[mr.x]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

This has been a very healthy couple of days for the Canada Line and the future of SkyTrain. By that I mean that once the Vancouver Sun says something is true, in this case that the SkyTrain Canada Line is already packed and a runaway success, then a very large part of the city's political and business decision makers, plus Mrs John and Jane average suburban British Columbian, accept what has been said as fact. Like it or hate it, Pacific Press is the news outlet of record for our province. Now Translink has been on the defensive and in 24 hours it has released more details about the concessionaire agreement than has come to light in the past five years.

Now the collective 'we' know the number of trains that the concessionaire agreement allows to be put in service on a regular basis, we know that there is a fixed number of service hours that may be open to reallocation and we know that next summer two more trains enter regular service when the "initial service plan" transitions to "regular service plan". We also now know that 75% of all Canada Line traffic is within the municpal borders of the City of Vancouver, with the remaining 25% boarding and departing on Sea Island/YVR and in the City of Richmond. We know that 15% of all traffic is tied to the Richmond leg and 10% to the Sea Island leg. The Canada Line is overwhelmingly about serving the transit needs of the City of Vancouver and it is impossible to imagine that the exponentially more built up Broadway Corridor will be any less of a success from day one should SkyTrain be built there.

In the context of the Evergreen and UBC lines the conventional wisdom that has just fully been entrenched is that SkyTrain attracts ridership like it is going out of style and it does so quickly. The Evergreen line is still up in the air as far as I am concerned but the project just got a huge shot in the arm with this story and the UBC line is the big winner. The public wants fast, frequent, high capacity trains and Translink, and especially the Province, like success stories and are risk-adverse. With the success of each SkyTrain line the case for changing modes grows harder to make and, frankly, that our newest SkyTrain line can be a success without it requiring Bombardier technology is a good thing for our region. But can you imagine the stories that would have already hit the press if an at-grade LRT Canada Line routinely collided with vehicles at level crossings? What about the first time a senior was clipped when they slowly crossed the street in front of a train in Kerrisdale or an oblivious kid on his BMX with headphones in his ears that got hit because he blew through an intersection as a train approached?

Lastly, the drumbeat for more public information about the concessionaire agreement has begun and I hope that Pacific Press keep up the pressure. The packed SkyTrain is a good news story but there is a whole lot more beneath the surface and can you imagine what the reaction will be among the same political and business decision makers, plus Mrs John and Jane average suburban British Columbian, when they learn just how many decisions about the project and design of the system were forefitted by the government and handed over to InTransitBC? On this board we understand the trade-offs that were made, whether we agree with them or not, but the short stations and difficulty increasing capacity are issues that people are not going to take lightly once they learn more.

+1.


Incredible post.