Transit Fantasies

[Migrant_Coconut]

Found it; there's also a Sun article from the 2011 census. Yup, most Langley workers are staying local or going to Surrey.

And if the Condon chucklebugs (Hepner, Fitch, zwei, et al) want to butt in with "but SkyTrain access means it's easier to skip Whalley and go to downtown/Burnaby instead!" Well, that says more about themselves and/or Whalley than it does SkyTrain; I'd want the shortest commute possible.

[dleung]

The point about Whalley being a metropolitan centre is well taken. Still, no reason for rural areas to get gold-plated transit. Why is Langley more important than South Surrey/White Rock? Same population, same distance (13km) from Fraser/152nd, both with a giant gap (5km) between the closest reasonable stations from each city. Why not serve both (and Cloverdale!) with commuter rail, with a connection at Newton? One rail-to-rail transfer to get to either Whalley or downtown isn't bad at all. It's not just about speed, but coverage.

The first 3 billion (excluding the UBC line - that should've been built yesterday):


Future Phases:

Originally Posted by scryer

Same exact thing was said about the Millennium line extension. Now we are seeing some excellent urban developments happen around Lougheed, Brentwood, Metrotown, and Gilmore stations. Actually there has been some murmurings about mixed-use hubs for Fleetwood around the 160th st station. It's not like developers haven't took notice.

...funding a Skytrain to approach downtown from Guildford would be a lot more expensive than funding a Skytrain extension down Fraser Hwy. The reason being is that throwing a Skytrain extension on 104th or 108th (to connect Guildford) will likely have to be tunneled driving up the expenses, and lowering how many voting areas would be affected.

Brentwood, Metrotown, etc are in the geographic centre of the metro, which means transit service must run through it whether or not it builds up. Same cannot be said for Fleetwood or Langley, unless we want more sprawl, which we don't! Also, I can't imagine anything other than elevated skytrain running along 104th or King George. The contexts there are less urban than North Road or Pinetree way.

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Already did the Abbotsford math above...

But you forgot South Surrey and Cloverdale lol, that's the whole reason for the WCE expansion idea

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by dleung

The point about Whalley being a metropolitan centre is well taken. Still, no reason for rural areas to get gold-plated transit. Why is Langley more important than South Surrey/White Rock? Same population, same distance (13km) from Fraser/152nd, both with a giant gap (5km) between the closest reasonable stations from each city. Why not serve both (and Cloverdale!) with commuter rail, with a connection at Newton? One rail-to-rail transfer to get to either Whalley or downtown isn't bad at all. It's not just about speed, but coverage.

Brentwood, Metrotown, etc are in the geographic centre of the metro, which means transit service must run through it whether or not it builds up. Same cannot be said for Fleetwood or Langley, unless we want more sprawl, which we don't! Also, I can't imagine anything other than elevated skytrain running along 104th or King George. The contexts there are less urban than North Road or Pinetree way.

But you forgot South Surrey and Cloverdale lol, that's the whole reason for the WCE expansion idea

1) If you look at just the SoF, it's a box with Scott Road Station in one corner and Langley in the other corner.
1A) Keeping all the density and rapid transit in one corner is what the COV did, and that's why we have so much traffic in the first place!
1B) In that light, you want to service as much of the box as possible with the $3B. Fleetwood may have less density now, but it's right in the middle; running a diagonal straight through the box and adding a bunch of little grid lines (frequent buses) covers everybody.
1C) You could run it to Newton and add a commuter line to Langley, but you're only covering two sides and a bit of the box, and one of those side's already covered by B-Lines. And then you don't get the bus grid because the middle is empty.

2) Cloverdale's covered in both plans. And both Fleetwood and Langley City are planning TOD well in advanced of construction, so they're set to grow bigger.
2A) By contrast, as long as White Rock keeps deciding to reject anything higher than three floors, trains would be wasted on them and all they really need is a RapidBus to Newton; they don't even like the trains that run there now! South Surrey's not much better. IMO both would be the epitome of gold-plated transit to remote areas.

