The Tyee and Transit – Please do More Research!
TransLink is embarrassed because they oversee a rather expensive mini-metro system, a system that has now cost the regional and BC taxpayer nearly $9 billion, yet congestion in Vancouver is so bad, it is rated worst in Canada and second only to Los Angles. This certainly not good advertising for TransLink, especially when it wants more ‘brass’ from regional taxpayers to pay for questionable transit schemes.
So, what to do.
Why not call on some transit types working for the Tyee and have them submit a ‘puff‘ piece on TransLink and howAi??transit ridershipAi??”crushes” Portland and Seattle.
The following is from the tyee.com, an alternative online newspaper of sorts and as expected it is all rah, rah Vancouver, but just wait a second here.
There is no mention of TransLink recycling and double or triple counting bus and SkyTrain riders as they are forced to transfer from one mode to the next, nor is there any mention of the now 100,000 $1.00 a day U-Pass season ticket holders, that get unlimited travel on the transit system for $1.00 a day! (Sources have told Zwei that about 70% of the U-passes are being used, with users making 2 to 6 trips a day and the U-Pass program is hemorrhaging money from the transit system at a rateAi??far more so than fare evasion!)
How about the cost per passenger comparison between Vancouver, Seattle and Portland, to determine which city has invested wisely for public transit options?
Never done by Vancouver’s media is why SkyTrain was rejected by Seattle and Portland, in favour of modern LRT?
The SkyTrain lobby are hard at it, desperately Ai??trying to squander the taxpayer’s money on more SkyTrain Lines and the piece from the Tyee, is nothing more than TransLink speak by a reporter who should do more research.
Transit Geeks Rejoice!
Not only does Vancouver crush Portland and Seattle, but proving it involves nifty analysis and charts.
By Clark Williams-Derry, Today,Ai??Ai??Ai??Sightline.org
When it comes to commuting by transit in the larger cities on North America’s northwest coast, neither Portland nor Seattle can hold a candle to greater Vancouver.
The simplest comparison among the three cities looks at the average number of bus and rail transit boardings per person, per year, in the entire metro area. And on that measure, Vancouver vastly outstrips its two southern neighbors (see chart at top of story).
Unfortunately, the story is somewhat more complicated than this chart suggests. Vancouver’s transit system encourages transfers — and since there’s a single, unified transit agency for metro Vancouver, there’s good data on how many riders actually transfer in the course of a single trip. Seattle, in contrast, has so many overlapping transit systems that it’s very difficult to assess how many transfers there really are.
Still, even if you assume that each transit boarding in Portland and Seattle represents a single trip, but use Vancouver’s data on “trips” rather than “vehicle boardings,” Metro Vancouver still beats the two U.S cities handily:
Using the same “trip” definitions in the chart above, a mode-by-mode breakdown shows that Portland has far more rail riders than Seattle, while greater Seattle edges out greater Portland in bus ridership. But Vancouver still comes out on top in both categories.
Trips per capita, 2010*
By Bus: Vancouver 56, Portland 32, Seattle 43
By Light Rail: Vancouver 33, Portland 21, Seattle 3
By Commuter Rail: Vancouver 1, Portland 0, Seattle
*Note: Vancouver data represent transit “trips,” while data for both Portland and Seattle represent transit “boardings.”
Of course, there’s still more to the story. These charts exclude a number of transit modes, including dial-a-ride transit (which is typically door-to-door service offered to those who are physically unable to use standard transit service), as well as vanpools and ferries. I’ve decided to keep those out of the analysis for now, but I’ll note that after including ferry trips in the total trip count count, Seattle’s per capita transit ridership ties Portland’s; and when you add in vanpools as well as ferries, Seattle narrowly edges Portland.
So perhaps Portland and Seattle are about tied… but tied in a race to see who comes in a distant second to Vancouver.
Notes and Caveats:
For this analysis, we considered all of the transit agencies in the greater Portland and Seattle metropolitan areas, as listed in the National Transit Database. For Seattle, those agencies included King County Metro, Sound Transit, Community Transit (in Snohomish County), Everett Transit, the City of Seattle, and a handful of ferry providers — but not Kitsap Transit. For Portland, it included Trimet, C-Tran in Clark County, the South Metro Area Regional Transit agency in Wilsonville, and the Metro vanpool program.
