Millennium Line - Broadway Extension: Planning & Pre-Construction

[twoNeurons]

Originally Posted by nname

It is impossible to have direct service between any of these places. In fact, for the 8 places listed above, TransLink will need to run 120 bus routes in order to have a direct connection between each of these destinations - and this does not include the case where your friends home or work place is at a distance away from the town centre.

I'm sure you're using hyperbole, but just for the math of it:

You would need 28 routes to connect 8 locations with every other location directly: (n-1)(n/2).
(Or 7+6+5+4+3+2+1)

The actual number of endpoints would probably reduce this number to about 20, as a route that connect endpoints such as Langley and Surrey Central much go through Cloverdale and Fleetwood. And obviously White Rock and Surrey Central would go through Newton. That's still quite a few routes. I'm sure Surrey could do with a few more direct routes, but I'm not qualified to know exactly what those are. When I lived in surrey, bus service to places like Fleetwood stopped around 6PM.

[nname]

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

I'm sure you're using hyperbole, but just for the math of it:

You would need 28 routes to connect 8 locations with every other location directly: (n-1)(n/2).
(Or 7+6+5+4+3+2+1)

The actual number of endpoints would probably reduce this number to about 20, as a route that connect endpoints such as Langley and Surrey Central much go through Cloverdale and Fleetwood. And obviously White Rock and Surrey Central would go through Newton. That's still quite a few routes. I'm sure Surrey could do with a few more direct routes, but I'm not qualified to know exactly what those are. When I lived in surrey, bus service to places like Fleetwood stopped around 6PM.

That's what you get for being too lazy

I typed 8C2 in a calculator and it somehow gave me that weird number... And yeah.. 8C2 = 8!/(2!6!) = 28...

And the service had since improved I guess.. now almost all route going through residential area run at least till 9 PM on weekdays.


And now, lets see what connection is missing...

SC = Surrey Central; GU = Guildford; NT = Newton; SH = Strawberry Hill (Scottsdale); FL = Fleetwood; WR = White Rock; CL = Cloverdale; LA = Langley; WG = Walnut Grove

GU	320
NT	321	341
SH	316	 x	319
FL	335	320	 x	 x
WR	321	375	321	 x	375
CL	320	320	341	364	341	 x
LA	320	320	341	364	320	531	341
WG	501	501	 x	 x	388	 x	 x	501
	 SC	 GU	 NT	 SH	 FL	 WR	 CL	 LA

So if you ignore Walnut Grove, TransLink actually have 23 of the 28 links. I wouldn't called it bad for travelling internally within Surrey, unless those town centres are still not the places where people want to go...

[tybuilding]

Originally Posted by nname

That's the problem. There are one main destination SoF (Surrey Central) and then there are many smaller ones (Scottsdale, Newton, Guidford, Fleetwood, Cloverdale, Langley, White Rock, ....) It is impossible to have direct service between any of these places. In fact, for the 8 places listed above, TransLink will need to run 120 bus routes in order to have a direct connection between each of these destinations - and this does not include the case where your friends home or work place is at a distance away from the town centre.

There ARE many options from Fleetwood to Scottsdale with only 1 transfer - unless again he live/work far away from the town centre (ie. 160th St), or he refuse to take a bus that does not involve transfer at a SkyTrain station. Just to list a few:
* 388 -> 319, transfer at Scott and 88th [35min]
* 341 -> 319/301, transfer at Newton [35min]
* 345/375 -> 364, transfer at 152nd and 64th [40min]
* And then the usual transfer at Surrey Central (to the 316/312, which goes directly to Scottsdale Exchange) [50min]

So I don't know what is he expecting.. a route that provide him door to door service? Even then, driving will still be faster. Unless its a rapid transit or commuter rail service, transit will always be slower than driving.

This is why I bike and use transit at the same time. Cycling and using the bike racks on the buses makes a lot of sense in Surrey, though not many take advantage of this.

[jsbertram]

What seems to be missing in these discussions is that the Broadway-UBC line won't be a stand-alone line (like the Canada Line is), but rather an extension of existing Millennium Line starting with VCC in the east running to UBC in the west.

With Evergreen also effectively being an extension of Millennium Line from Lougheed Mall east to Coquitlam, many of the studies I've seen anticipate the future Millennium Line will become a separate Skytrain line from Coquitlam to UBC, with the Expo line continuing to run from Waterfront to King George. No mixing of Expo / Millennium trains between Waterfront and Columbia. There would need to be some type of shuttle train between Lougheed and Columbia to handle those 5 stations.

