Surrey Langley Skytrain - Expo Line Extension | Proposed

[logan5]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

We've had driverless technology for trains in segregated rapid transit systems for decades, yet how many subway systems out there still have drivers? Even once driverless buses hit the streets, their adoption will take decades.

Volvos road train technology is far simpler than Google car. All the bus has to do is follow a lead vehicle. It works and it's perfect for brt. Volvo is one of the largest bus manufacturers in the world by the way.

[Kisai]

Originally Posted by Jebby

LRT will employ 25,000 people!

Building anything creates jobs. I can't believe Surrey is being so dishonest with that silly presentation.

Like optimistically, I hope we get to see the bids and Surrey has to pay for the L segment itself if the province won't intervene, and the Province forces the Surrey-Langley to be built as skytrain or the funding for it gets pulled entirely.

This is the downside of P3's. The cheapest bidder wins. So you can be sure that there will be plenty of missing level-crossing safety equipment that the city will be on the hook for. And once a few people get killed by it during the first month of it opening, there will be calls to make it safer that will get blamed on Translink instead of the City of Surrey for allowing the corners to be cut in the first place.

I don't want to see taxpayers on the hook for this boondoggle.

[BCPhil]

• Video Link

The problem with the video is it wants to turn King George and 104 into a pedestrian paradise.

King George and 104 are THE roads through the city. Without the roads handling the capacity they do now, the city is fucked (there is no better word to describe it). Hell, it is being pushed to it's breaking point at times right now.

So either, LRT will fuck over the people of the city who don't live close enough to walk to LRT (and noone lives on King George or 104, which is why it is the perfect place for a highway) or the future it depicts is an outright lie.

Look at Calgary. LRT actually works great there. But please, name one single pedestrian neighborhood aligned with the LRT line. Just one, please. Crow Child Trail is not a pedestrian street. Nor is 17 Ave SW. Neither is 36 St NE. MacLeod Trail? HA!

Edmonton? It passes through brownfield industrial lands in the NE and along some sudo highways in the South. The new NE line cost $665 million (at least) for 3.3km of track. That is $201 million/km!

How about the LRT utopia of Portland. It's amazingly cool downtown. But downtown Portland (and the other downtowns of LRT) wasn't shaped by LRT. The pedestrian grids of downtowns have existed for a century. Leave downtown and it just passes through sprawl alongside freeways or major (completely unwalkable) boulevards.

The only exception might be Interstate Ave on the Yellow line in Portland. They traffic calmed a major street and a lot of businesses are located along it (nothing like they envision for Surrey though, it's kind of run down shit). However, they were able to do that because the I-5 is a block away.

So if the politicians of Surrey are so enamored with LRT in Portland (even travelling there to study it) we should follow their lead: Build a new freeway with LRT beside it, or build LRT on a road that is a block away from a freeway.

The future shown in the video is complete fiction. No where has that happened around an LRT line. Especially in a city the size of Surrey that is not an already established downtown core of a major metropolitan area.

Please, someone show me the error of my ways. Where has a city like Surrey, built an LRT network like Surrey proposes, and it turned out like how Surrey envisions? Please.

[st7860]

It's nice that surrey may get more rail transit but the lrt headways are kind of long ....

[trofirhen]

http://www.lrta.org/mag/articles/images/art0202a.jpg

In Paris, tramways (or LRT, as we call it) are well used, and new lines are being built or planned all the time.
The key thing seems to be able to find routes with as few intersection crossings as possible.
This line,for example, runs along the west slope of the Paris basin, and has almost no street crossings. It gets you there pretty fast.
Don't know if the same configuration type can be found in Surrey or area, though. Could anything in Surrey be figured out to minimize crossing stops, like maybe
dipping into shallow tunnels here and there? Other cities have done that (êx: Calgary) and it seems to speed things up.

[Sheba]

Not in Surrey. Maybe one along the Trans Canada just outside Surrey, from Carvolth Exchange (202nd St in Langley) down to McCallum Rd in Abbotsford - I'm guessing the open grassy space down the middle would be wide enough for rail. There aren't many cross streets and most of them are already overpasses, so at most they'd only need to dig down for clearance at those points, and build some kind of crossing at a few spots.

[GlassCity]

Rail along freeways is a huge waste of money. Seeing as there aren't any intersections anyway, buses would be exactly as fast as light rail would, and cost much much less. Give it it's own lanes and the level of service is exactly the same. The whole point of rapid transit is to make dense corridors easier to travel on. There is no incentive to switch to transit if it won't improve your speed, such as on a highway.

As far as Surrey goes, as nice as traffic calming is, LRT would affect traffic enormously, which is just another reason to support SkyTrain instead..

[Zassk]

Originally Posted by trofirhen

The key thing seems to be able to find routes with as few intersection crossings as possible.
This line,for example, runs along the west slope of the Paris basin, and has almost no street crossings. It gets you there pretty fast.
Don't know if the same configuration type can be found in Surrey or area, though. Could anything in Surrey be figured out to minimize crossing stops, like maybe
dipping into shallow tunnels here and there? Other cities have done that (êx: Calgary) and it seems to speed things up.

What about the various power line rights-of-way? One of them goes right past King George Station, and there are various such rights-of-way crisscrossing Surrey. Anyone know more about them? Could you run an efficient rail line along one or two of them?

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

Rail along freeways is a huge waste of money. Seeing as there aren't any intersections anyway, buses would be exactly as fast as light rail would, and cost much much less. Give it it's own lanes and the level of service is exactly the same. The whole point of rapid transit is to make dense corridors easier to travel on. There is no incentive to switch to transit if it won't improve your speed, such as on a highway.