All data for Metro Vancouver comes from Translink. In Seattle, Light Rail includes the monorail and South Lake Union Trolley. Population for the Seattle metro area includes the full population of King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties. Greater Portland’s population includes Clark County, Washington, and Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington counties in Oregon. Population for greater Vancouver includes all of Metro Vancouver. Note that Seattle and Portland population totals, as described above, may differ from the populations of the service areas as defined in the National Transit Database
That was a [poorly done article at the Tyee and many of the comments it seems people bought into the Translink Kool Aid about how great SkyTrain is when it is not.
Zweisystem replies: I agree. The problem is that we do not have a transit press in BC and the vast majority of reporters do not know what questions to ask and in the end ask “puff” questions that really are of very little use.
Both Rafe Mair and Charlie Smith (of the Georgia Straight) have an understanding of transit issues, but circumstance prevents the pair to delve into transit issues.
I really do not care id someone supports SkyTrain or not, but, oh my god, they use a jumble of anti-LRT rhetoric, not based on facts to do so. Witness the SkyTrain for Surrey lot who use a nameless expert (?) who goes by the name of nname on the Skyscraper page for their grand study for SkyTrain, but when I use quotes from real transit experts such as Gerald Fox, my god the libel flows like a torrent.
I see Rico, in his charming way of debate has this to offer on the Tyee blog.
EDITED FOR PERSONAL INSULTS — MODERATOR
The last apples to apples comparison of SkyTrain that I saw, was that the Expo Line cost 40% more to operate than Calgary’s LRT, both being about the same length. If this is correct, it could go a long way in explaining why SkyTrain has poor sales.
Folks, just a note that the story in question is reprinted from Seattle based Sightline institute and neither the research nor the reporting was done ‘for’ or by the Tyee. We did think it worth sharing and appreciate your engagement.
Or maybe just read the article carefully. The second chart does take into account transfers.
“Still, even if you assume that each transit boarding in Portland and Seattle represents a single trip, but use Vancouver’s data on “trips” rather than “vehicle boardings,” Metro Vancouver still beats the two U.S cities handily:”
Also, the upass started at the University of Washington.
Research and reading always a good idea.
Zweisystem replies: Ah yes Richard, the U-Pass was first started in Seattle and it was to “put bums on empty seats”.
Transit in the USA is provided a little differently than in Vancouver and the transit authority had to provide mandated service to universities and most of these services ran almost empty, thus the U-Pass program was conceived to put more bums or customers onto empty seats. With mandated services (something to do with the quaint American custom of “Earmarks”), if buses run empty, there is more revenue to be had with deep discounted fares that actually attract custom to the service; the U-Pass program costs very little as the buses must operate either empty or filled with cheap fares..
In Vancouver, the mass of U-pass users are dumped onto an already at capacity transit system, causing mass overcrowding and pass-ups and in the end discouraging full fare customers from using the service. The U-pass is just a TransLink gimmick to pretend they are attracting people to transit, when in reality they are recycling transit users with cheap fares to give the impression of high ridership. This why we have a funding crisis for transit; this is why we have very bad congestion in Metro Vancouver.
Seriously, you think people are riding transit just for kicks just because of the UPASS? Of course not. They are going to school or work or out on the town. If they were not on transit, they would likely be driving making congestion worse.
Students using transit should be counted the same as anyone else using transit. To imply anything else is just not appropriate. Blaming the province’s lack of leadership on funding transit on the UPASS is rediculous.
Zweisystem replies: Richard, the U-Pass was designed for about 30% usage, but according to some at TransLink, the U-Pass has over 70% usage, this is siphoning off revenues from other sources. If the U-Pass is so good, why not give every transit user a $1.00 a day universal rail pass? no” Why not?
Again, a source at TransLink confided in me that they have examples of students using the Canada line up to 7 times a day or more and thus one student with a U-pass is counted 7 times. This is what happens when one rolls all their transit options into one trunk line, skewed ridership. Your fundamental lack of knowledge about transit and transit use is telling.
