Millennium Line - Broadway Extension: Planning & Pre-Construction

[rofina]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Conspiracy theory: would the feds offer to fund the UBC extension right now, on condition that Horgan and co. end their opposition to the KM pipeline?

The damage has been done.

Feds should just ignore Horgan and get the thing built. Like they should have done since day one.

[dleung]

Originally Posted by Sheba

That's nice - but who's going to pay for it. We don't have the money to build the entire thing at once, hence why it's divided into two phases. Trying to force it into being built all at once means every other project gets delayed. Do you want to tell the rest of the region that they have to wait for much needed rapid transit (of any variety, inc B-Line buses) because Vancouver is queue jumping?

York University has 2 new subway stations and it's in the middle of fucking nowhere. All about priorities. The only reason why the most worthwhile subway project in North America is even debated for so long is because it serves busy young people, while the rail-for-the-valley people are old and have time to make noise.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Conspiracy theory: would the feds offer to fund the UBC extension right now, on condition that Horgan and co. end their opposition to the KM pipeline?

This would be political suicide. Trudeau would not get elected in BC. Horgan would also find himself looking for a job after the next BC election. Even the Greens might take a hit.

KM is going to be kicked till after the election. In AB he will promise to build it, but will stay relatively quiet in BC, except saying it will be done the safest possible way.

[Mac Write]

I think we all agree the $1.6B Surrey LRT is a joke and use that money to fund the Millennium Line all the way to UBC. Or use the money to fund the Langley SkyTrain extension.

[scryer]

Originally Posted by Mac Write

I think we all agree the $1.6B Surrey LRT is a joke and use that money to fund the Millennium Line all the way to UBC. Or use the money to fund the Langley SkyTrain extension.

Amen, girl.

[Hot Rod]

IMO, the Surrey LRT should instead become the Surrey Streetcar, same route just tram instead of light rail. Would be much cheaper and right sized for the route being served.

Then, send those extra $1.4B split half to help extend M-Line to UBC and half to help extend SkyTrain to Langley.

Everybody wins and the system is RIGHT SIZED!!

[Bdawe]

Originally Posted by Hot Rod

IMO, the Surrey LRT should instead become the Surrey Streetcar, same route just tram instead of light rail. Would be much cheaper and right sized for the route being served.

Then, send those extra $1.4B split half to help extend M-Line to UBC and half to help extend SkyTrain to Langley.

Everybody wins and the system is RIGHT SIZED!!

I don't understand this take.

There isn't a technological difference between 'trams' 'streetcars' and 'light rail'.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by Bdawe

I don't understand this take.

There isn't a technological difference between 'trams' 'streetcars' and 'light rail'.

This. Though everyone seems to have their own definitions, I think the most common differences are that light rail has its own lanes and less stops, while streetcars run in mixed-traffic and have more stops. I don't see how that would make it cheaper. I guess the vehicles and stops would be smaller, but there'd be more stops, and it'd be decidedly slower than the 96 B-Line.

[Migrant_Coconut]

I think Hot Rod's suggesting that Surrey could save money by ditching the median and running smaller trains.

Problem is that the median and trainsets are a relatively small part of the bill. The big $$$ comes from buying private property, ripping up the road, moving public utilities, then rebuilding the road with a pair of rails inside it - not applicable to off-street surface rail, but on-street surface rail (heavy, medium, light, streetcar, whatever) will always require it. I really don't see the Phase 1 "Surrey Streetcar" costing any less than $900M ($85M/km x 11km?), which is still waaay too expensive for B-Line level service.

[Bdawe]

You can imply something sort of like Portland - the Portland Streetcars are lighter than the light rail vehicles, and are built with tighter curve radii. This *does* save money because the track could be more lightly built and require less utility relocation and and street alteration, but that mostly works because local streetcars don't need to go especially fast and can thus be more lightly powered than more interuban-oriented vehicles. As such, while Portland streetcars can use the light rail tracks, MAX light rail vehilcles are banned from the street car tracks due to weight and the inability to to take many of the curves.

But that makes surrey's LRT program *less* useful if we're trying to span the sort of distances that we're talking about

[scryer]

Originally Posted by Bdawe

This *does* save money because the track could be more lightly built and require less utility relocation and and street alteration, but that mostly works because local streetcars don't need to go especially fast and can thus be more lightly powered than more interuban-oriented vehicles. As such, while Portland streetcars can use the light rail tracks, MAX light rail vehilcles are banned from the street car tracks due to weight and the inability to to take many of the curves.

But that makes surrey's LRT program *less* useful if we're trying to span the sort of distances that we're talking about

Then why not just use electrical buses with over-head wiring? You save even more money by not ripping up the street at all and achieve the same effects with greater flexibility and potential for growth.

Back to the M-line extension.... Lobbying to have this mofo extended all the way to UBC actually solves the transit problems. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that it's getting extended to Arbutus but all that will really do is just extend the bus congestion over to Arbutus instead of Commercial/Broadway. Heck I would even argue that the 99 B-line will continue to see a similar number of boardings at Commercial/Broadway because of ppl that want seats on the bus all the way to UBC.

[Colin4567]

Originally Posted by scryer

Then why not just use electrical buses with over-head wiring? You save even more money by not ripping up the street at all and achieve the same effects with greater flexibility and potential for growth.

