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PrintPatrick Condon highlights cost of Broadway transit
A senior researcher at the UBC Design Centre for Sustainability says that a proposed rapid-transit line along Broadway would be “the most expensive system we’ve had to date”.
Patrick Condon bases this on the provincial government’s 2008 Provincial Transit Plan. In it, the B.C. Liberals called for $2.8 billion for a new 12-kilometre rapid-transit line from Broadway Station to UBC.
“It’s about twice as expensive [per kilometre] as the Canada Line, and it’s about 15 times more expensive per kilometre than a system which, I think, shows a lot of promise, and that would be a European tram system,” Condon told the Straight by phone.
Vision Vancouver councillor Geoff Meggs called expanding the SkyTrain along Broadway a “city priority”.
“But I don’t think it can get ahead of the Evergreen project,” Meggs told the Straight. “I don’t think the regional consensus is there for Broadway until they have the Evergreen Line at hand.”
Meggs said he has no idea how much the Broadway project would cost. “We already have a high-speed line ending at the Millennium Line at VCC–Clark,” he noted. “It just makes sense to complete it somehow, either over to the Canada Line or, better yet, take it to Arbutus. It could be the hub of a future extension down the Arbutus corridor or over to UBC.”
Initially, Non-Partisan Association councillor Suzanne Anton told the Straight she didn’t want to get “embroiled” in a debate over whether SkyTrain expansion along Broadway should take priority over an Evergreen Line to Coquitlam.
“They both have to get built,” Anton said. “The Broadway line serves a need that’s already there, and once it was built, it would immediately start pumping operational dollars back into the system. In other words, it would be a net benefit to the system and not a net cost.”
At its Friday (September 25) meeting, the Metro Vancouver board will vote on a motion to advise TransLink that its 2010 10-year base plan, which calls for “Drastic Cuts”, is not in line with the region’s goals. The motion also states that TransLink’s upgrade and expansion program, which would require additional funds of up to $450 million per year, supports regional planning priorities.
“And I fully expect that it will be endorsed by Metro on Friday,” Meggs said.
Comments
Consider trams for less intensively used corridors - south false creek for instance.
http://railforthevalley.wordpress.com/2009/08/15/the-skytrain-lobby-pixi...
http://railforthevalley.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/hong-kong-tramway%e2%80...
The Expo Line needs over $1 billion more spent on it so it can match the capacity of a $25 million /km. European style tramway.
The public have been lied to, for far too long by the SkyTrain lobby and not one penny more for TransLink until they start planning for affordable light rail.
http://www.humantransit.org/2009/07/streetcars-an-inconvenient-truth.htm...
"Streetcars that replace bus lines are not a mobility improvement. If you replace a bus with a streetcar on the same route, nobody will be able to get anywhere any faster than they could before. This makes streetcars quite different from most of the other transit investments being discussed today.
Where a streetcar is faster or more reliable than the bus route it replaced, this is because other improvements were made at the same time -- improvements that could just as well have been made for the bus route. These improvements may have been politically packaged as part of the streetcar project, but they were logically independent, so their benefits are not really benefits of the streetcar as compared to the bus. "
if cost was the biggest issue, instead of skytrain or lrt, you can build a special trolley bus express along a reserved ROW on broadway.
Until real experts and consultants are used, the oh so tired bureaucrats within TransLink and the City will still pervert all planning to support SkyTrain!
http://railforthevalley.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/the-greer-report-review...
Extending trolley buses up W. 4th Avenue and W. 16th Avenue would meet any spill over demand for transit for another $200 million to get those damn 99 B-Line and other diesel buses off the roads. The City of Vancouver and TransLink really don't know what they are doing and are huge disappointment for allowing 99 B-Line and other diesel buses to operate on the #10 trolley bus route out to UBC.
How many large (1.5 million pop. +) European metropolises use trams or LRT as the backbone of their public transportation system? Answer: NONE
They all use "real" trains/subways/commuter rail and trams and LRT are secondary to the heavy rail trains.
During peak hours the 99 B-Line buses leave/pull into the Commercial Drive station stop every 30 seconds. Trams are basically trolley buses that run on tracks and suggesting they are a solution to the Broadway corridor's transportation woes is laughable and shortsighted.