Broadway-Commercial station would be the preferred location for a transfer between Millennium Line and Expo Line; Waterfront becomes the preferred transfer point between Canada Line and Expo Line; City Hall becomes the preferred transfer point between Canada Line and Millennium Line.

With the full-length Millennium Line in place from UBC to Coquitlam there should be a spike in traffic on all the Skytrain lines, since the Broadway-UBC section is providing the capacity of a freeway (that was never built) across Vancouver to Burnaby.

There also seems to be a fixation on UBC as the destination station for most people. When the Broadway-UBC section is in place, you will also see a spike in traffic between stations like Coquitlam and VGH; Arbutus and SFU; City Hall and Lougheed; UBC and City Hall; Point Grey and Brentwood Mall; plus all the other starting/ending stations on the Expo Line and Canada Line that are accessible with just one transfer from the full-length Millennium Line.

[xd_1771]

Originally Posted by tybuilding

This is why I bike and use transit at the same time. Cycling and using the bike racks on the buses makes a lot of sense in Surrey, though not many take advantage of this.

Oh, hey. If you also have a smartphone and the LiveTransLink Vancouver app (Android) it's really a great one for perfecting your timing to catch those infrequent routes

jsbertram: If you've read the final business case, officially the Expo and Millennium will operate as-is but the Millennium Line will be truncated at Lougheed Ctr (coming from Braid). The new Evergreen Line as well as the existing Millennium west of Lougheed will collectively be one service and one branding (Evergreen Line).

[Alon]

Originally Posted by queetz@home

The bottom line is this...all this "redevelop this, add more residents to that, UBC is growing", everyone seems to forget that in order for you to live in that area, you need to be super duper rich. People are moving in Metro Vancouver, this is a given fact thanks to Canada's 300,000 a year quota on new immigrants.

Not all of these immigrants are super duper rich, and most will settle in the big metro areas, including Metro Vancouver. And majority of them will go to Surrey and the Northeast Sector , because it is the most affordable place in the region by far.

You cannot expect all of them to buy million dollar homes in the UBC area, its just not happening. Not every Chinese person is Li Kashing, and not every new migrant is super duper rich. But they will still come to the Greater Vancouver area because they simply like it here.

This argument is wrong, because the reason UBC is expensive to begin with is that there's tons of people who want to live there and not enough housing for them. It's not as if there are two separate housing markets, one for the rich and one for the poor. Instead, housing filters - if there is too much demand and not enough supply, housing filters up, i.e. rents rise and the poor are priced out; if there is a construction boom, then eventually rents come down.

Put another way, those houses in the UBC area cost a million dollars because there are enough people who will pay a million dollars for them to fill the Endowment Lands and Point Grey. If there's more construction, then either there will be more rich people, perhaps moving in from farther away, paying a million dollars for them, or instead prices will come down until there are enough people to fill everything.

The only way it's not going to work is if prices go down below construction costs. And this is not going to happen, because Vancouver's West Side is not Detroit.

[Dave2]

Originally Posted by xd_1771

jsbertram: If you've read the final business case, officially the Expo and Millennium will operate as-is but the Millennium Line will be truncated at Lougheed Ctr (coming from Braid). The new Evergreen Line as well as the existing Millennium west of Lougheed will collectively be one service and one branding (Evergreen Line).

I'd rather they drop the "Evergreen" name, and use "Millennium Line" for Douglas to VCC Clark. Trains from Waterfront would either be "Expo Line to King George" or "Expo Line to Lougheed Town Centre". Many systems have lines that fork into branches serving more than one terminus... No more confusing than running two "lines" on the same track (Overheard at Stadium. Is this our train... No, we're going to Metrotown,that's the Expo line)

This branding is exactly the same as the official plan, with the benefit of a lot fewer stations requiring rebranding. That's assuming that the "Evergreen" line will be coloured green, and not yet another shade of blue. http://www.fairylandscape.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Blue-Spruce-Trees-011.jpg

[Meraki]

Originally Posted by Dave2

I'd rather they drop the "Evergreen" name, and use "Millennium Line" for Douglas to VCC Clark. Trains from Waterfront would either be "Expo Line to King George" or "Expo Line to Lougheed Town Centre". Many systems have lines that fork into branches serving more than one terminus... No more confusing than running two "lines" on the same track (Overheard at Stadium. Is this our train... No, we're going to Metrotown,that's the Expo line)