[dleung]

White Rock is already more urban than anywhere in Surrey - I wouldn't let short-term politics take away from the fact that it's has a more transit-oriented form than anywhere else south of the Fraser. They don't like the current trains because they occupy a disruptive route across their entire waterfront.


I disagree that Cloverdale is "covered" by skytrain. The station at 184th surrounded by sunbelt sprawl and acreages is going to need a lot of parking. "Urban" Cloverdale is at the southern end of town, next to existing rail tracks, hence most of the bus routes between Langley and Surrey actually run east-west through there, far away from Fraser Highway. The latter is basically one express bus route, not what skytrain is built for. It's for this reason that we don't propose skytrain on highway 91 to Richmond even though it has tons of ridership as shown below. Instead you would lump those trips into an eventual rail line north of the Fraser to connect with more points within Vancouver/Burnaby even though it isn't as direct. The same should apply here with Cloverdale/Newton. The King George and 104th corridors are surely more worthy of 1-2km station intervals.



Of course, what this map really is saying is that none of these projects are remotely close to being as critical as the UBC subway, but that's already been beaten to death lol

[Bdawe]

What does this map represent?

[Migrant_Coconut]

I'd argue that White Rock's actions point less toward short-term politics and more toward an entire generation turning preservationist. Dunderave and Ambleside in West Van are technically transit-friendly, but nobody's running a train that way anytime soon.

By that logic, the Millennium should've stopped at Lougheed: between it and Brentwood is a whole lot of nothing.
TL can run a RapidBus from 168th Station to Cloverdale much easier than Newton Centre to Fleetwood - and since there's only two stations instead of eight (meaning coverage is even worse than a Langley SkyTrain), they'd be much more dependent on the buses.

TransLink's studied the interurban for the last ten years, and every time, nada. CP and SRY aren't even selling, so you either have to put up with hour-long delays or twin it for half a billion.

Again, you build for the city that's going to be there. If either UBC or the West Side were to get twice as big in twenty years, by all means, but until then, ridership between Macdonald and Sasamat is as "weak" as Langley.

https://sfb.nathanpachal.com/2019/01...-skytrain.html

Likewise, Surrey IS going to get twice as big, even though passenger traffic right now is even weaker than on 41st. And since pretty much all three corridors are equally busy, you might as well build the one that more or less covers the whole region.

[xd_1771]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

2A) By contrast, as long as White Rock keeps deciding to reject anything higher than three floors, trains would be wasted on them and all they really need is a RapidBus to Newton; they don't even like the trains that run there now! South Surrey's not much better. IMO both would be the epitome of gold-plated transit to remote areas.

White Rock's rejection of towers (more on the White Rock side of the border than the Surrey side) is definitely a thing right now. Emphasis on 'right now'.

I'm going to be brutally (and savagely) honest here but, a lot of the voices that are contributing to that opposition to higher buildings... I don't think they're going to be around anymore in 20, 30 years

A lot of the people who are going to be there in 20-30 years would probably appreciate good transit and good planning.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Again though, we could say the same for West Van; I'm still not expecting more than a RapidBus to either one.

[officedweller]

Good point about the diagonal route - that's how the Expo Line has served East Van and Burnaby so well.

White Rock is eventually planned as an extension of the Newton line, so it's on the agenda.

[dleung]

The Expo Line runs through the geographic center of the city, largely through traditional street grids amenable to walkable densification, so of course it works well. Look at the brand-new sunbelt sprawl and acreages surrounding every station between Fleetwood and Langley city - where's the densification potential that isn't greenfield or requires an expanded local bus network that will hit farmland at every turn? Like why are they planning to urbanize Anniedale??

The central problem with the Langley extension is that it's basically trying to kick the affordability issue down the road by enabling people to spread further away from the city, rather than face the NIMBYs with broad increases to density within the existing urbanized footprint. The alignment only benefits 60,000 people commuting within that corridor and the remote location precludes benefit from synergies with other lines.

