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Potential problems for Broadway corridor identified

April 20th, 2010 · 30 Comments

A great analysis of the current Broadway corridor options here, with succinct explanations on the difference between light rail and streetcar (now I know, at last), the dangers of having a streetcar instead of light rail, the rapid-transit gap that needs to be fixed, and the dangers of ignoring the long-distance commuters coming into Vancouver as we plan the line.

And for those who didn’t see the link in the comments on an earlier post, another great site and debate going on here.

Categories: Uncategorized

  • Urbanismo

    The Broadway corridor is a minor part of the problem!

    Thanqu Jarrett for this very comprehensive analysis.

    Perhaps, though, you are shooting for the stars catering to what may be a population expecting unobtainable convenience.

    I am an amateur user/observer. My experience, TX long term, has only been Mexico City and London. Both, hugely different to Vancouver pop-wise.

    But apart from size there are salient factors that make the Tube and El Metro very easy plan and to use.

    Both London and Mexico City, as they grew, subsumed contiguous smaller villages into the general metropolitan areas: whilst preserving, and this is most important, the essential main streets village configuration, useable and recognizable today. Each had, and have, natural nodes to work with.

    Buenos Aires similarly subsumed its contiguous villages, La Boca Palermo Viejo etc, connected by el Subte, but, having had little experience, I cannot comment!

    Yet, even London, with such a magnificent system, Wapping and the Isle of Dogs are still “off- grid.” Canary Wharf has it own connection, yet again “off-grid.”

    El Metro is, in my experience, probably the most efficient for reason mentioned: La Ciudad grew by subsuming contiguous already established villages: i.e. connective, traditonal nodes.

    Two historic events put Vancouver at a disadvantage when talking TX: The Great Treck and Sky Train.

    The Great Treck isolated UBC out on the point and the Bennett/Van der Zalm imposed Sky train!

    Vancouver grew, and is growing, as sprawl and, apparently, is destined to continue: ergo cannot expect easy convenient connections, or indeed an efficient system, simply because it does not have natural nodes with which to facilitate interchange.

    The essence of a good TX system, please allow me to question your superior expertise, lies not in the system, connections of a line, be it LRT, tram or whatever, it lays within the configuration of the city the system servers.

  • Urbanismo

    PS . . . Develop nodes http://members.shaw.ca/urbanismo/DTES/DTES.charrette.html first . . . before we waste anymore billions on trinkets . . .

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    The primary concern in transit implementation should be “the resulting quality of the urban space”.

    1. SkyTrain blights neighbourhoods

    On this issue alone, SkyTrain is a bad option, and the Evergreenline a disaster in the making—unless they switch to LRT. I rate that an “unlikely”.

    2. On the difference between LRT and Streetcar

    I prefer to think of them a “express trains” and “local trains”. I am thinking of the NYC Broadway Subway line as the example. If you get on the local, you are on a milk run that stops at every station. If you wait for the express, you are whisked down the track to Wall Street.

    3. On the difference between LRT/BRT (bus rapid transit) and BLine 99

    The B-line does not ride in the centre of the road (i.e. service is encumbered by right turning vehicles); B-line does not activate the signals (make red lines green, and vice versa); and B-line does not have as many doors for quick loading/off loading.

    4. On the difference between BRT and LRT

    Both ride the centre of the street, have dedicated lanes (i.e. take cars off the road), and both have signal activation (i.e. trip the traffic lights). There are differences in the quality of the ride. Compare the Olympic Line to riding the B99, for example.

    However, the greatest difference is that the LRT is a “train”.

    That gives it a few advantages. It is possible to link two trains together to double the capacity at peak hours. Thus, 10,000 people per hour per direction is potentially 20,000 (the number will be lower due to loading times). It is also possible to run the LRT as an interurban, achieving subway-like speeds on separated R.O.W. (right-of-way)

    5. Integrated Implementation Strategy

    What I began presenting at Canadian Institute of Planning conferences last year is a progressive implementation strategy (yes—that “p”-word is a bit of a leap of faith in our current climate of urban design).

