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Old Posted Sep 14, 2016, 5:36 PM
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SFUVancouver SFUVancouver is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Hamilton
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If it's of any interest to the forum, I created the preliminary feasibility report for the Burnaby Mountain Gondola. I was hired by SFU Community Trust in '07 and the project ran for about six months. I ran trip demand forecasts, financial analysis of 'status quo' and 'improved bus' service options and then did an alternative technology evaluation that arrived at a bi-cable ropeway system as being optimal for SFU 145-replacement scenario, which benefits from an extraordinarily fortuitous corridor from Production Way-SFU station up the mountain to a location immediately below the SFU Univercity Plaza. It would only cross over half a dozen or so townhouses and otherwise spend the entire corridor over public rights of way and property.

As I dug deeper and ran the numbers (and consulted with the Doppelmayr Garaventa rep for our region) I recall being bowled over by the level of service that was possible and just how favourably it compared to the 145: a 30 passenger cabin (same off-the-shelf models used by the Peak to Peak gondola at Whistler Blackcomb) departing every 34 seconds during peak periods and scalable to match diurnal peak demand bands. My order of magnitude capital cost estimate was within 5%-10% of the Bryce Tupper Engineering Consultants feasibility report numbers that SFU Community Trust commissioned following my work, and the net present value of the gondola system versus 145 bus service were competitive and saved just under $50 million dollars over the time frame of my analysis. The capex numbers in CH2MHill's business case analysis that Translink commissioned were a fair bit higher than mine and Bryce Tupper's, and this bumped the net present value for the gondola, but their opex and level of service numbers were very similar and the net present value numbers for bus service were pretty well bang on.

It was a fascinating assignment and as part of it I traveled to Portland to see the then-new OHSU-Trimet Aerial Tram. SFU Community Trust had talked about the Gondola idea for some time and wanted to do a first pass at actually researching options and modelling levels of service and running a preliminary financial analysis. I was pretty crushed when the CH2MHILL report threw cold water on what looked like a slam-dunk business case for a gondola versus the 145. I also think that the whole thing is a perfect project for a Canada Line-style design-(co)finance-build-operate-maintain P3 concessionaire agreement. The higher capital cost assumption in the CH2MHILL work are worth revisiting, in my opinion, and would benefit from far clearer project definition, technical analysis, and tender competition.
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Last edited by SFUVancouver; Apr 17, 2017 at 7:23 PM.
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