Think City might look at ways to remove the diesel buses from our roads if it wants to improve the air quality. There is absolutely no reason for TransLink to be operating diesel buses out to UBC on existing trolley bus routes. What is going on in this city? If you discuss it with the Minister of Transportation, the City of Vancouver or TransLink, all you get are excuses from people who are obviously responsible and who are just covering the asses.

This week a Chinese mother moved from our building because her young son couldn't sleep at night due to the screaming and howling diesel buses keeping him awake at night until 4 am and because she was worried about the toxic diesel bus emissions damaging his lungs. She is just one of dozens who have moved to escape the noise and pollution by TransLink; yet, if you talk to the COV, they say that all is fine. Things are coming to a head and I'm going to do as much as I can to sue these jackasses and to have the Human Rights Commission investigate them.

Charlie, perhaps you can help by doing story in the GS. For whatever reason, GS allows negative comments but never supports articles attacking TransLink. It isn't as if you need the advertising dollars from TransLink.
 

Anyone who has read the Georgia Straight over the last decade will know that I have written many articles that criticize TransLink. I will consider your suggestion regarding the impact of diesel buses. 

After the sight of Critical Masstards laying on Lion's Gate bridge last Friday, I think that Think City may be in for a surprise. 

There is already a bike route parallel to the drive, on Woodland. Enhance the drive for pedestrians, not vehicles.

 

Regarding the comment about diesel buses out to UBC, I think the solution to that as well as the overcrowding on the buses going that way is to build housing for all UBC students on campus.

That way everyone can walk to class. And Translink will save a bundle. 

Much appreciated, Charlie, and I'm looking forward to seeing an article on the impacts of diesel buses and in particular the B-Line diesel buses. Perhaps a front page article with black smoke spewing out of the tailpipe of a B-Line diesel bus might get the average person thinking about which is worse for the environment and their health, a car which goes through AirCare or a diesel bus which is exempt from AirCare.

The worst air quality in Vancouver occurs on diesel bus routes, COV and GVRD facts, not mine. There is an obvious contradiction to TransLink claiming to improve the air quality by making it worse on diesel bus routes.

It is a little like BP in the Gulf of Mexico disaster trying to say that the oil impacts weren’t that bad because the oil concentration was only 1 part per billion in the entire Gulf of Mexico: not much consolation to the dead birds and sea life. TransLink does society more harm than good when you consider the health costs and noise disruptions of diesel buses on transit routes. It would be nice to read the truth about diesel buses for a change.
 

@BusHater

As for the air quality on diesel bus routes being the worst areas so what you saying is that everywhere outside of Vancouver has worse air quality because all of their buses are diesel? Vancouver is the only municipality with trolley wires.

Or is it more a case of correlation not causation? In that the diesel bus routes happen to have the worst air quality(I am assuming your statements are accurate even though you fail to back them up with data) but are not directly(or in this case entirely) caused by the buses. That said, I will give that buses do contribute to the problem but are only a part of the issue, as a large majority of these high frequency diesel bus routes are highly used roads by other vehicles(commuters, taxis, diesel trucks, etc). Take for instance, the main route you complain about on oh so many GS articles, Broadway, is jam packed with vehicles all day, as are other major Vancouver east-west arteries and north-south arteries.

I will also say, I wish all the buses were electric(or some other cleen tech and that skytrain ran all the way down broadway) but money unfortunately does not grow on trees as these trolleys from what I've read up, are roughly twice the price of a new diesel bus and cost a cool million each! This puts my environmental considerations in a dilemma, buy all trolleys but 1/2 the # of buses or use trolleys where we can and get diesels elsewhere. The 2nd option allows for more buses and for getting more people out of cars thus reducing congestion on the roads and potentially reducing the overall pollution levels.

I guess it comes down to how much pollution does a new bus put out as compared to an average car in city traffic or diesel transport truck? I'm pretty sure one bus will put out more pollution than an average car but is it more than 2 or 3 or 4 or however many people can jam into a bus? Let's make it an extreme #, say 10 average cars per bus, even at that rate if an average over the day of more than 10 people ride each bus it is still less pollution than if they drove their cars. Which like you advocate is still more than the electric bus but better than not being able to afford enough buses and have people drive. 