    The key is to understand that operating a large bus fleet on any given line costs about as much as operating higher capacity BRT or LRT.

    There is a logical progression that is not unlike what we are seeing on Broadway. First: Implement Rapid Bus or B-Line. Next, for very little money, redesign the centre of the road, buy new electric buses, and implement BRT. Third, put tracks in the BRT lanes, and implement LRT. Finally, at very high densities, build a subway under the LRT, which then reverts to local service or “streetcar”.

    6. The resulting quality of the urban space

    The win-win in this implementation strategy is that surface rapid transit takes cars off the street. What we have always lacked in our area is a viable alternative to the automobile (unless you live walking distance from specific corridors).

    However, it is important to understand what cars are removed by surface transit implementation.

    At six lanes, Broadway has a capacity between 40,000 and 60,000 vehicles per day. Implementing BRT or LRT will cut that capacity in half. Remaining will be capacity for between 20,000 and 30,000 private vehicular trips.

    However, the trips removed will most likely be the “peak hour trips”, and these are the trips most likely to switch to transit in the first place (save fuel and parking costs).

    At peak hour, Broadway would be a very busy place, with 50% less pollution, and a lot of trains running by.

    However, at every other time of the day or week, Broadway could become a lot more like Robson with the added advantage of the sleek BRT/LRT quietly serving the entire corridor.

    We may implement transit, but if done right, what we are going to get is a “Great Street”.

    7. Hastings BRT/LRT

    Take this approach to Hastings Street, and the regenerative effects of a combined transit implementation and Hastings Street revitalization (with the appropriate changes to City Policy in the DTES) will provide the local investment necessary to end homelessness and turn the fate in our long-suffering historic neighbourhoods.

  • Urbanismo

    PPS . . .

    Lest I become engulfed by rage . . . IMO

    A massive shopping emporium is not a node . . . á la Metrotown: it is designed to induce us to spend money . . .

    Broadway @ Commercial is not a node . . . it is an artificial place were two TX lines meet haphazardly . . .

    etc etc etc . . .

  • Bill Lee

    @Lewis N Villegas April 20th 10:08

    …”6. The resulting quality of the urban space
    The win-win in this implementation strategy is that surface rapid transit takes cars off the street. What we have always lacked in our area is a viable alternative to the automobile (unless you live walking distance from specific corridors).”

    Urh, aah… People resent paying [do you know the bus fare $.cc] for riding 6 blocks or so (1 km on usual plaiting). Having a system for casual ridiing that is as expensive as it is now is ridiculous.
    And we do want to encourage the always-take-transit/bus mentality other than the one slog to work and then slump to home.

    Building any system is ?doomed? if it is too expensive for what it is. Docklands light rail in London? Scarborough? in Tronna.

    Remember that cars cost “nothing.” There is no meter, you always get a seat, often music and heat. And no farebox.
    Nobody thinks when they fill-up of the daily cost or is-this-journey-really-necessary.

    Even now DTES denizens have the right attitude, just get on the bus and ride without paying a fare.

    —- Bring back the trolleys to Cambie Street.

  • Bill Lee

    @ Urbanismo 20 April 11:51
    …”Broadway @ Commercial is not a node . . . it is an artificial place were two TX lines meet haphazardly . . . ”

    It is also an intersecting with banks on 3 corners, the greatest killer of street life in Vancouver. pace Kerrisdale.
    Even the 4th corner used to be the ScotiaBank before the Skytrain station forced it to move to the NorthWest corner.

    And it is not a proper interchange because the two lines don’t come to a same level platform (Hong Kong Central), nor is there swift escalators and one step to the next line of the Skytrain malarkeys.
    The bus interchange has been cobbled together after the fact with multiple-entry B-line buses which had been planned to be front-entrance only.
    And the frequency of buses further east has been lessened, the Renfrew and Broadway loop closed and the Boundary Loop a most silly interchange to Burnaby-once-in-a-while series of buses. Reminds me of the old Government Road line to New West in the 1950s that took forever.

