TramTrain – It’s Time To Have Another Look At The Leewood Project

While local politicians squabble about expensive transit planning and gouging the taxpayer to pay for multi billion dollar transportation vanity projects, economic and user friendly TramTrain construction and operation continue to increase.

Isn’t time for politicians have another look at the Leewood/Rail for the Valley Study?

chemnitz14790Chemitz TramTrain on the mainline.

A Langley to downtown Vancouver in 50 minutes train service could be in operation by the start of 2020!

TransLink’s and the Province’s much ballyhooed Expo Line extension to Surrey  really doesn’t offer the transit customer very much, except for a 60 minute ride (if their are no glitches) on a dinky and crowed SkyTrain car to Vancouver.
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The Rail for the Valley TramTrain concept could do the trip from Langley (200th Street) to Vancouver Central Station in 50 minutes, including two stops at Braid St. and Willingdon on the West side of the Fraser River and the 10 mph speed restriction on the Fraser River rail bridge.
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The Leewood/Rail for the Valley Study time matrix shows that a 23 km. journey from 200th Street in Langley to Scott Road Station, including four stops, would take 22.5 minutes and an estimation of the 22km. trip from Scott Road to Vancouver would take 27.5 minutes – 50 minutes; a few minutes faster for a much cheaper cost.
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The cost, in 2023 , $1.5 billion, certainly looks more affordable than the $4.5 billion to $5 billion  Expo Line expansion to Langley especially if one can get to Vancouver faster and in more comfort.
The Stadler GTW light rail car could use city streets and operate as LRT if need be.

Comments

One Response to “TramTrain – It’s Time To Have Another Look At The Leewood Project”
  1. Haveacow says:

    I always liked what Chemnitz did because they developed Tram Trains, but in reverse to the way Karlsruhe did, which is quite similar to our situation in North America. With Karlsruhe, Trams were introduced to railway operations turning a great tram system into a fantastic truly regional distanced LRT network.

    Chemnitz took underused sections of mainline railway track and connected new sections of local LRT track, creating a region LRT system but using very lightweight mainline railway vehicles as hybrid, sometimes, on street, Light Rail Vehicles (LRV’s). The system in Austin Texas is a great example of this.

    This very low cost approach could be easily adopted in Canada and the U.S. being much cheaper than trying to create entirely new purpose built LRT track networks from scratch, with no or little involvement of the existing regional mainline railway infrastructure, which in most North American cities is completely underutilized. I remember a freight railway guy telling me that one freight train per hour is considered really busy, I laughed in his face because even in North America that’s a stretch.

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