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  #1041  
Old Posted Nov 12, 2011, 9:12 PM
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does anyone have the video they showed on global news? i missed it
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  #1042  
Old Posted Nov 13, 2011, 7:37 AM
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Originally Posted by SpongeG View Post
does anyone have the video they showed on global news? i missed it
Its not on their website yet?

http://www.globaltvbc.com/
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  #1043  
Old Posted Nov 13, 2011, 7:41 AM
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Originally Posted by go_leafs_go02 View Post
I agree.

Have LRT run on a L-shaped route from Guildford -->> City Centre --> Newton, with great connections to King George & Surrey Central. Keep Fraser Highway open for future skytrain expansion to the southeast towards Langley.
I agree as well, plus the factors that BCPhil has mentioned discouraging at grade on Fraser Highway (intersections, etc.)
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  #1044  
Old Posted Nov 15, 2011, 1:16 PM
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While not directly related to SoF rapid transit, I feel like this is probably the most appropriate place to post this. I think someone google bombed Rail for the Valley. See the second search result.


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  #1045  
Old Posted Nov 16, 2011, 11:29 PM
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From the Now:

Quote:
Light rail vs. SkyTrain expansion: Surrey transit a hot election issue
By Amy Reid, Surrey NOW
November 14, 2011

Read more: http://www.thenownewspaper.com/story...#ixzz1dujcSp7W

SURREY - Surrey and Langley mayors are commending Transportation Minister Blair Lekstrom for a letter indicating the provincial government is examining transportation issues south of the Fraser River.

In the letter, Lekstrom states, "We are examining the use of LRT (light rail train) as well as the potential for bus rapid transit and SkyTrain technology to provide frequent, fast and reliable service to communities south of the Fraser River."

He goes on to state that he is "committed to working with the City of Surrey and the communities south of the Fraser through this process."

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts is confident Lekstrom will create an effective transit network.

"We have been pushing for increased provincial spending on transit in our cities for quite some time, to level the funding inequity both cities are currently experiencing," Watts said in a press release.

"This letter is both an acknowledgement of our issues and a sign that transportation in Surrey will be improving in the future."

Watts said the city has been advocating for light rail transit because it's an "effective and efficient form of transportation. It will allow us to shape our communities and connect our town centres, while at the same time increasing economic development in our city."

Surrey is exploring three light rail transit routes: 104th Avenue between 152nd Street and City Centre; City Centre to Newton, with an extension to South Surrey; and Fraser Highway between City Centre and Langley.

But independent council candidate Paul Griffin said SkyTrain expansion is what the city needs.

Griffin said the mayor's ground rail proposal is second rate, adding that it will create "traffic chaos" and will inconvenience users.

"Calgary tried it," Griffin said of light rail during an all-candidates meeting on Nov. 8. "They had so many accidents and so much traffic congestion that they determined that every future kilometre on their system would be raised," he said.

"We've got to start thinking not only about the people in the public transit system, but about the people who aren't planning to take the public transit system," Griffin added. "They are going to be greatly affected by a ground rail system."

Griffin also said that creating light rail and SkyTrain would cost nearly the same, but light rail could have more operating costs.

But earlier this year, in an interview with the Now, Jeffrey Busby, manager of infrastructure planning for TransLink, said SkyTrain comes at a very high cost.

"Our SkyTrain options range from $900 million for just a short extension all the way up to almost $2 billion," he told the Now in May.

"In terms of the per-kilometre cost of rapid transit, you can get much more of LRT (light rail transit) or BRT (bus rapid transit) for the same level of investment."

Coun. Judy Villeneuve is pro light rail.

"I think it really helps develop a community," Villeneuve said during the Nov. 8 all-candidates meeting.

"Public transportation is so important. Many people in the Lower Mainland move to Surrey because housing is more affordable. But the problem is that there's a real lack of transportation. People can't get around," Villeneuve said.

