Expo Line - Surrey Langley Extension: Planning & Pre-Construction

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by scryer

Nothing beats out skytrain to UBC. Not by a long-shot. I'm willing to bet that the Mayor's council will eventually redirect the LRT funds from Surrey to help pay for the extension out to UBC, and that Surrey will agree to this so long as the Mayor of Vancouver is willing to support Skytrain in Surrey. I already called the LRT getting scrapped, years ago and I have a feeling that the Vancouver and Surrey mayors are playing a little game of "scratch my back and I'll scratch your's".

Potential ridership is a very fragile crutch to lean on here. They speculated the same thing about the Canada Line, and look at what happened. They said rider-ship was poor on the Millennium line and it has been increasing year by year (as far as I know, someone can correct me if I'm wrong), and I'm not even going to get into how it will increase once it extends out west. The entire Skytrain model has always been about building for the future. This is a project that addresses the needs of the Lower Mainland's second largest city (by population) and it connects both of the largest cities seamlessly. Does induced demand ring any bells here?

Not only that but there is also a B-line bus (if I remember correctly) that will be introduced in 2019 that goes down Fraser Valley. So if you are looking for ridership specifically, you'll have to wait until we get the data from that new route .

Absolutely. And when it does well, then we can use its net income to help pay for increased SoF service, North Shore SkyTrain and all kinds of other projects. "High cost, high reward" always pays off with rapid transit.

Originally Posted by CanSpice

It doesn't address Surrey's needs as it bypasses Surrey's two largest neighbourhoods. It'd be like having SkyTrain go down Marine Drive in Burnaby and skipping Metrotown and Edmonds. And Surrey and Vancouver are already connected with SkyTrain.

If Metrotown was on Lougheed and Edmonds on Marine Drive, the Expo would probably skip them too.

They're not exactly neglected - the BRT provides the same level of service as the LRT (and much better than Broadway), so there's nothing stopping Newton or Guildford from proceeding with their redevelopment plans anyway.