There hasn't been much talk about the trolleybusses in here so I thought I'd bring them up in their own post. Basically I've been thinking about what could be done to make the network fit into the overall system better, and in so doing (hopefully) ensure we don't have any questions about preserving trolleys next time new busses are needed. On the preservation theme, it also wouldn't hurt their prospects that a second order would be needed to do this, spreading the fleet age out a bit.
Anyway,
http://tinyurl.com/5pqby9 is what I've come up with. There are certainly other possibilities for conversion, but I really was trying to limit myself to building a better network, rather than recomending a general conversion of heavily used routes (not a bad idea, but not what I'm going for). The Stanley Park thing is just a conversion of the existing shuttle, and isn't included in my estimate of the route miles, it should probably not be paid for by Translink anyway (I would do it the same way I would the downtown streetcar, city built, city owned and city funded but contracted to Translink for operations). Really it just bugs me to have diesel buses running through the park when we have a wire connection already, and I HATE those faux streetcar bus things (even worse here in Toronto where Grey line runs the things along real streetcar lines *sigh*).
The only thing I'm not convinced of is the route across the Second Narrows (do people here think its possible to get wires onto the bridge?), but the connection up Willingdon seems important, and is hard to justify without going to Capilano, so I put it it. The whole thing comes to about 90km of new wire, plus about another 10 if you continue the quad wire on Hastings, so I suspect the infrastructure cost would only be around 100 million.
Aside from that, I would keep all the routes that get duplicated by SkyTrain extensions as local service (Cambie is already secure, so mostly this applies to Broadway with a U line), reconvert 41st to trolley operation (pretty obvious when you see the map, but not actually included since wires are still in place, and not going anywhere anytime soon) and run the B Lines with trolleys where possible (SFU and 41st, as well as UBC untill the SkyTrain line is built) Thoughts and comments?
PS, for anyone who missed the URL in all the text, here it is again:
http://maps.google.ca/maps/ms?hl=en&...8,0.11055&z=13