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Mayor Watts comes out swinging on the gas tax

July 19th, 2011 · 38 Comments

Someone’s ready for a fight to the death here, it sounds like. This just out from the mayor’s office.

Do We Want our Region to Become Los Angeles?

Let’s make one thing clear:  Metro Vancouver Mayors approved a two cent per litre gas tax increase and the money will not be used solely to pay for the Evergreen Line.

The $40 million generated annually will be used to fund a comprehensive, integrated, financially sustainable transportation network that will benefit virtually every single person living in Metro Vancouver, regardless of where they live and what mode of transportation they use.  The Evergreen Line is just one component of the plan.

The remaining funding for the plan will come from advertising, naming revenue at SkyTrain stations, road pricing and contributions from development.  A property tax increase hasn’t been approved and will only be considered if no other revenue options can be secured.

The regional plan includes:

  • $20 million annually for Major Road Network improvement projects
  • $6 million annually for cycling network infrastructure
  • 200,000 additional transit hours for the South Fraser Region – 425,000 hours region-wide
  • Hwy #1 RapidBus Service from Langley, through Surrey to the Lougheed SkyTrain station
  • A New B-Line service from White Rock to Guildford Town Centre, plus a new bus route from White Rock to Langley serving the Surrey community of Grandview Heights
  • SkyTrain station upgrades and Seabus improvements

The funding formula has been debated for over six years now, and it’s time to move forward.

Over the next two decades, almost a million people will be moving into Metro Vancouver.  This will add over 800,000 vehicles to our roads.  Do we want gridlock and smog?  Do we want our economy to be stuck in traffic?  Do we want our region to become Los Angeles?

In order to accommodate the population increase, we must implement an integrated transportation system and move forward with a long-term funding model that will serve our current needs and those of our children and grand children.

It’s been 17 years since Surrey has seen an expansion of rapid transit, despite the fact that our population has more than doubled.  Currently, our vast city is so underserved by transit that for most people it’s not a viable option.

We’re developing a plan to create light rail transit (LRT) to connect our town centres with the existing transit infrastructure and reduce the number of vehicles on our roads.  But, for the past ten years, the Evergreen Line has been designated as the next priority for the region.  So let’s be clear: Surrey and the other communities in the region can’t move forward with their transit projects until the Evergreen Line is built.

Let’s not turn this issue into a political football.  Let’s move forward as a region to create connected, productive and livable communities that our children can be proud of.

Sincerely,

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts

Categories: Uncategorized

  • Rico

    Good to hear,

    My respect for Dianne Watts just went up a little more.

  • mezzanine

    Bravo! 🙂

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    Mayor Watts’s office would do a great service if it could speak to some very important points:

    1. Evergreen is already fully funded. The ask for more capital is for Skytrain. There are strong concerns that Skytrain will blight the neighbourhoods it crosses; provide 50% fewer stops; and not provide any significant increase in the level of service over street oriented tram.

    2. Street tram—i.e. the Olympic Line—will:

    – revitalize the Port Moody Historic District along Clarke and St. John’s Streets—this is a promise long withheld from the local residents;

    – turn Burquitlam into an urban village; and

    – make Guilford Way function as the first Transit Oriented Development (TOD) in our region.

    3. As regards the “… comprehensive, integrated, financially sustainable transportation network that will benefit virtually every single person living in Metro….” Where is the plan? I join the Mayor in calling for a fully integrated transit and community planning system at the regional level.

    4. Finally, there is a difficulty in democracy—if not constitutionally—about having non-representational metro government raising taxes.

  • mezzanine

    @LNV,

    @ points 1 and 2, IMO that would be contrary to the spirit of Ms Watts’ sentiment. I can respect your opinion that skytrain would be a bad idea, even though I think the corridor would justify skytrain. But the consultation and planning work is done already, and we are ready to build it as soon as the gas tax is approved. a new round of consultation and a decision for LRT would mean negotiating new funding arrangements with victoria and ottawa, which will take a lot more time and may be different with what we have now.

    point #3, i think you will be waiting for a long time…:-P

    point #4, i don’t like our current system, but I am not sure that the grass is greener on the other side. we can amalgamate toronto-style and have an simply elected council decide transit planning and zoning, but it hasn’t worked that great for TO IMO. having a member of your city council IMO ensures that they will have their election prospects in their municipality as a consideration for regional decisions. I am unsure if victoria will provide as significant funding if they lose decision-making ability.

    one example perhaps closest to metro vancouver would be DART in dallas. they are still separate cities under a regional organization. from what i can gather they get 85% of funding from a 1% sales tax and the rest, i think from fares, with fed funding for capital. i’m unsure they get any state funding.

    perhaps they have more autonomy that translink. but they have similar sets of problems, perhaps worse due to a recent drop in sales tax revenue, and of course, regionalism.

