The Evergreen line limbo should be a wake-up call for the City of Vancouver.
Tomorrow, Vancouver’s Special Standing Committee of Council on Planning and Environment will be presented with a staff policy report outlining the suggested terms of engagement for TransLink’s UBC Line Rapid Transit Study.
The study, which is a partnered project between Translink, the City of Vancouver, UBC, the University Endowment Lands, and Metro Vancouver, will identify a wide range of rapid transit options for the Broadway corridor including a preferred route, technology(ies), and general station locations.
Here is what Geoff Meggs told News 1130 about how such a line would already be able pay for itself:
“There already are more people riding on buses, jammed on buses, hanging on straps on buses, watching buses drive by them, than we need to justify the line.”
The evidence to support such claims is concrete and real, and Meggs is doing his job in advocating for Vancouver’s transit needs first and foremost. However, with the spectre of the yet-to-be-started Evergreen Line hanging over Translink and their next steps towards progressing forward on regional transportation, these plans for the city seem extremely premature.
Most transit watchers in this region are at least vaguely familiar with the political hot potato that is the Evergreen Line – a project that was originally promoted as the second phase of the Millenium Line in the late 1990s. And in spite of the construction of a third incomplete platform at Lougheed Town Centre station, the project was cancelled following a change in provincial government due to rising costs. The Canada Line, which was a major component of the Vancouver 2010 bid for the Olympics, also displaced the Evergreen line in terms of priority and funding.
Since then, Translink has produced study after study of possible options on how to best upgrade links between Coquitlam and the rest of the Skytrain system. In 2006, these studies morphed into a plan for a tram line – the Evergreen Light Rail Transit (LRT) project. Then, on February 1, 2008, the TransLink revised plans and changed their minds, swithing gears towards Advanced Light Rapid Transit (ALRT), which is the technology currently used by SkyTrain.
Proposed start date? Late 2010. Expected completion date? 2014…supposedly.
However, one only needs to look to Frances Bula’s article in today’s Globe and Mail about the future of Translink, and more specifically the comments of action CEO Ian Jarvis, to understand how precarious this kind of assertion is at this point:
“We’ve put a lot of service out there in the last few years: the Canada Line, an expansion of cars in the existing line, Golden Ears Bridge, a 40-per-cent increase in buses. With that, and the economy, that requires us to take a bit of a breather.”
The state of the Evergreen Line’s funding is unusual in that there is already $800-million in federal and provincial commitments, but absolutely no figures, time frames or ideas on if, how and when Translink’s portion of the total is going to come to fruition.
So, with all of this ambiguity in what is still being called one of Translink’s “top priorities,” I can be forgiven for my skepticism about the Broadway corridor’s rapid transit future.
Mel Lehan also makes a valid point in comments made to the Georgia Straight when he questions the logic behind sticking to the antiquated and over expensive sky train system, which has been surpassed across the Globe by a number of different technologies:
“Now that they’ve made all the phony promises and reality sets in, they don’t have the money to build this. It’s such a waste, because if Patrick Condon is right, we could have trams throughout the entire Lower Mainland at the same cost it would be for a 12-kilometre Broadway line.”
As pointed out by transportation economist and regional planner Stephen Rees, LRT is much cheaper than the skytrain system, and has far less impact on the bottom line, the environment and the business community.
Regardless, with the political implications associated with such cost and regional battles (check out the comments from Ray Hudson from the Surrey Board Trade in the abovel-linked News 1130 article), the Broadway line is currently little more than a pipe dream.
Broadway businesses might be weary of facing the same fate that befell Cambie Street businesses, but I would say they could very well have a decade worth of different politicians and officials to complain to before that fear becomes a reality.
Premature planning? I think not. You’re assuming the Evergreen Line funding issue won’t be figure out for years. Perhaps I’m simply more optimistic, but I suspect as the Province and TransLink renegotiate their rules of engagement this fall, the Evergreen Line money will be found and construction will begin in earnest. Campbell and Bond have promised out the wazoo that the line will get built and, being in the 11th hour now, a deal will surely be struck soon.
