Stephen Rees’s blog

I just happened across this image. It shows a San Francisco MUNI light rail train. It is what is used to get people around the city - for regional connections there is BART. Note the combination of exclusive right of way and surface street running. And the complete absence of crossing barriers, flashing lights, bells and cross bucks. These trams are more common in SF than the cable cars - but those are iconic, this is prosaic. But along with trolleybuses this is what the residents use mostly. In the centre of the city there is a cut and cover section to downtown - and in fact is double decked with BART underneath. The trams then run in a tunnel underneath Forest Hill. The two systems are run by different agencies (a bit like TTC and GO in the centre of the known universe).

I think that a system like this along Arbutus would still be useful - except now it could follow Kent Avenue past the Canada Line and wind up in New Westminster. In fact in the early days of the Evergreen studies something like that was actually looked at as the CP tracks go all the way to Coquitlam. But being Metro Vancouver we never really take using existing railway track for transit seriously. It just works well everywhere else and could not be tried here. Except for the Vancouver Heritage Railway of course. But no-one takes that seriously.

Not much happening at the YVR terminal end, but progress at the central station opposite the Air Canada Hangar.

And out at Templeton - near the new long term parking lot what looks like a more substantial concrete structure is going up

Mike Clay is a Port Moody Councillor who has a web site, on which he has been running a survey of opinions on the Evergreen Line. One of my readers wrote to me and asked me to draw it to your attention, and hoped it would provoke some discussion.

I will kick things off by noting that the response rate is very low - 104 total. Of those, only 35 say they come from Port Moody and another 30 from the rest of the TriCities. The other thing that needs to be said is that this is a self selected sample: people who knew about the web page and its survey and could be bothered to go there and complete it. So in no sense can it be said to be representative of the opinions of those in the area. And it is quite easy, if you put your mind to it, to work out ways in which one individual could answer more than once.

I have commented here before on the Evergreen Line and the group which has been pushing for SkyTrain rather than light rail. So the link will take you there and I won’t cover the same ground again. And I have also noted that Port Moody is a bit of an anomaly in the suburbs as it has got transit oriented development - and could get more - but so far has only a B-Line and the last stop inbound on the West Coast Express.

What is also instructive is the extent of the comments that were posted at the open ended questions in each section - which again shows that those who did respond have a much higher level of commitment than the “average punter” type interviews - usually people who are not skilled enough to avoid market researchers who phone them at suppertime.

The real problem for the TriCities was that the provincial government decided to proceed with the Canada Line - and I have also written about how that decision was rammed through. At that time the completion of the LRSP “T Line” - essentially Lougheed Mall to Coquitlam Centre at one end and VCC to the west (and no one now agrees how far west it would have gone) at the other - was supposed to be the first priority. After all the original idea of developing the North East Sector was that it would be transit oriented, but there has never been and still is not adequate transit service in that area. So the traffic congestion through the area was entirely predictable. Especially around the interchanges at the north end of the Port Mann Bridge.

It now makes it very hard for me to answer the question put me earlier in the week by a journalist on my priority list for LRT in the region in future. We should have built both the Evergreen Line and the Broadway Line extension from VCC by now. But equally with the province determined to expand Highway #1, something to directly link North Surrey to Coquitlam is also essential, as well as rail for the Valley. Now if the sort of money being spent on Gateway were devoted instead to electric trains/trams, especially on existing tracks, we could actually build quite a lot of this. But asked to prioritize between them and I am afraid I had to duck. But I did make it clear that electric trains in general are to be preferred over highways.

Richmond News

The City of Richmond will spend up to $1.3 million to house a tram that may never run again, according to a plan going to the city’s parks, recreation and culture department tonight.

This is a sorry story. Richmond has not performed well with respect to the Interurban which pretty much created it. Vancouver and Burnaby have done much better. Vancouver certainly benefited from a former head of BC Transit who recklessly spent the crown corporations funds without proper authorisation on restoring a car now on Vancouver’s Heritage line. Burnaby have recently spent a packet on their interurban car. Richmond has a long history of arguments and law suits and the car is still not in running condition.

I got an idea from a story in the Vancouver Courier today (not on their site at the time of writing) which lauds Hatch Mott McDonald for getting the contract to design the expansion of the streetcar lines between Granville Island and Science World.

If the project goes ahead, the single tracks between Granville Island and Science World, where the Downtown Historic Streetcar runs on weekends during the tourist season, would be replaced with double tracks that would accommodate both the new and old streetcars.

Single cars would run down a grass median in the centre of First Avenue with a car and a bicycle lane on either side. Whether the wires that power the electric cars will span First Avenue or run off posts in the centre of the median will be examined in the report HMM will submit to the city by the end of the year.

My suggestion would be that the City of Richmond lend the tram to Vancouver. They hope to borrow some other cars to have some running by 2010. TRAMS have a lot of experienced people, and the technology of electric traction is common to trolleybuses. So 1220 could be running again, as long as we don’t have to wait for Richmond to get its act together. And we might even have some money from our Olympic venture to contribute. The main thing is that the car run, not be a static museum piece. We have lots of nice pictures in our Archives - which cannot be published because no-one knows who the photographers are. They form a very nice exhibit right now. A few artifacts could round that out. A working car on a line that is actually performing a function is a much better memorial to the interurban.

Richmond should hang its head in shame. It has already allowed housing to be built on part of the right of way. In future years our children will look at the monstrosity on No 3 Road and wonder what on earth we were thinking of. We could have had a real light rail system here again. We chose not to. Incredibly short sighted and as always driven more by penny pinching than common sense.

Update

Tram moving to next stop

By Matthew Hoekstra

May 27 2007

City staff will announce next Tuesday the new proposed home for the Steveston tram.

