Transportation activists mobilize to thwart South Fraser Perimeter Road and Broadway SkyTrain
Opponents of a potential SkyTrain project along the Broadway corridor and critics of the South Fraser Perimeter Road are both calling upon the public to attend meetings on these topics later this month.
On Saturday (January 16), the South Fraser Action Network will host a townhall meeting to educate the public about the proposed $1.1-billion South Fraser Perimeter Road.
The meeting will take place from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Sundance Banquet Hall (6574 Ladner Trunk Road). It's served by the C76 and C87 buses.
Speakers include Richmond councillor and farmland advocate Harold Steves, former TransLink planner and blogger Stephen Rees, transportation consultant Eric Doherty, and Alexandria Mitchell, a high-school student and delegate at the recent climate-change conference in Copenhagen.
The following Monday (January 18), TransLink is hosting a stakeholder meeting from 6 to 9 p.m. on a proposed rapid-transit line to UBC. It will take place at the Plaza 500 Hotel at 500 West 12th Avenue.
The group Businesses and Residents for Sustainable Transit Alternatives claims that the Broadway Corridor has already been selected with no public input.
BARSTA says it's not against transit, but prefers an affordable, low-impact, cost-effective, and community-accessible system rather than a SkyTrain-style project.
BARSTA favours a $360-million European-style, at-grade train, which would provide more stops along Broadway than a $2-billion subway.
"It is important that our community comes out in force and expresses our concerns in relation to Translink and above all the SKYTRAIN Technology option that Translink is pushing," BARSTA stated in a widely distributed e-mail. "Our community organization is very concerned on the lack of honest and open discussions between Translink's key decision makers, local politicians and provincial politicians."
Related article: Patrick Condon highlights cost of Broadway transit
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Comments
A light-rail system would be MUCH MUCH faster to install, and would have a FAR smaller impact on the local businesses along the line (Remember the lawsuits from the Canadaline?). All of this in addition to the lower cost and faster return on investment (shorter payback period). I really wish the government would start releasing their NPV calculations for these mega projects, so people can see how flawed their logic really is!
Go BARSTA!
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Actually, I am afraid this project is well beyond the "proposed" stage. Work is underway and huge loads of fill are visible in Delta when driving to the Tsawwassen Ferry terminal.
Eric Doherty visited Maple Ridge last year. I am sure he took the bus out here (#160 plus #701). Aren't you?
He told the audience at the ACT (local performing arts centre) that he was admantly opposed to any new bridge at Port Mann, whether tolled or not, but said nothing -- nothing whatsoever -- about either the new Golden Ears Bridge or the new Pitt River Bridges, both of which he opposes just as vehemently as the new Port Mann bridge.
I guess he didn't want to alienate a local audience by poking a stick in their eye, and instead was content to play the usual Lower Mainland gamesmanship bit of suggesting that more transportation capacity for one's own section of Metro is a perfectly necessary and normal development, but that a big project in some other part of Metro is a monumental waste, a ticket to urban sprawl and Los Angelization, a throwback to the auto culture of the 1950s, etc., etc.
Stephen Rees reported on his blog last year that he drives to work through the Deas Island tunnel. But you MUST understand. He has no choice but to do this, ... unlike the hundreds of thousands of other people who commute by car. According to Rees these people could in many cases take transit now, and if improvements were made to the transit system, many more could do so. But Rees's own case is so special and so unique that it would be unfair of anyone to see this as some kind of double standard, ... after all, ... this man is an important expert and blogger, and that's by his own admission.
Finally, I am sure the very, very sincere people organizing this gathering at the Ladner Hall will be happy to report how many attended, how many arrived by the two, 24-person mini-buses, C76 and C87, how many walked or cycled, and how many came by cars and what the the number of cars was, that is, how many came one person to a car and how many car-pooled, as well as telling the public how many came from Delta, Richmond, or Surrey, and how many came from Burnaby and Vancouver.
Once again, given that some extremely important people will be going to this meeting, it would be most unfair, silly even, to see their choice of transportation mode as indicating any lack of interest in the mode choices they recommend for millions of others.
Rod Smelser
http://railforthevalley.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/and-just-what-is-rapid-...
