Millennium Line - Broadway Extension: Planning & Pre-Construction

[Metro-One]

Post that on his site, please.

[jlousa]

Guys be very careful going to his site, it is bodering on trolling and I have a bad feeling that it will eventually result in him coming over here. I don't want that as we've just spent so much effort cleaning up the board to where it is now.

[CLC]

Posting all your opinion on Straight.com may be a better strategy now. The comments there needs pre-approval before appearance, so at least the Straight (website) editor would know how many people are support skytrain over light rail.
http://www.straight.com/article-280315/v...ser-perimeter-road-and-broadway-skytrain

[Metro-One]

OK, you are right. I left one final comment, I had to let some of my frustration out directly eventually. Now i feel better

The final comment was about this: Edmonton currently lists their next 7.8km LRT extension at 630 million.

Since that is a Canadian city where he cannot claim that price is calculated differently, yada yada yada.

[Metro-One]

hehe, i noticed he deleted my post about the Edmonton LRT.

Man the guy is manipulative!

[CLC]

^ You can play with Evil Eye in Straight.com. If your post does not get approved, then something is very wrong.

[Metro-One]

Maybe tomorrow, I am exhausted now (and i am suppose to be working!)

[Spork]

You guys need to stay on message. All he keeps spouting is that skytrain is more expensive per km than light rail. Come up with some sort of counter message. Since the core of the issue is money, are there any statistics on operating costs of skytrain (metro) versus light rail? Since the trains need to be short for the tiny blocks on Broadway, I'd bet that the operating costs could be inflated even further.This could be either gross or net - at this point it doesn't matter. Heck, build in the construction of a new OMC if you need to.

The problem is that you are playing a game of facts, and he is playing a game of manipulation and falsities. At this point, you know that your facts are true, why not inflate them? If somebody comes back at you, say "okay, so it isn't as high/low as I said, but skytrain is still shown to be advantageous". You need to make the contrasts to be even more evident.

[CLC]

Originally Posted by Spork

The problem is that you are playing a game of facts, and he is playing a game of manipulation and falsities. At this point, you know that your facts are true, why not inflate them? If somebody comes back at you, say "okay, so it isn't as high/low as I said, but skytrain is still shown to be advantageous". You need to make the contrasts to be even more evident.

Zwei/ the Eye is too skillful of doing it. This does need some years of experience to reach his level.

Found a new facebook group from Straight.com link. Guess who makes the group?
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=info&gid=169753053447

[BCPhil]

The problem is he sees something like this running on Broadway, but there is simply no room to run a train at this speed safely on a road like Broadway.

• Video Link

I mean, it is cool, but look at where it is. It is nothing like Broadway at all.

• Video Link

The brand new tram in Nice travels through parts of nice that are a bit closer to Broadway (but without the vehicule traffic). But according to the Wiki, the average speed of the tram system is 18km/h.

The things with these two systems, and like the others I've seen is that they take up a lot of road space. Something like this might work on a Boundary road, or even E Broadway where it becomes Lougheed (where the M Line is).

I just don't believe, and have never seen any evidence, that there is room to run a segregated tram ROW on Broadway, especially through the busier sections. Without a fully segregated ROW in the median of the street, there is no way a tram can operate any faster than a bus.

• Video Link

Bellow is Dublin. Their tram in downtown runs on the streets, sometimes mixed with traffic, with not much room. It doesn't strike me as "as fast as Skytrain".

• Video Link

And here is Montpellier:
• Video Link

More Paris:
• Video Link

I just don't see where the "speed" comes from. I don't see where there is a tramway on a street that is as fast as Skytrain, especially if it stops at least twice as much.

[racc]

A good overview of SkyTrain:
http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/public_consult/tmp/lrt/vancouver_en.pdf

[Overground]

Perhaps I posted this before. I think a good example to compare Broadway to somewhere else is Long Beach. LA's Blue Line - LRT, which runs through Long Beach on Long Beach Blvd, has seen plenty of accidents. In fact, there was even one yesterday on it. The 3 mile boulevard is much wider than Broadway and runs straight north/south. In Long Beach it runs through the urban centre to the downtown/convention centre/waterfront. It also goes by a major hospital precinct. Blue Line saw 74k avg weekday boardings in Nov 09 - http://www.metro.net/news_info/ridership_avg.htm