  • Bill Lee

    And the earlier post that Madame Bula is referring to above:
    “And for those who didn’t see the link in the comments on an earlier post, another great site and debate going on *_ here_*.”

    is: http://francesbula.com/uncategorized/translink-puts-out-preliminary-broadway-rapid-transit-options-two-with-streetcar/#comment-24930
    written by Shepsil // Apr 20, 2010 at 12:47 am
    ” Not a transportaton expert, but some of these folks are http://bit.ly/aUY4wt . ”

    Which expands to the Ed Doherty comment of 16 April 2010 here
    http://www.livableregion.ca/blog/blogs/index.php/2010/04/16/broadway_rapid_transit_alternatives_lack#comments
    which has a dozen long comments so far.

  • MB

    If LRT automatically led to “quality urban space”, then Calgary would be Paris.

    Believe me, it’s not. However, certain bits and pieces of the inner city neighbourhoods have some good urban space, but only one is served by LRT (which it predated by several decades).

    Quality urban space results from planning and design decisions within a framework of other tools and inputs, not from solely transit tech.

    SkyTrain = blight … well, let’s be accurate, the guideways suck, but not nearly as much as your average concrete viaduct structure. Downtown has not been blighted by SkyTrain in any detectable way. Wait ’til you see the new Port Mann monster bridge. SkyBridge (SkyTrain over the Fraser) is a butterfly by comparison.

    We musn’t forget that Broadway is regionally and locally significant, something Jarrett Walker astutely astutely points out.

  • MB

    Taking space away from cars can be accomplished in many ways, and I’d certainly support it if the decision weas made to extend the Millennium Line to UBC in a subway, with an accompanying widening of all the sidewalks at crosswalks (including midblock in the central area) and stations. This will also keep some parking in place, but at a reduced overall space.

    Taking space from cars will also become a hot button issue with local merchants.

    Special paving, pocket parks, urban plazas oriented to the stations, and design excellence should all be part of the package.

  • Bill Lee

    Re: Taking cars off the street, but allowing street-parking for the ease of urban shopping and for the merchants.

    Remember “snow”? This mythical substance, rarely seen here means that it is pushed up to the sidewalk by the plows, but bunches up meaning that parked cars are now 1 metre from the sidewalk edge further restricting traffic, and in times of “snow” people even double park rather than get stuck in “snow” so mess up street traffic even more.

    And then city ploughs in the “snow” follow straight lines along the street lanes, not winding in and out of the windings created by expanding the sidewalks of, and at bus-stops, intersections and the like.

    Who has “snow” pictures of the present Fraser and Main streets wider sidewalks experiments?

  • mezzanine

    “If LRT automatically led to “quality urban space”, then Calgary would be Paris.”

    I think i’ll get this bronzed. 😉

  • MB

    Here’s yet another take on the Broadway rapid transit issue:

    http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/04/20/can-vancouver-afford-to-abandon-skytrain-for-its-broadway-route/

  • Zweisystem

    Calgary is a first generation LRT, which was designed on the lines of a Belgium pre-metro, rather than a classic European tram. High-floor cars and economic construction and operation were the hallmarks of 1980’s transit planning (except Vancouver that is).

    LRT has evolved in the past 30 years and now with low-floor cars and lawned rights of ways, LRT is intrinsically attractive, with tram routes becoming linear parks.

    Calgary’s transit mall is utilitarian, to say the least, but this is not the fault of LRT, rather civic politicians.

    How about this, a BCIT to UBC and Stanley park LRT that costs the taxpayer $0.00!

    http://railforthevalley.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/to-ubc-from-bcit-and-picinics-in-the-park-by-tram-the-light-rail-committees-broadway-light-rail-project/

  • voony

    yes the post of Jarret at Human transit is a brilliant one.
    I particularly like the title “mind the gap”, and the map showing the “gap” between “commercial” and “cambie”.

    “Closing the network gap” is something tending to be water down in the Translink approach, but very critical, and it is good to get a recall shot from Jarret on it.

