UBCx - Millennium Line Extension Arbutus to UBC | Proposed

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Sheba

I don't know that it'll generate that many more riders - it'll move existing riders off the crowded street and into a subway instead.

I think more people will take transit if it has one less transfer and no buses.

The line will spur more development at UBC as well, and hence ridership.

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

The 84's still the only bus that covers the 6th/2nd/GNW stretch, and 4th Village is pretty busy, so I doubt it's getting downsized. Worst that happens is that it and/or the 44 terminates early at Alma Station.

I can still certainly see the artics repurposed somewhere elsewhere, and frequency reduced. Maybe not to suburban levels, but definitely not staying at express pseudo-rapid-bus levels.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by chowhou

I can still certainly see the artics repurposed somewhere elsewhere, and frequency reduced. Maybe not to suburban levels, but definitely not staying at express pseudo-rapid-bus levels.

That's assuming we don't buy any more buses between now and 2040; given the amount of foot traffic the Broadway Corridor is supposed to attract (including the 84 route), the situation probably calls for more capacity.

The 10 on Granville still uses artics, despite not having a B-Line anymore.

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

That's assuming we don't buy any more buses between now and 2040; given the amount of foot traffic the Broadway Corridor is supposed to attract (including the 84 route), the situation probably calls for more capacity.

The 10 on Granville still uses artics, despite not having a B-Line anymore.

Perhaps you're right, it seems like the 10 matches in capacity and frequency, but it's certainly not an express bus and much more of a local bus. I imagine at least the 84 becoming something like a "24" (2nd + 4th) local bus with more frequent stops.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by chowhou

Perhaps you're right, it seems like the 10 matches in capacity and frequency, but it's certainly not an express bus and much more of a local bus. I imagine at least the 84 becoming something like a "24" (2nd + 4th) local bus with more frequent stops.

Yeah, I'm guessing they'll truncate it somewhere around Jericho (where it turns back into a limited-stop service because ridership is nonexistent).

[Unregistered User]

Do we know what is going on at this point as far as next steps are concerned? Is the business case report actively being worked on? Who's in charge of that? Translink? The province?

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by Unregistered User

Do we know what is going on at this point as far as next steps are concerned? Is the business case report actively being worked on? Who's in charge of that? Translink? The province?

The Millennium Line UBC Extension is identified in the Transport 2050: 10-Year Priorities to advance as a priority project. The next step is to work collaboratively with senior government and partners to advance the project to the full business case stage.

https://www.translink.ca/plans-and-proje...ion,the%20full%20business%20case%20stage.

[Mac Write]

It would be great if construction could start mid to late next year and open in step (or earlier) with the Langley line.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Mac Write

It would be great if construction could start mid to late next year and open in step (or earlier) with the Langley line.

I doubt it. They will have to do a ton more soil analysis and planning.

[madog222]

We don't even have the route planned yet.

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by madog222

We don't even have the route planned yet.

Sounded to me like they've settled on a few rough drafts of the route, just a matter of deciding which to go with. All continue along Broadway until swinging north into the Jericho Lands, then the decision must be made of what to do after that.

[jollyburger]

I mean money to pay for it would be a good start.

[VancouverOfTheFuture]

Originally Posted by madog222

We don't even have the route planned yet.

oh i am 100% sure they have a route planned, it just isnt public yet.

[jollyburger]

Good luck with that dude.

New transit vision needed for a changing Metro Vancouver, says expert
Transit SkyTrain Expo Line Millennium Line Translink Generic
Vancouver's SkyTrain Expo Line. (OMNI/CityNews Image)
By Mike Lloyd
Posted Oct 27, 2022, 7:51AM PDT.Last Updated Oct 27, 2022, 7:52AM PDT.
Hundreds of thousands of trips are taken on Metro Vancouver’s buses and trains every day, but are enough commuters able to get to where they really need to go?

After the civic elections, TransLink is getting a new Mayors’ Council this fall and one expert believes the transit authority and its leaders need to start steering transit development toward change.

“I’ve long argued it’s well past time to do that because our transit model is not suited for the way the region is growing,” Patrick Condon with the Urban Design Program at the University of British Columbia said. “Most of the job growth is not in downtown Vancouver, it’s throughout the region, and it’s very dispersed in many, many locations.”

Condon says the current hub-and-spoke model presumes that all the jobs are downtown and all the workers live in the suburbs, but it’s no longer the case that all roads lead to Vancouver.

“We committed to the SkyTrain system in the 1980s and we seem very reluctant to move away from it into a system that’s much more affordable and much more capable of serving a distributed region with a distributed system of transit,” he told CityNews.

He says surface light rail and express buses are much more affordable ways to move people than using an elevated or underground SkyTrain system, particularly the “fantastically expensive” Broadway subway line currently under construction in Vancouver.

“The problem [with the SkyTrain] is, because of its nature, it can never serve, within reasonable distance, everybody in the region. It’s impossible to serve everybody with such an expensive system. There are much more affordable systems that can reach closer to people’s homes and can bring them to where they want to go if it’s not downtown Vancouver.”

Condon points to the “political brouhaha” in Surrey as an example.