So, if the Evergreen Line does actually start construction by next year, then no, beginning planning now for the UBC Line is not at all premature. In fact, it’s simply a smart decision, allowing that route to be built even quicker in due course.
Anything but SkyTrain along Broadway would be absurd. We have a half built system with the Millennium Line. Like it or not, it is SkyTrain, and the Millennium Line’s western extension, the Evergreen Line, will be as well. With 2/3 of the Broadway/Lougheed corridor in SkyTrain, it makes absolutely no sense to force a transfer at Commercial Drive onto a different system. We are currently doing that with the B-Line!
Besides, unlike in other areas of the region, Light Rail along Broadway would be a disaster. We would spend hundreds of millions of dollars for what? There would be no significant decrease in time, only a minor increase in capacity, and still stuck with a system transfer. Considering it’s the second busiest corridor in the region, Broadway needs real rapid transit, and in this situation, that will only come in the form of a SkyTrain extension.
Two items which may prove an interesting read, The fist is a letter sent by Gerald Fox, a very well respected transit consultant who has worked on most new transit systems in the USA, regarding the Evergreen Line business case.
http://railforthevalley.wordpress.com/2008/12/26/can-translinks-business-cases-be-trusted/
The second is about LRT/tram on Broadway. Unlike the scare tactics used by the SkyTrain Lobby, LRT works very well and would reduce the cost of transit on Broadway, while at the same time greatly improving service.
http://railforthevalley.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/to-ubc-from-bcit-and-picinics-in-the-park-by-tram-the-light-rail-committees-broadway-light-rail-project/
As how a LRT/tramway would look, the following are views of 21st century LRT/tram lines:
http://railforthevalley.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/how-green-is-my-rapid-transit/
As a matter of record, in the past 3 decades only 7 SkyTrain type systems have been built, yet during the same period over 136 new LRT lines have been built and a further 50 are under construction.
Did you know that LRT actually has a higher theoretical capacity than SkyTrain?
SkyTrain along Broadway would bankrupt TransLink and force South of the Fraser cities to secede from TransLink, with the possibility leaving Vancouver taxpayers to pay the massive bills for a metro.
Paul – Expo line travelers would still have to transfer at Broadway/Commercial so the point is moot.
Furthermore, from my travels on the B-Line I notice that many travellers only travel 1 or 2 stops. Many people travelling through to UBC, I suspect, take other services like the #84 because they aren’t as packed. So I think comfort rather than speed will be more effective in attracting new riders along this route.
So a light rail system is far superior due to cost and flexibility. Extending and enhancing a light-rail system only costs hundreds of millions of dollars, rather than BILLIONS of dollars for SkyTrain.
I believe the best solution is a light rail line with grade seperation at some strategic points (such as maybe an underground Vancouver Hospital station). Combine this with possibly an extension of the M-Line to Cambie street but NO FURTHER.
The area around the current Olympic Village station could be rebuilt as a transit hub, a bit like Waterfront station, with bus, skytrain, Canada Line and light rail connections. There is plenty of space there if they get rid of the car park or build on top of it.
Just one more point – one of the major bottlenecks of the B-Line service is the time it take for passengers to load and unload. There are only three small exits on each bus and people have to push past each other along narrow aisles. With a modern light rail system, load and unloading would be much quicker which would improve both the speed and reliability of the system. It would never but as fast a SkyTrain but one has to wonder if speed is really worth the multi-billion dollar price tag.
Chris say “Expo line travelers would still have to transfer at Broadway/Commercial so the point is moot.”
As said Paul, Extension of the Millenium line West suppresses a transfer for a significant share of user, sure not the one using the expo line, but it could be an improvement on the existing situation, so I am not sure in what aspect the point is “moot”,
regarding the loading/unloading time: it is mostly due to the bus overcrowding…and typical choice to have 3 doors bended bus when in Europe, you frequently see 4 doors bended bus
Now, for a similarly crowded LRT or whatever system, you could face the same issue.
Speed is not the single factor skytrain type solution improve over other solution
there is also capacity, reliability, connectivity (transfer minimization)….