    Dallas Area Rapid Transit says that even if Plano votes to withdraw from the agency, the city will still owe debt payments for years to come.
    …
    Plano officials asked for information about leaving DART after some citizens complained about sales taxes for a service they don’t use.
    …
    DART officials say Plano could not hold an election on leaving the transit agency until 2014. And even if the referendum passes, the city would still be obligated to pay a share of outstanding DART debts for the next 10 to 15 years.

    http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/business/DART-to-Plano-Youll-Still-Owe-If-You-Drop-Sales-Tax-89305212.html

    the URL says it all…

  • Roger Kemble

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBemzu1Fchk

    I like that sign, “If you don’t own an oil well get one.” Quick, it’s easy to miss.

    Don’t worry Madame Mayor, Metro will never be like LA!

    Actually, some little pockets are quite nice: Venice Beach, Franklin Street, Hollywood. One or two!

    But no it wouldn’t work on Kits Beach.

    As for all the local TX chitter-chatter: well I’ll believe Evergreen when I see it!

  • Everyman

    Under the guise of seeming progressive, the mayors are in reality only acting to save their own political hides by not having to increase peoperty taxes. Building a transit system that is reliant on gas taxes, while simultaneously saying you are trying to get people out of cars seems contradictory at best, folly at worst.

    All what Watts et al are doing is enriching gas station owners in Blaine and Point Roberts. Surely she doesn’t think those border line-ups are all for people buying cheese.

  • Eric

    Very impressive.

  • Joe Just Joe

    If I were a US border town with financial woes I’d impose a 10c-25c/gal gas tax with an instant rebate for locals with washington plates. Financial woes solved w/o upseting the locals.

  • jesse

    “Do We Want our Region to Become Los Angeles”

    You mean Los Angeles, a city with a decentralised core with no one area dominating commercial activity?

    Maybe we should pine to be a Chicago or New York, with all transit routes leading to a giant vertical central commercial district with feeder suburbs. I wonder how Myr. Watts feels about that.

  • Richard Campbell

    Well said by Mayor Watts. Great to see the mayors of the region showing bold leadership especially in an election year.

    Poor LA though. There are many cities in the states that are much worse than LA in terms of reliance on automobiles including Houston, Atlanta and Phoenix .

    While LA has many challenges and unfortunately has been developed around the automobile, they have made significant progress in the past couple of decades. Even more encouraging, lead by Mayor Villaraigosa, they have impressive plans backed up by significant funding committed to a massive expansion of rapid transit and rail. In the last election, voters approved a 1/2 cent sales tax increase amounting to $40 billion dollars over 30 years for rail, transit and road improvements.

    Not satisfied with the pace of change with that success, Mayor Villaraigosa is quickly building support for his innovative 10/30 initiative that would see these rail and transit projects completed in 10 years instead of 30. In the 10/30 initiative, the federal government would loan the city money so the projects can be completed sooner. The loans would then be paid back through the sales tax revenue over 30 years. As construction costs will escalate over the years, this plan will likely not even cost taxpayers more while giving them the benefits of transit and rail much sooner. Together with high-speed rail, 10/30 could transform LA and California.

    Even more importantly, the Mayor’s efforts could prove to provide a national template, America Fast Forward, for moving transit and transit forward that is receiving bipartisan support.

    In addition to transit, the Mayor has also recently led efforts to improve cycling including the development of a new cycling plan including a 1,680-mile bikeway system Still, TransLink’s Bicycle Strategy, Cycling for Everyone is better but without the $23 million a year in funding, we will not have networks of bicycle routes that are safe and comfortable for women, children and even the majority of men in the region.

    If our region does not move forward with badly needed transit improvements, we risk becoming the LA of forty years ago while the LA of the future becomes the type liveable, vibrant region with great transportation choices envisioned in our plans. In ten years, becoming the next LA might actually be a ambitious goal to achieve instead of something to be avoided at any cost.