@Richard, without even trying (transit users are treated like lepers in the USA), “average” transit use in Portland is 10% of the population and “average” transit use in Seattle is 10% of the population, as well:
http://www.apta.com/resources/statistics/Documents/FactBook/APTA_2011_Fact_Book.pdf
In Metro Vancouver “average” transit use might be as high as 11% of the population. Before TransLink started transferring riders from shuttle buses onto express bee-lines and SkyTrains – ridership was 10% of the population and it probably still is if you deduct all the current cloning of riders by TransLink:
http://www.metrovancouver.org/about/publications/Publications/Transit%20Ridership.pdf
To calculate the “real per capita transit use“, take the annual passenger trips, divide them by 365 days, divide by two (two trips per person on average) and then divide by the population – piece of cake!
However, TransLink trips are exaggerated as you have many trips by late night (3:36 am) riders recycled on frequent (every few minutes) party buses used to bolster TransLink ridership. Transit in Seattle or Portland likely does not operate every few minutes until 3:36 am like it does in Vancouver – maybe it does, I lived and drove in Seattle for five years and never once took transit – no loss, and it saved me an untold amount of time to drive, instead, I‘m sure.
Really, who cares what TransLink or some delusional dip says about transit ridership? Do the math yourself. TransLink is a mess even with maybe 11% of the population on transit and TransLink is going nowhere fast when elevated transit by TransLink costs up to three times more than LRT or trams used in Seattle and Portland.
Transit use in Seattle and Portland is real. Transit use in Metro Vancouver is exaggerated by the very nature of transit here – bee lines and SkyTrains recycling many riders forced to make an additional passenger trip with a U-Pass transfer onto a bee line or SkyTrain to complete the journey.
TransLink has no way of knowing whether any U-Pass trip is a transfer or a passenger trip by new rider and TransLink treats all U-Pass trips as a passenger trip by a new rider for the record books.
http://www.rockantenne.de/webplayer/?playchannel=alternative
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I am constantly amazed how poor transportation reporting is in your part of the world. In the UK, the difference between mainline railways, undergrounds or tubes, and the tram are more or less clearly understood. The tram versus SkyTrain debate is somewhat perverse as the modern tram has all but superseded the light-metro family, simply because you can operate a tram as a light-metro and still operate the tram as a tram on the outer parts of the system.
In the UK and Europe, providing the seamless or no transfer journey is seen as all important in attracting ridership and again the operating authority’s transit operation in Vancouver seems again perverse discounting the success of the transfer free journey, by forcing needless transfers on bus customers.
Those, who Herr Zwei calls the SkyTrain Lobby, also fail to answer his oft repeated question; “If SkyTrain is so good as Translink claims, why then doesn’t anyone else buy with it?” A very good question that deserves an equally good answer.
If Vancouver media types were intelligent enough, they would ask the right questions and if they did that, maybe there would not be a SkyTrain versus tram debate at all!
@Richard, there is no way that many U-Pass students would be driving cars without the U-Pass, they would be living closer to UBC, for instance, to walk or cycle. Alternatively, they would be car pooling. There would be “few added cars” on the roads without the U-Pass. There would be “far fewer” polluting diesel buses on the roads, however.
The U-Pass has made it possible for students to ride transit for almost nothing. If you are a student, you have more time than money and are willing to live far from UBC to bus it or SkyTrain it.
This changes when the student graduates and goes into the real world. You can’t succeed in life if you restrict yourself to a low paying job on a transit route, you have to be ambitious, buy a car and get somewhere in life.
A disproportionate number of people who take transit after graduating from school are government workers and others working in low paying retail or service jobs. TransLink by offering U-Passes is just keeping its bus drivers employed and inflating its ridership for more funding. Don’t think so? In Vancouver, UBC has 13 bus routes and all of Metro Vancouver only has about 150 conventional bus routes.
Increased transit ridership by TransLink is not healthy. It is from “off peak” diesel bus travel after 6 pm and from recycled U-Pass riders. Students on the U-Pass are using transit for joy rides or for cheap accommodation away from UBC and aren’t doing anything but degrading the air quality and increasing gas taxes for drivers paying for transit. Students on the U-Pass are making transit buses over crowded.
