The only reason I support a grade-separated system for Newton is that it seems to have a ridership to support such system in long term according to
the stat they posted and a bit of calculation of mine (*WARNING* this is just a very very rough estimate as I got the distance of line from my head and I round to the nearest 500 riders, but the ridership stat and estimate come directly from Translink and the RTM document by PTV America - nothing is made up by me):
Broadway Line by 2021: 13000 riders/km
Evergreen Line by 2021: 6500 riders/km
Canada Line by 2031: 7500 riders/km
Newton Line by 2021: 7000 riders/km
Newton Line by 2041: 12500 riders/km
Langley Line by 2041: 7500 riders/km
Expo Line by 2021: 10000 riders/km
Millennium Shuttle Line by 2021: 5500 riders/km
Millennium-Evergreen Line by 2021: 8000 riders/km
(note: this number is from the from the RTM document assuming a higher ridership compare to Translink's estimate I've posted above. But with Canada Line, Translink underestimated the 2010 ridership by 16,000, while the RTM overestimated by a mere 600 daily riders. So, just don't throw this estimate out completely
)
Expo Line as a whole right now: 8500 riders/km
Millennium Line as a whole: 3000 riders/km
Canada Line as a whole: 6000 riders/km
99 B-Line as a whole: 3500 riders/km
Although this is a bad stat for comparison as a Newton Line rider is most likely an Expo Line rider and might also be a Broadway Line rider. Also a person who ride the segment end-to-end count the same as a rider who just ride for 1 station, but the former takes up more capacity. So it definitely favor short lines as an extension to the current line, but this is all we got right now (passenger-km/km is actually a better stat, but we don't know how long each of the potential rider would ride - at least they don't tell you). However, you see,
if their estimate are correct, then by 2041 (and even 2021 by some degree), the Newton Lines would be pretty much on par with most lines that are currently in service right now.
Now doing the same with the LRT stat and compare to C-Train (since their stat is the easiest to get):
Surrey L-Line LRT by 2041: 5500 riders/km
C-Train South Line (busiest): 6500 riders/km
C-Train NW Line (least busiest): 5000 riders/km
C-Train West Line (new): 5000 riders/km for high-end estimate
So seeing the potential there? If you build it as a LRT, it would have a LRT-like ridership; if you build it as a grade-separated light-metro, then it would get a light-metro-like ridership. I just don't want to see the ridership potential for such route to gone wasted by throwing out RRT options so quickly. I'd say start a BRT or a B-Line and see how we're going to proceed from there. Using the Newton line as a lab rat isn't really a good idea as
their stat shows that the Newton line is actually the one that have better potential, at least up to 2041.
Now, if I do a rider per construction cost, RRT actually comes out to be a better option (65k/rider for NT-SkyTrain vs 85k/rider for L-LRT)...... Again, this compare holds
if their ridership estimate and cost estimate of 80M/km is correct - its all their stat, I didn't make up anything on my own. It still seems like most people here believe that the L line can be done with just 30M/km, so of course the LRT would be a much better option. Since I know nothing about construction, I pulled out the stat from
all recent and near-future Canadian LRT construction and show that none of them are actually below 80M/km. And by doing so, I got accused to being the zwei of skytrain by picking out the better stat (and yes, a direct comparison to zwei is very offending!). Anyways, if no one want to believe this, then I have nothing else to say here.