  • Frank Ducote

    Kudos to Mayors Watts and Goldsmith-Jones on this file. It takes guts to stand up to bullies and I’m glad they are doing so. City leaders are at the cutting edge of urban realities and the gas tax is one of the most equitable forms of user taxes out there, especially if it is used for alternative forms of transportation as well as roads, as this tax is proposed to do.

    Canadian cities have no secure form of taxation and it is always up to the whims and manipulations of provincial and federal politicians who are removed from urban issues to make supposedly “final” decisions. (Watch that the Broadway extension doesn’t jumpt the queue now tht we have another premier repesenting Point Grey.)

    Further, if the province and feds had only supplied the 50% to 80% of the capital cost of the Evergreen Line as they should, we wouldn’t still be dickering over this line 3+ decades later and counting (the NDP under Barret proposed a line to Coquitlam in the mid-1970s).

    Finally, I am even more supportive of this tax if it drives a nail in the coffin of a 3P arrangment as with the Canadian Line.

  • zweisystem

    The Evergreen Line will do nothing to reduce congestion in the region, in fact the SkyTrain metro system has done very little to alleviate traffic congestion, this why very few cities have built with SkyTrain light metro.

    The world has moved on, with most cites build what works and what is affordable and that is LRT. Today (except for Vancouver) SkyTrain is seen as an obsolete transit mode – a historic curiosity.

    The Evergreen Line is a continuation of the regions very bad transit planning and with the region’s ability to fund a new rail line every decade or so, if the Evergreen Line is built, we will not see an new ‘rail’ line built until 2020.

    Let us not forget that the Tri-cities are serviced by the West Coast Express so it is not like they are bereft of a rail service.

    The SkyTrain mini-metro is built solely to appease political and bureaucratic prestige and encourage land development and has little to do with providing ‘rapid transit’.

    Building the Evergreen Line will do two things:

    1) Encourage freeway construction.
    2) Cause TransLink split into to entities, the cities with SkyTrain and the cities that do not.

    The massive Gateway highways project came into being, in part, because of Skytrain’s high costs the inability to extend it where it is needed. New highway construction and SkyTrain go hand in hand.

  • Morry

    Refreshing!
    Crusty Clark needs to pay attention to MegaWatts in the short term, ’cause in the longer term she is nada but going going gone …

  • Frank Ducote

    Zweisystem @ 20

    Pontificate away! This blog is mainly about funding and the power of cities via their mayors. While I don’t diasgree about the adverse local and visual impacts of an elevated SkyTrain line, there can’t be much argument that ridership on at least the Expo line is amazingly high, esp. in the North American context, with a correspondingly positive impact on regional traffic congestion.

    I am not aware of a surface LRT line that carries a similar load over similar distances and also has the potential for city-shaping as does this technology, with all its warts.

  • Richard

    Zweisystem @ 20

    The ridership on the Millennium is pretty good too especially for a line that does not connect directly to downtown. The results speak for themselves. Both Burnaby and New West have transit commuting mode shares of 25%, the same as Vancouver. Pretty good by North American standards. Show me where in North American where cities have had the same success with LRT.

    Anyway, the decision has been made on the Evergreen Line. Switching to LRT would set the process back at least 2 or three years and tens of millions more would have to be spent on studies, environmental assessment and design. That, coupled with construction cost escalation would result in an Evergreen LRT not really saving any money over SkyTrain.

  • Shane

    Last time I checked, we were already becoming LA courtesy of Kevin Falcon’s 10-lane freeway from Langley to Vancouver.

  • Sean

    @Everyman #5:

    “Building a transit system that is reliant on gas taxes, while simultaneously saying you are trying to get people out of cars seems contradictory at best, folly at worst.”

    To me it seems exactly what is needed – what better incentive to use than raising the cost of driving? And what better way to justify it than by using the revenues to provide an alternative?

    I assume you’re worried about gas tax revenues drying up, but don’t forget that as transit utilization increases, economies of scale mean that fares will be able to fund a greater percentage of total costs.

    Sooner or later there is going to be a terrible blow to the economy as demand for fuel starts to outpace supply and prices skyrocket as a result. Better that we start conditioning ourselves to it now while we have time to adapt.

  • abigail

    Did anyone point out to the mayor she’s sprawling like mad in large areas of Surrey? Check out the land use plans for Anniedale or Grandview. Not exactly practising what she preaches.

    Throw in a 10 lane highway, new highway along the waterfront (how lovely that is), wider highways all throughout and yeah…

  • zweisystem

    SkyTrain has everything to do with our current funding as (the region) has spent about $5 billion more for light-metro than if light rail had been built. Added to this, the light-metro system is subsidized by the province to the tune of about $250 million annually.

