This Is No April Fools – None The Less, The Fool Is The CBC
I just shake my head at this.
At first, I thought it was an April fools joke, but no, it’s not, rather it is a reporting farce.
A chap who is a mining shill, with no expertise in public transport is calling for a subway to be built to UBC.
All he is trying to do is secure $5 billion worth of work for his engineering buddies and that is all what a $5 billion SkyTrain subway under Broadway will do!
Subways not only cost a lot of money to build, they cost a lot of money to operate and maintain and unless there is sufficient demand for a subway, at least with traffic flows in excess of 15,000 pphpd, those maintenance and operational cost will come back to haunt the taxpayer.
Obviously the so called expert, when he cited the Canada line being “overwhelmed” by customers, was not expert enough to know that the Canada Line’s design, because of the massive costs of subway construction, was truncated to the point it only has 40 metre long station platforms and can only operate two car trains and has effectively one half the capacity of the Expo and Millennium/Evergreen Lines, which station shave 80 metre long station platforms.
The Canada Line could barely handle the bus customers who are forced to transfer to the mini-metro, when it opened.
As for the CBC, such BS reporting, an utter disgrace.
B.C.’s short-sighted transit planning keeping UBC subway line from getting on track, says expert
ai???Subways are not built on the here and now,’ says Mauro Chiesa, infrastructure development expert
ByAi??Yvette Brend, CBC News Posted: Apr 01, 2017
Critics calling for a subway line extension to theAi??University of British Columbia’s Vancouver campus say a recent infusion of government cash for transit in B.C. ignores an overall lack of vision resulting from a dearth of planning.
“No subway was ever justified on the here and now,” said Mauro Chiesa, a transit development expert who has organized the financing of tunnel projects world-wide.
He says that even with the B.C. LiberalsAi??promisingAi??to match Ottawa’s $2.2 billion for projects such as the SkyTrain link along the Broadway corridor, TransLinkAi??still remains “woefully underfunded.”
“It’s a 30 to 50 year game,” said Chiesa, sayingAi??trains and tunnels sometimes need to be builtAi??ai??i??Ai??even if they’re underusedAi??at first.
30-100 year plans
A 10-year plan like TransLink’s is not enough, he said, adding that Paris plans 100 years ahead for its transit.
Many cities turn to private financing before appealing for public funding, and the arrangements are often made well in advance.
But not in B.C.
Transit projects here tend to arrive at the the station just in time, and are quickly overloaded by users.
That’s what happened on the Canada Line as it became overwhelmed at key points by the influx of Evergreen Line passengers after it opened late last year.
It was April Fool’s Day, yesterday, then again TransLink was formed on April Fool’s Day in 1999, too. Does Harcourt own shares in Bombardier or SNC Lavalin? Is he going to profit from the land deals at Jericho in West Point Grey?
Metro Vancouver voted against the subway. Harcourt was un-elected for his shady bingo-gate dealings. What Harcourt thinks about public transit isn’t any more significant than what anyone else thinks; most people (over 80%) in West Point Grey don’t want the subway and don’t agree with Harcourt.
https://thetyee.ca/Life/2013/04/25/NDP-Skimmed-from-Charities/
“Expert” Mauro Chiesa in the CBC April Fool’s joke is implying that the Evergreen Line (EGL) joins the Cambie Street line to overload the Cambie Street debacle. It doesn’t.
“That’s what happened on the Canada Line as it became overwhelmed at key points by the influx of Evergreen Line passengers after it opened late last year.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ubc-tunnel-subway-transit-bc-mauro-chiesa-1.4050842
Expert Chiesa is daft and likely has a vested interest in the subway. Actually, his assessment of the problem with the EGL is wrong. The EGL can only carry about 2,000 pphpd because the dopes at TransLink “ass”umed that the Expo Line (EL) which the EGL does join could be “upgraded” to move 26,000 pphpd to take more than 2,000 pphpd from the EGL. Wrong !!!
Idiots at TransLink spent $2.4 billion so far on the EGL and the inadequate upgrades to the EL to find out that 15,000 pphpd is all that the EL will ever carry (without replacing the EL) and that the EGL must operate at 2,000 pphpd to avoid swamping the EL. Idiots.
“Yes, let’s plan for the future and microtransit”
Coupled with autonomous technology, nimble and inexpensive microtransit (using 3D printed electric buses, of all things) spells the end of costly and cumbersome public transit (hub to hub subway, for instance) requiring dedicated infrastructure for the few people who use it. Large buses and trains used for public transit have always been about keeping operating costs low for the transit agency providing public transit. They sacrifice service and require commuters to go to some centralized station or bus stop. Drivers comprise about 80% of the operating costs of public transit, Big buses and trains are meant to limit the number of drivers for buses and trains, and operating costs, therefore.
Autonomous microtransit or shared transportation which is “on demand” by the users is a disruptive technology and doesn’t require costly drivers. Microtransit which is demand based costs less to operate than regular public transit running around 95% of the time with practically nobody on board, to waste energy and cost money.
A few control room operators can manage thousands of small microtransit buses on the roads, and the microtransit buses are free to use all the roads to provide door to door service: when there is demand for it. With the typical two second separation between microtransit buses in traffic, each lane of roadway with each microtransit bus holding 12 people can deliver 21,600 people to UBC every hour. For the seven lanes of roadway leading to UBC, OLLI’s microtransit system can deliver an incredible 151,200 people to UBC every hour.
Current demand for public transit to UBC is just 7,500 people every hour, give or take. Dopes at TransLink are floating along in blissful ignorance while their public transit is set to disappear along with their deadbeat jobs.
Hi, I’m OLLI. TransLink, you’re toast.
https://localmotors.com/olli/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K564rXrlZbc
In comparison, the subway costing an estimated $5 billion for a mere 12 kilometres of track can move 13,000 people to UBC every hour. Public transit by TransLink is crap compared to microtransit. Crap.
To say that microtransit buses are going to kill public transit is an understatement. Future “investments” in hub to hub (subway) public transit today are foolish. They only serve to make the firms building, maintaining and operating them money.
“New transit competition: One reason public transit agencies can’t reliably serve feeder routes in the first place is they tend to lose money [uh, TransLink?]. Asking microtransit companies to take that role might not harmonize with their business mission … microtransit providers… poach bus and rail riders in key high-density corridors… create a two-front fight for transit agencies. On one side they’d be battling for riders against private services with potentially greater resources. On the other, as fare revenue eroded, they’d be battling public officials for more funding to stay afloat.”
“I think we should view the rise of the private operators as reaction to the failure of public transit to offer the breadth of services they can—that they should,” says Columbia University planning scholar David King. I do think there’s real concern that if these continue to grow, you’re going to be taking people off the public transit system.”
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/04/how-the-microtransit-movement-is-changing-urban-mobility/391565/