Having a subway built out to UBC is a crazy idea. It reminds me of the Simpsons episode when the town went ga-ga over the monorail. Maybe we should come up with a song?
Vancouver has a relatively small downtown core, and the cost of a subway only makes sense for those types of densities, not for the Broadway corridor.
Broadway already has pretty decent transit service, with all the 99 B-lines supplemented by the 9's. We should be investing money, firstly, in rail transit for regions that don't have well-developed transit yet.
There seems to be a whole lot of uneducated criticism of trams here. You really think you know more about this than Prof. Condon, who lives here and teaches at UBC, and has 25 years experience in sustainable urban design, just because maybe you happened to once ride a rickety old streetcar in Toronto and think you know stuff as a result?
$2.8 billion is a helluva lot of money, and could:
-Buy us a multi-line light rail NETWORK for the Lower Mainland from UBC to Hope.
-Or, the current proposal which would shave a few minutes off travel time for select people living in or travelling to Vancouver-West who happen to have an origin/destination that is close to one of the subway stations (that are spaced very far apart to make the commute 'faster').
Which is the greater good?
Condon is not proposing LRT for Broadway, he is proposing a street car for Broadway that he admits would be significantly slower than even the 99b. Why spend hundreds of millions on worse service than the 99B?
Spending money on rail systems for less developed parts of the region that don't even had the density to support good bus service is not a great idea. The Evergreen Line is fine but seriously, Broadway needs high capacity rail based transit.
How the 99 B-Lines got on the #10 trolley bus route defies comprehension. I'm hoping to see TransLink sued for negligence soon for disregarding GVRD reports harshly criticizing TransLink for creating dangerous “hot spots” along the 99 B-Line route and for making the air unhealthy to breathe within 50 m of the 99 B-Line route. The noise from the 99 B-Line service is also violating the Motor Vehicle Act but nobody seems to care at the City of Vancouver or at the provincial transportation department. The City of Vancouver’s Greenest City Action Team is concentrating on more “important” things than diesel buses on trolley bus routes.
There should be a Millenium Line station at Pacific Central Station to create a true transit hub in an intelligent place instead of at Boadway and Commercial.
Then LRT should run from the Pacific Central hub to UBC using the proposed downtown streetcar alignment along False Creek, connecting to the Arbutus Corridor to Broadway, then turning west to Discovery Street before jogging back to 10th and on to UBC.
It would be faster than a tram or the 99 but be way cheaper than Skytrain and its massive tunelling. It would connect directly with all three existing metro lines and inter-city buses and trains. It would integrate into the community better than SkyTrain. It could run at relatively high speeds in separate ROWs in parts of False Creek, the Arbutus Corridor and the ND/Jericho lands. But it would offer more of a community based tram style service in SE False Creek and West Broadway/West 10th.
It allows the speed freaks to travel further west on SkyTrain before the transfer. And it would operate at faster speeds than the 99 even allowing a few extra stops. And it would be relatively quiet.
Meanwhile, the rest of Broadway is a perfect candidate for a low speed tram service.
I completely disagree with you about spending money on rail systems for less developed parts of the region being a bad idea. That's been the screwed up philosophy of Fraser Valley politicians and their big-city counterparts for the past 60 years, and look where it's got us.... How many times have I heard, "we don't have the density, maybe in 20 years." Will we have to wait for the whole valley to be developed before density builds and we are given a token rail line or maybe a rapid bus for the poor?
How are we going to get this magical density when we don't have the transit to support it? For a line like the interurban it's even cheaper to construct because the right-of-way and track are already there.
It's called community building and it's the right thing to do.
I do agree with you that Broadway would be better-served with high-capacity rail-based transit. LRT would certainly accomplish that! Both an LRT and tram service, possibly like Ron suggests right above me, make a lot of sense.
Besides the huge, almost unimaginable difference in cost, there are a whole lot of businesses on Broadway that would be crippled by a subway system.... because such a system would have fewer stops than the 99, and be underground so that people don't even see the communities they are passing through.
If Condon says a Broadway tram service would be slower than a 99, it's because it would have many more stops, and therefore the correct comparison would be to the 9.