"The truth is 76 per cent of the people in Surrey commute by car to get to work in Surrey or outside of Surrey. And it's becoming very expensive for people to do that."

Surrey Civic Coalition council hopeful Grant Rice said transit expansion needs to start with rapid bus service on King George Boulevard.

"And we have to do something immediately," Rice said during the all-candidates meeting, pointing out students at Queen Elizabeth Secondary school often wait for two or three buses to come by before they can get on.

"There has to be linkages between our communities because the businesses that are on King George Boulevard need to be serviced. They need to have people get off the bus and do their shopping locally here in Whalley."

© Copyright (c) Surrey Now
Read more: http://www.thenownewspaper.com/story...#ixzz1dujUsJSI
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  #1046  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2011, 12:51 AM
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Who's from Surrey? We need to start a lobby.
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  #1047  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2011, 3:04 AM
NucksFanInVan NucksFanInVan is offline
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I have to agree with the posters speaking out against extending SkyTrain south toward South Surrey / White Rock. In my mind there isn't another route in the region that is better suited to LRT than Guildford - cc - Newton. Implementing this route means that we have even more time to wait and see how Langley and Surrey develop. Consider the major transit projects on the horizon in priority order:

SoF BRT (completed ±2014)
Evergreen Line (completed 2016)
M-Line extension (this has to be next, at least to Arbutus) (2020?)
Guildford - Newton LRT (2025?)
Expo Line Platform Expansion (2030?)
Langley RT

We seem to barely scrape along one major project at a time. Proceeding with Guildford-Newton LRT should give us more than enough allow us to defer the question of whether SkyTrain or LRT is better for Surrey <-> Langley service. Time will tell.
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  #1048  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2011, 4:20 AM
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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.
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  #1049  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2011, 5:13 AM
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With all the politics surrounding these proposed projects, it's hard to know what to believe. The Transit City projects in Toronto had an estimated cost of 50 - 60 million/km for the at grade portion of their LRT lines. Those estimates, I believe, came with road widening, underground connections to the subway stations, and some property acquisition. Then those estimates shot up, Rob Ford was elected mayor (who favours subways) and then Transit City was cancelled.

I won't say I don't believe Translinks 80m/km estimate, but I am very skeptical.
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  #1050  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2011, 6:55 AM
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I've been lurking this thread lately and it seems that there is a lack of consistency in these numbers that are presented. For one, the costs.

The people in charge of conducting the Surrey Rapid Transit Study seem to be inflating the costs. What do they want to build on our corridors, a subway!? Costs of $100-200 million/kilometre more closely describe implementation costs for the Canada Line and proposed Evergreen & Broadway/UBC lines, which all feature special provisions such as undeground sections, which inflate the costs. These will not be required in Surrey, as any implementations of SkyTrain we will see in Surrey will most likely be above ground or (in some sections) on the ground, so we cannot use these costs to represent elevated SkyTrain construction in Surrey.

That's not to say there aren't costs that we can use to more accurately compare. When you look at the full implementation costs for the 1994 extension of SkyTrain from Scott Rd to King George Station, convert those costs to 2011 dollars and compare per km, it cost between $60-65 million per kilometre to fully deliver that. The Millennium Line, also a mostly-elevated line with few underground sections, follows this trend; it was implemented for approximately $67 million per km.

The documents speak for themselves: [1][2][3]

We should also be assuming that the costs of full frequent transit network implementation (approx. $250 million as the "best bus" alternative) are included with all of the rapid transit alternatives presented for the Surrey Rapid Transit Study. If we use option LRT4 as an example and subtract that cost to upgrade the frequent transit network, that gives us a best-case scenario total implementation cost of approximately $55 million/kilometre. This is in line with the total implementation costs that Victoria may see for a proposed light rail system there (also $55m/km), so it can be considered fairly accurate.