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“When Doug McCallum regained the mayoral seat four years ago, he immediately switched away from a completely funded light rail system that was going to serve Guildford, downtown Surrey and Newton, preferring to extend SkyTrain out to Langley without the funding. And they still don’t have the money to go out to Langley. It’s a terrible situation”

Condon argues the at-grade, light rapid transit plan would have served a denser population area, it was cheaper to build and it was fully funded.

“Now you have a situation, which I don’t think was fully recognized during the last election, where most of the job and housing growth are occurring south of the Fraser [River]. The City of Vancouver has a population growth of less than one per cent over the past couple of years whereas, when you get south of the Fraser, it ranges from about 1.8 per cent in Surrey to over three per cent in Langley.”

The good news, according to Condon, is that the growing Lower Mainland is arranged along a corridor.

“It would be relatively easy to service this constellation of linear communities, from Surrey to Langley to Abbotsford to Chilliwack, with a reasonably inexpensive system that just connects the dots.”

That’s if we consider the region as a whole, beyond the Metro Vancouver area served by TransLink, he notes.

“We don’t really think about [the region past Langley] as part of our metropolitan area but it most certainly is and that’s where the growth is happening. And to extend a super expensive subway out to UBC on the premise we are going to add another couple hundred thousand people to Vancouver really defies the gravitational pull of where growth is going.”

The inaugural meeting of the next TransLink Mayor’s Council on regional Transportation is November 17th.

https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2022/10/27/metro-vancouver-transit-plan/

[madog222]

"He says surface light rail..."

And that's where I stopped reading

[chowhou]

A bit of a slanted demographic, but a lot of people I know are starting to wisen up and disregard any commentary made by Mr. Condon.

His own arguments aren't even consistent. Basically none of the currently proposed SkyTrain developments are hub + spoke. The Broadway Extension which he famously opposes (He's a TEAMer after all!) funnels traffic between UBC and the Canada Line and Expo Line, and out to the NoF suburbs; the Surrey Langley Skytrain is intended connect Langley to Surrey, not Langley to Vancouver; the 41st/49th line proposed by Stewart was not even close to serving downtown; and the North Shore Skytrain alignment endorsed by the North Shore and Burnaby would serve Lonsdale -> Brentwood -> Metrotown. It's only the Sim proposal which aims to connect Lonsdale to Downtown via Hastings (which doesn't make much sense to me given the fact the SeaBus exists).

He's an idiot and more people need to know.

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by chowhou

A bit of a slanted demographic, but a lot of people I know are starting to wisen up and disregard any commentary made by Mr. Condon.

His own arguments aren't even consistent. Basically none of the currently proposed SkyTrain developments are hub + spoke. The Broadway Extension which he famously opposes (He's a TEAMer after all!) funnels traffic between UBC and the Canada Line and Expo Line, and out to the NoF suburbs; the Surrey Langley Skytrain is intended connect Langley to Surrey, not Langley to Vancouver; the 41st/49th line proposed by Stewart was not even close to serving downtown; and the North Shore Skytrain alignment endorsed by the North Shore and Burnaby would serve Lonsdale -> Brentwood -> Metrotown. It's only the Sim proposal which aims to connect Lonsdale to Downtown via Hastings (which doesn't make much sense to me given the fact the SeaBus exists).

He's an idiot and more people need to know.

I mean you can be against condo development but that should be your main argument not some rant about transit.

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by jollyburger

I mean you can be against condo development but that should be your main argument not some rant about transit.

Even on that line he's inconsistent.

His argument in that article is "There's not enough population growth in Vancouver to support Skytrain". Then he turns around and says "They're only building Skytrain to support development of massive towers on Broadway!!!"

Patrick Condon is a hack. He should be a nobody, but because he's the UBC Chair in Landscape and Livable Environments he gets to pretend to be an expert on transportation infrastructure, housing economics, and population trends.

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by chowhou

Even on that line he's inconsistent.

His argument in that article is "There's not enough population growth in Vancouver to support Skytrain". Then he turns around and says "They're only building Skytrain to support development of massive towers on Broadway!!!"

Patrick Condon is a hack. He should be a nobody, but because he's the UBC Chair in Landscape and Livable Environments he gets to pretend to be an expert on transportation infrastructure, housing economics, and population trends.

Yeah he does have a few points (growth is dispersed across the region, not everyone is travelling to downtown Van, we can't build Skytrain everywhere and need more express bus service, etc) but then he fully leans into 'light rail is the answer to everything'. Meanwhile he ignores that the latest plans are showing BRT far more than new Skytrain lines.

[FarmerHaight]

Originally Posted by chowhou

Even on that line he's inconsistent.

His argument in that article is "There's not enough population growth in Vancouver to support Skytrain". Then he turns around and says "They're only building Skytrain to support development of massive towers on Broadway!!!"

Patrick Condon is a hack. He should be a nobody, but because he's the UBC Chair in Landscape and Livable Environments he gets to pretend to be an expert on transportation infrastructure, housing economics, and population trends.

Condon is right on one point: Skytrain is far too expensive to go everywhere.

But that's why the routes with the absolute highest demand get Skytrain, while everything else gets fast, frequent, and reliable bus service. I don't really see how light rail is any better than BRT if they both run at grade, especially since BRT is soooo much cheaper.