Migzy, cool name by the way, anytime a smoking bus goes by you it does more harm than all the cars in Vancouver because the toxic diesel bus emission concentrations are off the scale. Cars don’t concentrate emissions like diesel buses and it is the concentration which is harmful.

You presume that cars remove cars from the roads, given that the average transit rider is a student with no income, isn’t it much more plausible that if we did not have smoking diesel buses, these zero income students would be living nearer to campus or school to walk or cycle? Wouldn’t we have fewer long distant commuters and less pollution without regional transit? Vehicle registrations have never dropped in the Lower Mainland and transit has only served to attract more transit dependent people here. Moreover, if TransLink can spend $2,000 million for the RAV Line and pay $150 million/year in interest charges for the financing, can’t it spend $30 million to replace the B-Lines with articulated trolley buses?

A diesel bus like the B-Line gets 1/10th the fuel mileage of the average car and is on the road 20 times longer than the average driver's 45 minute commute. What's worse for the environment, 100,000 clean burning cars or 1,000 soot blowing toxic diesel buses causing cancer and asthma?

Before we even start to look at GHG emissions, diesel buses can't possibly be considered the preferred choice over cars because diesel buses emit toxic emissions which cars do not. Maybe the odd diesel bus is harmless but 600 diesel bus trips daily on the B-Line route? Come on. However, forget that, let's calculate the difference in CO2 emissions between cars and diesel buses:

Approximately one-thousand diesel buses move 100,000 riders daily (200,000 boardings per day in the Lower Mainland, see TransLink web-site). Let x = the CO2 emitted per hour for the car. Then, the CO2 emitted for the diesel bus per hour is at least 10x. The average driver commutes 45 km daily (from the CBC, "Who Killed the Electric Car") for a duration of approximately one hour. The diesel bus, in contrast, operates many nearly empty hours and "Not in Service" hours along with a few hours of overcrowding for a duration of 12 hours to 18 hours daily, on average.

For the miserable ride on the 1,000 diesel buses each day, the emissions are as follows:
(1,000)(10x)(18) = 180,000x

For the comfortable trip in the 100,000 cars each day, the emissions are as follows:
(100,000)(x)(1) = 100,000x

If you don’t believe me, ask TransLink to prove that diesel buses are not damaging the lungs of people on the B-Line route. I did and TransLink still hasn’t replied. Thanks for giving me the chance to educate you.

signed,
chemical engineer
 

In the second paragraph, I meant to say: You presume that "diesel buses" remove cars from the roads ...

I'm sure that you figured that out though. 

For the concentrations, one car no. But having a whole bunch of cars packed into say Broadway in stop and go traffic, due to the pretty much wall to wall buildings on broadway, would combine and concentrate their emissions by a fair margin at street level. Not to mention that car exhaust is low to the ground and the buses exhaust is not, thus allowing more of the cars emissions to concentrate lower to the ground and get sucked in by the drivers and pedestrians.

The average transit user is a student with no income? For the entire fleet including skytrain or the 99? For the 99 maybe, but otherwise definitely not.

Ok, let's take UBC, where I got my education for instance, there is room for some students to live on campus, and some reasonable places to live near school, but the reason that the majority of students take transit to school is because they have to live further away(ie. at home) to be able to afford school and also have a place to live. Now reduce or take away transit, guess what, they now have to find another way to get to school which is, yup, a car! In fact since the UPass program has been started UBC has been able to reduce public parking places for students because fewer students(and staff?) are now driving their own cars to school. SFU is similar.

Seeing as the population is growing rather rapidly, you can't just use total vehicle registrations for the entire area to say transit isn't taking people from their cars. Percentages to growth of transit to pop growth and vehicle registrations to pop growth are what you are looking to compare. But then your next statement says transit attracts more transit dependant people. Which is it, you can't have it both ways.

