Here are some light rail stories from around the Net. First up is some news about Seattle's new Link light rail system's ridership and the honour system (which our Province is doing away with on SkyTrain).
"Two out of three times on the train today I got checked for my ticket. And that's a good thing," said Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association, which sets industry standards and lobbies for transit agencies in Washington, D.C.
"That shows they're paying attention to their revenue base and that's important. You want people to get used to how the proof of payment system works, and you really haven't had that here before. There were clearly some people who had questions about how things work."
"There are several rules of thumb, but usually after about six months, you'll have about half of what you'll ever have," Millar said. "And after about a year-and-a-half – unless you have big change in levels of service or land use – you'll probably have what you're ever going to have."
Meanwhile Baltimore, Maryland, with regional population of 2,668,056, has decided that light rail is the future of public transit.
Earlier this week, and after seven years of working with citizens, community groups, transit advocates, Mayor Sheila Dixon and County Executive James T. Smith Jr., we announced the preferred alternative for Baltimore's Red Line. Consistent with our statewide vision for transportation that includes new roads and mass transit, together we are taking the next step to build a 14-mile east-west light rail system stretching from Woodlawn and Security Square Mall in the west, through downtown Baltimore to Canton and the Bayview Hospital complex to the east.
Finally, Kansas City is looking for $60 million US in funding to build a starter streetcar line.
There is no bigger fan of modern, American-made streetcars than U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who most likely will have a say in approving Kansas City’s upcoming application for a $60 million TIGER grant to pay 100 percent of the cost of a two-mile starter streetcar line from River Market to Union Station.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a group of workers so proud of what they’ve built together,” LaHood said in an early July visit to Portland, Oregon, which has a streetcar-based transit system and is also the home base of Oregon Iron Works, builder of the sleek United Streetcar model that so impressed LaHood.
Every so often TransLink releases surveys from their TransLink Listens online panel and from a general Ipsos Reid poll. I wanted to show you the slide on how people would like to fund transportation improvements. I find it interesting that a variable road user fee was not included.
The results were typical. People who use vehicles as their primary mode of transportation support higher transit fares and generally do not support a vehicle levy. People who use transit as their primary mode of transportation support the idea of rising property tax and generally do not support the idea of increasing transit fare. Also, people in the South Fraser generally had less support for paying more money for transit than people in other regions. It seems that in the areas with better transit service, people are willing to pay more for it.
This tells me a few things. If people can see a value in something, they will pay for it. People in Vancouver see more value in transit than people in Langley because transit is more viable in Vancouver. Also, people plan don’t like paying more money for nothing in return.
Road users at not used to the concept of a user fee. I think that variable road pricing would get more support than a vehicle levy, as people would be able to see the direct benefit of traffic congestion reduction on the roads. Still, it will take people time to warm up to the idea of a user fee. People I’ve talked can get pretty religious when it comes to the concept of road user fees. They have this notion that the government's most important role is to provide “free roads”. Road user fees would have to be phased in. The first step would be to build HOT lanes (or High Occupancy/Variable Toll Lane.) If the MoT converted the HOV lanes and two of the new general travel lanes into HOT lanes on the Highway 1 Project (as an example), it would be a success. People would have the choice of paying money for faster travel, or just stay in one of the four general travel lanes. 38% of TransLink’s revenue come transit fare (a user fee). Why are major roads still “free”?
This past August long weekend, I travelled up to Kamloops to visit a friend who was stage managing at a Shakespeare Festival. Travelling up and staying in Kamloops reminded me of some of the realities of what I will call “organic” growth.
The first change that I noticed, of course, was the removal of the toll on the Coquihalla Highway. I have spent the majority of my life living in the Okanagan, so travelling to the Coast and paying the toll was just something you just did. I actually find it odd that the toll was removed considering that the Province government was looking at privatizing the highway back in first half of this decade because it cost so much to maintain. By removing the toll, the government basically sent the message that road should be free even though modern economic thought (including the BC Chamber of Commerce) support the idea of road pricing.
The second shock was to see a Wal-Mart built right at the interchange to Merritt. It reminded me of the US mid-west where Wal-Marts are at every other interchange and the Main Streets are dead. I find it odd because I remember that when the Coquihalla was built, commercial development was not allowed to occur along the highway to ensure that communities along the highway would still have business.
As is typical in most North American cities, Kamloops has a downtown, but most of the business is now located along the freeway.
It was funny reading the Kamloops OCP which in one breath wants to support downtown, mixed-use, and walkability, but in another breath states that they must build auto-centric “regional commercial” at the edge of town. Regional commercial is a euphemism for big-box retailing. To state that regional retail need to be in commercial-only, auto-only areas has more to do with getting a quick buck than quality planning. Regional commercial can excites within the context of a well planning, mixed-use community. Vancouver is the perfect example. The City of Vernon, which in the past 7 years opened the flood gates to big box, now states in their 2008 OCP that they will allow higher density residential around their big box area to encourage sustainable modes of transportation.
Kamloops basically has three major areas: The North Shore, Downtown, and everything on the hill/highway. The North Shore and Downtown are the older parts of Kamloops and looks like their heyday was in the 1970’s. It would appear that most of the new development in Kamloops is along the highway in an area called Aberdeen. Kamloops has plans to revitalize its Downtown and North Shore, but with the amount of new commercial and residential development in Aberdeen, that will be a hard thing to accomplish.
On a positive side, the Kamloops area is on the top ten list of sustainable modes of transportation at 10.6% (Victoria is the top area at 26.3%). It also has the third highest transit use at 3.8% (Metro Vancouver is 16.5% and Victoria is 10.2%). Thompson Rivers University is located in Aberdeen which is a plus for bus service in the area. It has a student population of 10,558 or 12% of the total population of Kamloops. University students are more likely to take transit. Also, there now seems to be an effort to do the whole mixed-use thing in the Aberdeen area. Let’s hope it works out.
I live in the South Fraser region of British Columbia and even our own provincial government indicates that we have poor air quality. Do we want to do something about it and if so what? TransLink admits that we have a public transportation deficit and is even going as far as having many small transportation forums to find out what the public really wants.
For the rest of my discussion I am going to directly quote from Readers Digest July 2009.
The ribbon of steel that used to tie us together is almost gone. Now we have the airlines and bus companies, and we pretend to have a national highway. In many places-Northern Ontario or the Interior of British Columbia-it dwindles down to two-lane blacktop, and the local residents will tell you these narrow sections make our national Highway a death trap.
The Americans completed a four-lane national highway system 50 years ago. We are still awaiting ours.
The Europeans have used high speed railways to tie their countries together. After 50 years of studies, we are still considering a high- speed rail link to connect Windsor to Quebec City, Vancouver to Calgary and Calgary to Edmonton.
If we wanted to tie Canadians together, if we wanted to be nation builders, we would start on these rail links right now.
The above are some of the thoughts from Readers Digest, so for a long range plan I would suggest we start on our own public transportation and that in my humble submission would be modern Light Rail. Our provincial government is already building the Port Mann Bridge that will accommodate this and it can run down the side of the freeway. I have come from a railway town and trains are comfortable, affordable, sustainable, and punctual and can keep going even in ice and snow.