    MB, I am interested to see your source for the number of fatalities on the C train.
    I have myself tried to dig-out without success.
    I am not surprises by your number since they are in line with what can be observed on similarly sized LRT network in France,
    (see also http://voony.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/subway-and-lrt-safety-in-france/ )

    the gold platted sentence:
    “If LRT automatically led to “quality urban space”, then Calgary would be Paris.”

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    A good laugh is still the only bonafide free ride in any system.

  • MB

    Voony, I wrote to Calgary Transit several times in 2000 and 2001, and it was like pulling wisdom teeth to get that info, but it finally came through in an email. I’d have to root around in my digital archives for the final response from their PR people, so this is from memory:

    1990-99:

    23 deaths (at crossings)
    106 injuries (at crossings)
    6 suicides (at platforms)

    The number of deaths and injuries during maintenance activity has slipped my mind for now.

    There was also a very serious collision with a tour bus at a crossing on the Canada Day weekend in 2004 I believe that resulted in Calgary’s first Class A emergency response that put the entire Calgary Health Region on alert. No one died, but their were many serious injuries treated at several hospitals.

    The above numbers are macabre, but they form a necessary part of the analysis in transit planning. Or, at least they should.

  • Ron van der Eerden

    The type of system should match the type of development – or the desired type of development. Subways and elevated systems serve nodes well but are poor for short trips. Streetcars are great for short trips on linear commercial corridors like Broadway. LRT is somewhere in between. So LRT would be ideal for the False Creek/Arbutus corridors from Main Street to Arbutus and would still work well on west Broadway/10th Avenue before getting up to speed again on UBC boulevard. LRT can serve both nodal and linear development.

    It seems to be the best choice for this alignment. It would negate the need to make a decision on Central Broadway for at least a decade since it would remove such a huge load on Central Broadway buses. Then we’d have up-and- running systems in place to make better evaluations of technology for Central Broadway and elsewhere. In a few years gas will be so expensive there won’t be strong political opposition to removing road lanes in favour of excellent transit.

  • mezzanine

    ^but buses/trolleybuses are also good for short trips, one wouldn’t need to build track just replicate broadway’s trolley bus service.

    And if we did choose surface LRT, where would you put bus service on broadway already, like the #10, #16 and #9?

    “This is an example of an almost universal fallacy in thinking about rail transit outside the transit profession: that somehow, rail just makes buses disappear.

    The truth is more complex and interesting. Rail replaces some buses but never all of them. Major bus corridors still need to run into the city, and need to be accommodated there. Even with light rail on the Portland transit mall, for example, buses are by far the majority of vehicles there, and the great design challenge of that street was how to integrate the light rail and bus services without letting them get in each other’s way. It’s not an easy problem. There are many solutions, but all of them have enough impacts that you have to think about this when you’re proposing your rail line, not just assume that bus people will figure it out later.”

    http://www.humantransit.org/2010/04/honolulu-grand-themes-from-the-rail-transit-wars.html

  • Zweisystem

    It would be interesting to match Calgary’s death/injury rate with SkyTrain. Getting the same numbers from TransLink is near impossible and though the statistics are macabre, they tell us next to nothing if we can’t compare them with SkyTrain.

    I know of several instances where people have been injured by SkyTrain and have been quietly paid off and the issue closed.

    It would also be interesting to compare the death/accident rate with Calgary’s LRT with the total road accident/death rate in the city.

    I would also surmise that the vast majority of accidents are not cause by light rail, but people deliberately disobeying signals.

    In Houston, the accident rate with the new LRT system was extremely high compared to other new LRT systems opened. Only when an official investigation took place, it was found that intersections accidents were three times higher than the national average.

    In Europe,if it is your fault causing an accident with a tram, you can kiss your driver’s license goodbye for a year or so and/or pay heavy fines.

    Those following the Human Transit chap are following a yesterdays transit theme, which suits Vancouver as the entire city lives in the past.

  • Ron van der Eerden

    Never said integrating LRT and buses would be “easy”. But my experience around many European systems last summer indicates you can get rid of buses on well designed LRT routes. The problem is those cities have extensive LRTram (Hybrid?) networks whereas we would be introducing a single line in the short term.

