Surrey Langley Skytrain - Expo Line Extension | Proposed

[Bdawe]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

If you guys donèt agree with the Valley Line then fine, we will agree to disagree.

That however does not change the fact that you have bumper to bumper traffic on an increasingly dangerous HWY#1 and slow or even non-existent service to many post secondaries and the guge Gloucester Industrial area both of which represents thousands of students and workers to say nothing the general population itself.

Seeing the province has basically rolled back most of the HWY#1 expansion and there are absolutely no other highway projects online for at least a decade in the entire LM, what exactly are your alternatives. The SoF is growing MUCH faster than NoF and that will continue, buses canèt keep to schedules and are slow due to ever increasingly
congestion, and SkyTrain to Langley Centre will not help any of the stated areas.

It will take at least $3 billion just to bring SoF highways up to a standard that it would be in the trest of the country. Is that something you support and if not, what are your alternatives? Decisions are always best made when they are informed ones and I am trying to keep an open mind but with the province basically rejecting any significant highway spending, I simply don't see any alternative but the Valley Line to connect the people and places in SoF.

Bus's ain't gonna get any faster if we keep force-feeding more cars into the system by spending billions to bring it up to "standard"

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

If you guys donèt agree with the Valley Line then fine, we will agree to disagree.

That however does not change the fact that you have bumper to bumper traffic on an increasingly dangerous HWY#1 and slow or even non-existent service to many post secondaries and the guge Gloucester Industrial area both of which represents thousands of students and workers to say nothing the general population itself.

Seeing the province has basically rolled back most of the HWY#1 expansion and there are absolutely no other highway projects online for at least a decade in the entire LM, what exactly are your alternatives. The SoF is growing MUCH faster than NoF and that will continue, buses canèt keep to schedules and are slow due to ever increasingly
congestion, and SkyTrain to Langley Centre will not help any of the stated areas.

It will take at least $3 billion just to bring SoF highways up to a standard that it would be in the trest of the country. Is that something you support and if not, what are your alternatives? Decisions are always best made when they are informed ones and I am trying to keep an open mind but with the province basically rejecting any significant highway spending, I simply don't see any alternative but the Valley Line to connect the people and places in SoF.

If your mind is open, then understand that while you may have thousands, there are hundreds of thousands of others in the city with the same problems, and they're much more reachable.

One important part of effective transit planning is to encourage developers to "be on the way." Nobody forced your industrial park to set up in the middle of nowhere next to a highway and a zoo, in a way that makes them only accessible by car. Had they chosen South Surrey or Murrayville - closer to the city & other riders, and easier to get a bus there - they'd likely get better transit. If Abbotsford wants more, they can join the payroll, and that might get them a WCE extension and BRT lanes on the Trans-Canada. Highway widening won't solve much in the long run.

As it is, you aren't the only ones facing long commutes and missed schedules; two and a half million other people are too. The Valley isn't the only place outgrowing its infrastructure, so are Broadway, Surrey, Hastings and the North Shore. As we both know, it's TransLink's job to service as many people as possible with whatever few resources they can get, and that DOES NOT include a near-useless toy train for a few thousand people, many of whom aren't even on the membership list. That DOES include a rapid transit project to improve the commutes and facilitate the growth of Surrey, Langley, and several universities that on their own are larger all of the Valley's put together.

EDIT: Last year's TSPR says the 503 to Aldergrove - just south of Gloucester - averages 2,290 riders/day and a peak load of 21 riders per bus (half the seats full). The Fleetwood extension is projected to get 39,000+. Are you sure the Valley line is a better investment?

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

That however does not change the fact that you have bumper to bumper traffic on an increasingly dangerous HWY#1

Do you think the rest of the region doesn't have traffic from hell? The Broadway subway is going to happen because the traffic there is atrocious and even with the 99B running basically every 5 minutes they have trouble keeping up with demand. Everywhere there's a B-Line you're looking at a road with crazy busy traffic.

