tom_1
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Posts posted by tom_1
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Only problem is that it charges the same for someone that uses a vehicle once a week to go shopping as someone that commutes in daily from Abbottsford. Do a per kilometre insurance or just add more to gas tax (which would also encourage fuel effecientcy) instead of adding yet another beaurocracy and what will in many cases be an unfair tax.
yeah except the fact that the person in Abbotsford has/would have no other option but to commute by car. The government sure has done a nice job by replacing a suffient bridge and increasing the highway by two lanes.
What would you rather have:
South Permiter Road, new Port Mann bridge and golden ears $5+ billion
or
UBC skytrain expansion, Evergreen line, Surrey skytrain expansion, Abbotsford-Vancouver Railink $5+ billion.
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It's always been a very bad newspaper but lately it's just been brutal.
I mean look at this story that they ran on PAGE 3 last week, not in the opinions section but in the NEWS: (Warning, it will make your heart bleed.)
http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/BC-Politic...8/DayInTheLife/
It's not even completely factual!
And the week before they had a story something along the lines of "Gordon Campbell is the devil" followed 2 days later by basically a re-print of the same story. Again not in the opinions section, but in the local news section. It's a bit of a joke.
the Liberals are a bunch of bozos and scum bags. Boo-hoo, what are they supposed to write? about how the economy is doing so well and about the great provincial surplus?
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How can they be playing hardball? It's the government decision to not fund massive transit projects. But its beyond me why translink is paying to build bridges. How will translink profit by pumping money in a bridge that it doesn't even receive tolls from.
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Agreed. I'd certainly support the 6-km extension of SkyTrain to Fleetwood and another 5-km extension to Newton via King George Highway....but an extension from Fleetwood to Langley doesn't make much sense, it goes through huge swaths of ALR. It would be more ideal to use LRT and commuter rail from that point on and for the rest of Surrey and Fraser Valley.
The streets of Surrey are also capable of trams/LRT as they are quite wide, unlike Vancouver's roads.
Whats in Fleetwood? Not many dense apartments other then townhomes. If you extend skytrain to Fleetwood you might aswell terminate it in Langley.
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There are no tolls, it's a tiny crossing.
It'll be done on time, you're overestimating the scale of the project.
I was being sarcastic, the price is comparable to building a highway overpass or opening up the interurban
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Here's a project most of you have probably never heard of:
COAST MERIDIAN OVERPASS
- a 4-lane cable bridge, 600-metres long
- serves as an overpass over the CN Rail yard to Coast Meridian Road in Port Coquitlam
- cost: $135.4-million (Translink share: $60-million)
- construction start: summer 2008; construction end: January 2010
- contractor: SNC-Lavalin
Construction method:
The bridge superstructure will consist of six spans of up to 125 metres in length – five over the CP Rail yard and one over Lougheed Highway.
The spans will be push-launched into place one at a time, starting from the south embankment:
- The supporting structure for the spans will be fabricated off-site and assembled on-site.
- Hydraulic jacks will be used to push the span structures over the south embankment on rollers.
- Cable-stays attached to towers will help stabilize the launching process.
I believe the new Pitt River Bridge (part of the Gateway project) is in the distance on the right
the bridge is being pushed to the north from this end:
Hey where are the tolls? and if these pictures are recent doesn't look like its going to be done on time.
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Without regards to the heavily-subsidized 300s and 600s, I was simply stating why transferring to a skytrain would not be seen as the best thing by some people.
Now, having said that, of course making a non-driver system to shuttle people to point A to B via C is the best idea. The problem is, do commuters think that the pros outweigh the cons?
well most people who were taking the bus wounldn't resort back to their cars if they had them. Of course they will think that the bus should continue service due to their inconvience but its not enough to justify keeping the routes. They have already sacrificed commute time by taking the bus so I don't see them resorting to any other option other then catching an earlier bus. boo-hoo
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You lose time on the transfer.
You lose a guaranteed spot on a ride.
When you transfer back, your bus might skip you due to overcrowding.