If it is to be believed, the 'evil deed' has been done and SkyTrain will be built to UBC.
That being said, those who want SkyTrain also want massive taxes because the metro costs so much to build and operate.
http://railforthevalley.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/the-hysteria-of-the-ant...
Funny thing, no one else seems to build with SkyTrain or even plans for it, yet we build more.
While I don't live in the West End I do think that it is prosperous that those in charge of deciding what transit systems get adopted and what services are cut or not adopted rarely, if ever, take transit themselves so they have no idea what works or what does not.
i encourage everyone to attend the this important meeting on saturday, jan. 16 re the 1.1 billion sfpr. hopefully, we will succeed in stopping this nightmare freeway and spend the $ on much needed improved public transportation instead, then we will have a real choice to not use our vehicles.
see you on saturday
Cost of SkyTrain:
a) Elevated over $100 million/km.
b) Subway over $200 million/km.
Cost of Light Rail:
Streetcar - mixed traffic $15 million/km.+
LRT - HOV lane + signal priority at intersections $25 million/km+
Speed determined by quality of rights-of-way and station spacing, given equal stations SkyTrain subway or elevated and at-grade LRT would have equal commercial speeds.
Therefore one can build 4 times the LRT than elevated SkyTrain or 8 times the LRT than a SkyTrain subway.
Who is going to pay the extra for SkyTrain?
From the Rail for the Valley blog:
http://railforthevalley.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/debunking-the-skytrain-...
The Evil Eye sees stormy times for the friends of SkyTrain!
BernadetteK
The problem is that students can't find affordable rents on the west side and are forced to commute across town. Instead of building a billion dollar transit line to connect lower cost east side housing with UBC, the better solution would have been to spend a quarter of that on more student accomadations.
All this talk about Europe, LRT, trams is just clouding the issue. Most major European cities use heavy rail subway/commuter trains as the backbone of their transit systems.
Metro Vancouver needs to do what NYC did in the late-80s, early-90s: do a major upgrade of the public transit system, i.e make it more efficient than driving. Yes, it will cost money and if the three levels of gov't are serious about building a viable and efficient system they will find it. There's always money for wars, corporate bailouts and tax breaks..maybe use that money foe something useful?
If Joe and Josephine Suburb could get downtown from Langley, South Surrey, Coquitlam etc. by train in less time than it takes them to drive, you bet they'd use the system. The prospect of sitting on buses for hours and paying premium fares for sub-par service isn't exactly luring the masses out of their vehicles.
As it stands, the travesty known as TransLink, the overpriced, dinky Skytrains and the overpriced, dinky RAV line (trains limited to two cars!) are an expensive embarrassment. But then again this is a place that named its commuter train "network" WestCoast EXPRESS. Brilliant.
Until public transit is taken seriously by the powers that be, it will be used mostly by the poor, the young and the elderly. I mean middle class people here are embarrassed to take the bus. But at least we are a world class city and live in the "best place on earth". lol
Rod, your view is exactly what we are trying to correct. It is NOT too late to stop the freeway.
The preload needs to sit for at least a couple of years, and then, from my understanding, it is removed before paving. Road construction in my neighbourhood (North Delta) and through the Bridgeview section of Surrey is not slated to be complete until 2012. The contract has not even been awarded yet for this section, that is supposed to happen in the Spring.
And, even if construction is started, it doesn't mean it can't be stopped. If you need an example, look to the Georgia Viaduct. That was part of a freeway that was stopped after it was already under construction.
We most definitely can stop this freeway.
re rod smelser's comments. i find most of your comments ridiculous and ignorant. what part of all this do you not understand. ... i know that 1 would love to go that route instead of using my car. we live in a fast-paced society, most of us do not have the time to make a 2-hour transit trip instead of 30mins by car.
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katharina, perhaps you can tell me what part of this situation you are failing to grasp. You claim you are driving because it saves you 1.5 hours, by your estimates. Do you not think a similar consideration applies to others who are commuting or making other non-work trips by car?
Perhaps you could tell us all what this "fighting" is that you claim to be doing, along with so many others? Are you among those who are joining the paid promotional girls in team jackets who are fighting the new 21% parking tax? If so, how do you propose to fund Translink?
