Will the start-up of the new light-rail line for the City of Gold Coast in Australia (map here), just weeks away from launch, be one of the most successful in the world?
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I’ve thought so.
Having watched G-Link emerge, from conception to construction (there’s a video here by Bombardier), it seems to have everything going for it: an already existing demand, both by local residents and tourists, concentrated along the Surfer’s Paradise corridor, with anchors at either end: a convention centre and casino, a new billion-dollar hospital complex and Griifiths University. With major nodes along the way, notably the old urban centre of Southport and, soon, the athletes village for the upcoming Commonwealth Games, it’s not as though this investment has had to encourage new development to get the ridership.
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The question is whether an urban centre that grew up around the automobile will adopt a form of mass transit for which it has had little previous experience.
TransLink, the regional authority, increased bus service well prior to construction to convince the electorate that they were getting something immediately for the increased rates they had to pay – now well over a hundred Aus dollars per household per year – and to build ridership.
Although residents and businesses have had to put up with a few years of disruptive construction (sound familiar?), anticipation is high. Media has been sufficiently positive (they’ve been enticed by features like surf-board racks), and the route has been adjusted to placate relatively minor opposition. Even a mayor, elected part way through the process who was dubious about the project, kept his opposition muted. Now the talk is about expansion of the 13-km line, even before it’s opened.
The city has also put a major emphasis on urban design, in part to deal with the challenges of weaving a surface rail line through a highly congested tourist district, as well as to revitalize a declining urban village, and to connect adjacent residential areas to the stations.
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The goldlinQ consortium is a A$1 billion 18-year Public Private Partnership (PPP) contract with the Queensland State Government to design, build, finance, operate and maintain the system. Politically, though, the impetus for the investment came from the local council, which put its own resources on the table, increased taxes and coordinated the planning to convince senior governments that they should fund the capital costs of the project to make it a reality. Nothing like having skin in the game.
While lots of people can take credit (and will, if it’s a smashing success), the vision came appropriately from the strategic planner for the City of Gold Coast over a decade ago, for whom persistence paid off. (No question couldn’t be answered with “light rail!”) Warren Rowe is smiling for a reason.
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Sounds like the UBC-Broadway corridor line to me ! Easily doable here at home, too !
no, not at all like the UBC-Broadway corridor, and in need of different kinds of solutions.
Despite its separated right of way, GoldLinq will travel 13 km in 37 minutes or at 23 km/h (according to their website). I calculate 21 km/h, but either way it’s roughly the same speed as the B-Line.
http://www.goldlinq.com.au/operating-light-rail/trams-and-stations/
underground of course, not surface .. maybe west of Alma.
Thank you, Tessa. False “similarities” should be avoided as much as possible. The LRT option for Central Broadway has been debunked numerous times (by professionals!) and it is time surface rail lovers get over it as a practical consideration. (Only marginally better ridership potential than existing bus service at substantially greater cost and innumerable local impacts.)
Now, if one were to consider LRT for the Arbutus Corridor …
Probably more like what Las Vegas – should – have done.
Sounds promising with linear development in place along the corridor, major demand nodes, tourist demand and high density.
Am skeptical of projects that with opaque ridership and cost numbers. I did eventually find them, but they made you work. Not that bad, so I don’t know why they were hiding them among 100’s of pages of bumf (starting at 40,000 boardings per day up to 80,000 boardings per day in 35 years). Interestingly the BRT ridership projections were exactly the same, within a couple of dozen boardings per day. The cost was harder to figure out, but it seems like $1b A up front and some other costs or payments later on that raises the cost to $1.3 b A. The reports could have been much clearer about this.
I heard before leaving Auckland that there have been problems getting this off the ground because there have been multiple accidents between the train and cars. Appears mixing Lightrail and traffic will take some getting used to in the GC
A sad reminder that we could have had our own Bombardier streetcar running along False Creek, but Vision Vancouver felt it was more important to paint that as an NPA project, and therefore not worth their consideration.
The False Creek line is far too slow, would be heavily opposed and is not in line with any dense developments nor today’s traffic pattern. The best use of this right-of-way is a greenway / bike&walking path. Broadway is where a line has to go, ideally under it to Alma, then perhaps above ground to UBC.
I would have loved that too (of course, not instead of Broadway, but in compliment to it), but I do have to wonder if it would have been the best use of money at the time. A local streetcar would help fill in a gap in the transit network, especially if it not only continued around to North False Creek/Stanley Park, but also on another line up First Avenue, down the median there and maybe to Gilmore.
Thomas, please explain to me why a bikeway/greenway/walking path along the False Creek rail corridor would be better for Vancouver than an LRT line or a streetcar.
I have biked, walked and driven along Lamey’s Mill Road and Charlston, immediately beside the old CPR railway right of way, a thousand times, and I never see any traffic. Why duplicate what is already there?
Even along First Avenue, in front of the Olympic Village site, traffic is light.
Article from the Gold Coast Bulletin suggests that while there is still hope for success, challenges abound. http://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/news/traffic-reports/signs-trams-and-traffic-lights-cause-traffic-chaos-at-gold-coast-junction-from-hell/story-fnl6qvfc-1226896342347?sv=25e64be0e0401cc89f37a66b309c1103#.U6EURLOMf44.twitter