Back to the M-line extension.... Lobbying to have this mofo extended all the way to UBC actually solves the transit problems. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that it's getting extended to Arbutus but all that will really do is just extend the bus congestion over to Arbutus instead of Commercial/Broadway. Heck I would even argue that the 99 B-line will continue to see a similar number of boardings at Commercial/Broadway because of ppl that want seats on the bus all the way to UBC.

But they're truncating the 99 to be between Arbutus and UBC - so why would people get on the #9 at Commercial?

[scryer]

Originally Posted by Colin4567

But they're truncating the 99 to be between Arbutus and UBC - so why would people get on the #9 at Commercial?

Oops, I didn't know that. I stand corrected. Thanks.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by scryer

Oops, I didn't know that. I stand corrected. Thanks.

Yup, part of the plan is to make the 99 more efficient by cutting out the 15-20 minute crawl down Central Broadway.

[misher]

We both know that the light rail was pushed along with the Broadway extension for political reasons, Surrey has too many votes. Its obvious that Broadway is much more important, but you got to sacrifice to succeed.

My only gripe is that UBC has offered to pay for the extension from Arbutus to UBC but the government is not budging on changing its plans (damn bureaucracy). It would be much less expensive to keep going than stop and years later start again.



They say that around 10% of business is now done along Broadway. The ideal situation is for downtown's business to move to Broadway as there's much less traffic there and much more room for housing.

Of course the government has restricted Broadway to social housing....(which means no one is going to build shit) so Broadway will likely end up being completely flat instead of having towers around the station like every other municipality has.

PS: Gregor Robertson promised this wouldn't happen....and surprise surprise he lied.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by misher

My only gripe is that UBC has offered to pay for the extension from Arbutus to UBC but the government is not budging on changing its plans (damn bureaucracy). It would be much less expensive to keep going than stop and years later start again.

To be fair, the section to Arbutus has been extensively studied, with work such as drill cores having been made over the past few years which will become part of the RFP. It's pretty much ready to go out for bidding right now. If we stopped to put a bunch of work into the UBC section to get it up to that point then we'd be looking at a fairly substantial delay.

I'd far rather see construction get underway on the Arbutus section as soon as possible, since it will address around 80% of the transit issues on Broadway. It will serve the very important hospital district, it will substantially reduce transit times and bus requirements for the remaining leg to UBC, and it will complete the all-important missing link between the Millennium Line and the Canada Line, providing an alternate rapid transit route to downtown for everyone coming from the east.

[misher]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

To be fair, the section to Arbutus has been extensively studied, with work such as drill cores having been made over the past few years which will become part of the RFP. It's pretty much ready to go out for bidding right now. If we stopped to put a bunch of work into the UBC section to get it up to that point then we'd be looking at a fairly substantial delay.

I'd far rather see construction get underway on the Arbutus section as soon as possible, since it will address around 80% of the transit issues on Broadway. It will serve the very important hospital district, it will substantially reduce transit times and bus requirements for the remaining leg to UBC, and it will complete the all-important missing link between the Millennium Line and the Canada Line, providing an alternate rapid transit route to downtown for everyone coming from the east.

Hmm many good points here. I was thinking they could do the planning work during the construction? That way they could finish the first leg then immediately start the second. But I don't understand the project well enough to say for sure this is plausible.

[Waders]

Originally Posted by misher

We both know that the light rail was pushed along with the Broadway extension for political reasons,

Rail transit west of Arbutus to campus must be SkyTrain, says UBC President

The head of the University of British Columbia (UBC) is asserting that any future phase extension of rail rapid transit west of Arbutus Street to the university’s Point Grey campus needs to be a seamless SkyTrain extension.

Ground-level light rail transit (LRT), similar to what is planned for Surrey, is not a feasible option, according to UBC President and Vice-Chancellor Santa Ono.

“People have asked whether LRT to UBC might be worth considering,” says Ono. “Frankly, the extreme high volume of users to UBC requires the speed and capacity of an underground or elevated SkyTrain. LRT would be suboptimal. When the extension to UBC is built, we must do it right from day 1.”

Ono continued that a permanent terminus of the Millennium Line at Arbutus Street would create a bottleneck when thousands of commuters leave the station to board buses. There would also be issues with the reliability and safety of a ground-level train system running through streets.

“A transition from SkyTrain to LRT would have the same issues due to dramatically different speed and capacity of the two modes of transportation,” he says, adding that “integrating LRT traffic with automobile and pedestrian traffic introduces safety issues and accidents and exposes the system to challenges during inclement weather.”

“British Columbians deserve the right solution to this transportation challenge. A Millennium Line Broadway Extension to UBC is the only solution that makes sense.”

This argument is also valid for Surrey's rapid transit project. Too bad no one is listening.

[Aroundtheworld]

Originally Posted by misher

Hmm many good points here. I was thinking they could do the planning work during the construction? That way they could finish the first leg then immediately start the second. But I don't understand the project well enough to say for sure this is plausible.

Ideally they could use the same tunnel boring machine for the UBC extension as they are using for Central Broadway. That would basically mean starting the drill tests and planning at very latest when construction begins on Central Broadway.

It's doable. I just question whether there is the political will.

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by Waders

Rail transit west of Arbutus to campus must be SkyTrain, says UBC President

This argument is also valid for Surrey's rapid transit project. Too bad no one is listening.

Some of us have been - it's mostly the politicians who haven't been listening.