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

[memememe76]

I am surprised people prefer the transit systems of Portland and SF over Vancouver. Portland is cute if you are travelling within the Downtown, but goodness, is it slow. And SF? Goodness, no thanks. Getting passed by 4 or 5 buses is not fun. And the subway is unpleasant.

I enjoyed Montreal but my sister who lived there for 8 years would complain about it all the time. Essentially, people always complain about their transit system.

And I hate hate hate Seattle's system. One of the reasons I am hesitant to support distance based fares.

[Bdawe]

One thing to remember about San Francisco too is that BART ridership and Skytrain ridership have been fairly similar since 2010, despite BART being two-and-a-half-times larger system with twice as many cars

Sure, other systems like MAX or BART might have more route miles, but the proof is in the ridership pudding.

[swimmer_spe]

Toronto has a population of under 3 million. The have about the same number of RT track distances. If you include the Streetcars, then they have much more than GVA. They have the second highest ridership in North America. They are second only to NYC.

So, 3 million people and the second highest in North America? Yup, that is higher than Skytrain.

[waves]

Kevin Desmond spoke on CKNW today on the Steele and Drex show. He said that for Fraser Highway the question of Skytrain versus LRT was still an ongoing conversation and that "what's most important is performance. How do you get from Point A to Point B as quickly and as reliably as possible and how do you develop a transit facility that also helps grow communities."

The question was posed to him by a listener at 7:33 in the recording:
https://omny.fm/shows/steele-drex/ceo-of-translink-kevin-desmond-reflects-on-his-fir

[Pinion]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Toronto has a population of under 3 million. The have about the same number of RT track distances. If you include the Streetcars, then they have much more than GVA. They have the second highest ridership in North America. They are second only to NYC.

So, 3 million people and the second highest in North America? Yup, that is higher than Skytrain.

Toronto has almost six million people.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Pinion

Toronto has almost six million people.

https://www.google.ca/#q=what+is+the+population+of+Toronto?&*

I am not talking about the GTA. I am talking about the city of Toronto, of which until the extension is done, the Subways stay inside of.

[Metro-One]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Toronto has a population of under 3 million. The have about the same number of RT track distances. If you include the Streetcars, then they have much more than GVA. They have the second highest ridership in North America. They are second only to NYC.

So, 3 million people and the second highest in North America? Yup, that is higher than Skytrain.

Seriously?

Then I guess Vancouver is only 600 000 and we will only count the skytrain KMs within the city boundaries and the stations statistics within the city proper.

Seriously, it is obvious that we are talking about metro areas, which act as a single city.

Shit, Port Moody must have the best RR ratio in the country!

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Seriously?

Then I guess Vancouver is only 600 000 and we will only count the skytrain KMs within the city boundaries and the stations statistics within the city proper.

Seriously, it is obvious that we are talking about metro areas, which act as a single city.

Shit, Port Moody must have the best RR ratio in the country!

I was counting all the municipalities that the RT covers. So, Toronto has under 3 million, and GVA has under 3 million,

[nname]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

I was counting all the municipalities that the RT covers. So, Toronto has under 3 million, and GVA has under 3 million,

The last time I checked, the SkyTrain only goes into 7 of the 23 municipalities in Metro Vancouver.

And I'm pretty sure many people living outside of the Toronto city proper contributes to the city's economy, employment, and transit use. If there are nothing but farm lands surrounding the 3 million people living within Toronto, I'm very certain Toronto would not be what it is today, and RT's ridership wouldn't be that much higher compared to Vancouver's...

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by nname

The last time I checked, the SkyTrain only goes into 7 of the 23 municipalities in Metro Vancouver.

And I'm pretty sure many people living outside of the Toronto city proper contributes to the city's economy, employment, and transit use. If there are nothing but farm lands surrounding the 3 million people living within Toronto, I'm very certain Toronto would not be what it is today, and RT's ridership wouldn't be that much higher compared to Vancouver's...

The areas that have a Skytrain station:
Port Moody 34,000
Port Coquitlam 56,000
New Westminster 71,000
Coquitlam 127,000
Richmond 198,000
Burnaby 223,000
Surrey 518,000
Vancouver 631,000
Total 1,858,000

The areas currently covered by the Toronto Subway and RT:
Toronto 2,732,000

Toronto is comparable to The GVA. Just like I did not count places that did not have Skytrain stations, I also did not count places that did not have Subway/RT stations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_rapid_transit_systems_by_ridership

My mistake Montreal is #3, Toronto is #4. Skytrain is #10

So, maybe we should compare Montreal. The island of Montreal is made up of many cities. It has not been amalgamated like Toronto was.

