Quote:
Originally Posted by Hmoob
I'm sure this has been discussed to death over the last few years, but here goes again:
The original proposal to end the line at Arbutus made sense, in a short-sighted way, at the time it was proposed.
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This was my point.
It IS, it was and it always will be short-sighted that they made that decision.
Anyway you look at it, and even any time you looked at it.
Anyone with sense could have told you 5 years BEFORE they made the decision that it is short-sighted.
That's kind of the whole point of short-sightedness in that it tends to make sense AT THE TIME you're making the decision when you really could be using some foresight.
Calling it short-sighted now in hindsight is easy because we can point to things you might not have had ample evidence to, to support that view.
But that's no excuse.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hmoob
As Metro Vancouver's urban/transit understood, a line all the way to UBC would have actually made our transit system less efficient overall.
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That only makes sense if you made a lot of assumptions predicated on completely ignoring context, math, population growth and just plain old fashioned common sense.
Of course any transit system that's expanded or expanding typically tends to have a lot of inefficiency of use at the beginning (especially if the expansion was made with future growth in mind), wherein it seems you have more trains and systems than the capacity seems to indicate it needs. But over time, the efficiency increases as the ridership and usage grows with population growth, and change in people's commuting habits once they realize more options are available, and it eventually levels out with the resources available, and also as the translink authorities reconfigure the available train frequencies based on the ridership data that then can access after a few years and compare with their projections.
As happened when the Canada Line was introduced and also the same with the Evergreen line as well.
And none of this should be unexpected or surprising to Translink of all people who've seen the same phenomenon happen every time in the past they've expanded the line(s) and had to increase (or decrease) frequency and resources of various routes based on ridership and growth.
The fact that there likely would be some inefficiency in the overall system (in the beginning) should not only have been expected but really should have been factored into their projections.
And clearly they didn't, opting instead for the penny-saving route which is instead now seeming like it will cost them more (probably big time) in the long run.
Vancouver is a growing city.
Who didn't know this, or couldn't project any of this even 20 years ago?
Again, no excuse.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hmoob
Consider someone living near King Edward and Main St who commutes to UBC. The #25 bus line is likely their most efficient routing. With a new skytrain line all the way to UBC, they're more likely to take the #3 to Broadway, and then the train. If the train stops at Arbutus, they're back to the #25 to avoid taking a bus to a train to a bus. Admittedly, this hypothetical rider would like to see the train run the whole way. But once you consider how many similar riders there are across the city (Victoria to Arbutus, 20th to 45th) you understand how much extra demand you introduce to the train, at the expense of demand that will continue to support a broad network of frequent busses across the city.
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This argument makes no sense to me.
Isn't the (ideal) goal to get more commuters off buses onto an alternate means of commuting (if possible) so as to have fewer buses (especially in areas you don't need them as much as areas where alternatives don't exist) on the road, and reduce traffic and congestion (and everything that comes with that including pollution), while saving the city on cost of things like bus driver salaries and bus maintenance costs and such?
So if an expanded line would take more demand or pressure away from the buses and allow translink to deploy them elsewhere in the system where more frequency is needed or maybe even reduce their overall number if possible, isn't that actually INCREASING and not decreasing overall system efficiency?
Unless I'm misunderstanding your point.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hmoob
Now, the problem is that the transit planners who sold this concept to governments for funding don't seem to have been aware how quickly our city is growing or where that growth is happening. It's obvious now that the line should go all the way to UBC, but governments move slowly, and this project was being pitched for funding years ago. As much as it would be nice to change the plan, that would take additional years the way things work in British Columbia. We don't operate as a benevolent dictatorship like Singapore.
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I understand when transit planners sell or propose projects like this to city and government officials by low-balling their projections and exceptions, in the hopes of keeping costs low -- with the reasoning being that if they ask for what is perceived as "too much" ....now and they get it, and then can't show "enough" results for what they get, or worse are seen to have been wasteful with what they got, then the next time they go to ask for money when they really need it, they likely won't get any or as much as they really need.
I get that part of (what likely happened here), and in all likelihood which also explains a large part of why Vancouverites and tax-payers were unwilling to give them more money during the plebiscite a few years back. Because they (Translink) had already earned the reputation of being wasteful with money in the public eye. (rumours of $400-500K Translink CEO and Executives salaries, and $100K Translink Security officials take-home pay will tend to do that to you)
But in this case, aside from the explanation that they did not seem to have been aware of how quickly the city was growing being rather implausible and highly questionable to me, this is one situation where you only stand to hurt yourself in the long run and in the future by low-balling figures and costs now, building below expected and projected capacity, and then going back to ask for more in the future when it inevitably turns out that you didn't do a proper job to begin with, and now need to finish the job at an even greater cost.
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