Canada Line ridership dropped in 2011 and so did West Coast Express ridership in 2011. SkyTrain use increased slightly in 2011 while bus ridership increased tremendously. If the bus trips were increasing transit use, there should be a corresponding increase in SkyTrain use, as well. There isn’t.
Transit use will drop or stay flat in 2012 because TransLink has handed out all the U-Passes that it can and because TransLink is not bragging about any increases in ridership in the Vancouver Sun this year. Wake up.
http://www.metrovancouver.org/about/publications/Publications/Transit%20Ridership.pdf
Zweisystem replies: You are right on the money. This is why TransLink never claims a modal shift from car to transit, because the modal shift is negligible.
Well, if you want research, here it is. It is pretty hard to argue that the UPASS has been anything but a success in reducing automobile trips.
http://transportation.ubc.ca/files/2012/04/Fall-2011-Transportation-Status-Report-13-Apr-12.pdf
Zweisystem replies: I am sure that the good puppies at UBC will produce any type of study promoting taxpayer’s money spent on the U-Pass, most students and academics love a free ride. I never said that the U-pass didn’t attract students old chum, rather the overcrowding of the transit system by U-pass ridership was deterring ridership by full fare customers on the system as a whole. The problem with the U-pass is that too many students are using it, multiple times a day both chasing away full fare custom and skewing the ridership figures.
If the U-Pass is so good, why not have a universal $1.00 a day transit pass?
Richard, thanks for the link. I had a copy of the 2007 UBC transportation status report and wasn’t aware that the 2011 was available. Richard, the only success that the U-Pass has had is in employing many people who are making a living off of transit by TransLink, and drivers are payng for it.
Of course, when you give almost free U-Passes to UBC students and coerce them into not driving with high parking fees, driving to UBC is going to drop. It does not mean that pollution has been mitigated with the U-Pass (air quality is in fact far worse with No. 99 diesel buses operating on the No. 9 trolley bus route). It also does not mean that vehicle congestion is being reduced to any meaningful extent by the U-Pass (No. 99 buses cause congestion, too). The 2011 UBC transportation status report verifies what I’ve been saying.
A few comments:
• On page 11, after the U-pass, the mode share of single occupancy vehicles (SOV) to UBC dropped from 43% to 29% or a drop of 14%
• On page 19, the maximum “peak hour” transit trips going to UBC from 6 am to 9 am totaled 10,830
• On page 19, there were 74,800 trips to UBC by 37,400 people (two trips per person on average)
Let’s draw some conclusions:
• During peak hours from 6 am to 9 am, the U-Pass has potentially “reduced SOV traffic congestion” by 1,516 vehicles (10,830 trips * 14% drop in vehicle use = 1,516 vehicles). It has reduced vehicle traffic on West 4th Avenue, West 10th Avenue and West 16th Avenue by “less than 10 cars per minute” during peak hours (1,516 vehicles divided by three hours = less than 10 vehicles per minute on three roads). This is nothing.
• To do this, TransLink is operating two noisy and very polluting No. 99 diesel buses passing residences every 45 second to every minute during rush hours (one No. 99 deadheading east in the morning and one No. 99 going west to UBC in the morning). I’d say the two to three No. 99 diesel buses driving in two lanes “every minute” are causing more road congestion and angst for residents than a few insignificant cars every minute if students drove, instead.
• For the entire day, the U-Pass has potentially taken 5,236 drivers off the roads (37,400 people * 14% drop in vehicle use = 5,236 drivers off the roads). This sounds impressive. It isn’t when you consider that these cars are traveling over about nine hours to UBC and about nine hours from UBC. That is, on average, the U-Pass has reduced vehicle traffic by less than 10 cars per minute along West 4th Avenue, West 10th Avenue and West 16th Avenue (5,236 drivers over nine hours to or from UBC divided by nine hours = about 10 cars on three roads to UBC. The three roads to UBC can easily handle another 10 cars every minute if the U-pass is ended and more students drive.
Some facts:
• The No. 99 diesel buses travel 14 km one-way and many of the other buses travel 20 km or more one-way to get to UBC while the average commute in a vehicle is less than 11 km. In other words, the buses have a lot of empty seats much of the time and the buses are burning lots of fuel to move no one much of the time. There are also deadheading buses wasting fuel, too. So, tack-on about another 10% in wasted fuel.
