South Delta Leader – LETTERA?ai??i??ai???Light rail the one

LETTERA?ai??i??ai???Light rail the one

Published: November 18, 2010 11:00 AM

Updated: November 18, 2010 11:18 AM

The ongoing debate about TransLink, taxes, bridge tolls, and transit will not be resolved if current planning practices continue.

The problem is funding and when TransLink continues to plan for A?ai??i??Ai??pie in the skyA?ai??i??A? SkyTrain or light metro, costing over $125 million/km to build ($250 million/km for subways), instead of much cheaper light rail, our current transit funding gridlock will continue.

Provincial politicians like SkyTrain because they like to cut ribbons for glitzy new metro systems and TransLink likes SkyTrain because bureaucrats can hire scores of planners, engineers, spin doctors needed for light metro and everyone knows, a successful bureaucrat has hundreds of subordinates to help push paper.

Rail for the Valley and Leewood Projects have offered TransLink a golden opportunity to think out of the SkyTrain box with their recently released report, which shows that a basic TramTrain service could be had for under $6 million/km or put another way, at least $119 million/km cheaper than the TransLink SkyTrain product!

TransLink has ignored the report and now carries on planning for massively expensive subways and metros for Vancouver. The time has come to get blunt with TransLink, either plan for affordable transit for the region or face the South Fraser Valley municipalities seceding from this Kafka-ish bureaucracy.

Malcolm Johnston,

Rail for the Valley/Light Rail Committee

via South Delta Leader – LETTERA?ai??i??ai???Light rail the one.