Total incidents/accidents on the Metro Blue Line since July 1990 ----- 821

Transit vs. Vehicle incidents ----- 652

Train vs. Ped. Incidents ----------- 169


Total Metro Blue Line Fatalities since July 1990------- 90 (Note, 20 of these fatalities have been deemed suicides)

Train vs. vehicle fatalities ----- 26

Train vs. Ped. Fatalities ------- 64

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/bottleneck/2008/09/blue-lines-safe.html



http://www.usatoday.com/news/2003-01-07-rail-fatalities.htm

[twoNeurons]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

In my academic work and my job I am a perfectionist, hehe. Also, it is just because he is so keen on manipulating anything to his own bidding. Honestly, the man must be a politician, haha

No offense Metro-One... but people often hide behind the veil of perfectionism. It can show either a lack of humility ( willingness to admit one was wrong ) or a lack of courage.

If you're passionate about proving him wrong, getting publishing in a newspaper faces far less scrutiny from the general public than on a message board, where there can be direct rebuttals. In any case, it's all preaching to the choir, here.

Once something is written in a paper, people read it and make the decision on their own.

On a message board, people search for both opinions and try to figure out the facts. In short, even a slightly wrong printed opinion has more force and power than a perfect forum post.

[Metro-One]

No offense taken. I am getting closer to writing up a good article, I have been saving many key points/facts throughout the past months in a folder, but I do not know what media outlet is a good one to contact.

[jlousa]

Why limit it to one, create one letter and submit it to every newspaper especially the small local papers, as there is less people writing into them and they actually have a wider audience as they are free and ever household gets one.

[Metro-One]

Good point, I never knew that the local papers had a wider audience. But now that I think about it, it does make sense, for they are free and delivered to every house, unlike the Sun or Province.

I should have something ready by mid next week. Any guesses to length? (How many words would it be wise to keep it limited to?)

[BCPhil]

Attention aux Trams!

It would appear that accidents are not a North American phenomenon.

• Video Link

The video explains that in Nantes, France, that there have been 180 accidents involving LRT and vehicles in 2007 alone. That's an accident every 2 days on a system 41km long! Every 2 days there is a service disruption.

Of particular note is that Nantes is where the modern Tram started in 1985, so they have had quite a while to get used to it, and it's a rather small city (800K pop.).

[NetMapel]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Good point, I never knew that the local papers had a wider audience. But now that I think about it, it does make sense, for they are free and delivered to every house, unlike the Sun or Province.

I should have something ready by mid next week. Any guesses to length? (How many words would it be wise to keep it limited to?)

Metro News and 24 Hours are guaranteed tens of thousands of readers per day because it's free and available at every major areas in this metro.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by racc

A good overview of SkyTrain:
http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/public_consult/tmp/lrt/vancouver_en.pdf

That's a rather interesting presentation.

Operations & Maintenance budget = $82.7M (60% labour, 11% power, remainder inventory and overhead)
•
73.5 M passengers = $1.12 / cost per passenger
•
35.4 M revenue car-kms = $2.34 / cost per rev car-km
•
Average vehicle kms per car per year = 177,000 kms
•
92% of fleet is operated for daily peak service
•
~100% O&M cost recovery based on allocated fare revenue

Even if you're like zweisystem and disagree with Translinks fare revenue allocation, $1.12 cost per passenger is an amazing achievement. $82.7M for an operating budget is really low, I don't see how LRT could be any cheaper on the route.

If Skytrain were regular LRT and could actually operate at that budget, it would have a much higher cost per passenger, as fewer people would bother riding a slower system.

Phoenix is spending about $37 million a year on operating its LRT. Yes, amount wise that is a lot less than in Vancouver. But they will carry around 12 million people a year at their current pace. That's a cost of $3 per passenger.

In Denver, a metro area with a population of almost 3 million, they have an LRT system of almost equal length to all of Skytrain. Their estimated budget for 2009 is $30 million for O&M of the LRT system with 17 million annual boardings. That's a cost of $1.75 per passenger. That's better, but LRT still only attracts an average of 55K weekday boardings.

Sure, every system is different, but this just proves that LRT isn't a magic bullet that can be applied to any situation with amazing results.

Skytrain might have a much higher capital costs, but that pays off in the long term with orders of magnitude lower operating cost per passenger. As well, Skytrain has successfully attracted many times more people to Transit than LRT has in MOST other markets.

[MalcolmTucker]

^ Denver's LRT like many systems in the USA has 15 minute headways, so comparing the system just by mode is pretty much useless.