[VancouverOfTheFuture]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

The areas that have a Skytrain station:
Port Moody 34,000
Port Coquitlam 56,000
New Westminster 71,000
Coquitlam 127,000
Richmond 198,000
Burnaby 223,000
Surrey 518,000
Vancouver 631,000
Total 1,858,000

The areas currently covered by the Toronto Subway and RT:
Toronto 2,732,000

so, to you, 2,732,000=1,858,000??? don't do anything math related please...

2,732,000-1,858,000=874,000 difference. i wouldn't call an almost 1,000,000 people difference "comparable"

in other words, there are 874,000 less people in the GVRD to contribute to ridership #'s.

Vancouver proper's population in 2016 was 631,486 people. so that means you would need to add 1.384 Vancouver proper's into the SkyTrain network to have the same population as the GTA.

[Reecemartin]

Beyond the fact that the city of Toronto alone has the same population as Metro Vancouver, it's totally misleading to act as it Toronto ONLY has 2.7 million people. A massive number of people from adjacent municipalities ride the TTC into downtown Toronto everyday and when you consider transfers from GO and other agencies to various points on the TTC such as Finch, Islington, STC, etc. The number using Torontos system is heightened significantly by commuters. And btw the population for the GTHA is around 8 million!

I think the thing I was getting at was that for our size of city it is incredible that our system is pretty comparable to systems in much larger cities.

[LeftCoaster]

Comparing the City of Toronto to Metro Vancouver is beyond asinine. The subway is full of people from all over the metro who contribute to it's farebox recovery and usage.

Honestly what a silly discussion, it's like pointing out that Port Moody has 4.5KM of rail and therefore has the better transit provision per capita than Toronto.

Talk about grasping at straws.

[a very long weekend]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Sorry, but it is very east to argue that Vancouver has a far superior system than Portland. Yes, Portland may have more rail KMs than Van, but the system is substandard to Vancouver's in nearly every other way. One only has to look at the ridership per KM to get an idea.

Also San Fran and area are about 3 times the size of Metro-Van, so not an equal comparison at all. Even Montreal is nearly double the size of Metro-Van, and I will give you that Montreal does have a decent system for its size with a fantastic expansion planned. Most of the other cities mentioned are also far larger than Metro Vancouver and should have far larger systems, but the fact that it is hinted at that they are still comparable is pretty laughable for those larger cities.

the trick is that vancouver's regional system is an unusual commuter/local hybrid with only a part of it actually in the city. these parts of the transit system are great, you can get from city hall to the waterfront very quickly, and from commercial drive to the waterfront quite quickly. but you only have these two lines, the system is mostly a commuter system that serves the outlying cities.

SF's system (i'm excluding BART except where it works in the city like skytrain does) is a local train network, as is portland's. on that straight city-to-city comparison between cities of similar population, like i said, those two lines in vancouver are great, and getting the third line down broadway will be enormously helpful, but the system up there doesn't yet have the coverage that a portland or SF does and it's certainly not "leagues beyond" them, even if the system up there is enviably 100% fully grade separated.

if you want to compare regional train systems, maybe portland could still work, denver too, and i'd still take those for sheer coverage.

denver rail (not including the new line and extensions currently under construction):


as an aside, i'm also highly envious of how easy the governance structure up there makes it to build rapid transit. here, it's a titanic effort the involves winning serious funding from the feds, along with a 2/3 voter approval for sales tax increase and all sorts of nickel-and-diming along the way. and then we have to contend with our famous NIMBYs and their lawsuits, and a super inefficient/costly procurement and construction process that makes overruns totally inevitable. up there, it seems a lot simpler.

[Aroundtheworld]

Originally Posted by waves

Kevin Desmond spoke on CKNW today on the Steele and Drex show. He said that for Fraser Highway the question of Skytrain versus LRT was still an ongoing conversation and that "what's most important is performance. How do you get from Point A to Point B as quickly and as reliably as possible and how do you develop a transit facility that also helps grow communities."

The question was posed to him by a listener at 7:33 in the recording:
https://omny.fm/shows/steele-drex/ceo-of-translink-kevin-desmond-reflects-on-his-fir

It sounds like Kevin is being diplomatic. It the goal is performance, Skytrain wins easily on the Fraser Highway corridor. If they put most of the guideway to one side of the highway like they did in Richmond, it could integrate decently well with the urban fabric they want to build.

[SFUVancouver]

The Portland comparison is illuminating. The two metro areas have very similar populations (PDX 2.3M, Metro Van 2.5M) and started building rapid transit around the same time (service commenced for SkyTrain in 1985 and 1986 for PDX) and MAX actually has more track (96km for MAX vs 79km for SkyTrain) and more stations (97 for MAX vs 53 for Skytrain), but Trimet has a total of 101M boardings in 2016 to Translink's 384M boardings! That's an apples to apples comparison, too, of bus, train, and paratransit modes. We aren't just lapping them, or even doubling them, we're coming up on quadrupling transit use vs PDX.