As for "ridiculous and ignorant" I think you mean "politically incorrect" and not sufficiently subservient to the established doctrines of "Vancouverism".
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Gemma Stuart
... I do think that it is prosperous that those in charge of deciding what transit systems get adopted and what services are cut or not adopted rarely, if ever, take transit themselves so they have no idea what works or what does not.
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I agree. At times it approaches an almost brazen degree of insincerity that the most vocal "advocates" of transit are people you will never, ever see on public transit.
Rod Smelser
Even with some pre-load down, it will be at least two years before concrete can be laid for the South Fraser Perimeter Road - because paving over peat bogs is very difficult, as well as environmentally suicidal.
Our world is changing very quickly. We have stopped freeways before and we can do it again. www.gatewaysucks.org
I take the West Coast Express to work downtown and it's a good service that should be duplicated on the south side of the Fraser. I believe that with appropriate track improvements its speeds could be increased and travel times reduced. RIght now it takes 45 minutes from Maple Ridge, the same time I used to spend on the Pacific Coach bus 25 years ago.
RGiberson
Perhaps a true point of no return has not been reached, but if the pre-load were to be removed, of what value would the land that had spent time underneath it be worth in its former use as agricultural property?
The Georgia Viaduct? There's now talk of removing that rather than buidling the Grandview connector that Mike Harcourt talked about as Mayor. Personally, I think it's a bluff, a threat to get the BC Govt to pay for the Malkin connector portion.
Rod Smelser
"All this talk about Europe, LRT, trams is just clouding the issue. Most major European cities use heavy rail subway/commuter trains as the backbone of their transit systems."
Ummm.....Sorry....... NO!
In fact light rail is the backbone of European public transit.
Example Germany - Four metro systems and 66 LRT/tram systems.
Example France - 7 metro systems and 27 LRT/tram systems.
Example Austria - 1 metro system and 8 LRT/tram systems.
Example Belgium - 1 metro system and 7 LRT/tram system
http://www.lrta.org/world/worldind.html
In Germany, TramTrain ( where a tram can operate on existing railways tracks) is replacing commuter trains and is extremely successful. The first Karlsruhe TramTrain saw a over all ridership increase of 479%, in just in the first 3 weeks of operation when TramTrain replaces a commuter rail line.
http://railforthevalley.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/more-european-tram-trai...
LRT on Broadway would rejuvenate the street, bringing more shoppers to merchants stores. In Portland LRT brings about a 10% increase to businesses along its route.
http://railforthevalley.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/to-ubc-from-bcit-and-pi...
The only fools I see MrNogatco, are those who wish to bankrupt the taxpayer by building hugely expensive subways on routes that do not have the ridership to sustain them.
No joke, most farm land in South Delta is supporting large Blue Berry plantations and a prerequisite it seems is to dump liberal portions of sand on the ground.
The 'Eye' likes his Blue Berry fresh, picked in the midnight moon!
Lets call this for what it is... the gateway plan is a federal trade plan not a regional growth strategy. This is about moving more and more diesel trucks through our region. Any transportation planner learns in their first year of planning school that building highways does not reduce congestion... its called "induced traffic". This means that even without the port expansion and the tripling of big trucks coming off the port the new highways would reach congestion levels within a few years.
Now perhaps we need to have a broader discussion of how the gateway trade plan fits (or doesn't fit) into a discussion of climate change and the future of the global economy. But leaving aside the obvious implications of all this new fossil fueled trade, as well as the new planned exports of coal and tar sands oil... it's important to remember what is "driving" this process.
If we are serious about smart growth, planning that respects the needs of area residents and sustainability then the time is now to shift our investment to cost effective public transit and investments in new transit lines that will lead to hubs of development around new transit stops. Transportation planning decisions determine land use decisions.
Our current transit system is not meeting the needs of people in the region and is woefully underfunded. Meanwhile the provincial government has been heavily investing in highways. As many budgets were cut in the recent budget highway spending is up 20%. This is without taking into consideration the port mann bridge (which the auditor general has recently told the government they must stop trying to hide). Yes construction creates jobs but public transit invest creates 3 times as many jobs per dollar. Also construction jobs are contracts not long term employment.