This branding is exactly the same as the official plan, with the benefit of a lot fewer stations requiring rebranding. That's assuming that the "Evergreen" line will be coloured green, and not yet another shade of blue. http://www.fairylandscape.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Blue-Spruce-Trees-011.jpg

Yeah, considering all the Millennium Line stations I'd rather they just mark the new stations yellow as well and as you said have Millennium line from Douglas to VCC-Clark and Expo Line to Lougheed/King George alternating. Saves them redoing the existing stations.

[queetz@home]

Originally Posted by Alon

This argument is wrong, because the reason UBC is expensive to begin with is that there's tons of people who want to live there and not enough housing for them. It's not as if there are two separate housing markets, one for the rich and one for the poor. Instead, housing filters - if there is too much demand and not enough supply, housing filters up, i.e. rents rise and the poor are priced out; if there is a construction boom, then eventually rents come down.

Put another way, those houses in the UBC area cost a million dollars because there are enough people who will pay a million dollars for them to fill the Endowment Lands and Point Grey. If there's more construction, then either there will be more rich people, perhaps moving in from farther away, paying a million dollars for them, or instead prices will come down until there are enough people to fill everything.

The only way it's not going to work is if prices go down below construction costs. And this is not going to happen, because Vancouver's West Side is not Detroit.

Your argument is so flawed I want whatever your smoking man!

So essentially somehow built enough so that the supply would exceed demand so much that the prices would drop so people who can only afford Surrey prices today, can now move to the UBC area, therefore justifying the Broadway Line jumping the queue?

I WOULD LOVE TO SEE THOUSAND FOOT TALL SKYSCRAPERS HOUSING ALL THOSE MIGRANTS IN THE UBC AREA...THE QUESTION IS WILL THE CREME DE LA CREME ALLOW IT????

[Canadian Mind]

Originally Posted by queetz@home

Your argument is so flawed I want whatever your smoking man! By your logic, we should halt development in Surrey and literally built every single new housing unit in the UBC area by any means necessay?

So essentially somehow built enough so that the supply would exceed demand so much that the prices would drop so people who can only afford Surrey prices today, can now move to the UBC area, therefore justifying the Broadway Line jumping the queue?

I WOULD LOVE TO SEE THOUSAND FOOT TALL SKYSCRAPERS HOUSING ALL THOSE MIGRANTS IN THE UBC AREA...THE QUESTION IS WILL THE CREME DE LA CREME ALLOW IT????

His logic is sound. You just took it to some fornicated extreme.

[queetz@home]

Originally Posted by Canadian Mind

His logic is sound. You just took it to some fornicated extreme.

How so? I'm sure if it were up to *us*, we'd all be living in the most desirable places. But there is reality. The reality is there is a reason why Surrey is the fastest growing area, and it most certainly have nothing to do with it being as desirable as the Westside.

That is reality, not some academic argument of what ifs, the reason for this and that, and so on. And the reality is this....Surrey is the fastest growing area in Metro Vancouver, and its not going to stop as long as immigration is at the levels we are in right now, land to develop all sorts of housing from single family homes to high rise condos is plentiful and there is a constant gap between the rich and the poor.

So instead of saying Broadway should go first on the basis that "most people want to live there", it should be built where most people will actually live.

Lets be blunt, everyone here that wants Broadway Line to be built prior to the Surrey rapid transit only does so because

1) They think the transit map is pretty
2) They stand to benefit from it directly (either as a user, a property owner or someone that works in the area)
3) The usual city vs suburb bias
4) The usual Surrey stigma, with the jokes and all

And they will use whatever selected data, news article, opinion piece, and so on to justify it.

There is a reason why city planners and municipal leaders (with the exception of the NPA) all agree that Surrey rapid transit must come first in this case, And its certainly none of the above four....