The North Shore has been wanting a third crossing for ages, the Pattullo Bridge still hasn't been replaced and who knows what's going to happen with the Massey Tunnel - all need to be done as traffic backs up onto local streets.

In the past Surrey had a problem with 'checkerboard streets' - they would alternate between 2 and 4 lanes. More recently they've been on a mission to fix that.

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

As it is, you aren't the only ones facing long commutes and missed schedules; two and a half million other people are too. The Valley isn't the only place outgrowing its infrastructure, so are Broadway, Surrey, Hastings and the North Shore.

Well said.

[SFUVancouver]

There is just such incredible entitlement in some quarters of the South of Fraser part of the region. People moved there for (comparatively) inexpensive housing because development was occurring on the essentially unserviced hinterland of the region. The countless new townhouse developments and SFH enclaves were far removed from employment and commercial services, frequently served by little more than rural roads, had no schools or community services nearby, virtually non-existent civil infrastructure, and required absolute automobile dependency, hence families with three, four, five-plus vehicles.

Once there, faced with the acute shortcomings of living in areas unprepared for the scale and breadth of development that the cities blithely approved, residents felt injured and forgotten by their own city and the rest of the region. Why should Broadway get a subway when my rural road serving a thousand of new townhouses is congested and only leads to a highway? Why should downtown Surrey get a new library and parks when I live next to farms and forest without a library or park in sight? Why shouldn't there be fast and frequent bus service on my out of the way cul de sac that would miraculously be immune from congestion and get me to where I want to go despite vast geographic distances between anything resembling transit-supportive trip generators and churn?

It feels the same as folks who live in remote communities hundreds kilometres away for a centre with a five-digit population, that have to face the reality of having no real economy, no growth potential, negative working age population growth, no tourism, no educational opportunities, etc., who feel put out that the Province won't build them a hospital or public services commensurate with "big [bad] cities".

Economic geography is real. Distance exists. Relative remoteness has consequences. I feel sometimes like I'm living in a bizarre world where people expect the laws of physics to be repealed because it fits their chosen lifestyle.

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

There is just such incredible entitlement in some quarters of the South of Fraser part of the region.

...

To be fair, the entire SoF still tends to be blown off by a lot of the NoF. It didn't help that when BC Transit was in charge they were doing planning from Victoria - so SoF ended up with bus routes that were all about travelling to / from downtown Van and next to nothing else. Meanwhile anyone SoF wanting to travel anywhere else was stuck having to drive as they didn't have another option. People NoF didn't have that problem and looked down their noses at all the driving happening SoF.

TransLink has been trying to fix that but with limited budgets they have to pay more attention to the money making routes, which haven't tended to be SoF as driving is so entrenched. In the more recent past, a lot more people have been taking the bus SoF - despite the low frequency (most routes are still every 30 minutes).

Perhaps it's time for the North and South to put down their weapons and try to work together.

[ssiguy]

^^^ Very well said.

Yes I agree that industrial areas should have been developed near transit routes but Translink/Metro can't have it both ways. By having very high real estate prices which the cities have done nothing to control, large commercial areas have had to go further afield in order to find {reasonably} affordable land on which to develope. The cities have also limited the areas to where commercial areas can develope but have done so by making sure they are as "out of sight, out of mind" as humanely possible. Commercial areas are allowed to develope only by the approval of their respective cities and not the other way around.

By not providing transit or highways, you are also blaming and punishing the actual workers and/or students. For students you are basically saying that this is what you get for not being well off and hence being able to afford to go to UBC and it's associated rents. The workers you are eseentially saying that this is what you get for being blue collar instead of getting you Masters so you can afford to live closer to the city and hence better transit.

Vancouver's highway mentality of "don't build it and they won't come" is childish in the extreme as well as clearly incompetent. The city wants more people but due to the cost of living those newcommers and former Vancouverites must live in the Valley and yet hundreds of thousands are left with little or no transit option and the nation's worst highway system to boot. It also shows what little concern Metro/BC has for the actual safety of it's citizens. First responders have been pleading with BC to do something about HWY#1 as accidents are up 40% since 2014 and response times down dramatically as they are increasingly having problems accessing the incidents. Transports are barrelling down side streets they are not suppose to be on in a desperate attempt to move their goods. No highway interchanges so start and stop traffic especially buy transports results in the belching of pollutants as well as going thru town centres and by schools and residential areas.

