Saturday, July 12, 2008

Light Rail Guy Posts in


From:

Light Rail Guy...


Hey David, the Light Rail Guy & the Light Rail Committee were onto the RAV/Canada line hokum in 2000. not only did the LRC predict cut-and-cover subway construction, it also predicted that ridership will be about 10% greater than the 98-B Line & Cambie St. buses.

The LRC also predicts that Translink will lose the suburban ridership because of the forced transfer of 300 & 600 series of buses from South Surrey & Delta, at Casino Junction (just a few slots away from your destination).

Already in Tsawwassen there is a large number of wee "Smart" cars and many former bus riders will switch from transit to cars.

(Maybe we can get electric cars and hook up to the new high voltage power lines?)

RAV/Canada Line shows the complete folly of building metro/subway on a route that doesn't have the ridership to support it.

For about $1.5 billion less, we could have had a LRT line from Downtown Vancouver to Steveston & YVR and possibly to Ironwood mall @ #5 and Steveston highway.

Postscript

Running just in from of the mouldy 'Speed Skating oval', is the remains of a former railway right-of-way which connected to the 'Arbutus' Line. If LRT had been built instead, we would have had a very speedy LRT service direct to the Oval's front door. But, no, Malcolm Brodie wanted a politically prestigious metro instead, so now the closest station is about 1.5 km. away. I'll just take the car instead!

I told you so!

1 comment:

Grumpy said...

Just a note on the Canada Line. Due to the cost of the Canada line escalating from $1.3 billion to over $2.4 billion (How many fast-ferry fiasco's does this equal?), the stations in the subway are a mere 50 metres in length, or just enough to fit a 3 car train.

This means that for $2.4 billion (and climbing) we have the world's smallest subway system with its maximum capacity held at 15,000 pphpd (and that is crush loading) and to increase capacity, larger stations must be built!

This means that to increase capacity, we have to to the cut-and-cover thing all over again on Cambie St., to increase the subterranean stations lengths.

Anyone want to tell this to Susan Heyes?

Two things come to mind with this idiocy:

1)In the real world, subways are not even considered unless ridership on a transit route exceeds 15,000 pphpd.

2) A simple LRT operating on the 'Arbutus' at a fraction of the cost of the Canada Line, could achieve capacities exceeding 20,000 pphpd!

That's right folks, step right up and see the world's smallest and most expensive subway, brought to you by Gordo & his pals, including Malcolm (not the Light Rail Guy) Brodie; Senator Larry (30 pieces of silver) Campbell ; Ken (lets shred those memos) Dobell; Jane ($20,000 a month) Bird; and not to forget Kevin (another bird brained) Falcon.

You just can't make this stuff up!