I don't see it as a foregone conclusion that we have to sprawl out into the valley (paving over acreages is just as bad as building on ALR in my view), and have 45km subway rides to downtown (for scale, Toronto's furthest reaches of the subway is only 20km to downtown from Vaughan and eventually 25km from Richmond Hill). I want to build for the city that should be there; also - meeting future needs is cool, but current needs haven't even been meet in the part of the city that's already "there".

The UBC extension doesn't need Surrey-style growth rates to justify it - it already has the ridership base even without Cambie-level density along Broadway and a moderate build-out of the Jericho lands. It's main benefit to the region is to connect the rest of the metro to by far the biggest employment center that still isn't served by skytrain.

[Migrant_Coconut]

1) If anybody thinks people walk from Fraserview to the Expo, I've got bad news for them. Practically all successful metros depend on a feeder network of frequent buses.
1A) By chance, frequent bus service is possible for 2/3rds of the Langley route; it's mostly through suburbia, but so is most of Vancouver's.

2) Densification in Vancouver and in Surrey can be done at the same time. Nothing stops it.
2A) Yet if you turn all of Vancouver into apartments, does that mean Surrey stops growing? Of course not. So we should make sure Surrey has good transit & TOD and fewer drivers.
2B) Synergy is for future buses; a RapidBus or FTN down 88th, 96th, 152nd or 200th would harmonize very well with the Langley extension and the R1/R6. Without the SkyTrain, you can't justify any of those, and connectivity suffers accordingly.
2C) If there's a better plan that gives more than 60k riders (or the many other indirect benefits), nobody's made it yet.

3) (Once again) almost all SoF commuters stay SoF. The idea that they'll all suddenly find better jobs and amenities NoF and waste an extra hour going there instead is highly unobjective.

4) SkyTrains are just as much about the in-between as the end point. For example, Central Broadway, Commercial Drive, Metrotown, or Oakridge.
4A) Not even Greektown is enough in-between for the UBC extension; half the 99 gets off east of Arbutus (i.e. the B-Line is technically "good enough" for at least another ten years), and so it's not more of a priority than Langley.
4B) And since we've already bought one SkyTrain for Broadway, it's understandable that somebody else wants a turn.

[scryer]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

3) (Once again) almost all SoF commuters stay SoF. The idea that they'll all suddenly find better jobs and amenities NoF and waste an extra hour going there instead is highly unobjective.

I just want to add on that the communities SoF have a lot more geographical space to work with when it comes developing their own employment centres. Downtown Vancouver and Broadway (both BC's largest employment centres) can really only build taller at this point to provide enough space to attract tenants. Whereas in Surrey and Langley, they actually have more geographical space to, per say, meet the needs of employers that want large floor plates for example; or they would probably be in a position to build taller than Vancouver because of the lack of view cones.

I'm not suggesting that the anchored employment centres of Downtown Vancouver and Broadway (I mean, look no further than the Post) are going away anytime soon but the municipalities SoF have more freedom and less red tape to pull off larger scale employment projects.

So more employment opportunities and amenities are certainly on the horizon for SoF municipalities.

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

4B) And since we've already bought one SkyTrain for Broadway, it's understandable that somebody else wants a turn.

And this is where the politics come into play that I have been mentioning since the jump. Surrey and Langley have been paying for Translink services as part of the Lower Mainland and now that they are aiming to increase their population and employment centres, they are now rightfully demanding that Translink and the province provides them transit services akin to what Burnaby, Richmond, Vancouver, Coquitlam, and Port Moody have received (Skytrain).

Otherwise, they are going to vote the party out for not delivering on what they promised.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by dleung

The Expo Line runs through the geographic center of the city, largely through traditional street grids amenable to walkable densification, so of course it works well. Look at the brand-new sunbelt sprawl and acreages surrounding every station between Fleetwood and Langley city - where's the densification potential that isn't greenfield or requires an expanded local bus network that will hit farmland at every turn? Like why are they planning to urbanize Anniedale??