Eric - point taken about the 99. I never had to live or work on Broadway. It's convenient and reasonably fast, that's about it.
http://www.krockradio.com/B-Local/3328940
In terms of LRT, have you been to downtown Calgary and seen the mess of traffic it causes where it travels at grade? It needs to be separated from traffic, in which case Skytrain is perfect. Skytrain also eliminates the need for drivers, reducing operating costs and allowing the system to be extremely flexible in responding to special events, etc.
That said, Skytrain seems ridiculously expensive - I think some serious cost-engineering needs to be done, because the jump from 400 million for an LRT/Tram system to 2.8 billion seems way out of line. Are they planning it to go underground the whole way to UBC? It doesn't need to - only through the busiest sections of the Broadway corridor. Beyond that, raise it above ground like most of the system already is.
Streetcars don't work without dedicated right-of-ways or at least if the street car is flush on the right-most lane (ie., rides against the curb). PERIOD.
In Toronto, when the street cars don't have a ROW, they block traffic down the entire street, which in turn blocks other street cars behind it. If you haven't experienced this, you don't understand the pain of riding in a street car without the ROW.
Even with an ROW, street cars bunch up in busy areas, causing increased wait-times and slow service.
Finally, if a city builds an ROW, why not just use buses on them (say trolley buses or other green options)?? What's the point of wasting money laying down track?
Charlie Smith
Editor
There is this story on "Mayor Meggs":
http://twurl.cc/1u48
And there is this story on comments from Burnaby mayor Derek Corrigan, which to me aim a kick at the collective groin of all Vancouver city councillors, Geoff Meggs included:
http://www.straight.com/article-260401/transit-gambit-condemned
Just FYI
Matt Burrows
Staff Writer
1985 UTDC - SKYTRAIN
Skytrain Expo (EXPO 86) Line 1985 20.4 km $1.45 Billion
Vancouver Waterfront Station to New Westminster Station
114 Skytrain Mark 1 Cars (57 two Car trains or 28 four Car trains + 1 two Car train)
($854 Million paid by British Columbia, $600 Million paid by Canada / Ontario.)
1986 BOMBARDIER - SKYTRAIN
1989 Skytrain Expo Line extension to Columbia Station 0.64 km ?
1990 Skytrain Skybridge $244 Million
1990 Skytrain Expo Line extension to Scott Road Station 2.3 km ?
16 Skytrain Mark 1 series 2 Cars (8 two Car trains; or 4 four Car trains)
1994 Skytrain Expo Line extension to King George Station 4.4 km ?
20 Skytrain Mark 1 series 2 Cars (10 two Car trains or 5 four Car trains)
Total Mark 1Cars 150 (75 two Car trains or 37 four Car trains + 1 two Car train)
2002 BOMBARDIER - SKYTRAIN
Skytrain Millennium Line 2002 20.6 km $1.1 Billion
Columbia Station to Broadway Station
60 Bombardier Mark 11 Skytrain Cars
(30 two Car trains or 15 four Car trains; only Cars 259 / 260 have on-board cameras)
Skytrain Millennium Line 2006 extension to VCC / Clark Drive 0.83 km ?
2009 BOMBARDIER - SKYTRAIN
48 Bombardier Mark 11 series 2 Skytrain Cars with on-board cameras $193 Million
(24 two Car Trains or 12 four Car trains)
2010 BOMBARDIER - SKYTRAIN
7 Bombardier Mark 11 Series 2 Skytrain Cars $28.1 Million
(3 two car trains + 1 one Car train; or 1 four Car train, 1 two Car train + 1 one Car train)
http://www.bclocalnews.com/tri_city_maple_ridge/tricitynews/news/5048688...
2005 SIEMENS - CANADA LINE (orphan system not compatible with Skytrain)
Canada Line (RAV - Richmond Airport Vancouver) 19.2 km $2.05 Billion
1 Block from Waterfront Station to Richmond Centre or Airport
40 Heavy Rail Subway Cars (20 two Car trains) No on-board cameras for safety.
Subway Station Size reduced to two Car trains to save money, no room for expansion.
2009 TOTAL COST: $5.07 Billion
1979 GVRD RAPID TRANSIT PROJECT COST: $430-558 million
Skytrain Expo/ Millennium Lines, longer Evergreen Line, and Canada Line. $430 million at grade; $558 million elevated, subways, Pattullo Bridge with 6 lane car and 2 lane LRT.
PROFIT FOR INVESTORS: PRICELESS
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