When we compare that with the SkyTrain implementation costs, the reality stands: SkyTrain/RRT will cost approximately only 20% more to implement. The requirement of things such as maintenance yards, staff training, and additional street-scaping and property acquisition will inflate the costs of and be inevitable for LRT, whereas such will be optional for SkyTrain implementations depending on the scale.
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  #1051  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2011, 8:45 AM
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I do believe the figure they quoted for RRT and LRT are both on the higher end, but if both numbers are inflated, then the conclusion is still the same. But then, since construction material inflate more than average inflation rate in the recent years, I don't think you can build any RRT or LRT at a cost similar to 1994 or 2002.

The RRT's cost is quite high, I believe is at least partially due to one of their assumption that the RRT is going to run in the middle of the street. This will involve high guideway with HIGH stations that have huge footprints 2 levels above the roadway (like Brentwood). Is Surrey so tight in space that they can't put on the side of the road and build smaller stations (like most of the ones on Millennium and elevated portion of Canada Line). Just looking at the map, I can see a route on the east side between Fraser and 84th, and switch to the west side between 84th and 72nd.

The LRT's cost is quite high also. It may be comparable to other systems, but there are 2 assumptions that should make our LRT system cheaper than others:
- The station are assumed to be 1-2 km apart (in most cases, pretty close to 2km). So much for community integration, eh?
- The LRT line is going to be sharing roadway with general traffics in some segments such as the Green Timber park, so they can build the line without cutting down the trees... Well, I don't think I want to comment on this....

W.R.T. to the LRT line in Victoria - The cost is actually 62M/km as stated in the report. I think the use of rail ROW in the last segment and highway ROW in the middle maybe contribute to this lower cost, as the options without the last segment all ended up with higher cost at ~72M/km (my calculation).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Daka View Post
We should also be assuming that the costs of full frequent transit network implementation (approx. $250 million as the "best bus" alternative) are included with all of the rapid transit alternatives presented for the Surrey Rapid Transit Study. If we use option LRT4 as an example and subtract that cost to upgrade the frequent transit network, that gives us a best-case scenario total implementation cost of approximately $55 million/kilometre. This is in line with the total implementation costs that Victoria may see for a proposed light rail system there (also $55m/km), so it can be considered fairly accurate.
I don't really get this part?? I think the cost of best bus are not included in any of the BRT, LRT, RRT scenarios.
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  #1052  
Old Posted Dec 3, 2011, 10:05 PM
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In accordance to a number of comments above about inflated costs, I tend to agree, especially given the number of possible existing rights-of-way in Surrey that can further reduce cost. While I fully support and love SkyTrain, I do believe that there are many useful applications of LRT, and Surrey is likely the best place in Metro Vancouver where it should be applied. Here's a brief overview of some potential rights of way that could be used...

brown = existing railway
yellow = existing transmission lines
blue/yellow = existing expo/millennium skytrain lines
red '!' symbols indicate town centres or major shopping areas



http://maps.google.ca/maps/ms?msid=2...49125,0.308647

Instead of extending anything down Fraser highway into Langley, I tend to think that the best bang for buck could be down King George Hwy to Newtown, and then following the railway ROW through Cloverdale and into Langley.
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  #1053  
Old Posted Dec 4, 2011, 8:14 AM
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@ nname: If you happen to have the Surrey Rapid Transit Study evaluation summary booklet this is actually stated very clearly on page 18. Oh here it is online
Quote:
All alternatives include increased background bus service compared to today
We can use the best bus $250 million value as an assumption for what this background bus cost increase might be.

I don't think any assumptions have been made on whether the line will mostly run at-grade, underground, or over-ground, but I tend to think the costs in the study are all representing whatever is the worst case scenario (i.e. SkyTrain is to tunneled SkyTrain).

You're right though, there are plenty of opportunities to build street-side SkyTrain and more compact stations. ie in Newton on the east side of King George Blvd.

Chikinlittle: The problem with many of the routes you mention is lack of development opportunities and important destinations. Hardly any one of the routes you mention pass through very important destinations. I could see them maybe viable for regional commuter rail/LRT that is not for urbanized implementation.

