In a surprising editorial, The Vancouver Sun paper opines that Densification must include livability.
That’s sure to be controversial.
After observing that “feelings of anonymity can accompany life in big, tall complexes and pressures on community infrastructure grow,” the writer notes:
Opponents of the Oakridge plan, understandably, have cited such complications at recent public hearings.
One big concern is how the five-year-old Canada Line will deal with a surge in passengers as density grows along the Cambie corridor. Already, during rush hour, transit users are crushed like sardines in the two-car trains.
It is hard to understand why city planners approved such small station platforms and two-train transit configurations for the line …
It’s also hard to understand why The Sun didn’t know this was not in the City’s purview. Nor even TransLink’s. The undersized platforms are a consequence of the P3 arrangement, where the bidder for the contract was also the designer of the system, and hence motivated to bring costs down to both win the bid and keep operating costs low.
But here’s the question: Why are senior governments so willing to underbuild and underfund transit while accepting proposals for bridges and roads that are significantly overbuilt and often overbudget?
In the case of Canada Line, no doubt the argument was that trains can be added and stations expanded once overcrowding emerges. Not so easy to do with a bridge.
But given recent experience, where reports and data are coming in by the month on a decline in driving and failure of tolled projects to, in some cases, come even close to their projections (hello, again, Clem7), why is the proposed Massey Bridge not being questioned now? The same with a six-lane Pattullo.
The most critical question, though, is really this: Why are we putting transit expansion at risk with an ill-thought-out referendum, while over-built road-based projects get a perfunctory pass?
A subject worthy of an editorial.
The bidder has presented an offer matching (or even outperforming) the Canada line requirement set by the crown, be in term of speed, train frequency or capacity: What we get is what we have asked for!
Platforms look short, but the reality is that the canada line capacity is only 20% shine of the Expo line one (essentially because train are much wider)
It is also useful to remember that back in ~2005, many people, including many municipal officials was casting heavy doubt on the Canada line ridership
The municipal official which has forced $1.4M a cap on the public funding of the line…
http://www.straight.com/blogra/canada-line-subsidy-will-be-felt-years-come and the one eventually to be finger pointed if you think the line is underbuilt.
Many was claiming that the 100,000 daily ridership was pie in the sky
(usually, it is the same whose claim the line is undersized today):
after all it was no more than 40,000 bus rider in the corridor…
today the line absorbs 3 times that ridership with a 5,000pphpd, which can relatively easily be increased at 15,000pphpd.
If the region stick to its “livable plan”, meaning no development in the ALR in south Delta, it is hard to fathom why more could be needed.
Transit issue at Oakridge
If there is a Transit problem at Oakridge it is not the Canada line but the 41st Avenue:
It is the second busiest surface transit corridor in the region…
( pass up at 10pm in the night on the bus 41 are routine)
Provision to convert it to a BRT/LRT (as envisionned in the Province transit Plan, or Vancouver Transportation plan) should have been planned right now
at Oakridge, the 41st avenue will be lined by underground garage access, making that simply difficult to have such transit infrastructure on the edge of the avenue (and have long platform)…not counting the urban experience there which be dull as mentioned by yvrlens in a previous post
but typical BRT/LRT ususally happen in the middle of the ROW:
At Oakridge, there is a garage exit ramp in the middle of the 41st which will be preserved to prevent such option
Yes, the Vancouver planner didn’t do a good job in that instance, and it they have wanted to torpedo a LRT/BRT on 41st, they couldn’t have done better:
Fact is that in Vancouver, bus transit is totally disregarded by the city council (and the planners work reflect that).
Like mentioned by yvrlens, this Oakridge project seems half baked, and I am a bit surprised it has been rushed so fast on the approval path
The main reason is that we elect people with myopic views and little understanding of what is happening in other cities. Another reason is that the NDP has so thoroughly ruined this province economically in the 1990’s that the money is just not there. BC could be as wealthy as Alberta but chose not to. Being too green, ie opposing every industrial project, has its price, and the price is inadequate roads and transit infrastructure. It will be a few decades of decent economic growth to catch up and find the money.