    In any case, LRT could run in dedicated lanes with trolley buses offering local service in the remaining car lanes. Or the on-street LRTram segments offer frequent stops and eliminate the need for buses, while the off-street segments make up speed with fewer stops between those commercial corridors.

  • MB

    @ Zwei: “It would be interesting to match Calgary’s death/injury rate with SkyTrain.”

    I’m referring specifically to deaths and injuries resulting from accidents at surface crossings with LRT, in which case the score is:

    Calgary: 129 (1990-99 … probably over 200 by now).

    Vancouver : 0 (1985-present)

    There are no crossings anywhere on the SkyTrain system because it is grade separated, and therefore no deaths and no injuries from collisions.

    Suicides, health-related collapses on the station platforms and trains, deaths + injuries from maintenance etc etc are another story.

    @ Ron van der Eerden

    Surface LRT on Broadway from Main to Alma will encounter 38 highly active crossings, the majority signalized for pedestrians and cyclists.

    Slow moving LRT trains will create 38 opportunities for collisions with pedestrians, cyclists, cars and commercial vehicles with every run.

    Faster LRT trains in a dedicated fenced median will sever 30 of 38 crossings (i.e. stations located only at the arterials), therein creating a safer environment, but a major inconvenience for pedestrians who simply need to cross the road between stations, and fro merchants who rely heavily on walk-in business copmiong from all directions.

    A hybrid dedicated LRT corridor with extra stops + crossings will only split the difference in safety and speed.

    You can see how easy it is to say philisophically Broadway needs surface LRT, but how difficult it will be to implement with the specific realities of the site and anything remotely resembling design detailing.

  • mezzanine

    @MB, WRT 38 ped/cyclist crossings, this is an interesting post from the Seattle Transit Blog WRT Link delay, of note regarding ped crossings:

    http://seattletransitblog.com/2010/03/08/signaling-on-mlk-i/

    “-Pedestrian Signal in Progress. Obviously, pedestrians must be given the chance to complete their crossing.
    -Skipped Pedestrians. If a pedestrian signal has been skipped in the cycle, it will not be skipped a second consecutive time, “to encourage compliance with the signal display.” ”

    how many crossings, and how many skipped pedestrians will affect travel times? Remember the MLK ROW is separate from traffic, and has signal priority over cars.

  • Richard

    @Zweisystem & MB

    Your whole discussion on injuries and worse is a real distraction. I strongly suspect that both SkyTrain and LRT result in safer cities. The millions of cars racing around our cities are much more dangerous and cause far more injuries than either SkyTrain or LRT. Lets focus on the real problem and stop these little squabbles that are getting rather tiresome.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    Ron’s analysis rings true with me: LRT has flexibility and that’s what we need on Broadway.

    A welcome to the rest of the transportation gang, making an appearance at the Fabulablog.

    Mezz likes trolleys/buses. He doesn’t seem to mind that we get capacity gains by putting the buses in the centre of the street, on dedicated lanes, and with signal priority. If it were LRT, Mezz, that would usurp all the bus trips from Broadway, and bus drivers would become train operators in a zero sum game that would multiply trips by a factor I can’t calculate because I don’t have a ppd/h number for Broadway buses. It seems that we are getting about 50,000 trips per direction per day, but we can’t break it down to the buses per peak hour.

    Ron reminds us once again that although we are “Just Talkin’ Broadway LRT Blues”, we really should be thinking of an LRT network.

    LRT would ride on Hastings, on 4th Avenue, on Arbutus, link VCC to Olympic Village, etc. The bus/trolley fleet gets rationalized around higher capacity transit implementation. Now, if David’s out there, he could give us the low down on his latest ideas for LRT networks, now that both south of Fraser and Broadway are in play.

    Richard, I’m glad to see you here as well. As you saw in my earlier post, I made a point to hijack a family trip to the No. 3 Road. The Skytrain’s very, very wide sidewalks are kind of a Richmond version of the Barcelona Ramblas… BIG disappointment. Don’t print the tourist brochures just yet.