In all of 2016, MAX saw 40M boardings. In January 2017, SkyTrain (Expo, Millennium, and Canada Lines) saw 12.09M boardings. We've done almost a third of their annual use in the first month of the year.

PDX's MAX system is an abject failure when compared to our SkyTrain system vis a vis ridership.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

PDX's MAX system is an abject failure when compared to our SkyTrain system vis a vis ridership.

Plus anybody who's ever been to downtown Portland would understand how drivers in Vancouver would be apoplectic if they saw what kind of road space the system takes up, including removal of street parking, etc.

[bardak]

Originally Posted by a very long weekend

the trick is that vancouver's regional system is an unusual commuter/local hybrid with only a part of it actually in the city. these parts of the transit system are great, you can get from city hall to the waterfront very quickly, and from commercial drive to the waterfront quite quickly. but you only have these two lines, the system is mostly a commuter system that serves the outlying cities.

SF's system (i'm excluding BART except where it works in the city like skytrain does) is a local train network, as is portland's. on that straight city-to-city comparison between cities of similar population, like i said, those two lines in vancouver are great, and getting the third line down broadway will be enormously helpful, but the system up there doesn't yet have the coverage that a portland or SF does and it's certainly not "leagues beyond" them, even if the system up there is enviably 100% fully grade separated.

if you want to compare regional train systems, maybe portland could still work, denver too, and i'd still take those for sheer coverage.

denver rail (not including the new line and extensions currently under construction):


as an aside, i'm also highly envious of how easy the governance structure up there makes it to build rapid transit. here, it's a titanic effort the involves winning serious funding from the feds, along with a 2/3 voter approval for sales tax increase and all sorts of nickel-and-diming along the way. and then we have to contend with our famous NIMBYs and their lawsuits, and a super inefficient/costly procurement and construction process that makes overruns totally inevitable. up there, it seems a lot simpler.

You seem to be framing your argument in a very specific way. Arguing specifically about rail in the within the municipal boundaries of Vancouver. It is an artificial comparison. The fact that having more rail coverage does not make a transit system have better service. Also the fact is legal city boards do not change the fact that people will live and work in different municipalities.

As an example Dallas has 150 miles of light rail however the transit system overall has much worse service compared to most smaller bus only Canadian systems.

Portland may have more rail than the city of Vancouver but the buses make the overall service in Vancouver better than in Portland. I would put the city of San Francisco and the city of Vancouver about equal for service within the municipal boarders even though San Francisco has more rail. When you actually look at the entire region of the Bay Area and Metro Vancouver I would argue that Metro Vancouver is better served overall though.

[nname]

Originally Posted by a very long weekend

the trick is that vancouver's regional system is an unusual commuter/local hybrid with only a part of it actually in the city. these parts of the transit system are great, you can get from city hall to the waterfront very quickly, and from commercial drive to the waterfront quite quickly. but you only have these two lines, the system is mostly a commuter system that serves the outlying cities.

SF's system (i'm excluding BART except where it works in the city like skytrain does) is a local train network, as is portland's. on that straight city-to-city comparison between cities of similar population, like i said, those two lines in vancouver are great, and getting the third line down broadway will be enormously helpful, but the system up there doesn't yet have the coverage that a portland or SF does and it's certainly not "leagues beyond" them, even if the system up there is enviably 100% fully grade separated.

if you want to compare regional train systems, maybe portland could still work, denver too, and i'd still take those for sheer coverage.

as an aside, i'm also highly envious of how easy the governance structure up there makes it to build rapid transit. here, it's a titanic effort the involves winning serious funding from the feds, along with a 2/3 voter approval for sales tax increase and all sorts of nickel-and-diming along the way. and then we have to contend with our famous NIMBYs and their lawsuits, and a super inefficient/costly procurement and construction process that makes overruns totally inevitable. up there, it seems a lot simpler.

Its either people down there don't mind paying extra taxes, or don't care, or.. just they just hidden somewhere deep inside the budget.

Those light rail systems you showed may look good on a map, but they only carry a fraction of riders compared to here. Operating seems to be a nightmare, as it incur huge losses year after years... and... the tax payers are going to be on hook for those.

From the system you gave as example in the States (2013 Operating cost in USD):
San Francisco BART HR: 119M loss
San Francisco MUNI LR: 140M loss
Denver RTD LR: 29M loss
Portland MAX LR: 53M loss

In comparison, TransLink pays about 30M per year for capital contribution to Evergreen extension, and the line is expect to break even 2 years after the start of operation....

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by waves

Kevin Desmond spoke on CKNW today on the Steele and Drex show. He said that for Fraser Highway the question of Skytrain versus LRT was still an ongoing conversation and that "what's most important is performance. How do you get from Point A to Point B as quickly and as reliably as possible and how do you develop a transit facility that also helps grow communities."

If these are really the requirements, then "Skytrain" is the only sensible answer.