[paradigm4]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

Economic geography is real. Distance exists. Relative remoteness has consequences. I feel sometimes like I'm living in a bizarre world where people expect the laws of physics to be repealed because it fits their chosen lifestyle.

I disagree pretty strongly with this take. You could argue that in the 20's, people would consider Oakridge, Richmond or Burnaby in the same way. And maybe that was the case at some point, when these were hinterlands compared to the Burrard Peninsula, but growth happens, places develop, and communities evolve.

Governments have collectively allowed, and with the ALR disallowed, growth to occur beyond the Metro borders. For the sake of Vancouverites, thank goodness this opportunity exists, otherwise CoV would've been upzoned and re-developed much more extensively than it is today.

The reality is that people live beyond the core, either in the SoF, the Valley, or the Sea to Sky. Some may work and commute to Vancouver, many do not. But these places exist, they will continue to grow, jobs will come with that growth, and expecting decent infrastructure, including non-SOV options to get around, is reasonable. That doesn't mean Broadway doesn't need a subway - of course it does. But I think dismissing ideas to deal with congestion and provide better transit, whether on Hwy 1 east, at the Ironworkers, at the Massey Tunnel or on Hwy 99 north, is unnecessarily polarizing.

[Alex Mackinnon]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

If you guys donèt agree with the Valley Line then fine, we will agree to disagree.

That however does not change the fact that you have bumper to bumper traffic on an increasingly dangerous HWY#1 and slow or even non-existent service to many post secondaries and the guge Gloucester Industrial area both of which represents thousands of students and workers to say nothing the general population itself.

Seeing the province has basically rolled back most of the HWY#1 expansion and there are absolutely no other highway projects online for at least a decade in the entire LM, what exactly are your alternatives. The SoF is growing MUCH faster than NoF and that will continue, buses canèt keep to schedules and are slow due to ever increasingly
congestion, and SkyTrain to Langley Centre will not help any of the stated areas.
Decisions are always best made when they are informed ones and I am trying to keep an open mind but with the province basically rejecting any significant highway spending, I simply don't see any alternative but the Valley Line to connect the people and places in SoF.

Generally improved bus service will help with the congestion. Failing that, bus lanes could help improve the bus service.

Transit riders numbering in the thousands are a bus sized problem.

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

^^^ Very well said.

Yes I agree that industrial areas should have been developed near transit routes but Translink/Metro can't have it both ways. By having very high real estate prices which the cities have done nothing to control, large commercial areas have had to go further afield in order to find {reasonably} affordable land on which to develope.

The cities / province have little control over real estate prices. They've got their foreign investor (CoV) and speculation (entire region) taxes and that's about it. The fees cities add to the developer are to pay for amenities (which in some cases the developer builds instead of paying in cash).

This is all outside the point of this thread though. You should really take TransLinks maps for the SoF and analyze them. What works, what doesn't, and what would you change to make it better. Limit yourself to buses and the planned Expo extension down Fraser Hwy and see what you can come up with.

Originally Posted by Alex Mackinnon

Generally improved bus service will help with the congestion. Failing that, bus lanes could help improve the bus service.

Transit riders numbering in the thousands are a bus sized problem.

I would love to see more bus lanes throughout the region. SoF having more space to work with would be an easier area to implement them. I know Surrey has long range plans to add them to their main arterial roads.

[ssiguy]

I certainly agree that more bus-only and general purpose HOV lanes would help immensely but there are absolutely no plans to do either one and if they spend $1.6 billion on a little SkyTrain extension to Fleetwood then the money will be gone for a very long time.