It's designed to be a bottleneck, so that it's a transit hub. Makes overcrowding and pass-bys occur more frequently.
when you factor in the gas, driver salaries and other costs for only 3 zone fare, those buses were heavily subsidized. A minor inconvience shouldn't be
a major issue.
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^ the interurban line is destined to fail if it ever goes ahead, it's one massive squiggly line - it's a detour. Unfortunately, that's one of the few rail corridors we have left for transit use.
It would probably be cheaper to simply upgrade the Canada Line, and there's no point in ditching infrastructure we've built.
Anyhow, when it comes to the near future.....100,000 seems closer to reality everyday, and that's good because it means Translink won't have to subsidize it. But the downside of that is Translink will have to find tens of millions to buy more trains much earlier than originally planned ($6-million per 2-car train). We're at 80,000/day right now and that's WITHOUT bus integration, I think we can easily reach 100,000 within a matter of weeks with south of Fraser buses terminating at Bridgeport, the elimination of the 98 B-Line, people going back to school, and the majority of the office worker population returning to work.
You would think they would have thought of having increased platform size in the tunnel stations. How many hundreds of millions of dollars is it going to cost to dig up the roads and increase the platforms another 10m.
And the interurban would net be set to fail, it would have cheap operating costs and start up costs. Don't underestimate the population of south of the Fraser. From Langley to Surrey the line runs through dense enough population that even your beloved BC Liberal failure government plans a skytrain route.
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they could always hire people pushers; pretty sad that the line is aleady inadaquate. The $1-2 billion needed to improve service would be better used on new routes such as surrey, evergreen and ubc extensions. Money doesnt grow on trees.
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Yep. But don't expect him to be near the top of Brynas in scoring. He won't get many minutes as a rookie and probably won't get the chance to surpass 15 points.
probably would have been a good idea to transfer to the WHL like Edler, Moller and Backlund
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The ONLY place that it would make sense to run any kind of ground base rail would in fact be along the shore line say starting from the west end around false creek through the north false creek up the arbutus corridor (with overpasses at the major arterials) some sort of parelell to marine drive with a terminus at Marine Drive RAV. You could MABYE run it up granville instead.
that and the interurban initially from Langley to Scott Road. No sense spending billions on skytrain in non-metropolitian areas.
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do you happen to live in the valley?
Its whats truly needed
1. UBC extension
2. Evergreen extension
3. Guildford extension
4. SFU Tram
5. Fleetwood-Langley extension 2025; probably closer to 2040
Surrey will be a bigger city then Vancouver in 5-10 years so the current 4 skytrain stations are clearly not enough. Downtown Vancouver should utilize streetcar technology.
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Where's the shortfall for the new Port Mann Bridge and South Permiter Road? This goverment defines failure
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That's why I've always been afraid of staying on the SkyTrain at terminus stations.
you would think this would happen quite often, either by falling asleep or by accident. I guess thats what the panic strips are for.
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It would cost way too much to construct glass gates on station platforms. If those people don't kill themselves jumping in front of the skytrain they'll find some other stupid way to commit suacide.
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So, if I'm reading this right... the only way for Translink to make money on this bridge is to double the vehicle traffic going across it over the next few years. A fantastic goal for a PUBLIC TRANSIT COMPANY.
lol increase Vehicle traffic on the Port Mann and Golden Ears, so much for the green plan.
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Beats coming up with a billion dollars to build the bridge in the first place.
I don't believe the Private company came up with the entire $800 million to fund the entire project. And the $60 million dollar a year price tag paid to the company could add up to over $2.5 billion over the lifespan of the bridge. Not bad for contribiting less then $400 million.
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Another idiotic plan by the liberals; Why didn't the money stay in BC? I bet the Canada line will be the same situation; Revenue goes overseas while Translink is left with the expenses. Then we wonder why Translink is in the hole so much every year.
