Transit Police

I took these about 10 minutes ago.




It is common knowledge that you rarely ever see Transit Police out during peak travel times checking ticket. I was a bit shocked when I stepped into King George Station to find police at the bottom and the top of the escalator handing out tickets. Is this one of the Transit Police's new initiatives? Are we going to see more police during peak?

HOT Lane

On yesterday’s post, there was a comment made about how the Port Mann/Highway One Project will be expanding the HOV system into Langley from the bridge. This got me thinking about a presentation I heard a few years back about MnPass. MnPass is an on-going project of the Minnesota Department of Transportation to convert their HOV system to high occupancy/toll lanes or HOT lanes. According to the US Federal Highway Administration HOT lanes are:

Limited-access, normally barrier-separated highway lanes that provide free or reduced cost access to qualifying HOVs, and also provide access to other paying vehicles not meeting passenger occupancy requirements.

By using price and occupancy restrictions to manage the number of vehicles traveling on them, HOT lanes maintain volumes consistent with uncongested levels of service even during peak travel periods.

Why did Minnesota switch to HOT lanes?
-HOV lanes for carpool/transit are successful, but operating at less than full potential.
-During peak, HOV lanes are typically moving more people per lane than general-purpose lanes.

HOT lanes allow them to maintain free flow speeds for transit and carpools while improving highway and transit in their corridors and generating revenue. Variable tolling is the key. The more demand there is for the lanes, the more it costs. The following photos show how it works. Click them to make them bigger.




Variable tolling is really, combined with Transit improvements, the only sustainable way to shape traffic and reduce peak congestion. HOT lanes allow this to be politically possible in North America. People don’t seem to mine being tolled for new infrastructure. But as the lack of road pricing in Vancouver today shows (there should have been by now), there is no appetite for road pricing on old infrastructure. People don't see the value, right or wrong.

Now the Port Mann/ Highway One Project would seem like the perfect place to implement HOT lanes. The project could convert the proposed HOV lanes and the two new general-purpose lanes to HOT lanes. The revenue could be used to build transportation choices in our region. One of the major concerns of the public when Minnesota did HOT lanes was the perception that they were building “Lexus Lanes” or roads for the rich. Their data shows that all demographic are represented in the HOT lanes. Check out this Wikipedia article to see where HOT lanes are or are being planned in the US. The Washington State Department of Transportation also has a great study on their brand new, successful HOT lane project.

Portland Bridge

I’ve blogged about the Columbia River Crossing at the border of Washington and Oregon State in Metro Portland before. It is basically like our Port Mann Bridge project except that instead of an all road project with 37km of highway expansion and a new bridge, the Portland project includes a new bridge, a much needed light rail line across the Columbia river, and 16km "of moving or improving highway connections, adding add/drop lanes and lengthening on-and off-ramps."

Light rail would extend from the Expo Center MAX Station in Portland to a station and park and ride at Clark College in Vancouver. Pedestrians and bicyclists would travel along a wider and safer path than exists today. Light rail and the pedestrian and bicycle path could be on a third bridge or located beneath the decks of the new highway bridges.

Light rail would fit within the future express and local bus systems to expand access between Vancouver and Portland. Express buses would continue to serve long distance commuter markets by providing direct access between Clark County and downtown Portland during peak commute hours. Local bus service in Vancouver would connect to light rail and continue to serve Vancouver.

Anyway in recent news, the project is now in the design phase of the light rail component of this multimodal project.

TriMet on March 10 will hold a neighborhood workshop to hear input about the design of a new light-rail station that would be constructed in downtown Vancouver, Wash., as part of the Columbia River Crossing project.

On a side note, our Port Mann/Highway 1 project will cost about $3 billion. This is what $3 billion of light rail would buy. The map is from Patrick Condon at the UBC School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture. Click the map to make it bigger.

Transit Adventure

On Saturday, a friend of mine wanted some moral support, so she took me on a bit of an adventure to the Guildford 108th Avenue area of Surrey to get a body piercing. All went well, but there were some interesting things I noticed on the trip. First off, work is coming along on the Golden Ears Bridge. They are working on street landscaping right now. If only provincially controlled road did the same thing, but I’ve talked enough about that. They actually already have green directions signs pointing people to the not-yet-build South Fraser Perimeter Road. Hope no one gets lost. *cough*

Anyway, we made it to Guildford in one piece. I actually have never walked through the Guildford area, but I snapped these few pictures of the area around 108th. As you may know, the 104th/108th will be/is a major transit corridor. Also this is an older neighbourhood, so there are many redevelopment opportunities as the following pictures show.






On the way back, I ran into fellow blogger Paul Hillsdon on the 320. Go Transit!