I could live with a SkyTrain extension to Langley but not one to Fleetwood as it would be useless with very little benefit and bleed transportation money from the entire SoF for at least another 20 years. A Fleetwood extension would be akin to building the Evergreen from Lougheed to Port Moody. Those precious transportation funds would be far better used building transitways along Hydro corriodrs, bus-only lanes, HOV and a fleet of express buses, HWY#1 widening, and interchanges along the key trucking routes.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Yes I agree that industrial areas should have been developed near transit routes but Translink/Metro can't have it both ways. By having very high real estate prices which the cities have done nothing to control, large commercial areas have had to go further afield in order to find {reasonably} affordable land on which to develope. The cities have also limited the areas to where commercial areas can develope but have done so by making sure they are as "out of sight, out of mind" as humanely possible. Commercial areas are allowed to develope only by the approval of their respective cities and not the other way around.

For the umpteenth time, TransLink controls neither control nor land value - that was the city planners of the Fiftiess through Seventies who thought bigger and bigger highways were the future. The whole continent is suffering for that misjudgement, not just the Fraser Valley.

And businesses have hardly been forced all the way to the Highway 13 interchange. The owners saw cheap land, never questioned why it was cheap or whether or not the highway would stay empty forever, and now they want the government to come and bail them out of their mistakes. There's plenty of industrial areas in the city proper that are thriving and/or making room for more.

Originally Posted by ssiguy

By not providing transit or highways, you are also blaming and punishing the actual workers and/or students. For students you are basically saying that this is what you get for not being well off and hence being able to afford to go to UBC and it's associated rents. The workers you are eseentially saying that this is what you get for being blue collar instead of getting you Masters so you can afford to live closer to the city and hence better transit.

UBC is hardly for "well-off" students. SFU Surrey, Douglas and Kwantlen, even less so. Each has a sizeable amount of students, and are on major transit corridors - them being bigger priorities than Trinity Western or Columbia Bible College or UFV isn't condescension or any kind of prejudice on TransLink's behalf, it's plain old common sense.

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Vancouver's highway mentality of "don't build it and they won't come" is childish in the extreme as well as clearly incompetent. The city wants more people but due to the cost of living those newcommers and former Vancouverites must live in the Valley and yet hundreds of thousands are left with little or no transit option and the nation's worst highway system to boot. It also shows what little concern Metro/BC has for the actual safety of it's citizens. First responders have been pleading with BC to do something about HWY#1 as accidents are up 40% since 2014 and response times down dramatically as they are increasingly having problems accessing the incidents. Transports are barrelling down side streets they are not suppose to be on in a desperate attempt to move their goods. No highway interchanges so start and stop traffic especially buy transports results in the belching of pollutants as well as going thru town centres and by schools and residential areas.

Cool. That description fits practically all of Metro Vancouver outside of the downtown core - just last month on the way home, I saw an eighteen wheeler trying to negotiate a side street with roundabouts.

Kindly get the hell out of your little bubble and realize that you're not the only people in the province stuck in traffic. One former city council's dislike of cars is hardly the norm; as far as roads go, TransLink, Vancouver and Victoria are already busy spending billions on the Pattulo replacement, widening the Trans-Canada in the Interior (much of which does not even have four lanes), and maintaining the roads they already have, and whatever the future George Massey replacement will be.

On top of that, they need to figure out transit for downtown, Broadway, Arbutus, 41st, Hastings, Gilmore/Willingdon, the North Shore, Surrey, Langley, Maple Ridge, and many, many more.

Expecting them to drop all of that and help the Valley first just because you're on the membership list (you're not, you're under BC Transit) and because you asked nicely (you aren't doing that either)? THAT is the definition of childish and incompetent.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

I certainly agree that more bus-only and general purpose HOV lanes would help immensely but there are absolutely no plans to do either one and if they spend $1.6 billion on a little SkyTrain extension to Fleetwood then the money will be gone for a very long time.

I could live with a SkyTrain extension to Langley but not one to Fleetwood as it would be useless with very little benefit and bleed transportation money from the entire SoF for at least another 20 years. A Fleetwood extension would be akin to building the Evergreen from Lougheed to Port Moody. Those precious transportation funds would be far better used building transitways along Hydro corriodrs, bus-only lanes, HOV and a fleet of express buses, HWY#1 widening, and interchanges along the key trucking routes.