We need for international trade that will help us be ahead of the curve when it comes to peak oil, climate change (and the associated legislation, carbon pricing schemes and trade disputes soon to come), population growth and Canada's capacity to support itself. At the moment we are woefully un-prepared. Gateway wastes billions of public dollars moving us in the wrong direction. Now is the time to turn this thing around.
Broadway IS the major transit road, thus it makes total sense to double its transit capacity by building light rail.
Lets call this for what it is... the gateway plan is a federal trade plan not a regional growth strategy. This is about moving more and more diesel trucks through our region. Any transportation planner learns in their first year of planning school that building highways does not reduce congestion... its called "induced traffic". This means that even without the port expansion and the tripling of big trucks coming off the port the new highways would reach congestion levels within a few years.
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I think it's good see some recognition that much of Gateway is a national project, including the Trans Canada Hwy, and part of the Federal Govt's committment to international trade and competitiveness. That's especially true for PMH1, even if no direct federal expenditure is involved there. The Govt of Canada did pay half the costs of the new Pitt River Bridge and associated 3-level interchange, a project that would normally be a purely provincial and local one.
The plain truth is that Greater Vancouver has not seceded from Confederation and will not under any circumstances be allowed to plan in isolation, let alone to gratuitously veto, every transportation investment or project in this region without regard to the economic interests of the rest of the nation. That is simply not on, no matter what.
As for "induced demand", no honest and responsible expert would ever contend that induced demand effects will occupy ALL of an increase in highway capacity. There can be and there are reasonable debates among experts over what percentages are involved, but no one other than an ideologue -- or else someone deliberately attempting to mislead people -- would ever suggest that 100% of additional capacity will be occupied by traffic generated solely by that increased capacity.
If opponents of white-collar commuting by car are really interested in transit alternatives, why is it that their recommendations never include expanded commuter rail service, but instead focus exclusively on various LRT systems, and then disintegrate into endless arguments over which brand of LRT (conventional/automated, elevated/on-grade, etc.)? Could it simply be that they are just not serious?
As for what any transportation planner learns in first year, ... is that why none of the tenured academics who are specialists in transporation issues at SFU and UBC have authored any academic papers at all on the specific subject of Gateway, leaving this job instead to their graduate students?
Finally, I would be interested in hearing Ben West's opinion of the new 21% parking tax. The CanWest papers have treated downtown Vancouver business opposition to this tax as front page news.
The downtown property owners are, in fact, so bloody furious they have hired squadrons of young women, mostly blondes, and fitted them out with smartly contrasting jet-black team jackets proclaiming "Drive out the tax", and sent them round to the parking lots to hand out leaflets to the BMW and Benz commuters from Point Grey and the North Shore, people who we all know can hardly be expected to take transit ... any more than Stephen Rees or David Suzuki.
Rod Smelser
The cities in Europe that use LRT as the backbone for their transit systems are smaller in area and population than Metro Vancouver.
Bigger cities primarily rely on subway/commuter rail and the tram and bus networks complement the heavy rail network.
Face it...a public transit system based on buses and LRT would be woefully inadequate for a sprawling city with a metro pop. of 2.1 million.
another personal example as to how poor our transit system is: i live in surrey and when i worked in north van it takes me approx. 35 minutes by car. when i take transit via skytrain, seabus, and lonsdale bus it can take 1 1/2 - 2 hours to get to work and up to 3 hours to get home my choice is just over an hour by car or 5 hrs by public transportation.
i would like to invite you also to try our public transportation system.
360 millions for Broadway corridor is a pure lies. In reality it likely cost 75- 100 millions per kilometer, based on the figures of all new, nice light rail lines built or proposed around the world, including the Calgary C-train expansion.
The city of Karlsruhe, Germany and 10 more in Europe have done away with commuter trains and operate tramtrains. Karlsruhe longest line is 210 km. long.
If ridership on a transit route is greater than 400,000 a day, then build a metro, if not, build LRT.
Time to read a book on the subject!
In my opinion, your point is redundant. The preload can be removed and the area can recover.
Yes, some destruction has already been caused but what's better... building the SFPR so the neighbourhoods, surrounding farmland, the air, Burns Bog and the Fraser River get even more polluted and less liveable, or stopping the project NOW and letting the area recover?