[SpongeG]

Originally Posted by Dave2

I'd rather they drop the "Evergreen" name, and use "Millennium Line" for Douglas to VCC Clark. Trains from Waterfront would either be "Expo Line to King George" or "Expo Line to Lougheed Town Centre". Many systems have lines that fork into branches serving more than one terminus... No more confusing than running two "lines" on the same track (Overheard at Stadium. Is this our train... No, we're going to Metrotown,that's the Expo line)

This branding is exactly the same as the official plan, with the benefit of a lot fewer stations requiring rebranding. That's assuming that the "Evergreen" line will be coloured green, and not yet another shade of blue. http://www.fairylandscape.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Blue-Spruce-Trees-011.jpg

i don't think we need to dumb down the system for stupid people, society needs to stop catering to them, if they are stupid enough to not know how to get to metrotown than they deserve to stand there waiting

[squeezied]

Originally Posted by queetz@home

So instead of saying Broadway should go first on the basis that "most people want to live there", it should be built where most people will actually live.

You think that's why we think Broadway should have rapid transit first? I can assure you that's the least of our reasons.

Let's get some things straight. We know Surrey is a growing city; you can stop repeating that in every post. We believe Surrey should get transit improvements accordingly. But there's no reason to splurge on rapid transit that would only serve a very narrow corridor when the rest of Surrey still has terrible transit. Surrey needs an improved bus system before it should even think about getting rapid transit. The beauty of rapid transit is that it works with the local bus feeder routes; the benefit is not just the narrow corridor in which the rapid transit is located but it extends out beyond that corridor because of the local feeder routes. Surrey cannot benefit to it's full extent from rapid transit if it doesn't have an adequate local bus system. In summary, you'd be splurging in a small corridor when the rest of Surrey's vast area (mind you, rapidly growing) still has shitty transit.

Rapid transit should shape growth, I understand that. That's why you advocate for rapid transit in Surrey. What you ignore is that rapid transit should also serve demand. It's a balancing act; do you shape growth or serve demand? When demand is so severe along Broadway such that the corridor is already the busiest bus corridor in North America and that ridership spills out to parallel routes, it's clear the scale had tipped in favor of serving demand.

But let's not forget WHO actually benefits from rapid transit along Broadway. Approximately half of those who commute along Broadway are actually from Vancouver, the other half, well from the rest of the region (including rapidly growing Surrey). So people need to remember that rapid transit along Broadway doesn't only serve Vancouver, but the rest of the region as well.

[cornholio]

Originally Posted by SpongeG

i don't think we need to dumb down the system for stupid people, society needs to stop catering to them, if they are stupid enough to not know how to get to metrotown than they deserve to stand there waiting

Well its not dumbing it down, its making it simple and easy to use. Even if a person figures it out, if they need to spend 1 extra second doing that then you have room for improvements. Put it this way, I work in HR/PR outsourcing, I see every day 100's of managers using pr and hr systems and 100,000+ employees using T&A clocks all over NA in all different industries. Believe you me when you start looking at people as numbers and statistics instead of people you will soon realize how important and difficult it is to make a system simple and easy to use. T&A clocks are actually really fun because you can see the live impact of a small change when there are huge amounts of users.

SpongeG, I totally understand where you are coming from but if you ever looked at how people function from a purely statistical angel you would think differently.

[Canadian Mind]

Originally Posted by queetz@home

How so? I'm sure if it were up to *us*, we'd all be living in the most desirable places. But there is reality. The reality is there is a reason why Surrey is the fastest growing area, and it most certainly have nothing to do with it being as desirable as the Westside.

That is reality, not some academic argument of what ifs, the reason for this and that, and so on. And the reality is this....Surrey is the fastest growing area in Metro Vancouver, and its not going to stop as long as immigration is at the levels we are in right now, land to develop all sorts of housing from single family homes to high rise condos is plentiful and there is a constant gap between the rich and the poor.

So instead of saying Broadway should go first on the basis that "most people want to live there", it should be built where most people will actually live.

Lets be blunt, everyone here that wants Broadway Line to be built prior to the Surrey rapid transit only does so because

1) They think the transit map is pretty
2) They stand to benefit from it directly (either as a user, a property owner or someone that works in the area)
3) The usual city vs suburb bias
4) The usual Surrey stigma, with the jokes and all

And they will use whatever selected data, news article, opinion piece, and so on to justify it.

There is a reason why city planners and municipal leaders (with the exception of the NPA) all agree that Surrey rapid transit must come first in this case, And its certainly none of the above four....