Last October city council abandoned plans to relocate interurban tram #1220 to Britannia Heritage Shipyard, over cost and community concerns that a shipyard wasn’t the right spot for a historic rail car.

Council opted instead to leave it at its current home in a barn in Steveston Park until a new location could be found.

Now, according to city spokesperson Ted Townsend, a new location has been identified. That location will be revealed at the next parks, recreation and culture committee meeting, Tuesday at 4 p.m. at city hall.

And something I had missed in  the Province last Monday from Derek Moscato

News :: thetyee.ca

Did Tories’ new enviro minister undercut a big light rail project to settle a political score? A Tyee special report.

By Laura Drake
Published: January 23, 2007

I have been professionally invloved in evaluating transportation projects for most of my career. And far too often, it really doesn’t matter what the technical or economic arguments are - it’s all about politics. And mostly poilitics of the smallest and most personal kind.

When I was last in Ottawa (June 2006) it looked like the line would be built. But what did I know? I was cheered by the use of a lightweight German vehicle which brings the lower cost of Light Rail (tram) technology to existing railways. O Train got around the ARA rules about not allowing heavy freight trains and Light Rail vehicles on the same track by “temporal separation” . Diesel traction may not be ideal but saves a lot in front investment in electrification, so the initial line as proof of concept can open and win over the waverers.

But obviously not those opposed by reason of personal self interest or - if the Tyee is right - simple malice. And after all the interests of the community at large are the last thing you would expect any politician to put ahead of their own agenda.

Un Tramway Nommé Désir: Streetcars Make a Comeback in Paris - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

I don’t normally read Der Spiegel. This article was brough to my attention by the Semiahmoo Planning Group on the Liveable Region Coalition listserve. There some nice (though small) pictures to go with the article too. I hope this story gets picked up around here as trams on Broadway (and other major streets) are becoming something of leitmotif of mine.

Here is the official website and if you look in the comments section, Ron has provided some useful links for English speakers.

Bombardier wins Vancouver SkyTrain contract

Is this news? No one else can build SkyTrain cars. They are Bombardier’s proprietary technology. I suppose at a stretch you could put someone else’s car bodies on Bombardier’s running gear, but that is not likely cost effective. There is no competition for building SkyTrain cars, so why pretend there is?

Group lobbies for SkyTrain rather than light rail

This is bizarre. Accepted wisdom is that light rail is cheaper than SkyTrain. Mainly because SkyTrain is grade separated, and the costs of a structure are way more than putting tracks in the streets. Of course, most light rail schemes started by making use of existing rail tracks, and building short links to make service more convenient especially in City Centres. (Nottingham, Manchester and Croydon all follow this pattern).

Mazur also worried about the effects of street-level rapid transit on vehicle traffic,

Actually that is kind of the point. He tries to tie it in to fire trucks, but the hidden agenda is what it always is - the desire to ensure freedom for cars. In most of Europe, cities which had retained streetcars played around with “pre-metro” for a while (Antwerp for example) putting the street cars into tunnels in city centres prior to planned later extensions into full blown metros. Most abandoned this approach, as cars flooded into city streets as the trams were taken out, making not only the congestion worse, but reducing the quality of life in city centres with noise, fumes and danger. Perhaps some of the nicest new LRT systems are in France (Grenoble, Strasbourg, Marseilles, Lyon) which are nearly all at grade and often in car free streets. The Swiss, of course, stuck to their streetcars throughout.

SkyTrain is very nearly unique. It is only found in Canada (Scarborough) and the US (Detroit, and a slightly larger version feeding JFK airport). Originally conceived as a maglev people mover, the innovations when it was launched were linear induction motors (LIM) and driverless operation (except in Scarborough). Small volume production and the use of proprietary technology means higher costs, as there is not the ability to tap into volume production. Many systems take standard cars common to many cities. Calgary and Edmonton both went for on street running using high level cars (standard German Duwag cars initially - popular with US cities too) and platforms. Most comparative studies show that LRT can be affordable, provided the proponents resist the inevitable scope creep that happens once local politicians with an edifice complex get involved. (The original Docklands Light Rail was developed as a turn key contract for UKP75m, mainly built on existing rail rights of way and structures and using off the shelf German trams. It is now growing rapidly along new tracks.)

That being said, there is a lot of merit tying LRT into redevelopment. Docklands served this function so well it had to be expanded almost as soon as it was opened, and a new deep level tube line was also added to the area. Portland has made a success of developing station precincts in suburbs that were formerly lifeless dormitories, and has also added city centre street cars to regional rapid transit. The TriCities are already developed as car oriented suburbs, although Port Moody has added some high rises in its downtown, as has Coquitlam. But the key to making sustainable suburbs is to put the train in first, and put up with operating losses for the years it takes for the city to grow up around it. This is the way that most cities grew in the pre-automobile era. The streetcar and subway companies lost money on their operations, but made out on the property development. We do not have this ability here now.

Actually, when it was laid out Coquitlam left provision for an “intermediate capacity transit system” (i.e. technology not specified) with provision for a right of way along Guildford Way to City Hall. When the the province attempted to extend SkyTrain on this route the people who had moved in, knowing the SkyTrain was planned, all howled in protest and got it moved back to Barnet Highway. The same thing happened when the TTC tried to use its reserved right of way into Malvern to extend the Scarborough RT, and the extension was abandoned, contributing to the rapid decline of the area into one of Canada’s most dangerous places, though that may have been reversed recently.

What we have here, folks, is a pattern. And that is, once again, “not in my backyard.” No doubt this group will gather adherents to their misguided ideas, and the end result could be the Evergreen line (one of the few properly planned rapid transit proposals in this region) goes on the back burner once again.