The Canada line could run more frequently to increase capacity btw. Every 2-3 minutes as opposed to every 4-5. At least there is a subway. Why do we allow more construction along Broadway, UBC , Granville or Arbutus with zero investment into more transit ? Obviously every development needs to allocate more $s to transit and social housing, say 10% of units! to also avoid a ghetto in East-Hastings.
Small town thinking in a 2,00,000+ metropolis is the root cause coupled with ant-industrial “green” activists blocking economic progress at every corner.
Uh, might actually want to do just a speak of research. A combination of taxes and resource royality rates that are way to low and high construction costs due to unsustainablely high resource extraction rates have lead to a huge backlog of infrastructure projects in Alberta.
Vancouver’s transit system while in need of improvement, is far better than Calgary’s.
Alberta even with its oil, is running deficits. It is one of the worst managed provinces.
Have you been to Calgary lately ? The weather is different, as is the topography. There is land in all 4 directions. Of course a more car oriented culture makes more sense there than in land locked and better weather Vancouver. Tough to walk, bike or even wait for a bus at -20 !
The main reason AB has a deficit is the high demand on new schools, roads, sewers etc that have to be built for all the immigrants and the money sent to Quebec via transfer payments. if Alberta were like Norway, i.e. low to no immigration and no neighbors siphoning funds off it would also have a huge HUGE surplus !
Those immigrants pay taxes, you know, and work in jobs just like everything else. To blame a deficit on immigrants is pretty low, and in my opinion, based on bigotry rather than facts.
Norway has a surplus because it is well-run, properly taxed and the money from the oil is invested, not given away in one-time tax breaks. It has nothing to do with immigration.
I agree Gord, We have short platforms due to cost savings but we have a 10 lane bridge instead of an 8 lane bridge? They say it makes more sense to build the more expensive 6 lane bridge compared to a 4 lane bridge?
Lay people don’t understand the “frequency” aspect of transit capacity (because you can’t touch, feel or see it).
You can wait 2-3 minutes for a short train, or 20 minutes for a long train.
Frequent short trains are better for quality of service to passengers.
Frequent longer trains are better 🙂
They could have built the platforms to fit 3 or even 4 cars (or at least to be easily expanded).
Who is “they” ? I understand it is a P3 model.
@Guest: That sounds like an unfair comparison between a metro and commuter rail.
A short train every 3 minutes or a double length one every 6 is the same capacity. The benefit of the higher frequency is rarely realized because most of us are tied to buses running only every 10, 12 or 15 minutes and often running off schedule to boot. For those lucky enough to avoid bus connections if waiting an extra 3 minutes is a major issue then you’ve probably got much bigger problems in life than your mode of transportation.
Canada Line could run more frequently, but there’s a hard cap on what can be done with the current infrastructure. Almost the entire route from Lansdowne to Brighouse and back is single track. YVR has a similar length of single track. I estimate that each branch could cope with at most 16 trains/hour before experiencing regular delays. 10 trains/hour is overkill for YVR so the maximum number is 26 per hour for the subway section. To achieve that TransLink would have to negotiate a new contract to permit more service to Richmond than to YVR and pay ProTrans for the extra service, and ProTrans would have to buy some more trains.
One could also ask why the developer wasn’t asked to pay to upgrade the Canada Line Station, which will be overloaded by the development. The cost of needed upgrades: $7 million. All this, in a hard to find last minute ammendment to the oakridge rezoning report.
http://former.vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20140310/documents/phea3memo.pdf
It’s boring being a transit advocate these days.
Because it feels like a waste of breath to talk about how we need more transit here or there. It’s just assumed the money isn’t there.
I guess we’ll have to wait until the next provincial election to get rid of the anti-urban liberals and replace them with the anti-urban NDP. Then we’ll be left wing as we sit on our hands, big difference.
The difference is that the NDP will also destroy the economy and then FOR SURE there will be no money.
Of course the first election promise of the NDP will be a widening of highway 1 on east-bound lanes for all the jobs and job seekers heading to AB and SK !
On the Canada line capacity, I have precised some number here:
http://voony.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/subway-capacity-some-remarks/
…so no much too worry about that (not even with the single track section)…