    Our current financial predicament was predicted by transit experts 30 years ago and those predictions have proven true.

    What was thought to be “world class transit” in 1980, is now seen as yesterday’s transit and transit philosophy, yet we seem stuck with SkyTrain and the high taxes needed to fund it.

    Just to let everyone know, the ridership needed to sustain just one light-metro line is over 200,000 persons a day or 400,000 boardings (most people board twice a day). TransLink claims about 380,000 boardings a day for the three light-metro lines, thus we have a massive shortfall in revenue needed by the much more expensive light-metro system. Added to this is the folly of deep-discounted U-Passes, which are clogging our already overcrowded transit system with $1 a day all-system passes. The cheap U-pass customers are forcing out proper revenue paying customers from the transit system.

    All a 2 cent a litre gas tax will accomplish is driving more motorists to fill up in Point Roberts and Blaine.

    @ Frank D. & Richard.

    Modern LRT has proven to be able to handle passenger loads far greater than SkyTrain at a much cheaper cost. Why do you think only 7 SkyTrain ICTS/ALRT/ALM/ART systems have been sold in 30 years.

    The root of our transit fiscal woes is SkyTrain and until we accept this higher and higher taxes will be on the menu for years to come.

  • Richard

    @zweisystem 16

    You are comparing apples to vegetables again again. Of course fewer SkyTrain systems have been sold than LRT. You should really be comparing metro systems against light rail systems sold or a particular model of LRT made by one manufacturer against SkyTrain.

    Anyway, your general discussion of LRT vs SkyTrain is not relevant in this discussion which is about a specific route, the Evergreen Line that connects with an existing SkyTrain Line. Sure, if there was no SkyTrain to Lougheed Mall or there was LRT to Lougheed Mall it would make sense to make the Evergreen Line LRT.

    But back to reality, we have an existing SkyTrain line to Lougheed. Switching to LRT for the Evergreen Line at this late date is not going to save taxpayers money.

  • pacpost

    @ Sean #15

    “Sooner or later there is going to be a terrible blow to the economy as demand for fuel starts to outpace supply and prices skyrocket as a result.”

    Some economists have argued that the high oil prices of late 2007 and 2008 triggered the last “great” recession, which then led to other parts of our debt-laden economy collapsing.

    http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2011/05/will_high_oil_p.html

    With all the focus having been on subprime mortgages in the U.S., most people are largely unaware that high oil prices played a significant role in the 2008-09 economic crisis. Despite the “terrible blow” that high oil prices caused to the world economy, we haven’t drawn the right lessons. Especially when it comes to national governments: Obama’s highway construction budget in 2009-10 massively dwarfed any rail and transit funding.

    “Better that we start conditioning ourselves to it now while we have time to adapt.”

    Would be nice. Unfortunately, most people are reacting to high prices by railing against gas taxes and the major oil companies. They somehow ignore the fact that we have rapidly growing new demand coming from China and India, as well as various OPEC countries. Saudi Arabia has recently raised concerns about its own rapidly growing use of oil for power generation (which is starting to eat into its oil export capabilities).

    Most people don’t want to accept these new realities, and the attendant changes that they will bring with them. Again, governments aren’t helping: not to hammer on Obama (overall, he’s a decent president), but his recent launch of a committee to investigate oil price speculation is complete nonsense. Every person that sits in a car and complains about gas prices just needs to look in the mirror to find the culprit.

    For a hint of positive news to end this post, it does look as if the past 5 years of high gas prices are having an impact on driving habits, as researchers are now talking about seeing declines in car use in many developed cities (and not just Vancouver’s downtown core):

    http://worldstreets.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/newman-and-kenworth-on-peak-car-use/

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    I was enjoying a Granny Smith Apple and Spinach salad with a nice vinaigrette at lunch today, well before reading the latest round of posts.

    Yes, Zwei-whomever-that-may-be comes a lot closer to my understanding between the relationship of technology choice and the resulting quality of urban space that the other see-no-evil-hear-no-evil-say-no-evil posts.

    All posters anonymous to me save one. Here’s Frank D:

    I am not aware of a surface LRT line that carries a similar load over similar distances and also has the potential for city-shaping as does this technology, with all its warts.