Outside of North America, which city has population over 2 million but use solely at-grade LRT (with no other real form of rapid transit)?
And If you try to find a transit line that every 12km carries greater than 400,000 a day, only few cities have that. Even in those dense city like Toyko and Hongkong, you will not find all lines can justify this criteria. For instance, Hongkong relatively new West Rail, which has largest train depot in Asia, still carries less than 300,000 daily in its 30+ km track, i.e. less than 100,000 for every 12 km. To require 400,000 a day for 12km Broadway line is ridiculous.
I don't believe elsewhere in the world has a rule of thumb of requiring 400,000 per 12km for grade-separated metro. If this criteria is used nowadays, TTC subway & Montreal metro has to rollback and not even got built!
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=169753053447
Strange thing happened, where metro replaces LRT, ridership dropped on public transit systems. Then came the 80's & 90's where the public wanted their transit "on the pavement" and "handy to use", resulting in an explosion of LRT/tram projects.
There you go, transit history 100, condensed for you. It is not about metro or LRT being the backbone of a cities transit system, it is all about moving transit customers afforably and efficiently on transit systems that first goal is to satisfy the transit customer!
Passby Tuen Muen LRT carries over 25,000 pphpd during peak hours, you do the math chum for daily ridership.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=73380534833
A summery: Hong kong light rail, the highest ridership of all at-grade LRT in Asia, at least 370000 boardings per day as of last year, but have also been losing billions of dollars since its inception at 1988. It is certainly not the best example for light rail advocates: if you look for capacity, it is forced to operate beyond its presupposed cap; if you look for comfort, it is slow like bike and packed to hell level at peak traffic.
http://www.mtr.com.hk/engtxt/lr_bus/intro_index.html
From the website info, one can see that the total length of HK light rail network is exactly three times that of Broadway line proposed for Vancouver. If HK light rail is currently over-capacity, one would not need a crystal ball to see that Broadway LRT line will be totally packed when its ridership grows to about 130000 daily or above.
Fares start at about 25 cents (concession fares) and its not just the trams that are operating at a deficit, the buses and ferries are showing a decline in patronage.
Now let us not forget SkyTrain's annual deficit which is about $230 million, quietly paid by the provincial government.
As for ridership say we have modern articulated LRV's (capacity 250 persons) operating in pairs, traveling at 2 minute or 120 second headways (30 trips a hour) on a proposed Broadway LRT line, capacity would be15,000 pphpd! (500 X 30 = 15,000). A peak hour capacity of 15,000 pphpd would easily handle 130,000 a day, with plenty of spare capacity to handle even larger passenger loads.
A 90 second headway or 45 trip per hour would generate a capacity of 22,500 pphpd and please remember many European tramway's operate at 30 second headways on downtown portions of their routes!
Light rail could easily handle Broadway's transit loads for generations to come at a fraction of the cost of a SkyTrain subway.
If light rail were to be built on Broadway, where would the OMC be? The distance between Main and Kingsway is only ~70 m. Can you explain how a 3 or 4 car trainset will be able to fit between the intersection when demand increases? Why does a 8 km, mostly at grade expansion of the Edmonton LRT costs about ~$700 million? I thought at grade light rail was supposed to cost $10 million/km?
The trackage is not that busy ..
oh yea; i know why .. Gordo n his deal with CN
Join the 'I Support Extending SkyTrain To UBC' facebook group and support fast, effective transit for all of Metro Vancouver along the broadway corridor.
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No thanks.
As our former Mayor in Maple Ridge, Gordon Robson, pointed out two years ago, for the costs of an underground line to UBC from VCC, you could provide an LRT system on both the north and south sides of the Fraser River as far as Mission and Chilliwack.
I wonder if there is some sound and defensible reason why Point Grey residents would consider it unacceptable, if a Skytrain technology were used, to have it done in an elevated fashion as it is in East Vancouver and Burnaby?
Rod Smelser
But one thing that seems to have been missed is that the Broadway corridor has three potential rapid transit routes on it. So one option is to have two moderate capacity rapid transit lines on the surface (say Broadway and 4th / 2nd) rather than one higher capacity line. So the question is not only if there is too much capacity for a surface line to carry easily, but if two or three lines would be a better way to add capacity since there would be more origins and destinations covered.