• The fuel mileage of a diesel bus ranges from 2.7 mpg to 3.3 mpg and the fuel mileage of a hybrid-diesel bus ranges from 3 mpg to 3.8 mpg while the average fuel mileage of a car ranges from 27 mpg to over 50 mpg for a hybrid car
• Cars carry 1.6 people on average, and buses to UBC carry less than 10 people on average to maybe 25 people on average (No. 99)
In short, the U-Pass has done “nothing to reduce vehicle gridlock”, and in fact, the U-Pass has increased pollution with the No. 99 operating about 500 trips daily on the No. 9 trolley bus route. I see lots of students parking at Sasamat Street to hop onto the No. 99 for the short two kilometre trip to avoid the parking fee at UBC (they do after all have an almost free bus pass). Is UBC considering these students to be transit users when they are really car users?
We were far better off in 1997 with trolley buses (no crappy No. 99 express diesel buses) and a few more cars on the road, Richard.
@Eric
Trips to UBC increased by 32,000 a day and transit has handled all that increase. Even if the transit mode shar stayed the same, the number of buses would have increased dramatically.
Buses, especially ones that only stop at major intersections really don’t create much congestion. What creates the congestion is right turning motor vehicles. Certainly more congestion would have been created by increasing the number of #9 buses to handle the increase in transit demand.
Regarding car pooling. Likely carpooling results in an increased amount of driving to pick upand drop off peopleso it is not as efficient as you might think. As well, some portion of those trips would be someone just giving someone a ride. Thus the passengers per trip would just be .5.
Buses pick up and drop off people over the entire route so even if the average trip length is less than the bus route length, it does not mean the bus is carrying fewer people for the entire trip.
@Richard, as far as the vehicle congestion by the U-Pass goes, we’ll have to wait and see what happens in September when TransLink drivers might go on strike. I do remember the blissful four month TransLink strike in 2001; the vehicle traffic didn’t change much at all, the windows stopped rattling in my place from the vibrations caused by the diesel buses, the noise level from traffic dropped off to almost nothing and the air quality in Point Grey improved dramatically.
TransLink killed the report on air quality from the GVRD and quietly installed particle filters on some newer diesel buses but can’t install the particle filters on the older and most polluting buses. If I had my way, the clowns at TransLink would all be in jail for covering up the air quality degradation since the No. 99 started.
There would be no need to increase the No. 9 frequency to match No. 99 frequency (No. 9 buses operating every 15 minutes to 30 minutes is more than adequate. Whatever students could fit in the No. 9 trolley buses operated as articulated buses would and the rest of the students would walk, cycle or car-pool.
TransLink has mostly increased transit use by reducing the number of people walking, cycling and car-pooling, as the UBC report shows. TransLink has reduced the minor vehicle traffic congestion producing little to no pollution in 1997 with No. 99 diesel buses creating severe pollution in Vancouver and much worse traffic congestion on the roads!
We are paying the monkeys at TransLink for this?
I’ll be doing some air quality dispersion modeling for the COV soon and it appears that the particulate matter (PM) emissions from the No. 99 diesel buses exceed the 30 microgram per cubic metre Canadian standard due to the tall buildings trapping the PM at the corner of Blanca Street and West 10th Avenue.
Expect fireworks and a lawsuit to follow if TransLink can’t show that it has not been slowly poisoning residents with arsenic, mercury… lead laced PM for the last decade on the No. 99 route.
Whoever is giving you information at TransLink about the U-Pass having 70% usage… I would ask that perhaps *you* might do a little more research. The only reliable data that TransLink is able to collect are the number of cards that are picked up by students. That is the *only* reliable metric they have for usage. Period.
You don’t need to believe me though. You can always send an email to John Coombs at the Ministry of Transportation and ask him.
Zweisystem replies: The problem is that no one knows what percentage of the U-Passes are used as there is no method to count legitimate usage. The U-Pass was designed for about 35% compliance and if usage is higher, then the program loses money, which translates into a higher subsidy. My source at TransLink told me that the “there could be over 60 % of the Canada Line’s ridership using the U-Pass”, which is a double whammy to the taxpayer. Again, no one knows and apparently TransLink is too afraid to ask!