    The Director of Engineering for the City of Vancouver gave us these numbers at the Alan Jacobs session we both attended a few weeks ago:

    200,000 daily trips — Expo Line
    130,000 DT — Canada Line
    100,000 DT — Buses on Broadway
    60,000 DT — Millennium Line

    Now, the kind of city-shaping that Skytrain does is characterized by Metrotown; Willingdon & Lougheed; Surrey Central; and No. 3 Road Richmond. Honestly, is that ‘good’ urbanism?

    If Broadway can do 100,000 trips per day with buses… then, we can assume a 2x increase with Olympic Tram-style technology simply because the trains are 2x as large as the buses (never mind signal priority—the tram trips the red lights to green—and centre of the road lanes so that the tram is not encumbered by right turn movements or curb side parking).

    The ridership on the Millennium is pretty good too especially for a line that does not connect directly to downtown.

    Richard (13)… really? Bus Rapid Transit (with signal priority and centre lanes) should be able to double the 60,000 daily trips on a dime-budget. Of course, this puts us face-to-face with the real problem.

    There is no hope in hell that Millennium will ever get to 200,000 DT from its service area because the urbanism is not there. Burnaby is suburban. Full stop.

    But back to reality, we have an existing SkyTrain line to Lougheed. Switching to LRT for the Evergreen Line at this late date is not going to save taxpayers money.

    Richard (17)… Guilford Way was platted for LRT. The plans were all detailed to the full for LRT. This sounds like the spurious “save the transfer” argument. That dog won’t hunt. Skytrain is not within easy walking distance of the population it serves, thus the “transfer” is built in. People have to take a local bus and transfer to get to the Skytrain station.

    Honestly, folks, we are arguing the wrong criteria. On a strictly transportation basis whether one or another option may turn out to be better is a wash. However, from the point of view of the quality of the resulting urban space, of the resulting neighbourhoods and places, there can be no argument.

    Of course, I am not hearing any discussion about that made here. No one is thinking that way.

    Ultimately transit is the servant of its communities. The question remains unanswered by most posts here:

    What will be the resulting quality of a Skytrain community vs. the resulting quality of a Tram community?

    What is the difference between say Metrotown 2011, and Marpole 1930?

  • mezzanine

    it’s simplistic to say that skytrain is responsible for the built form of metrotown.

    Gord Price has a timely synopsis on the history of metrotown at his blog.

    http://pricetags.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/10836/#more-10836

    he alludes to zoning and a lack of political will being the main issue.

  • mezzanine

    and seeming how we always have the same arguments whenever we talk about this, i gleefully copied this from a previous post here, wrt zoning and political will being more important than any type of transit technology for creating nice neighbourhoods.

    I offer Metrotown verusus Joyce Station precincts. Both were brownfield developments in close geographic location to each other, with similar neighbourhoods. Both close to major road arterials. Metrotown at the time had Simpson-Sears, the old Kelly-Douglas warehouse and the area by eaton centre was mostly empty or low density…Both connected by skytrain. Yet under different neighbourhood plans and city councils the built form and pedestrian experience are dramatically different in 2010.

    Interestingly Champlain Mall in the past 10 yr has developed much of its parking lot and is a lot more of pedestrian-focused community. And this is in the abscence of being close to a transit line.

    roger kemble is a big fan of the champlain redevelopment:

    http://members.shaw.ca/rogerkemble/1.champlain/mount.royal.square/mount.royal.html

  • mezzanine

    peruse the original post on Ms. Bula’s blog and you can predict the tenor and topics of further debate on this post. You’ll even be treated to further guest posts by vancouver’s own zweisystem.

    http://francesbula.com/uncategorized/mayors-willing-to-entertain-new-local-taxes-to-pay-for-evergreen-after-rejecting-them-last-year/

    to everyone for preempting further similar debates again, you’re welcome.

    now can we build this thing?

  • Roger Kemble

    Frank @ #12

    “I am not aware of a surface LRT line that carries a similar load over similar distances and also has the potential for city-shaping as does this technology, with all its warts.”

    Did you see THE NATIONAL last night: a very brief glimpse of Jerusalem’s new street level, electric LRT: check . . .

    http://www.subways.net/israel/jerusalem.htm

    Your use of the phrase “city-shaping” sort of pushes a few of my buttons. Of course I am just a small town architect, as opposed to all the big-time, prolix, expertise here, so what do I know?

    “city-shaping”? A good TX system shapes the city? I don’t thinq so.

    Were the hell are you going in such a hurry?