Bus rapid transit (BRT) also seems to have been left out of the conversation. One big advantage of BRT over light rail and metro (Skytrain) is that you don't have to re-locate the underground pipes. On some routes this makes little difference to the cost, on others it makes a huge difference.
Maybe the best option would be and two electric bus rapid transit lines. Then after the Evergreen Line, Surrey-Langley Interurban and King George Highway lines are built, an extension of Skytrain to Cambie and 2nd (elevated to reduce cost over a subway) to connect to the Canada Line might be worthwhile.
The trick is to not have the LRT train stop within the restricted length of track, as is done in Europe, The triangular shape of the intersection would require the train to transit the 70m before stopping.
Edmonton's high costs for LRT is a) very costly land acquisitions (which are not needed on Broadway) and b) very expensive engineering costs because politicians refused to look at a cheaper alternative (which Vancouver's engineering dept would love to download onto the regional taxpayer).
Cost of LRT:
TramTrain - Track-sharing with mainline railways: $5 million/km.+
Streetcar - on-street, little or no priority at intersections: $15 million/km.+
LRT - reserved rights-of-way (HOV lane in median): $25 million/km.+
All costs subject to land acquisition costs and engineering (note Edmonton). Costs include track, OHLE, vehicles and depot.
Question for Broadway surface-rail advocates:
Current Skytrain schedules give an average 44-45 km/h operating speed, including stops.
Name just one place in the world, operating a non-grade-separated, surface-rail system through a comparable corridor with similar density, traffic volume, and traffic interaction, which achieves similar average speeds.
A grade-separated Skytrain extension will transit the 13-km corridor in about 17 minutes.
Name just one comparable surface rail line anywhere in the world that can travel 13 km in 17 minutes.
(The current 99 B-line, by comparison, averages 42 minutes, but can range 30-60 minutes depending on traffic)
Why are we considering building anything at all, as opposed to just expanding bus services? What is The Number 1 objective for building any kind of rapid transit project in the corridor?
Speed.
"No thanks.
As our former Mayor in Maple Ridge, Gordon Robson, pointed out two years ago, for the costs of an underground line to UBC from VCC, you could provide an LRT system on both the north and south sides of the Fraser River as far as Mission and Chilliwack"
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Fair enough, but be clear with your argument. It sounds like one issue for you are other transit priorities in the Metro area at the expence of the broadway corridor. make that argument, pick the potential corridors and transit modes and discuss land-use planning and debate what is higher priority.
If your arguement is that skytrain is too expensive, quailify it. do we really need skytrain as the best mode there? why not LRT or BRT? elevate skytrain guideway or bury it?
Since 1997 Portland built 4 LRT lines and a downtown streetcar, but transit use in the city (mode share) has remained unchanged. knee-jerk reactions about how many LRT lines or priuses can be bought with the cost of a skytrain line will not bring clarity to the issue.
http://www.humantransit.org/2010/01/portland-a-challenging-chart.html
The main thing is to first make sure that our money goes to transit not freeways.
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Eric, wouldn't it be fair to say that this is your entire message, that everything else is at best details, things you're not really serious about?
Given that Golden Ears, which you opposed silently when you visited Maple Ridge, and Port Mann are to be built with debt financed by tolls on those structures, can you possibly explain to me how these two structures in any way reduce the amount of public funds available for other components of the transporation system?
As for your inflexible No Freeways Dictum, that may be the Vancouver-centric teachings of Profs Frank and Perle, but it's not what one would hear from internationally recognized experts like Anthony Downs of the Brookings Institution.
http://www.anthonydowns.com/site/Speeches/Entries/2007/3/7_A_Growth_Stra...
"It seems to me highly unlikely that Vancouver can add 750,000 people in a society with rising incomes and scattered employment locations and drastically reduce the share of commuting trips by car to the extent that your planners desire. You will have to increase the capacity of your roadways to some degree."
Rod Smelser
I was repeating something from a former Mayor who simply said "LRT", and didn't specify anything beyond that.
