Quote:
Originally Posted by Sheba
Why does it keep coming up that any rail line *must* go to downtown Van? Surrey Central is becoming the South of Fraser downtown - rail lines could easily terminate there instead. Downtown Van is not the be all and end all.  |
because existing rail lines don't go to Surrey Central. Nor do good rights of way. Rail lines do go downtown, and downtown is, more than anywhere else, the sort of place that lots of people want to go and lots of people don't really want to drive to.
I think we should get the idea of a West-Coast-Express-style service out of our heads. There are no routes that make sense left that don't require a considerable investment, and it's simply not worth a whole lot of investment to have peak-oriented, mono-directional, infrequent stop, heavy locomotive-hauled trains.
If we're talking then about something that's going to require any serious investment, we should be talking about small multiple-unit trains that go both ways, all day, provided rapid transit service over railways for cheaper than alternatives rather than as a commuter shuttle. This is not the sort of service that runs between Waterfront and Mission.
I think that there are two places where this sort of service *could* make sense with existing rights of way - the former V&LI interurban between New Westminster and Marpole. This line has few remaining freight customers, is fairly straight (thus can support fast speeds), serves development sites like the River District and better connects regional town centers, providing a more direct route between Coquitlam, Surrey, and New Westminster with Richmond by Skytrain connection. Freight could probably be handled at night or over specified times, and rolling stock could be done for cheap-ish with off-the-shelf DMU like the Trillium Line or eBart or at a higher investment (and assumed better frequency and lower operating costs) with electrified EMU or LRVs.
At the inflation-adjusted per kilometer cost of the Trillium Line in Ottawa, such a project would cost about $60 million, though it might be necessary to construct extra track east of Queensborough Bridge in order to bypass the freight yard, which would drive up costs.
This would plug a gap in our regional transit system, in a similar way that the Lougheed Branch of the Expo Line provides cross-regional connectivity, enable more town centre-town centre travel, and provided the travel times on the line of a century ago, would be considerably faster and more reliable than equivalent bus service (25 minutes New West-Marpole), and could be bundled with service over Arbutus and through to Port Coquitlam if such was ever desired.
I think there's actually less of a case for the Fraser Valley Line, however, let's look into it. I don't think you would ever want to go beyond Langley City. The line starts being out in the middle of nowhere and less direct for further destinations, to start. Assuming a new Fraser Bridge is out of the cards, that terminates us at Scott Road, which will require a bit of new right of way to be a convenient connection. This skips Surrey Central, but Surrey Central is of far more paper importance than actual importance (fun fact, Langley City has more jobs) and the connection at Scott Road or to the express bus at Newton enable access, while also enabling access to New Westminster, Metrotown, etc. You hit central areas on Scott Road, Newton, Cloverdale, and Langley City all in a direct-enough line.
To be most useful, you'd probably want to rebuild the line through Cloverdale, rather than the bypass and rebuild the old right of way into Langley City which appears to include a trail now. This might necessitate a short stretch of street running, but it's a not unreasonable trade off. You could build a new terminus in the Army-Navy parking lot. If this wasn't desired, you could use the Langley Bypass and build a terminal on one of the industrial spurs to gain access to the commercial area.
Now, Fraser Highway rapid transit is probably going to be built in some form. If it's the skytrain, I would be quite willing to believe that there just wouldn't be enough overhead traffic to make the interurban route viable, but remember the interurban hits Cloverdale, Newton, and Scott road while Fraser Highway doesn't. I suspect an at-grade LRT line on Fraser would be much less competition, but it still has a straighter route through more immediately residential areas.
At Trillium-line costs, that'd run about $90, though the necessary additional track construction would likely cost more than New West - Marpole. The point isn't that these lines would generate hundreds of thousands of riders, but that you could potentially generate respectable ridership for a given capital cost.
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