Local government officials on the money

Here is a great story from Black Press on how TransLink can save money. Build Light Rail, not SkyTrain:

"Given these economic times, maybe we go back to the drawing board and have a look at it," said Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts, who also chairs the Mayors Council on Regional Transportation.

She told a Metro Vancouver board meeting Sept. 25 a shift back to light rail would save a significant amount of money and would be supported by northeast sector residents along the line.

Check out the whole story

New Report: Freeways cause congestion

Perhaps the German word schlimmbesserung — meaning an improvement that makes things worse — is an apt descriptor for the massive program of new road construction that has marked Melbourne’s ‘solution’ to its transport challenges over the last several decades.

One of the major justifications for most freeway expansion projects in North America is that they will relieve congestion and improve travel times. Reducing travel time is the major economic value used in justifying these projects. In fact if you look at the BC Gateway Program’s justifications from 2004, the major justification was to reduce travel time.

A new report from Melbourne, Australia calls into question that justification. In Melbourne, they examined the data from the last two decades of traffic and road expansion and found that travel time has not been saved, in fact it is worse than ever. The most interesting fact was that the $1.5 billion City Link freeway project actually caused “the average speeds on Melbourne’s freeways for the entire urban network overall have also dropped in the years following City Link’s full opening.” Before the open, travel time where improving.

This is interesting because Metro Vancouver didn’t have too much freeway expansion for the last 20 years and was the only place that saw a reduction in travel times in Canada. It would seem that the more freeways that get built, the worst congestion becomes.

The report from the University of Melbourne made the following conclusions:

In sum, these results suggest that the core of travel times savings benefits, which is an increase in average travel speeds, has not eventuated in Melbourne’s urban road network during the years under review. Indeed, based on the evidence presented and analysed in this paper, one could be led to the conclusion that investments in Melbourne’s urban road network have resulted in more time being used by Melbourne’s motorists rather than less time. On the basis of the assumptions conventionally used to justify road building , major road infrastructure initiatives have resulted in net economic disbenefits.

Please check out the whole report.

Langley Monorail

A few weeks ago, Joe (co-founder of SFOT) and I were at a barbeque and happen to meet Mr. John Murchie. Mr. Murchie is an inventor and invented something called Composite Steel Technology (CST). This is an ultra light, strong construction material that can be used to build shells for things like light rail vehicles.

As you know we are strong supporters of at-grade light rail, but Mr. Murchie has invented a monorail system of his own using this CST technology. We at SFOT are open-minded, so we thought we would share some of the information about his system. You can download a letter with more detailed information from our document archive.

Inexpensive: We can build and install the guideway towers and rail for as little as $5-7 million per mile, roughly 35 percent of what Metro Vancouver’s Skytrain system now costs. Imagine, instead of the proposed UBC Skytrain extension costing $2.8 billion it could be done for well under $1 billion. In fact, both the UBC extension as well as the Evergreen line could be built for less than the Skytrain extension out to UBC!

Light Weight: Weight savings come from the patented Composite Steel Technology (CST) built into the passenger cars. A 90 passenger urban car will weigh under 10,000 lbs which allows for a far lighter support structure than any other system in the world. The lightness of the car and support structure not only translates into lower construction costs but equally important it allows this system to go where traditional systems can’t go such as on existing bridges, over top existing railway lines and over unstable ground.

Rapid construction time: Because the towers, rails and footings are steel these components can be fabricated in a shop environment on an assembly line basis. Once delivered to their erection site their light weight allows small portable cranes to handily install them with minimal interruption to people’s daily life and ground traffic flow. We estimate that once footings are in place we could complete one mile of elevated guideway in less than 2 weeks.

Safety: As an elevated system there are no concerns with respect to vehicular or train traffic.

Aesthetic Appearance: In contrast to the scenic nightmare created by the massive concrete columns and guideway of Vancouver’s Skytrain, the light weight of our system allows for small towers connected by an attractive architectural guideway.

Employment opportunities: This system will have universal appeal to cities and governments across North America and around the world for all the reasons listed above. While the fabricated steel would be done by multiple shops on a regional level the cars themselves would be manufactured here in the lower mainland. This would require a large investment in plant and equipment and create substantial employment opportunities for professionals and trades people.

Additional Advantages: For longer inter-urban travel, the guideway could also be used as a carrier for some services such as hydro, thus eliminating the need for separate towers and the associated landscape clutter.

Waiting for Information

Back in February of this year South Fraser OnTrax, as well as other rail advocacy groups, gave presentations to the Ministry of Transportation, Fraser Valley Regional District (FVRD), BC Transit, and TransLink for the Fraser Valley Transit Study for Abbotsford, Mission, Chilliwack and all points east. I emailed Ashok Bhatti, the PR person, on any updates on the project as I haven’t heard much since February. I was told that information including key transit corridors will be released soon and that the next phase of the study will take place at the end of November/early December.

On another note, I heard rumour that TransLink is starting to work on a Surrey Rapid Transit Study. Stay tuned for details.

Finally, it has been 20 business days since I last heard from the Agricultural Land Commission on my Freedom of Information Request. I guess I’m doing to have to contact the Office of the Information & Privacy Commissioner...