The central problem with the Langley extension is that it's basically trying to kick the affordability issue down the road by enabling people to spread further away from the city, rather than face the NIMBYs with broad increases to density within the existing urbanized footprint. The alignment only benefits 60,000 people commuting within that corridor and the remote location precludes benefit from synergies with other lines.

I don't see it as a foregone conclusion that we have to sprawl out into the valley (paving over acreages is just as bad as building on ALR in my view), and have 45km subway rides to downtown (for scale, Toronto's furthest reaches of the subway is only 20km to downtown from Vaughan and eventually 25km from Richmond Hill). I want to build for the city that should be there; also - meeting future needs is cool, but current needs haven't even been meet in the part of the city that's already "there".

The UBC extension doesn't need Surrey-style growth rates to justify it - it already has the ridership base even without Cambie-level density along Broadway and a moderate build-out of the Jericho lands. It's main benefit to the region is to connect the rest of the metro to by far the biggest employment center that still isn't served by skytrain.

And this is why a WCE expansion should be looked at. If it is more than 1km of a gap, then it begins to make sense to use existing ROWs for WCE. Long gaps on farmland does not make sense for Skytrain.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by scryer

And this is where the politics come into play that I have been mentioning since the jump. Surrey and Langley have been paying for Translink services as part of the Lower Mainland and now that they are aiming to increase their population and employment centres, they are now rightfully demanding that Translink and the province provides them transit services akin to what Burnaby, Richmond, Vancouver, Coquitlam, and Port Moody have received (Skytrain).

Otherwise, they are going to vote the party out for not delivering on what they promised.

And they've lost the taxi cartel vote since Uber and Lyft are here anyway. So if they really are diverting SkyTrain money to a hospital, it'd better be a good one.

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

And this is why a WCE expansion should be looked at. If it is more than 1km of a gap, then it begins to make sense to use existing ROWs for WCE. Long gaps on farmland does not make sense for Skytrain.

Sure, if you can make the WCE stop every 1km once it clears the farmland and hits Newton or Cloverdale, and divert to Whalley. Long gaps between stations and bypassed downtowns do not make sense for growing urban areas.

[cganuelas1995]

Would have been great if the UBC extension was built in tandem with the Canada Line.

[officedweller]

The main problem with WCE expansion is frequency.
If it doesn't service a typical office core, you may not have a passenger base reliant on the 9-5 work day for whom rush hours trains are sufficient.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by officedweller

The main problem with WCE expansion is frequency.
If it doesn't service a typical office core, you may not have a passenger base reliant on the 9-5 work day for whom rush hours trains are sufficient.

What does it serve? What would need to be fixed?

[Tvisforme]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Sure, if you can make the WCE stop every 1km once it clears the farmland and hits Newton or Cloverdale, and divert to Whalley. Long gaps between stations and bypassed downtowns do not make sense for growing urban areas.

Wouldn't the stop-start be an issue as well? As I understand it, trains like the WCE take significantly longer to get up to and slow down from speed for stations, whereas a system like SkyTrain is designed for more rapid changes of velocity.

[officedweller]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

What does it serve? What would need to be fixed?

WCE commuter trains run only 4 or 5 trains in morning rush hour at 30 min intervals and 4 or 5 trains in the afternoon rush hour at 30 min intervals.
that won't serve a lot of peoples' needs.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Yeah, any urban train that doesn't run at least every 15 minutes (and all-day) is dead on arrival.

Originally Posted by Tvisforme

Wouldn't the stop-start be an issue as well? As I understand it, trains like the WCE take significantly longer to get up to and slow down from speed for stations, whereas a system like SkyTrain is designed for more rapid changes of velocity.

Indeed. But that's what it'll take to have an S-Bahn fill in for a U-Bahn... instead of just sucking it up and buying the U-Bahn.