    I’m going to have to go now and get me a whole lot more bathwater. It seems there are two babies we’re willing to toss out: aesthetics and personal safety. God help us if it should turn out that just one of those Calgary deaths, or any other, could have been prevented by practicing better urban design.

    It is the worst sort of callousness to suggest that we have to just put up with a death rate of a certain order. When in fact, as professionals, we should be gate keepers of just the sort MB is showing us how to be.

  • voony

    Frances Bula writes
    “And for those who didn’t see the link in the comments on an earlier post, another great site and debate going on here [livableregion.ca].”

    I don’t know if this site is great, but I know debate can’t go there when the site author is discarding comments “daring” to question Patrick Condon or Zweisystem numbers.
    (and there is effectively matter to question those number, as shown here: http://voony.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/a-streetcar-named-16-million-desire/ )

    I post it here, since I have saw mostly comment of regular bulablog contributors, Mezzanine, MB, Ron Smelser, to name few, all disappearing after lunch today.

    Ron Smelser post another comment ironizing on it which has been removed as well.

    That speaks enough of the ethic of the author of the above mentioned blog….

  • Urbanismo

    Way, way too much expertise going on here . . .

    @ Lewis . . .”The primary concern in transit implementation should be “the resulting quality of the urban space”.” Thanqu!

    @ MB . . . “I’d certainly support it if the decision was made to extend the Millennium Line to UBC in a subway . . . ” You godda be kiddin’! And surely not “cut-and-cover”!

    Anything, anywhere in the city that goes subway after the Cambie “cut-and-cover” . . . errrr . . . lesson . . . is just . . . “we have leaned nothing and we have forgotten nothing!”

    The B line works beautifully thanqu: I used it for two years.

    Even better a stop/start dedicated tramway all the way: especially if it is on turf. Wot’s the rush: I used it to catch up on my reading!

    Yup! What on earth’s the hurry! UBC is out 20+/- weeks in the year and students travel irregular hours! Commuters diminish after Ontario east and Arbutus west.

    Too much ex “expertise” going on here . . . time to take breather!

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    Thanks for the info voony. Do you have any idea what the ppd/h for the B-Line is?

    Urbie, gettin’ just the facts, as Dragnet would have it, builds expertise. That’s good, ’cause the provinciales have a record of resting their thumb on the scale when it comes to the final decision.

  • MB

    @ Lewis: “It seems there are two babies we’re willing to toss out: aesthetics and personal safety. God help us if it should turn out that just one of those Calgary deaths, or any other, could have been prevented by practicing better urban design. >> It is the worst sort of callousness to suggest that we have to just put up with a death rate of a certain order. When in fact, as professionals, we should be gate keepers of just the sort MB is showing us how to be.”

    We may disagree on how to accomplish this in the case for Broadway (but I suspect not on any other route), but our principles originate from the same place, Lewis.

    @ Richard: You’d be distracted too if you lost a family member via an otherwise preventable accident with … well, pick your vehicle, train, bus, car, Segway. My point is that each shortlisted option proposed for this important project should be subjected to a rational risk assessment. And the fact that Canada averages 9.6 deaths per 100,000 from motor vehicles is a tragedy that we allowed to subsume our rationality. It’s 15.5 in the US, BTW, which to me is an indicator that they’re even more offbase in the building of safe cities.

    @ Urbbie: If I had my way I’d ban cut & cover outright as from the Dark Ages of engineering. And the B-Line is really a mixed bag. Ive ridden it mostly when it was packed (as was the #9 and #10 that preceded it), but I’ve actually had two occasions last year when I could get a seat. Mind you, I don’t use it every day, so this is strictly annecdotal. And UBC has active summer programs and an increasing permanent population.

    @ Voony: You know, I was wondering about the Livable Blog too. My post yesterday (an honest questioning of Condon’s numbers as well) didn’t appear, yet when I tried to repost it wouldn’t allow it. I want to give the editors the benefit of the doubt that they aren’t practicing the worst form of censorship and host an anti-democratic site, but I am reminded why I quit the Livable Regions Coalition a couple of years back even though I agree with them most of the time.

