Thursday, January 30, 2014

MALCOLM JOHNSTON ON GORDON PRICE ON TRANSIT

David;
I must comment on your interview with Gordon Price, who is perceived by many as a transit expert, he is not and not even close. Mr. Price is a graduate City Planner and has very little knowledge of transport mode and its application and operation.

I must state that I am not a transit expert but a layman, who has over the past 30 years have consulted with transit professionals about metro, light-metro and light rail. I was also the chap who was responsible for organizing the Rail for the Valley Leewood report about reinstating the the Vancouver to Chilliwack interurban.

http://www.railforthevalley.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/chilliwacktosurreyinterurbanfinalreportr.pdf
I was once on your radio program in your 'NW days.
So let's look at the transit situation today. SkyTrain is a vintage proprietary railway, which after being on the market since the late 1970's has managed to sell only seven such systems under four different names (ICTS; ALRT; ALM; ART)and only three are seriously used for regional transit, with the other four being a demonstration line and or an airport/theme park people movers, all overseas SkyTrains financed in part by the government of Canada. The vehicle and technological patents for the SkyTrain system are held by SNC Lavalin and Bombardier.
The Canada Line is not really a SkyTrain at all but a $2.5 billion dumbed down heavy-rail metro, built as a light metro and as built has less capacity than a streetcar costing a fraction to build! The Canada Line is also incompatible in operation with the rest of the SkyTrain mini-metro system.
Mr. Price made much hay about the "90 second headways", to which I say; "so what", most European LRT/tram systems operate at 30 second headways during peak hours! SkyTrain's 90 second headways are necessary due to the small cars and small stations which demand short headways to be able to keep up to traffic loads. As an aside, the Canada Line has very small station platforms and was at capacity when it was completed!
Today, it is recognized by transit professionals,(but not Mr. Price or SFU) that modern LRT does indeed have a higher capacity than SkyTrain, that's why no one builds with SkyTrain today!
SkyTrain does indeed carry high ridership, but over 80% are bus passengers forced to transfer from bus to SkyTrain, about twice the industry standard, which conveys the message that SkyTrain's ridership is a forced ridership which is definitely not how you attract new ridership. With the proliferation of a 110,000 U-Passes for post secondary students it is easy to see that our transit system is at capacity on major routes, but with cheap fares, TransLink is going broke carrying the extra loads brought about by the U-Pass.
From 1994 to 2011 the mode share in the Metro Vancouver region has remained unchanged at 57% and transit ridership has increased a mere 3%, hardly a great selling point after an over $9 billion invested in rapid transit.
SkyTrain, with it's puny streetcar sized stations with 80 metre platforms means the mini-metro has met its maximum capacity of about 15,000 persons per hour per direction (the Canada line has 40 to 50 metre station platforms and effectively has about half the capacity!) meaning a Skytrain subway under Broadway will not have the capacity as claimed by the city of Vancouver, TransLink and Mr. Price unless every station platform is increased to 120 metres or more in length which will push the cost for a Broadway subway to near $5 billion! No wonder the SkyTrain Lobby wants road pricing and all the tax revenues they can get their dirty little hands on.
Calgary's LRT has platform lengths of 120 metres, enabling them to operate longer trains and the Ottawa LRT will also have 120 metre platforms, which are designed to be easily expanded to 150 metres, in fact the tram subway in Ottawa already has 150 metre platforms!
I am tired by academics pretending to be transit experts trying to sell dated planning, using dated Skytrain as something wonderful. All I think what Mr. Price wants, is to keep his speaking engagements calendar open for as many dates as possible selling what is tantamount to, is an Edsel.
Malcolm Johnston
Rail for the Valley

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Pete Seeger

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Monday, December 9, 2013

Thursday, December 5, 2013

The Mind (more or less) of a Writer

Friday, November 29, 2013

AUNT LEAH'S PLACE

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Saturday, November 9, 2013

CONVERGENCE





Witness the latest news. Is it all of a piece?

Item: Many millions of tax dollars (upwards of $90 Million) are given to social services agencies for child welfare and not even one file is opened. Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond is B.C.’s fearless child and youth advocate. Her latest findings verge on the criminal. Committees were struck, meetings were held and deeply concerned people talked. Travel and accommodations and meals were covered. Aboriginal children in particular remain completely “under served.” Try at mortal risk.

Item: A second major long-serving doctor has resigned from Surrey memorial Hospital because he has no faith in the hospital’s ability to respond to Code Blue alerts, such as cardiac and respiratory emergencies.

Item: B.C. Government orders review of Fraser Health Authority.

Item: A full page - reprinted no doubt in its entirety from a pharmaceutical PR kit – report in the paper tells us that pediatricians are endorsing Prozac for kids. We are supposed to be cheered by this horror. It is, of course, a monstrosity and a huge public scam, but we are being conditioned to buying in to the madness. We are being convinced that it is good for us and for our children to get all doped up at the age of 5.

Item: The largest convention ever held in this city will occur when 48,000 come to Vancouver for the 2025 International Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous. But wait. How can this be? I have been in public meetings and heard with my own ears from officials and experts that A.A. doesn’t work. The man, who for two City of Vancouver mayors, was the drug czar at $100,000 a year and who has been showered with many civic and national awards for his contributions to the field, said in plain English that everyone knows that 12-step programs do not work. He was inviting us to join in on the mayor’s latest plan to give prostitutes free heroin and heroin substitutes. The czar and the mayor felt it was important and humane to keep prostitutes comfortable in their chosen field of work. Many experts have told me with complete knowing conviction that A.A. - and Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Emotions Anonymous – that none of these programs is really effective and that only a handful of people ever profit from them and then only for a short time. And that therefore, we ought to be giving people free drugs and alcohol to make their hopeless lives more tolerable and keep the poor slobs from braking into our cars and homes. And all of these people who have told me these things over the years are experts and doctors and psychiatrists and political leaders. 

But this all leaves me terribly confused because if 48,000 people are coming here for an A.A. convention and each of those delegates represents 1,000 or more clean and sober members who will not be making the trip, that’s a lot of clean and sober people who seem to have got that way by walking into church basements and saying, “Hi. My name’s Jenny and I am an alcoholic.”

It leaves me even more confused because of the thousands of people that I know personally who are clean and sober A.A., N.A. and C.A. members, and the many millions of people worldwide who claim similar status. Why are all those people trying to fool me when the experts have told me that this stuff doesn’t work?

I’ve called this little rant “Convergence,” because I believe there is a pattern here.

In this province, the Health Authorities are powerful, distant, dictatorial and combative with the very people they are meant to serve. They have sets of frozen ideas and they are determined that constituents will march in step to their drum beat. The monies wasted are gigantic and appalling. Bad programs are supported because they toe the line, good programs are refused because they don’t fit The Master Plan and the bureaucracy increases in direct proportion to its inefficiencies.

Never forget that the single consistent operating principle of all bureaucracies is Cover Your Butt.

Maybe we have become a nation of mandarins. Maybe we are already China. Maybe this is the result when half the available jobs in the country are with a government.

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Getting close...