Because what was said is true. If you build greater than demand, prices drop, and things become more affordable. Only reason why Surrey is cheaper is because there is a greater ratio of supply/demand than there is in the west end. And none of that nullifies the fact that Broadway NEEDS rapid transit. It will benefit the whole region by not only making commutes quicker (quicker commutes equates to less people on the network at any given time), and all of the buses and drivers that are freed up could be utilized elsewhere, hopefully the majority in Surrey. Not to mention that a Broadway line would be instant positive cash flow for translink, making it easier to budget for extra services elsewhere.

[usog]

I think it's important to separate those wanting skytrain to go to the Canada Line, and those wanting to run it all the way to UBC.

[Millennium2002]

I really wish that people could compromise or something, because this debate mirrors the exact same debate facing the region, and it won't get us anywhere given the amount of cash that we have.

usog, well... not exactly. If anything that might mean that everyone supports the minimum of an extension to the Canada Line at the very least, with the option to go further to UBC if possible. That is, unless they are being unreasonable and wish everything be built as one, which in my opinion is fanciful and unrealistic at present.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by allan_kuan

If anything that might mean that everyone supports the minimum of an extension to the Canada Line at the very least, with the option to go further to UBC if possible.

If we take the extra funds that would be required to continue the Millenium line extension from Granville-ish to UBC and apply them to a Surrey project so that everyone's happy and we all agree to get started, I'd be more than happy.

Right now Skytrain to UBC is a "nice to have" which can be built as a future Millenium line easily enough. It's the Canada Line line connection through the hospital district where the need is really critical.

If the B-Line buses to UBC were able start around Granville and skip the congestion around Fraser / Kingsway / Main / Cambie / Oak then UBC transit times would be a lot faster than they are now. They'd get plenty of benefit from even a partial extension of the Millenium line.

[Alon]

Two things.

1. Broadway has slightly lower projected capital cost per rider than Surrey, and reduces operating costs whereas Surrey increases them. The incremental operating cost of Broadway is -7 million a year; that of Surrey is 25-26 million (I'm assuming the option that's actually SkyTrain in both cases, rather than SkyTrain-BRT hybrid).

2. In reality, there has been a lot of new development around Expo Line stations and in Downtown, and there are plans to upzone around the Canada Line. Even if you write off Point Grey and the western parts of Kits as NIMBY-land, you're still left with Central Broadway and Arbutus, where the density for transit is already there. And that's just residential - UBC is a growing destination, and precisely because of the UEL and Point Grey NIMBYs people need trains to get there, and then there's the Central Broadway secondary CBD.

[Alon]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

If we take the extra funds that would be required to continue the Millenium line extension from Granville-ish to UBC and apply them to a Surrey project so that everyone's happy and we all agree to get started, I'd be more than happy.

Right now Skytrain to UBC is a "nice to have" which can be built as a future Millenium line easily enough. It's the Canada Line line connection through the hospital district where the need is really critical.

If the B-Line buses to UBC were able start around Granville and skip the congestion around Fraser / Kingsway / Main / Cambie / Oak then UBC transit times would be a lot faster than they are now. They'd get plenty of benefit from even a partial extension of the Millenium line.

Meh. If you terminate at Cambie then you're right, people can continue to use the 99-B (as they do today). But if the terminus is anywhere west of Cambie and east of UBC, you'll still have to run the buses as far east as Cambie, to avoid making what is now a two-seat ride from Downtown a three-seat ride, with the middle leg an annoying 2- or 3-station hop. So you'd be raising rather than reducing operating costs. (That's the combo 2 alternative studied.)

And the other issue, which I don't know if the ridership model considered, is that passengers have transfer penalties, and those are especially large when the transfer is near the destination. Suburban commuters who will drive 10 kilometers to a cheaper park-and-ride will avoid a two-stop subway transfer from the train station. (Not terribly relevant to Vancouver because downtown is walking distance from Waterfront, but it's painfully relevant in Toronto, San Francisco, Boston, Austin, and other North American cities.)

What this means is that cutting the extra transfer from SkyTrain to bus is worth a lot, probably a lot more than the 11,000 riders out of 149,000 that Translink projects. There's not a gradual rise in ridership based on how far west you build the line - there's a large rise when the line gets to Central Broadway, nearly flat ridership west of Arbutus and east of UBC, and then another large rise when the line actually gets to UBC. Just being able to get directly to Main Mall rather than the diesel bus loop has to be worth a couple thousand daily riders, since it cuts several minutes from the egress time, another factor that passengers weight heavily in their mode choice.