The latest that SkyTrain runs is 1:29 am. A lot of people wish it was later – but be glad, at least, that you don’t live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where BART, the regional rail system, stops running at midnight.
So why not later?
Cory Weinberg at the San Francisco Business Times explains why here on video …
.
… and in print. Yes, there are some parallels to SkyTrain (maintenance, single track), but most interesting are the impacts on lifestyle and, hence, real estate.
… many renters choose where to live based on the lack of late-night transit in the Bay Area. Even with Oakland’s nightlife booming, people with more money — and midnight oil — to burn will pay more to live in San Francisco.
The real estate impact is tangible. In theory, the lack of late-night transit means apartment rents rise faster in San Francisco while rents in Oakland stay at lower levels that don’t justify as much new construction.
Todd Vitzthum, executive director at the brokerage Cushman & Wakefield, said the lack of late-night BART means that technology workers moving to the Bay Area aren’t considering Oakland as frequently.
Late-night BART “would attract an entirely different residential tenant base to the East Bay,” he said. “It’s mostly workforce housing now, people being priced out of the city moving out here and making the East Bay their lifestyle.”
Are there are similar impacts because of limited SkyTrain hours? With longer hours, would real-estate values in, say, New Westminster respond as they might in Oakland? And is there any analogy with the Mission in SF, and the contentious issues of affordability and gentrification?
Every rapid transit technology has good points and not so good points. Bus rapid transit has a good point in that it is the easiest to run 24/7 since you can easily re-route around maintenance activities. On some LRT lines you can run buses on the right of way and achieve the same thing – something worth considering in Surrey/Langley. And maybe we should be thinking about a network of 24/7 BRT lines in addition to SkyTrain lines in some areas.
Here’s TransLink’s Buzzer article from a year ago.
“Why can’t SkyTrain run 24 Hours”
http://buzzer.translink.ca/2013/03/translink-101-why-cant-skytrain-run-24-hours/
Extend to 3:29AM on Friday and Saturday
Extend to 1:29AM on holidays and perhaps Sunday as well. Currently the last westbound train leaves New West at 11:38PM on Sun/Hol
Developers in New Jersey seem to think there is a connection between 24 hour transit service and real estate values. A proposal by the Port Authority-Trans Hudson (PATH) rail service to cut its overnight rail service linking NYC and New Jersey is being panned. One of the reasons is the potential negative impact on real estate development in places like Hoboken, which are presenting themselves as alternatives to living in Manhattan but with easy, 24-hour access to Manhattan. (http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2015/01/zimmer_cutting_path_overnight_service_threatens_state_hoboken.html)
The Toronto Transit Commission operates a network of 24 hour bus and streetcar routes when the subway is closed. Service is generally every 30 minutes but the heavily used Yonge Bus runs every 3 – 4 minutes (http://www.ttc.ca/Schedule/schedule.jsp?Route=320N&Stop=n.b._on_YONGE_at_QUEEN). The TTC’s rationale for subway closures is the need for maintenance windows. On Saturday night, the subway closure is extended to 09:00 AM on Sunday morning to allow for an extended maintenance period.
Are they really doing maintenance each night? I’d like to see data to back up the claims and to show for how long and how frequently maintenance work is done.