    “ . . . ridership on at least the Expo line is amazingly high . . . ” Well errrr obviously Frank. Like the lifeboats on the Titanic there is no other (grid lock on the Mary Hill by-pass not being an option) choice!

    A good TX system is shaped by the city: COD (community oriented development) not TOD (TX oriented development)! Or better still, SOEFPF (street oriented, emissions free, pedestrian friendly) which in less pretentious parlance equals the old clickity clank tram car.

    Even the original over rated, over priced, community busting, under used SKYTRAIN responded to community: Waterfront, Metrotown, NewWest. It didn’t quite hit “Thu Drive” but it was a near miss.

    Vancouver is way too immature to be considering current on-the-table plans. We are far too immature to speak authoritatively about an appropriate TX system: we want to be like, I dunno, any God forsaken place last visited on our lookie-loo tourist jaunts.

    Vancouver cannot afford more shinny techno-trinkets and local, over taxed, merchants cannot endure anymore Cambie-like disruptions: Broadway/UBC comes to mind.

    The virtues of capital intensive, taxpayer funded, la la land going nowhere techo-wizardry has been bandied around for as long as I can remember but the DFEEPTBBUIST (deficit friendly, emissions emitting, pedestrian threatening, bike busting useful idiots’ shiny tank) keeps on rolling off the line in Windsor (try driving to Maple Ridge (should be called Vimy Ridge) any rush hour.

    Mezz @ #21 “ now can we build this thing?” No friggin’ way!

    Nowhere is this more clearly exposed than Vancouver on any sunny day: our politicians are ego driven, not community driven!

  • Jason

    I’ve been saying for a long time now that gas taxes should be increased and put towards transit…I’m a father with 3 kids who almost exclusively uses my car…but I recognize the benefits and need for a comprehensive transit system…and my 13 year old happens to LOVE her bus pass….and I’m hoping that continues once she’s old enough to drive…

    If we are going to pretend to be a big city we need excellent transit

  • Rico

    I guess I will get sucked into the LRT vs Skytrain debate too. People should check out the Jerusalem LRT on Wiki. Some highlights construction started 2002 still not fully complete. 13.8km = 1.1billion US. Currently no signal priority, but signal priority will take travel time from 80min to 40min. Lots of critisism about construction. General thoughts sometimes LRT is better, sometimes grade seperation is better. In the case of Evergreen integration with the existing system makes sense (especially if it eventually goes under Broadway). Just build the damned thing.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    it’s simplistic to say that skytrain is responsible for the built form of metrotown.

    Mezz 19

    I’m beginning to imagine a spreadsheet with two columns: LRT and Skytrain. Then, a set of criteria along the left side. Some urban design criteria, some system design criteria, some criteria we may not have been able to identify at the beginning, but that emerging as we go along.

    Meanwhile, I already referred Mezz—and I am happy to repeat the link here—to a lecture I gave at the Arbutus Community Association where the venue allowed us to avoid the accusation of being ‘simplistic’:

    http://wp.me/p1mj4z-eP

    Towers and Skytrain go hand in hand as often as possible. The Lower Mainland is the poster child for that.

    The lecture suggests that—outside the downtown peninsula—it amounts to committing the “Density Fallacy” to suggest that we need to build towers in order to build density, or that the resulting quality of the tower neighbourhood is as good as the quality of the high-density human-scale neighbourhood.

    Should we pen a corollary as regards building Skytrain?

    No, the main concern with the urbanism that the Skytrain engenders has been repeated often, as Mezz points out, and never refuted (a point that goes missing).

    Skytrain blights the neighbourhoods it crosses. This time, blight will come first to the apartments fronting North Road Skytrain, and the entire stretch of Skytrain in Port Moody where it will be at grade (yes, sky-on-the-ground), between parallel barbed wire fences, and running through the heart of the Historic District in that Community that Councils since the 1990’s have been promising to “revitalize”.

    Yes, we’ve said all that before, and we won’t tire of repeating it. But, we also have pictures and numbers of what we see a ‘good’ urbanism at high density.

    See for yourself.

  • Sean

    I’m not convinced of the strength of the link between Skytrain and towers. Plenty of towers have been built in places not served by Skytrain.

    I believe that the primary motivator of towers is the desire to maximize the revenue from a given parcel of land, particularly in this era of stratospheric land values. The way to counter that trend is through controls on development, not controls on transit.

  • Roger Kemble

    There were towers, Metrotown, Oakridge, NewWest Lougheed, and multiple floor buildings long before Skytrain and the CL.