    If true (and it’s not a technical glitch) then Livable blog readers who wander over here to FaBula’s site (and a couple of others) should question the ethics of the blog editor(s). Some of us may not agree with everything they say (only most of it), but we are not spammers or trolls.

    And what exactly is wrong with a good democratic debate, anyway?

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    There is one example of cut-and-cover that was very successful. When Paris set out to build the first Metropolitan subway, they had the spanking-new Haussmann Boulevards cutting here and there and everywhere in the city. Most notably, hardwiring the trains stations on the periphery with the historic center.

    The boulevards featured contre-allées—side streets separated from the central carriage ways by a median with trees. The entire first phase of the system was built in about a year and a half, all cut-and-cover, and not very far below surface making access more reasonable.

    But, here’s the hook. It was built in the contre-allées. Just the side of the boulevard was encumbered. Photography—already available in the late 1880’s—shows prefabricated steel and rivet components being lowered into place.

  • MB

    Livable Blog Censorship

    An attempt to post the following comments about the Broadway transit issue on the Livable Blog was made three times over two days. The comments were removed, though they did not violate their posting policy (typically “stay on topic, keep it clean”) in any way.

    This to me is outright censorship and very anti-democratic and should be challenged.

    http://www.livableregion.ca/blog/blogs/index.php
    =============================

    DEAR EDITOR: This is my third attempt in two days to post the comments below . I sincerely hope that the “posting irregularities” that occurred on 10.04.21 were the result of a technical glitch, not because the editor deletes messages that challenge assertions made by Livable members. The Coalition deserves better.

    ***

    It would do us all a favour to eliminate bias when having fun with numbers.

    It was stated above that it costs $25 per trip to run the Canada Line, and $50 per trip for a Broadway subway, and by extension these systems are “too expensive” to consider and should be binned prior to completion of detailed planning. No stats were offered for the B-Line, comparable BRT, LRT or private cars.

    Let’s take these figures at face value, and let me offer another set of numbers. Using the same logic, one can justify the continuance of rampant idiotic car-dependency because it costs taxpayers “only” $7.40 per day per car in subsidies (source LRSP docs stating the subsidy is $2,700 per car per annum, divided by 365 days). This is above what drivers willingly pay privately to run their vehicles.

    Do I hear anyone out there demanding we cancel transit projects and build more road space because it “costs less”? Of course not. There are just too many cars already.

    It’s obvious transit has far more value to the community and the economy than a simplistic per rider cost calculated in 2010 for a project that is expected to be around in 2110. Vancouver will supersede Montreal as Canada’s second largest city by mid-century at the current growth rates. These projects will have 70 years of amortization-free service during a period when at least two million new residents will arrive in the region, and ridership will look far different than it does today. I suggest they will eventually make a profit from farebox revenues, especially Broadway with potential huge increases in ridership.

    Put another way, a full-scale subway to UBC with all the bells & whistles will have a one time base cost approximating 10 months of the annual regional car subsidy. The debate about costs between subways, LRT and BRT have been made in the absence of meaningful leadership from the federal government, a situation unlike every other industrialized nation. Of course such projects are expensive when couched in terms of limited local funding and absolutely anemic funding by the province. There is lots of money to build subways, LRT and BRT where most suited, but the senior governments choose to spend it on freeways, Big Oil, GM (which thankfully paid it all back) and in making the military a source of hard power.

    For the record, I don’t have a problem with light rail when it’s designed with the highest safety and design standards, and has appropriate urban design measures — except on Broadway which is a unique corridor with regional transit significance, and dense crossing spacing with significant pedestrian and bike traffic (almost every intersection is currently signalized), hence high accident risk on the surface (no dedicated rail median), or the blocking of 30 out of 38 intersections (with dedicated median). This corridor needs something more efficient and safe.

    Regarding urban design, human scaled urbanism and a beautiful streetscape treatment with an emphasis on increasing pedestrian space by taking away road space is entirely possible with a subway project as it is with Eurotrams. Transit tech alone does not dictate an urban design response without an accompanying urban design policy.