Good news then - you'll get a SkyTrain to Langley by 2030-35, and that will help remove ten thousand drivers from the road, as well as cover much of SoF's future transit expansion. Unlike trams or most commuter trains, SkyTrain turns a profit.

In the meantime, many of SoF's bus routes will get more service (if not already) as per the Ten Year Plan. You want any more, you gotta put in some effort yourself; TransLink's busy putting out dozens of metaphorical fires all over the metro, and they only have enough resources for a few at a time, and the widening of a highway that's technically the province's jurisdiction (which itself has problems of their own) is really not a priority.

[nname]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

I certainly agree that more bus-only and general purpose HOV lanes would help immensely but there are absolutely no plans to do either one and if they spend $1.6 billion on a little SkyTrain extension to Fleetwood then the money will be gone for a very long time.

I could live with a SkyTrain extension to Langley but not one to Fleetwood as it would be useless with very little benefit and bleed transportation money from the entire SoF for at least another 20 years. A Fleetwood extension would be akin to building the Evergreen from Lougheed to Port Moody. Those precious transportation funds would be far better used building transitways along Hydro corriodrs, bus-only lanes, HOV and a fleet of express buses, HWY#1 widening, and interchanges along the key trucking routes.

Buses are actually very expensive to operate for the amount of people they carry. Running buses everywhere is certainly not an efficient way of running the transit system. Plus, remember the current funding setup, senior level government pays 80% of capital cost, but 0% of the operation cost.

So from the transit operator's perspective, how much bus service can you buy in place of a Fleetwood SkyTrain extension?

Fleetwood SkyTrain:
Capital = 20% of 1.65B = 330M, or about 20M per year of debt servicing for 35 years
Operation = 17M /year
Total = 37M /year

Half of 502/503 Operating cost: 6M /year
Net increase of cost = 31M /year

Compare this to B-Line operating cost:
99 B-Line: 16M /year
96 B-Line: 8M /year
95 B-Line: 12M /year

So the extra cost of SkyTrain can buy a few more B-Lines, and that's it? And I'm not even counting the cost of bus vehicle and infrastructure.

Note: Operating cost for bus route service cost from 2018 transit performance review +25% to account for out-of-service cost and inflation.

[nname]

And so Surrey-Langley Line was officially approved in today's council.

The business case for the full line will be developed by Jan 2020.
Initial phase will be limited to the 1.6B available funding (to Fleetwood).

As for the King George/Guildford line, the overall budget limit of 3.55B will still apply.

The approved motion (except item 2b)

1. Complete the Surrey Langley SkyTrain (SLS) project business case to be ready for submission to senior government by January 2020.
2. Concurrently, complete a refresh of the south of Fraser rapid transit strategy, that:
-- a. Considers combinations of alternatives within the $3.55 billion funding envelope and assesses the consequences of providing less than 27 kilometres of rapid transit.
-- b. Recommends preferred technologies for 104 Avenue and King George Boulevard, and assesses the consequences of exceeding the $3.55 billion funding envelope, including impacts on a likely timeline to deliver those projects.
3. Prepare an implementation strategy that allows the sequencing of rapid transit south of the Fraser consistent with available and anticipated funding.
4. Prepare the procurement documents for a SkyTrain on Fraser Highway to be ready to initiate the procurement process following an approval of the business base and supportive investment plan.
5. Limit funding available for the first phase of the SLS project to the $1.63B already securedthrough the Phase Two Plan of the 10-Year Vision;
6. Ask staff to negotiate an MOU with the Township of Langley and the City of Langley to be considered at the same time as the final business case;
7. Receive this report.

Seems like at this point, SkyTrain to Langley eventually will be almost guaranteed, unless the entire phase 3 of the 10-years plan collapsed?