    And as, supposedly, this conversation is about financing TX, and because finance is out of our hands locally we tend to retreat, me included, into our personal reveries.

    A well conceived urban design plan includes a variegated typology, high, atrium . . .

    http://members.shaw.ca/urbanismo/Atrium.pdf

    . . . medium and low: all part of a well conceived urban environment: appropriate to prevailing aesthetics, social purpose and economics.

    Unfortunately the way finance is run (international, out of our hands: us oblivious) architecture has degenerated to formula: kitsch, new urbanism, this hero or that hero.

    Green/sustainable is the latest fad.

    What really matters most is ground level spatial interconnects.

    But ground level is REAL ESTATE and control of real estate means more than money: . . . CONTROL!

    With land being our economic quotient and money as debt we all escape into our own fantasy preserves because essentially there is nothing we can do.

    Cope, Vision, NPA are all puppets on a string.

    We obsess by retreating into our favourite comfort zones. I don’t like towers: who cares? The juggernaut moves on!

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    Sean, the key blighting problem of skytrain is not the towers. The key blighting problem is having that overhead guideway blocking the sun, your vision, the sky, the view out the window, the sense of place on the street… really, the list is endless. If you want a walkable streetscape you want the transportation either on the street or below grade. Above grade only works in railway yards, airports, and across farm fields.

    Here are a few reasons to link towers to skytrain:

    1. Land Lift (local governments negotiate a special development levee for the rezoning).

    2. Putting the land lift to help offset the costs of building Skytrain.

    3. Using Skytrain to lure tower development.

    From my worksheet (Using Translink Docs dating back to 2007):

    Skytrain
    Construction: $1.4 Billion
    Operating cost (per year): $10 Million
    6 stations
    Revitalization: No
    Ride bus to station: Yes
    Trip time: 13 mins (ride to station not included)
    Passengers/train: 260
    Max. capacity (one direction): 10,400 trips
    Annual Riders (2021): 23 Million
    Jobs for drivers: 0

    tram
    Construction: $o.97 Billion
    Operating cost (per year): $15 Million
    13 stations
    Revitalization: Yes
    Ride bus to station: No (walk)
    Trip time: 24 mins (walk to station: 5-10 mins)
    Passengers/train: 250
    Max. capacity (one direction): 4,800 trips
    Annual Riders (2021): 9 Million
    Jobs for drivers: much more than the 5 million per year difference in operating costs

    These are Translink numbers from this year, and from 2007 the last time Tram was pitched.

    The cost for Trams is inflated in the Evergreen route because both Skytrain and Tram will use an expensive bored tunel (under single family residential land).

    The puzzler is the predicted difference in millions of riders per year. Skytrain 23M; Tram 9M. Why low ball it?

    The capacity in passengers can also be raised for the tram by running two trams together, just like the Skytrain. The numbers don’t appear to take that into consideration.

    What is not surprising is hearing the Tram literature make the case for community integration and revitalization, and the Skytrain business case focus almost entirely on the advantages of grade separation; speed of travel; and reduced labour costs.

    What is not addressed is that by the time we are in the Tri-Cities the town planning and the market demand is not for the kind of density concentrations needed to make subways (and skytrains) necessary. The population density and density hot spots that we can expect in the Tri-Cities are ideal for tram service. The same is the case for Vancouver outside of the downtown areas.

  • Richard

    @Lewis N. Villegas

    You are making the common general assumptions of the impact of elevated guideways that are often incorrect in specific circumstances. Typically sidewalks paths and sidewalks under guideways are not shaded by the guideway for the majority if not all of the day. As we are pretty far north, paths directly under guideways are never shaded by the guideway.The designers of the Central Valley Greenway actually made the mistake of never actually observing where the shadow of the guideway was cast. Instead of placing the path under the guideway were it would have been lit from the south, they placed it to the north ensuring it would be shaded.

    Elevated guideways can actually improve the pedestrian and cycling experience when it is worst, in the winter and during rain.

    For north south guideways, shading would typically occur only during midday, when it is hottest and shade is welcome for both cyclists and pedestrians.

    As was done on #3 Road, the visual impact can be mitigated through landscaping and public art. Elevated guildways also create space for wider sidewalks, bike lanes, greater separation from traffic, patios and landscaping all of which improve the public realm. They also create the opportunity for more pedestrian crossings of streets which again improves the pedestrian experience.

