Stephen Rees's blog

BC Government Press Release

VANCOUVER – The security of B.C. commuters will be enhanced thanks to a $100-million priority project that the governments of Canada, British Columbia and TransLink have identified today.

This project involves implementing controlled access gates (Faregates) and electronic fare cards (Smartcards) on the Lower Mainland’s transit system, Premier Gordon Campbell, Russ Hiebert, MP for South Surrey-White Rock-Cloverdale and TransLink CEO Tom Prendergast announced today.Construction of the Faregates-Smartcards Project is expected to begin in the spring of 2010.

There must be an election coming. As usual the rules of propaganda apply. Lie big, lie often and sooner or later it will be accepted as truth.

The investment of $100m in out transit system is welcome – and Smartcards  may or may not make travel easier. It all depends on the way they are implemented and the the tariff they use. But one thing I will predict with certainty, “Faregates” will not make transit any safer.  There are a lot of things that our transit system needs – and gates – despite popular opinion – are simply not going to anything worthwhile. They will raise costs, make transit use more difficult and give rise to even more disputes with staff. They will impact on people with disabilities, people with small children, bulky baggage and bicycles. And fare evasion will continue – just in different ways.

Above all the sort of people who make you feel unsafe on transit will not disappear. Cities like New York and Paris have always had gates – and always had problems with crime. That is because places with crowds of people are attractive to certain types of crime – as with any other enterprise. There are more people so there are more potential victims. And the need to have a farecard will deter none of the hardened types. Young women walking home from bus stops and SkyTrain stations will be no safer. Young men will still get into confrontations with each other, especially when there are crowds fuelled with alcohol and “team spirit”. Con men will still stop you with plausible hard luck stories.

“a simpler and more convenient way to access the system”

Are you kidding? What could be simpler and more convenient than the present barrier free access?

I am sorry, but if faregates make you feel safer, you have been deluded.

The Province

That is a very nice headline to be able to copy. It looks good doesn’t it?

It certainly sounds better than “transit ridership increases by less than 3%” – which is also true

And you will search in vain for the statistic that really matters. What did that do for transit mode share? Tom Prendergast says it was due to higher gas prices, because that is what some people said when the were asked in a survey. But the probability that I would go for is just more transit service.There has been such severe overcrowding and pass ups in recent years than any additional service would be quickly filled at peak periods. This might also raise the confidence of people trying to use transit that they will be able to get on a bus or into a SkyTrain in a reasonable time frame.

The only way to tell if people had actually switched from driving to buses in any significant way would be if the number of car trips declined. And despite Translink being an all mode transportation provider, not just a transit system, they seem very quiet about the number road trips. A lot of Translink’s revenue gets spent on roads. Some of the additional gas tax they were awarded when they were formed was swallowed up by the need to maintain (and the desire to improve) downloaded provincial highways, bridges and the Albion Ferry. And of course the biggest single project on the books has been the replacement of that ferry by a massively increased car capacity Golden Ears Bridge. (Yes that is a P3 to paid for by tolls – but the upfront drain on resources must be significant.)

Perhaps it is just to early to tally the traffic counts?

I am not going to get into a discussion about ridership statistics – that is an old saw done to death here. They are supposed to be getting better, though I hear the automatic passenger counters now installed on a few buses are not as reliable as had been hoped. The phenomenon of rising transit ridership has been seen across North America – and has been one of the few bright spots in the recession so far. Of course, just like Translink, most transit systems have also seen their ability to provide enough service to carry all these new rides severely hampered. And rising fares and cutting service has been a very common story for months on my daily Google alert for “transit news”.

But it would be nice for a change to have some context for statistics and not just spin. How does a 3% increase stack up against Toronto or Montreal for example? Or even Victoria, come to that. Has there been a reduction in the number of axles going across the automatic counters along the “cordons” (basically the major bridges, tunnel, Boundary Road and North Road)? Or even was there a fall in the number of private vehicles insured in the region in 2008?

Matt Burrows interviews the Premier in the Straight this week. The things this man says “make one gasp and stretch one’s eyes”.

I am also pleased to say that I got in my rebuttal – at the top of the page no less.

Ministry of Transportation documents filed with the Environmental Assessment Office in 2006, and updated in 2007, predict that 176,000 tons of greenhouse gases will be added in the Lower Fraser Valley annually until 2021 as a result of Gateway.

“Well, you’ll have to define what you mean by the Gateway program,” Campbell responded,

No, actually we don’t. We can only use the definitions that the Government themselves have been using. Campbell now adds that Gateway is a transit programme as well. Which will be news to Tom Prendergast at Translink who is so strapped for operating funds that he is now saying that of we do not give him more taxes he will cut transit back to 1970 levels. That’s not any sort of plan – and it is certainly not one that will reduce emissions.

Campbell and Falcon like to talk about a “transit plan” but all it really is is a collection of old plans slightly warmed over that was hastily cobbled together in response to the growing pressure – especially south of the Fraser – for more transit not freeways. The claim is that after the freeway has been expanded then transit can be improved. Of course none of the $14bn this is estimated to cost is funded – and by the way it includes all of the money spent or committed to the Canada line. Both the federal government – and the cash strapped Translink – would have to equal the province’s contribution. Which just brings up back to poor old Mr Prendergast again.

The Gateway will not ease traffic congestion. First of all during the construction phase it will – of course – get much worse. Then when the shiny new facilities are opened there will be a brief period of whoopee. Which quickly evaporates as people start taking more and longer trips. “Induced traffic” has always followed new hiughway openings – and the more “supressed demand” there is now the quicker this effect is seen. The Alex Fraser Bridge is an example I quote because the people who live south of the Fraser are all familiar with it. The free flow of traffic period lasted months – not years – and even opening up the extra lanes on the bridge years before they were supposed to be needed did not help for long.

There are ways to reduce traffic. Indeed the traffic engineers’ toolbox is a concept that has also been around for years. The toughest sell to the driver is the idea that they should actually pay for the road space they use – in exactly the same way they pay for airline seats, or movies or any other perishable commodity. At peak periods, road space should cost the user more. It has a higher value at peak times. That way there is some effect possible of peak spreading – but mostly it provides a revenue source for alternatives – which are inherently more efficient people movers.

Congestion occurs on roads because cars are dreadfully inefficient at utilising road space. That is why there has long been a research porgramme for “intelligent highways” to try and get better at handling crush loads. A 3 metre wide strip – which might be a freeway lane or a bus lane or a railway track – can handle 2,000 vehicles per hour which at present average occupancy of 1.3 persons per car is 2,600 people per hour (pph). That kind of volume is well below what most existing transit (bus or train) provides. Most rapid transit systems work well at 10 to 15, 000 pph but 20 to 30,000 is not unusual. All kinds of fancy technology is proposed – most of which takes control of the vehicle away from its driver – but still at most doubles people carrying capacity. Yes, if you could persuade people to share their cars, you could equal that performance. All we have seen is a steady erosion of what is defined as a “high occupancy vehicle” – and many places in North America have given up altogether and allowed people willing to pay tolls into the HOV lane.

The point though really is that as a long term strategy to reduce greenhouse gases, highway expansion is self defeating. Because it locks the region into car dependency for the next thirty years or more. At the very time when redesigning the suburbs to reduce their carbon footprint is one of the most pressing needs to ensure that humanity can survive on this planet. Because know for certain that the one thing we will NOT see as a result of the Gateway is Transit Oriented Development. Because there will be no transit worth speaking of until all these highways are paid for.

Update – also read what my friend Eric has to say on the Livable Blog