And as for attracting more transit dependant people, you may not think that is a good thing, I do. Now if everyone(even excluding your poor student) that used transit, had a car instead, we would need way more larger roads and parking infrastructure. That in its own right, would have significant environmental impact without even adding up the emissions etc from all those cars. So far in previous comments, that I recall, you were just advocating the exchange of diesel buses for trolleys, but some of your current statements seem to advocate all transit is bad. Please clarify this so I know where you are coming from.

Translink did not pay 2 Billion for the Canada Line, in fact, the majority was paid by the BC Gov't and a private partner. Translink is now paying the private partner to run the line, which because is already at 100,000 a day, is at the break even point for operations/interest(ie. the canada line is paying for itself right now) and according to Translink they will be able to pay off their debt a few years earlier than expected. Not to mention it was also forced upon translink by the BC Gov't.
 

Continuation of last comment... Hopefully the GS moderators allow it.

30 million? I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure the 99 has more than 20 or so buses. My million figure was for a regular size bus. Oh and as far as I know another set of trolley wires would have to added in order for one trolley to pass another, otherwise every 99 would get stuck behind a 9. So now if you were translink would you be able justify to all the other municipalities that spending an extra large portion on the limited capital funds on just getting trolley buses for one route in Vancouver, you could try, but I doubt that would fly with them. I just want to reiterate that I prefer all the buses or say the 99 to be electric(and by extension skytrain) - yup, but it is just not realistic and like I said in my last comment, the money has to come from somewhere.

Let's see, 1/10 the mileage a car gets? Let's say the average mileage is 25 mpg(for cars/trucks/etc from google), what you are saying is that a diesel bus, only gets 2.6 miles per gallon? I find that number impossible to believe seeing as 18 wheelers average around 7 mpg(from google). I also checked on buses and found that for some kind of bus purchased for San Diego in 1995(10 years before our new buses were purchased) was 6 mpg. I'm guessing that was for a regular size bus, but given that the 99 buses are newer, I'd guess they would be similar. So 1/5th the mileage or better would be more accurate comparing cars to buses, which adds up to a lot of difference in total fuel used to your number.

Cars don't emit toxic emissions? I can't take your word on that because the smog, CO, and low level ozone(highly toxic to life) blanketing major US cities would say otherwise. Per vehicle yes, i would imagine buses do emit more though. Let's see 600 bus trips on 99 that transport say 20-30,000+ per day, even at 10,000 that's a lot of cars that would need room to drive and park. Not to mention a lot of exhaust. You are welcome to find and link to proof that the new diesel buses are as bad as you say they are compared to cars(facts please, heresay is easy to find on both sides of the argument).

And then for the rest of your argument about GHG you now generalize over the entire fleet including routes that are barely utilized to try and prove your main argument that a heavily used route like the 99(which is 50-75% full most of the day and overflowing during the morning/evening hours) is worse than cars. Sorry, that doesn't fly with me. For the entire fleet, I'll give you that based on your data, but for major routes you have yet to prove your point that replacing the diesel buses with cars would be better. Replacing diesel buses with trolleys, yes but I already agreed with you on that and most probably would, outside of the capital cost per bus. Over the lifetime, trolleys are probably cheaper than diesel buses but capital considerations can't always take operation expenses into account, otherwise we would have more skytrain by now on busy routes as I'm guessing overall lifetime expenses are much lower per person than buses. I'm assuming they are lower as otherwise the economic argument would have stopped the construction in the first place.
 

Victoria Drive, maybe.

Commercial Drive, no way!

Outside of the downtown core, it might make more sense to build new commuter bikelanes in existing vehicular laneways - half a block or so from the automotive route. This could also be done in some places downtown, but just not in areas that have busy truck loading docks.
http://www.a1freesoundeffects.com/freesounds5/airhorn.wav

Near Victoria Dr., the 20 or 30 vehicles that have legitimate reasons to be in any particular block of laneway will just have to adjust.

Add a community garden, paint a pretty mural on one wall, and call it progress!