![]() |
i think that any NEW transit infrastructure is a good thing. Though, i do agree with the article in that we do need to get replace some trolley routes with these trams and that can help reduce the number of cars on our roads.
|
Quote:
That and roads are controversial in the Lower Mainland which is why we're about 30 years behind every other city in North America so sometimes people at the top have to just say "Well tough shit it's going forward." Campbell is also of the philosophy that you have to spend money to make money, a major philosophy in successful private business which is why those businesses make money compared to government which typically loses it. Gateway is just that, and investment in the overall infrastructure to make money through greater goods movement. Another thing that is missed is that traffic = more pollution overall typically so reducing traffic even if not reducing the car count is still actually reducing pollution output in the region which can buy time as transit is increased as you get better gas mileage moving rather than being stationary. As people can see with just the expo expansion, they want to add ~8km to the skytrain line. It is slated to take 10 years to do. You can make a heck of a lot more roads than 8km in 10 years so transit, while the most ideal for reducing pollution, is REALLY slow to be built so reducing traffic is a good alternative while the transit expansions are being built. Unfortunately, as with everything, even citizens look at just the dollar number and go "Oh well it can be better spent here aka health care, education, etc." and forget that sometimes you have to spend money on the trenches and that on things like health care even if we spent 100% of the budget on it, people would still not think it was enough. |
Quote:
|
Quote:
That being said, its pretty frustrating seeing the government's transit plan stretch into 2030. What relevance does that have to somebody sitting in traffic on the Port Mann? The Evergreen, M-Line and E-Line extensions need to be running in 2015, which is the earliest reasonable date. Lets hope for cheap construction costs post-2010, and the government can dig in and spend some cassssssh to help the economy in the form of big transit projects. |
Not sure why anyone thinks labour will be any cheaper post 2010. As it stands right now there will be more major projects post 2010 then pre. We should have less towers going up but not by a large amount, but we will have alot of large projects taking up the slack, pending a large recession.
|
Not only that but materials prices are set to continue their astronomical climb. Steel supply prices are set for two seperate price increases in the next 12 months alone.
|
What irritates me about this article is that is an exercise in second-guessing. Enough already! Sheesh.
Skytrain for backbone high-density commuter routes Trams/LRT for less dense routes and for people making "local" trips to get cars of the road Buses to fill gaps in coverage and add additional capacity. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn't benefit anyone. Would anyone here actually want to take a streetcar or tram to the airport to catch a flight? |
Quote:
I actually -- naively -- tried to take a trolley bus to YVR once upon a time. Needless to say, it ended with a no-show connection, a panicked phone call from a hotel pub, and a "go faster" cab ride to the domestic terminal. What was I thinking? I can't imagine this hypothetical "streetcar to YVR" being much better. |
^ 25-mins from YVR to Waterfront is quicker than the car and especially the 98 B-Line during most of the day....and it's certainly quicker than even some express metros in other cities, from the airport to their city centre.
|
This Tram propaganda has been going on for years. Every year or so a local newspaper publishes an article about it probably spurred by a local tram lover (or biased transportation consultant who had his hands in Portland tram system). And every time argument is the same - Portland, Portland, and Portland. Or possibly some medieval city in Europe with a tram. If you are tram lover just go to Stephen Reese's blog (the self proclaimed unemployed transportation expert) and you will be served the same tram stories on a daily basis.
The fact remains that Sky Train or Subway system paired with rapid bus and local buses is sufficient. You do not need a tram system to supplement anything as it is redundant and overpriced version of the rapid bus (if it is built on the street level). Our strategy of using rapid bus lines that over time get replaced by ART looks like a wise decision to me. |
Finally got a chance to read the report.
- Portland's streetcar is basically a trolley bus on rails; it runs in mixed traffic and stops every couple of blocks. The report suggests you could speed it up by adding a bunch of improvements, but those would be expensive, and suddenly the amount of tram you can buy for $2.8 billion is a lot smaller. But a smaller number isnt quite as dramatic, is it? - The $2.8 billion figure is (apparently) supposed to be a final-cost figure (i.e. construction costs in 2020 dollars). I have no idea what year they got their Portland costs from (they dont make it clear), but I doubt they assumed another 12 years of construction inflation. Hence, the amount of tram you could built would likely be lower. - The report automaticaly assumes the tram caused the massive redevelopment of downtown Portland; it it not safe to assume this would not have happened without it. If vancouver built a streetcar along Pacific Blvd in the early 90's, people would claim the streetcar caused Concord Pacific/North False Creek. And yet we know that's false, because all that development happened even without the streetcar. I'm not saying the tram didnt help, I am simply saying the report does not sufficiently analyse the three different possibilities (causation, correlation and co-incidence). Also, there is absolutely no analysis of redevelopment due to SkyTrain, which has shown itself to have, at the very least, a strong correlation to real-estate development. In fact, it would do even better if it wasn't prevented via zoning restrictions (*cough* Broadway, Namaimo, 29th Ave *cough*). - The study's spending breakdowns for all those European bunch of cities are flawed, since it doesnt examine in which context these different technologies are chosen (i.e. why is there mixed spending and how is technology assigned to different routes). If anything the mixed spending speaks to the