Transit Fantasies

[scryer]

Originally Posted by dleung

^^Lol, how many Langley people actually have Whalley as a destination? They're there to get on the trains to downtown, but any masochist need to go to Whalley can be done via transfer from commuter rail to skytrain in New West or Scott Rd, which probably takes no more time given far fewer stops.

I linked a study, some odd years ago, that found that most people travelling south of Fraser have a final destination in Surrey. I think that most certainly applies to Expo line extension.

Speaking of which, the Expo line extension to Langley is actually much closer to a reality at this point.

Originally Posted by dleung

And the city that's gonna be there isn't going to happen at 166th, 184th, or 192nd, about half the length of the 3 billion extension.

Same exact thing was said about the Millennium line extension. Now we are seeing some excellent urban developments happen around Lougheed, Brentwood, Metrotown, and Gilmore stations. Actually there has been some murmurings about mixed-use hubs for Fleetwood around the 160th st station. It's not like developers haven't took notice.

Originally Posted by dleung

I just don't know why Guildford - the only other place in Surrey with towers (and the city's biggest mall), and the most realistic 2nd urban centre - would be completely missed by the skytrain extension.

Two reasons: politics and expenses. And in that order.

Firstly, promising a Skytrain to Langley earns you more votes from more municipalities.

Secondly, funding a Skytrain to approach downtown from Guildford would be a lot more expensive than funding a Skytrain extension down Fraser Hwy. The reason being is that throwing a Skytrain extension on 104th or 108th (to connect Guildford) will likely have to be tunneled driving up the expenses, and lowering how many voting areas would be affected.

IMO, it was no mistake that Horgan promised the cheapest Skytrain extension to Langley for last year's provincial election.


When it comes to the WCE, my opinion is this:

- Yes, I do think that it is important to at least figure out potential routes for WCE expansion.

- A good problem that we have right now is that we are building Skytrain out to areas that are already serviced by the WCE such as Port Moody, Coquitlam, etc. This means that we have atleast provided a relief solution for the WCE (and vice-versa) in that those who are travelling to Broadway will choose to use the Millennium line, and those who are travelling to downtown would ideally choose to use the WCE.

- I also think that there is something to be said about induced demand for transit. We usually think of expanding traffic lanes, and getting those filled up as something that indicates induced demand; now don't get crazy with this point, but why wouldn't this theory be applied to transit on the right routes?

- Of course before anything, we need to purchase the very few rails that our WCE is currently running on and we need to expand the service times, slowly. Not everyone works from 9 - 5pm, and I think that a decent starting point to expand service times would be a mid-afternoon train of some kind (both directions), and maybe a late evening Eastbound train as well (9 - 10pm) after purchasing the tracks the WCE already operates on.

- I think that each municipality like Surrey, Langley, White Rock, Abbotsford, North Van, West Van, and possibly Richmond need to figure out what corridors they can reserve for WCE space right now. It's not like we need WCE right now BUT in the future the region is going to need to be better connected and reserving rail space for stations and such now is going to save us a lot of headache in the future.

- Just from looking at what the WCE route looks like now, the rail around Port Moody looks very valuable to CP/CN. The Pacific Coast Terminals and the Suncor Terminal both look like they would be quite important to the national economy with their rail connections.

- Also just from speculating, the WCE's rail feeds into the Port Coquitlam (Canadian Pacific) railyard. To me, this looks like a hell of a nightmare to work out logistically because you would have to create new tracks for freight trains to travel to the Pacific Coast Terminals and Suncor Terminals. Unless of course you only allowed freight trains to run overnight which would disturb the neighbourhoods along the way .