Stephen Quinn pens a more serious column than usual in the Saturday Globe and Mail – and does a fine job of summing up a certain ex-councillor’s opinions on the likelihood of rapid transit for the Broadway corridor:
Former Vancouver city councillor Gordon Price said something this week that I found simultaneously startling and depressing: He doesn’t expect to see a rapid transit line along West Broadway to UBC in his lifetime.
I’ll do my best to literally live up to Quinn’s take on my probable lifetime. And hope that my pessimism is replaced by the art of the possible.
“ He doesn’t expect to see a rapid transit line along West Broadway to UBC in his lifetime.” Thanqu Gord for injecting a bit of reality into the conversation for a change . . .
The disruption! The cost! Remember Cambie Street . . .
Before we contemplate the luxury of a Broadway corridor shiny trinket we have a minor detail to address . . .
http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/canadian-housing-bubble-full-mania-canada-household-debt-surpasses-us-household-debt-canada-real-estate/
. . . and this is an obligation all British Columbians, nay all Canadians, must address before we indulge ourselves in more fantasy.
Vancouver Sun, Sept 8 2042, a ridiculously youthful 92 years old Gordon Price joins Premier Chandra-Herbert for the ribbon cutting of the new UBC line.
I don’t fully understand why Surrey has first dibs on transit spending. What about the billions in provincial dollars being spent there right now on roads? Yes, Surrey needs transit, but if you look at it purely from an expenditure in provincial dollars perspective, they’re coming out ahead right now. The Gateway project after costs the same amount as skytrain to UBC.
But recognizing of course that Surrey does need transit, and does need it soon, and that as you say locking that part of the region into car dependence for the next few generations is a terrible idea, could we not build both if Surrey builds a cheaper LRT rather than a skytrain extension, which is something Surrey politicians themselves are asking the province for? Heck, even if we just had the $3 billion or so required to build skytrain to UBC, could we not settle temporarily for skytrain to Arbutus and light rail in Surrey? That would, after all, serve the five metrotowns on that map.
I may live to see rapid transit on Broadway by Gordon’s calculations, but I don’t think such a timeline serves the region very well, not just Vancouver. When you can’t get from Burnaby to Richmond or YVR in reasonable time because of a hole in the skytrain network that’s not just Vancouver’s problem.
Tessa you are whining! Whining wont get you anywhere! Whining wont get the city anywhere! Most contributors to this blog are whining too.
Vancouver took a turn for the worst, much Clr. Rankins chagin, in the early seventies when Hilda Symons (erstwhile chair of the planning commission) declared Vancouver to be an executive city.
BIG. BIG mistake and we have been, and are, prey to what ever off shore huckster, speculator, currency hedgers has whim to come our way.
And we let ’em do it!
In short we don’t have the Moolar to back our wild pretensions.
By the time Gordon is on his way hopefully we will have learnt that chucking money at shiny trinkets is, profoundly, the wrong way to go.
IMO check Evergreen.
If I were a betting man I would bet against Evergreen ever being completed. Look at the route: it replicates Millennium 90% of the way.
Hopefully we will one day lean the first priority of any community is to create wealth enough to underwrite our dreams, as we did before we went shipping matchsticks off to China to be returned as toothpicks in which to pick our rotting teeth because the orthodontist, and most services we take for granted, will soon be beyond our financial reach.
Metro is in need of a complete volte-face in administrative, financial and planning thinquing . . .
Whining? Speak for yourself. Just because someone has a different opinion than your’s doesn’t make them whining.
Roger, not only do you whine but you keep posting the same whiny housing bubble link in all your comments. It does not add to the discussion.
If you keep harping on about the bubble you may be right eventually and will no doubt declare victory. But remember that even a broken clock is right twice a day. A broke clock and a broken record, Roger.
After 5 Billions of investment on their transportation infrastructure, Surrey is still complaining it don’t get its fair share of the pie…who is whining?
Local urbanist want us to believe that not only no proper development can occur without rail in the ground, but that rail transit, by its own virtue will spur inevitably a desirable development form…
That is deceptive at best.
If the later was true, from Buffallo to San Jose, not even mentioning Calgary, someone could have noticed…alas, nothing is farther from the reality.
(and people will showcase Portland, but we all know it has benefited of a much more holistic “treatment” than some rail in the ground)
In fact waiting for the train in the suburb. is nothing less that a rational for inaction there!