sensibility of using the correct technology where appropriate, something I'm sure most of us advocate. Ironically, Paris's Metro system, due to its close station spacing, is too slow to be useful over city wide distances, so they built the RER to cover these long distances. Likewise, use SkyTrain for regional stuff, and trams for localer (i know thats not a word!) stuff. Of course, you have to shrink everything from the Paris context to the Vancouver context, since we're much smaller, but the principle stands. Using Strasbourg as an example is stupid, due to the geographical proximity afforded by being a city of only 250,000, everything is closeby, even if its on the other side of town. A tram system (by itself) would not work in a much larger city, like Vancouver. - As some others mentioned, building rails along Broadway is more expensive that normal, due to the massive amount of utilities along Broadway. - They completely ignore all issues surrounding capacity on Broadway. The 1999 report by the CoV predicted, iirc, 120,000 to 150,000 riders/day. It should be noted: a) report assumed a transfer to Rapidbus at Arbutus b) numbers were pre-Upass c) natural population growth has occured since the report d) people are flocking to transit in droves, for both financial and environmental reason e) a more built out system by the time the line reaches UBC (canada line, evergreen line already done) makes transit that much more attractive. - Worst of all is the assumption that speed isnt important, and its station spacing which matters. There's a reason why the 99 B-line is chock-a-block, but the 9, WHICH FOLLOWS THE EXACT SAME ROUTE, doesnt have massive lineups. People want to get where they are going, and they want to get there FAST. Getting to the 99 is a much longer walk for me than the 9, but I still take it. Why...oh right, i save a hell of a lot of time, despite the longer walk. Portlands streetcar averages 16km/h. At 12km to UBC, this would be a 45minute ride, compared to the 40 minute B-Line. - The map may make a sexy case for trams, but it doesnt in any manner differentiate between the quality of the two systems in the map. - The notion that the SkyTrain will only serve Westsiders (cant remember if this was in the study or in the article) is silly. The extention is GEOGRAPHICALLY LOCATED in the Westside (which appently extends as far as Clark Dr. now, but whatever...), but it is really where the ridership is coming from that matters. People all over the lower mainland go to the Broadway corridor and UBC, and hence they will all benefit. The report suggests that it would be nice to be able to use the system to get around you own neighborhood (isnt that what buses are for?), but it ingnores the fundamental fact that lots of people need to commute cross-regionally. Last time i checked, not every neighborhood has a University. Actually, come to think of it, the study seems to have a strange notion that more kms of track is automatically better, when in fact it is the ability to attract (current and future) riders that matters. --------------------- All that being said, I dont want to make it sound like I think tram/streetcar/LRT suck. They dont, infact im strongly in favour of building a bunch of them, but buildign them where they are appropriate. Broadway is not such a place. |
Quote:
|
Quote:
Just to compare, the Hong Kong MTR's Airport Express Line is 35-kms long....with just 5-stations, it can get passengers from the airport to Central Station Hong Kong in just 24-minutes (Canada Line, 25 mins). The HK Airport Express has a frequency of 12-minutes, compared to the Canada Line's 7-minutes. Interesting to mention that the Airport Express uses Bombardier's cars and are capable of reaching a maximum speed of 135 km/h. |
Quote:
|
I'm just shocked -- utterly shocked -- that Patrick Condon and his sustainability group would put forth information that can only have the effect of halting the move to get Skytrain to UBC.
A tram running to UBC is a fantasy (a sad and sick fantasy, by the way), but what can happen is that his propoganda will be used by anti-transit, anti-tax, pro-car groups to convince the Liberal government to kill off this crucially important transportation project. And what's sustainable about that?? |
Quote:
|
Let's hope so. But tonight, there were stories on both Global and CTV about the "tram over Skytrain to UBC" opinion.
I realize that this is mostly noise coming from the Condon-Stephen Rees-Malcolm Johnston coalition (the Anti-Skytrain society). But it threatens to undermine the really important thing at stake: The need to build this line out to UBC as soon as possible. |
Quote:
|
^ count on the media to do something right for a change? i think not.
as for Malcolm and Stephen, where is the guillotine when you need one? Reading through Ree's site and Malcolm's posts, their ideas are really mind boggling. Malcolm keeps mentioning about SkyTrain suicides being high in number, when that issue is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand and is definitely not preventable....not to mention that people will find a way to commit suicide whether or not it is SkyTrain. This one made me scream "WTF?": Quote:
With stops every 500-600 metres, forget transit....I'm driving. And does he really think a slower and constantly stopping service/more stations will attract more ridership? And I highly doubt the difference in travel time with an at-grade tram with stops every 500-600 metres and a fully-grade seperated SkyTrain with stops every 1 km would be "marginally" different. His definition of marginal probably means 50-100%, and that's certainly not marginal. However, it certainly would be marginal improvement from the existing 99 B-Line......but that's not what we're going after. What the majority of people want is a quick service that gets them to interchanges and important areas. Speed is a huge factor in attaining ridership, alongside with the location of stations and how many stations.....it's all a balancing act. Frequency is also quite important, (i.e. a train every 15-minutes for many LRT systems in the states is laughable - no wonder why these systems are failing to attract ridership.) What happened to logic???? Who threw theirs out the window???? And these people are suppose to be professionals???????????? Where is Gordon Price? I'm all for a streetcar network, as I've said before....just not for being the backbone of our metro. |
Quote:
|
All times are GMT. The time now is 11:17 PM. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.