[idunno]

One of the mayors asked about construction time differences between the options (KG-Fleetwood vs KG-Langley). Translink's answer was that there is a fixed amount of time for a) procurement and b) testing/commissioning, which takes about 2.5 years. The actual construction of the line would take 2.5 years regardless of the length of the extension, due to the ability to scale up the number of contractors. I think it has something to do with the fact that it's all elevated and much more predictable.

So potentially, if we were to receive phase 3 funding in the next couple of years, we could still end up with a KG-Langley Skytrain by 2025.

[SFUVancouver]

This is good news. I am actually okay with the phased funding approach in order to get shovels in the ground ASAP. I hope, as idunno posited, that the project can be structured in such a way that if Phase 3 Mayors Council funding comes together, the additional segment can be added to the contract without being treated as a separate tender.

Furthermore, this phased approach will be a good test case for the City of Surrey to begin planning for the station areas and plan a significant node in Fleetwood at 152 and Fraser Highway. The land is certainly there: https://goo.gl/maps/hA8Dg1oVu8V5mNHG9

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

This is good news. I am actually okay with the phased funding approach in order to get shovels in the ground ASAP. I hope, as idunno posited, that the project can be structured in such a way that if Phase 3 Mayors Council funding comes together, the additional segment can be added to the contract without being treated as a separate tender.

Furthermore, this phased approach will be a good test case for the City of Surrey to begin planning for the station areas and plan a significant node in Fleetwood at 152 and Fraser Highway. The land is certainly there: https://goo.gl/maps/hA8Dg1oVu8V5mNHG9

Is the UBC extension officially part of Phase 3 as well? It would be nice to see these projects keep rolling, rather than the complete re-invention of the wheel we seem to get every time there is a new line or expansion considered.

[SFUVancouver]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Is the UBC extension officially part of Phase 3 as well? It would be nice to see these projects keep rolling, rather than the complete re-invention of the wheel we seem to get every time there is a new line or expansion considered.

Re: UBC Line Phase 2 (Arbutus to UBC) in the Phase 3 Mayors Council 10 Year Plan funding, yes, that's my understanding. The Mayors have approved the UBC Phase 2 extension, subject to securing funding. I expect that the Langley Line Phase 2 would be treated in a similar fashion (approved in principle, subject to funding).

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

I certainly agree that more bus-only and general purpose HOV lanes would help immensely but there are absolutely no plans to do either one and if they spend $1.6 billion on a little SkyTrain extension to Fleetwood then the money will be gone for a very long time.

I could live with a SkyTrain extension to Langley but not one to Fleetwood as it would be useless with very little benefit and bleed transportation money from the entire SoF for at least another 20 years. A Fleetwood extension would be akin to building the Evergreen from Lougheed to Port Moody. Those precious transportation funds would be far better used building transitways along Hydro corriodrs, bus-only lanes, HOV and a fleet of express buses, HWY#1 widening, and interchanges along the key trucking routes.

As I mentioned earlier Surrey has long range plans to add bus and / or HOV lanes to their arterial roads so quit saying that there are "absolutely no plans" to do so.

Also a Skytrain extension does not equal no transportation money for anything else. The Skytrain money comes from one fund of many - there are also funds for buses. A few tidbits from the 10-Year Vision Phase 2 Investment Plan (pdf):

South of Fraser - Planned bus improvements

• B-Line - 319
• FTN - 323, 601
• Extend hours of service - 96B, 322, 324, 341, 342, 363, 364, 388, 531, 560 / 561, 595, 606, 608, N19

[nname]

Originally Posted by Sheba

South of Fraser - Planned bus improvements

• B-Line - 319
• FTN - 323, 601
• Extend hours of service - 96B, 322, 324, 341, 342, 363, 364, 388, 531, 560 / 561, 595, 606, 608, N19

• Improved frequency - 301, 312, 316, 325, 341, 342, 351, 364, 375, 501, 555
• New routes - 338, 368
• Restructure of Langley shuttle with new service area
• Restructure of Fraser Highway 502, 503 service with expanded hour and improved frequency

Pretty much the vast majority of SoF will have at least 1 improved bus route nearby.