Most of the European city are mature (already developed), and virtually all postwar development as been done in the suburbs, nevertheless, you will have hard time to find a suburbs with a LRT (not directly connected to the city center), but still you will find some transit friendly suburbs…organized around…a bus network connecting to the railway station of the suburbs (what could be the equivalent of existing Skytrain station in Surrey)…in fact you can see a model of it working relatively well in North Vancouver (bus connected to the Seabus).
You can find more elaborate planning model with well defined transit corridors, with unspecified technology – it will be bus per default, could be upgraded to LRT /metro, but only at a stage when it make more sense than bus… Now, that is planning, not wishy thinking…
Where are the Transit corridor in Surrey, is Surrey ready to have some bus only lane on KGH? (most European LRT are replacing already heavily traveled bus lane).
The urbanist claiming that we should by pass Broadway (on various ground, like already developed, already transit friendly…) to lay track in the remote suburbs…probably believe that Paris (RER interconnection), Zurich (S-bahn interconnection), and now London (cross-town link) among many other got it wrong…and the right model is one of LRT spreaded around to satisfy parochial politics, at the price of disregarding economic rational, and network cohesion.
Could they point successful examples of it elsewhere in the world, and if not explain why?
agreed completely Voony. Thanks for the succinct sum up, editing problems and all.
What local urbanist said that?
oops, an editing problem, bold case should have finished after “with unspecified technology “
For many, the billions ‘invested’ in highways in Surrey was unwanted.
Arguing that the municipality is whining for wanting more transit while they get billions in unwanted highways is a bit rich. I know the City would trade that highway ‘investment’ for transit money in a heartbeat.
“For many, the billions ‘invested’ in highways in Surrey was unwanted.”
“Unwanted” Ummmmmm, certainly not the case in the 70’s and early 80’s when I was building literally hundreds of zero lot-line residences in Surrey, Delta and Maple Ridge.
Your time horizon is just a little short Don!
I repeat, following the very popular green movement, I would prefer to go slow on shiny trinkets, their energy consuming tracks and stations, the energy consuming extraction of initial raw materials, thru manufacture and transport to site and eventual operations.
There is absolutely nothing conservatory about elevated tracks running thru neighbourhoods, or cut and fill absolutely disrupting them, or tunneling at budget breaking levels . . .
IMO rearranging the city, in Vancouver’s neigbourhoods, relatively simple, is my preference.
PS Oh now, Don, if today’s Surrey residents would prefer a “stop-go” emissions free tram car like we had up the Arbutus cut out to Steveston in the early ’50’s then we are on the same page . . .
““Unwanted” Ummmmmm, certainly not the case in the 70′s and early 80′s when I was building literally hundreds of zero lot-line residences in Surrey, Delta and Maple Ridge.”
This isn’t the 1970’s and early 80’s.
Not sure what you’re going on about with shiny trinkets as I made no mention of the type of transit preferred…
For many, the billions ‘invested’ in highways in Surrey was unwanted.
That is revisiting the history: Soon enough, one will claims that “Surrey didn’t want a new Pattullo bridge…it was New West which wanted it!”
“I know the City would trade that highway ‘investment’ for transit money in a heartbeat.”
Well that is not the stand it takes on the latest project, namely the Pattullo Bridge.
PS: when I said “local urbanist want us to believe that not only no proper development can occur without rail in the ground, but that rail transit, by its own virtue will spur inevitably a desirable development form…”, I don’t want to go to finger pointing a particular urbanist, It is a general feeling, from following the local urban politics here – be on the blogs like this one, or be to some other real life meeting- I have attended some stakeholder meeting in Surrey, and it was exactly the opinion expressed by Surrey city Hall representative “yes we do badly, but c’mom, it is because we don’t have the train”…conveniently forgetting the 3 skytrain station shaving sit in the middle of parking lot for 2 decades now…
“It is a general feeling, from following the local urban politics here – be on the blogs like this one, or be to some other real life meeting”
It’s just weird because the sentiment that has been expressed here is that the Broadway Corridor has been successfully built without rail transit.
Vancouver Sun, Sept 10 2062, a suspiciously youthful 112 year old Gordon Price joins Premier [not born as of yet] in the opening of the world’s first “Star Trek” transporter transit system. Surreyopolis has to wait for phase 2