    Yes, they can be a design challenge but a good, creative designer can make great public spaces that integrate elevated transit guideways.

    Lets not lose track of the big picture, it is road and heavy traffic that are the real blight to public space.

  • Todd Sieling

    I like a lot of what Mayor Watts had to say. Though her support for selling naming rights to sky train stations is distressing. Changing names every few years for waypoints in city navigation is more prone to confusion, and quite simply erodes the sense of public ownership over something that is paid for with public money.

    Mayor Watts would do well to consider something more innovative and appropriate, like selling naming rights for sky train cars, which by their nature are transient and more appropriate for whoever happens to be paying the naming bill this month.

  • voony

    Lewis,

    the number you provide are very instructive…
    It ends up the LRT could have cost twice more per passenger than Skytrain be in capital cost…or operating cost.
    So clearly the financial sheet is not on your side…

    (that is the reason why our good friend Zwei always prefer to make up the number out of the sky to foster his case: it is more convenient)

    you ask:
    “The puzzler is the predicted difference in millions of riders per year. Skytrain 23M; Tram 9M. Why low ball it?”

    the answer is provided in the number you seem to ignore:
    “Trip time”
    and the easiness of transfer at Lougheed

    …but you are right number are probably overinflated, because the Translink model probably has not factored the fact there is no room to accommodate those million of passenger unloading at Commercial to continue their journey, who on the 99B or the Expo line.

    That said, I am amazed at your capacity at always framing a transit debate on a skytrain vs LRT line, whatever is the introducing topic.

    To repeat what I have said on the Stephen Rees blog:
    A priori, the 2c gas tax will raise in the tune of $40 millions – when only $10 millions or so could be needed to finance the Evergreen line (see http://voony.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/translink-supplemental-funding/ ) – so much more than enough to finance the evergreen line…most of the money raised will serve to expand bus service in territories where land development choice make transit structurally unsustainable,…a Streetcar instead of a skytrain on North Road could have change nothing to that.

  • Sean

    @ Lewis N. Villegas #32

    “Sean, the key blighting problem of skytrain is not the towers. The key blighting problem is having that overhead guideway blocking the sun, your vision, the sky, the view out the window, the sense of place on the street…”

    I was cycling along the guideway just a few days ago and thought to myself how nice it was that the guideway shades the cycle path during the warm weather when the sun is high in the sky, yet illuminates the path in the cold whether when the sun is lower.

    I hear a lot of negative comments about the “blight” of the guideway, but as someone who actually does a fair bit of traveling in its vicinity it really doesn’t seem oppressive to me. It’s certainly nothing like the steel girders of elevated systems of the past.

    And as a transit user, I’d also like to point out that the elevated system is a wonderful transit experience. I’m convinced that one of the reasons Skytrain is so popular with its users is that it doesn’t relegate them to a noisy, dark, featureless tunnel but instead it gives them a wide, sweeping, panoramic view of our beautiful city.

    It seems unfair to me to talk about negative impacts of the elevated guideway without also including the very positive experience it affords to hundreds of thousands of riders daily.

  • Morven

    I am quite prepared to accept that the Mayors Council are doing the best they can with the mess handed to them by TransLink and the provincial government. The overall strategy is arguably sound – except for one irritant.

    I may disagree with Vancouver City Council (and often do) but they were voted in and by and large, there is a discussion before any expenditure or taxes.

    Accountability.

    What we now have is a group of Mayors acting with plenipotentiary powers on initiatives never discussed at their own councils. If for instance, Mayor Robertson after discussion and a vote, was instructed by council to pursue this regional funding initiative, then so be it – I had an opportunity to comment.

    The result may be good but the process is faulty and this is a killer for reasonable discussion of the regional issues.
    -30-

  • MB

    SkyTrain dis not lead to Metrotown. Cars — and all their attendant infrastructure — did. The Metrotown complex is surrounded and underlain by parking lots. And you’ll be brought right up to each door in cars, not SkyTrain.

    I contend that the cluster of towers there known rather blandly as a Town Centre would have happened with light rail, a subway or rapid bus of whatever make or mode. It was a set of social attitudes and planning mores that let such a powerful stimulator of the urban economy end up in towers and the continuing legacy of car dependency.

    If it didn’t, then we’d have much better integration of the station into the complex (be it elevated, underground or on the surface), a dominant role for pedestrians over cars, much, much higher quality stations, and a starting point for the key role in human-scale urbanism: quality public spaces.