more under the surface. Is this area that hilly? Is the local geological material, outside of possible earthquakes of course, so unstable that you have to dig 50 metres or more below the ground? That’s 12 commercial stories down under the ground.
Zwei Replies: Clark Road has a steep escarpment – 100 metres from top to bottom, mid you, if they went via the Lougheed Hwy. route, sea level all the way.