As far as Surrey goes, as nice as traffic calming is, LRT would affect traffic enormously, which is just another reason to support SkyTrain instead..

I didn't say it was practical - just that that's the only place I could see where it could physically be shoehorned in.

I think Surrey needs to do some road work (at least some of which they're waiting on developers to do) to move the traffic that's there, and then get some more buses on those roads. Without somewhat frequent service on a grid (like in CoV) people are going to drive instead of taking transit, no matter what form it takes.

[ClaytonA]

Originally Posted by Kisai

...

This is the downside of P3's. The cheapest bidder wins. So you can be sure that there will be plenty of missing level-crossing safety equipment that the city will be on the hook for. And once a few people get killed by it during the first month of it opening, there will be calls to make it safer that will get blamed on Translink instead of the City of Surrey for allowing the corners to be cut in the first place.

I don't want to see taxpayers on the hook for this boondoggle.

http://bikeportland.org/2015/09/29/t...osition-163836

I noticed during the Calgary transit tour of Vancouver-Seattle-Portland also they were posting "we should do this" pictures on twitter about just this, and now look. People get what they pay for.

Meanwhile, below the link in the above article to the value engineering, in the comments;

Any comment from TriMet on why they will not use common railroad crossing gates as found all around the world?

... A little searching suggests railroad gates cost around $150-200K each. These two crossings, three streets, need 12 such gates for cost of $2.4M (high end).

[Reecemartin]

Hey guys I just came here from the Metro Vancouver transit discussion what is the general consensus currently on when light rail might be announced

[Kisai]

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

Hey guys I just came here from the Metro Vancouver transit discussion what is the general consensus currently on when light rail might be announced

Hopefully never.

As I said on the previous page: Daryl has a newer video about the downsides.
• Video Link

[idunno]

Oh my god, what a great video! Darryl's killing it.

[logicbomb]

Daryl, an individual who hasn't even graduated from a post-secondary school has more knowledge and common sense than those engineers with 20+ years of experience.

It's obvious this is solely to appease local investors and stakeholders. You know, those lucrative contracts will surely give a few employees/civil servants a nice kickback. I know for a fact that Paul Lee is a puppet now- all common sense is gone with him nowadays.

"The key is to forcing people out of the vehicle, and we will do this by reducing the number of lanes and adding street parking along many arterial roads...People will grow incredibly frustrated and ultimately use the LRT."

SURE PAUL. Sure.

[WarrenC12]

The Geoff Meggs approach... on steriods.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

Rail along freeways is a huge waste of money. Seeing as there aren't any intersections anyway, buses would be exactly as fast as light rail would, and cost much much less. Give it it's own lanes and the level of service is exactly the same. The whole point of rapid transit is to make dense corridors easier to travel on. There is no incentive to switch to transit if it won't improve your speed, such as on a highway.

As far as Surrey goes, as nice as traffic calming is, LRT would affect traffic enormously, which is just another reason to support SkyTrain instead..

It depends on the situation.

I'm against Surrey's LRT plan, because the rosy depiction it paints is an outright lie and the desired goals will never be achieved, but I do think LRT has its places.

If you are building a freeway, and dedicating lanes on it to transit, the cost difference between laying tracks and paving 2 lanes with shoulders and barriers isn't a huge difference once you've set up the land. It costs more yes, but the operation costs make up for it if you run a single 3 unit electrified train instead of 6 or 7 diesel buses.

We here are used to rapid transit meaning a 3 minute wait. But LRT works well as Mass Transit. It's affordable when you have long trains replacing many buses, even if passengers have to wait.

And in rush hour, where many cities have gridlock along their freeways, LRT along the freeway flies by waiting cars.

And usually the longer the LRT line the better the returns. Replacing a long drive with a comfortable single seat LRT trip attracts a lot of riders.

From Clackamas in Portland to Pioneer Sq in rush hour it can take up to 40 minutes to drive the 22km; LRT takes 44. Not bad.

In Surrey, what's the point? Newton to City Center is 6 god damn KM. It's a pathetic 10 minute drive.

The average commute from the Newton area right now is local bus -> bus (96B) -> Skytrain (or local bus -> Skytrain if you are lucky to be on a route that meanders to City Center as well as Newton). With LRT it's local bus -> LRT -> Skytrain. What's the point?

It's just a glorified people mover. It's like an airport, and Newton is terminal B.

[Gordon]

Does Surrey have plans for operating costs, or are they planning to have Translink fund that?

[trofirhen]

All it takes is a look at situations like these to show that LRT isn't worth it, and that grade-separated is the only real way.

Houston
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwcYcedLxZc

Seattle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZWLR9ZNXyI

Phoenix
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAWat6h5GD8

[Klazu]

Originally Posted by trofirhen

All it takes is a look at situations like these to show that LRT isn't worth it, and that grade-separated is the only real way.

Houston
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwcYcedLxZc

Well Houston drivers are interesting in many ways. I didn't have any problems watching out for the big bad LRT when I was in there. But yeah, case in point on what's the advantage of grade-separated.

[Bdawe]

I'm happy that Surrey is even willing to consider taking space away from motorists. In so far as they envision themselves as anything more than a bedroom community, the demand for travel is one that cannot be cheaply or efficiently met by car. Repurposing already existing space to higher volume modes enables a much higher intensity of use for the whole corridor and will help ensure that transit projects have much higher economic return.

But they should just give that dedicated space to a bus. Would be much cheaper. You could even electrify that bus (and a bunch of other routes in Surrey, for funsies) for equal measure of green-ness