As it happens, I don't agree at all with the focus that some people in the Valley have on LRT, of whatever type. My worry is that if an Evergreen line is ever built, a somewhat low probability event it would seem, and then extended to the Maple Ridge area, we will loose the West Coast Express. The reason is that Metro politicians, especially those from the North Shore, Vancouver and Richmond would NEVER tolerate a situation in which residents of a municipality like Maple Ridge, which they regard as a totally third rate rendezvous, were being served by two subsidized, fixed rail services.
For example, going back to the 1990s when the WCE was first introduced, Richmond Mayor Greg Halsey-Brandt was so apopletic about it that he switched parties and joined the BC Liberals.
But Robson's basic point that a huge amount of transit services could be provided for the cost of an underground line to UBC is valid. Condon's sketch map of trams all over Surrey is one example, although I don't take it seriously as anything other than a kind of pedagogical device.
Obviously, my first priority would be to expand the WCE service, duplicate it on the CN lines south of the Fraser, and then look at similar commuter rail services proceeding south along the Arbutus line and then on to Richmond, Delta and White Rock, and a service north to Squamish and Whistler.
Ontario has a lot more than one GO train route, and these trains have been running with widespread popular acceptance since the days of the late Premier John P. Robarts. Why on earth are they so despised by all the transportation experts in Vancouver? Could it be that this type of train provides its users with a viable transportation package, but does not provide profit hungry property owners and DCC-hungry municipal politicians and bureaucrats with the right kind of real estate development opportunities? I suspect that's the one and only reason why "transit advocates" like Eric have so passionately denounced the West Coast Express, calling it a tool of urban sprawl.
Rod Smelser
It is not grade separation that determines speed of a transit system, rather the number of stations per route km.; the fewer stations, the longer time a metro/LRT train can operate at speed. SkyTrain has about 1/3 the number of stations than comparable LRT lines, thus has a faster commercial speed.
Let's compare with Karlsruhe's TramTrain (LRT that operates at a streetcar/LRT/Commuter train) which has commercial speeds of 70 kph to 90 kph because stations or stops are 5 km. or longer apart on certain parts of the route.
Given a LRT on a reserved rights-of-way (a ROW for exclusive use of a tram) and SkyTrain, with equal number of stations per route km., the commercial speed will be about the same only SkyTrain will cost 2 to 3 times to install (elevated) or 4 to 6 times to install (subway).
Cost, cost, cost - this is what th SkyTrain lobby willfully ignores. TransLink is bankrupt, who is going to pay for another Vancouver subway?
Skytrain travels 80-90 km/h between stations.
http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/public_consult/tmp/lrt/vancouver_en.pdf
I am unsure how surface LRT can do this on broadway.
I acknowledge skytrain is the most expensive choice. That is why this choice is difficult.
But I would not want hundreds of millions spent to obtain B-line levels of travel time. The best I see with LRT on Broadway is to increase corridor capacity, but with pedestrian impacts due to the ROW, less space for buses that still have to run along broadway and the odd car accident to snarl things.
But this is not necessarily a bad thing. We save money, but with disadvantages. Ultimately, it depends on what you value.
Re. Evil Eye
The St Louis LRT Blue Line takes 51 minutes over 24 miles - that is about 45 km/h.
Its route follows segregated railway ROW, elevated guideway, is buried underneath an expressway, and is tunneled under the downtown area. Ie, it is largely grade-separated for its length, with some level crossings of smaller roads. So, it is not a non-grade-separated system operating at street level, unlike a Broadway LRT/tram line.
It at no time travels down a major road at street level or shares a lane with traffic, so its traffic volume and traffic interaction is not at all like a tram/LRT down Broadway.
And the average density of its route does not match that along the Broadway corridor.
So, is the St. Louis LRT a comparable, non-grade-separated system running at street level down a corridor with similar densities, traffic volume, and traffic interaction as the Broadway corridor? No. It is not comparable in any way.
Name a single such comparable system in the world that can travel 13 kms at street level in 17 minutes.
(re Karlsruhe: so, what is the average operating speed of this system along a route comparable to the Broadway corridor?)
I suggest that people wait until more details are our regarding ridership and what the designs, costs and limitations are to each of the options are before making a decision. Be prepared though, that, while expensive, a subway will be the only practical option. There is little point in spending a billion or more dollars on an LRT that will be at capacity in just a few years after it opens.