The problem with LRT itself is that slower speed, lower max possible frequency and reliability issue may make it not very competitive - and this is a big issue, seeing as 88% of consultants for the Surrey Transp. Strategic Plan in 2008 agreed that transit must be competitive with driving. This may result in low popularity and very high cost per rider (since of course it is more expensive to operate) and an end result that is not justifiable for the high cost not far from SkyTrain that is required for the implementation.
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  #1054  
Old Posted Dec 4, 2011, 8:46 AM
Chikinlittle Chikinlittle is offline
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I wasn't suggesting using any of them entirely. However, plotting out ideal destinations and trying to use portions of existing rights-of-way could potentially provide benefits/savings. I simply wanted to highlight some existing rights-of-way that already existed.
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  #1055  
Old Posted Dec 4, 2011, 9:33 AM
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I'm not sure if BC Hydro right-of-ways are that easy to relocate and such...

As for the LRT vs SkyTrain debate... I personally don't mind trying a stretch of dedicated LRT on the 104th Avenue corridor to Guildford and a stretch of dedicated BRT on the Fraser Hwy corridor to Fleetwood for a few years to evaluate their real life effectiveness... and in fact I think TransLink should implement these two trials in the next five years. Such a trial would give us valuable hands-on experience on which mode of transport is the best compared to all the theoretical arguing that is occurring right now.
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  #1056  
Old Posted Dec 4, 2011, 5:28 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chikinlittle View Post
Instead of extending anything down Fraser highway into Langley, I tend to think that the best bang for buck could be down King George Hwy to Newtown, and then following the railway ROW through Cloverdale and into Langley.
I've been saying this for quite a while. Well fleetwood may be left out it is not like its a far bus ride to guildford or central from there.
I think going to newton and following the railway ROW is the best option. You bring way more town centres together in the line. Plus its not that much longer then following fraser hwy to get to langley.
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  #1057  
Old Posted Dec 8, 2011, 2:52 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nname View Post
The RRT's cost is quite high, I believe is at least partially due to one of their assumption that the RRT is going to run in the middle of the street. This will involve high guideway with HIGH stations that have huge footprints 2 levels above the roadway (like Brentwood). Is Surrey so tight in space that they can't put on the side of the road and build smaller stations (like most of the ones on Millennium and elevated portion of Canada Line). Just looking at the map, I can see a route on the east side between Fraser and 84th, and switch to the west side between 84th and 72nd.
For Skytrain, even if the track goes down the middle of the street, I think you could build cheaper stations than the centerpiece station we have at Brentwood. Instead of having a mezzanine, just have direct access from the street to the platform. Then the tracks can be the usual height above ground and the stations themselves need a lot less land, engineering and concrete. And in the case of Surrey and Langley, the bus stops will tend to be on the correct side of the street for access to the trains without having to cross the street (people on westbound buses will tend to transfer to westbound trains).
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  #1058  
Old Posted Dec 8, 2011, 3:06 AM
Daka Daka is offline
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I was informed by a Council Candidate lately that the cost is close to $750,000 to build a station. I'm pretty doubtful of this number since - obviously, depending on the implementation grade level - the cost would be likely much more varied. I know through reading an Evergreen Line report that a SkyTrain station would cost close to about $750,000 annually to maintain. I really haven't seen any reliable, quotable sources on the internet regarding SkyTrain station construction costs. Can anyone confirm this?
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  #1059  
Old Posted Dec 8, 2011, 5:09 AM
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You can probably search the internet and Richmond Council Minutes for references to the Concord and Pinnacle contributions for teh construction of the Capstan Way Station on the Canada Line.
You can also check for the cost of the "optional;" Olympic Village station, but, of course, that was an underground station.
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  #1060  
Old Posted Dec 8, 2011, 5:52 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Daka View Post
I was informed by a Council Candidate lately that the cost is close to $750,000 to build a station.

That's crazy talk.
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