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Golden Ears Bridge records a busy first week
By Rebecca teBrake, Vancouver Sun
June 24, 2009
METRO VANCOUVER -- The debut week of the Golden Ears Bridge saw it carrying 17,000 more vehicles per day than projected, but more traffic won’t mean lower tolls.
The bridge’s electronic tolling system shows 329,000 vehicles, an average of 47,000 per day, crossed over June 16-22. TransLink had projected the number of daily crossings at 30,000.
“All we know for sure is, forecasts are wrong,” said Fred Cummings, TransLink vice-president of major projects.
“I think we had a lot of people coming out to drive the bridge to say that they drove the bridge in the first week of operation, but also to see what difference it does make in their travel time.”
Crossing the bridge is a free until July 16, when tolls kick in. Cummings said the tolls will likely mean the end of the higher-than-expected numbers.
“It’s a good news story for us on the revenue side if traffic numbers stay as high as they do, but typically when you add a toll to a bridge, the numbers go down,” Cummings said.
Still, TransLink has already leased 10,000 transponders — electronic devices that identify the vehicle’s owner. It had expected to lease only 5,000 by now.
More than 11,000 vehicles have been pre-registered online, making toll collection easier.
“That may not be a measure of future demand,” Cummings said. “What it does show is that people want to save money.”
Vehicle owners get toll discounts for leasing transponders and for pre-registering.
Even with initial indications of heavy use of the new bridge, drivers shouldn’t expect tolls to drop. TransLink needs the revenue to pay for the $1-billion bridge — a debt it hopes to pay off by 2041. Revenues will also support the operation and maintenance of the bridge.
The biggest payments will go to the Golden Crossing General Partnership, the body responsible for the building, operation and maintenance of the bridge. It is wholly owned by the German Bilfinger-Berger Project Investments.
The steep payment schedule will see TransLink forking over $500,000 per month in the first six months and $1.5 million a month for the next six months. That jumps to $3 million a month the following year and $4 million a month for the three years after that. After five years, TransLink will be paying $4.7 million a month.
The payments are linked to anticipated increases in bridge traffic.
TransLink predicts that for the next few years, 30,000 to 50,000 vehicles will cross the bridge daily, bringing in revenues of $30 million to $50 million a year.
By 2035, it hopes 70,000 to 90,000 vehicles will be crossing every day, bringing in an annual $65 million to $90 million.
If these targets aren’t met, the transit authority will still be on the hook for repaying Golden Crossing at the pre-set rates.
“If we exceed the forecast, we keep the money,” said TransLink spokesman Ken Hardie. “If we don’t make it, we will subsidize it with our general revenue.”
TransLink’s revenues come from transit fares, fuel taxes, property taxes, and parking sales tax. According to Hardie, the transportation authority would be in a position to make those payments if necessary, and had always planned to subsidize the bridge for the first few years.
TransLink could also create incentives for drivers crossing the bridge to close a revenue gap.
“If traffic doesn’t occur, we’ll have to make adjustments to the tolls to make the bridge more attractive to people,” Cummings said. Adjustments could include off-peak pricing and variable rates.
While it’s still early, some TransLink officials were hopeful the high initial numbers bode well.
“If we are doing better than we forecast, then that’s great,” Hardie said. “If a lower subsidy is needed and if there’s a profit then that’s great and it goes back into the system and pays for something else.”
Meanwhile, the number of crossings at the Albion Ferry, which is set to close July 31, dropped by 46 per cent last week.
rtebrake@vancouversun.com
© Copyright © The Vancouver Sun
Well that was a brilliant plan, put a toll on the bridge only to throw the money away overseas.
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Why would your UBC extension veer off all the way to 4th? There's a town centre to be served around 10th and Sasamat.
fixed
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My transit 2025 plan involving commuter rail expansion and skytrain expansion:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&p...8f447945f66428d
New skytrain routes:
Gateway/Expo Line Expansion- King George, Guildford, Fleetwood, Langley Extension
UBC Line Extension - VCC to UBC
New commuter rail/light rail
Interurban express- Surrey, North Delta, Newton, Sullivan station, Cloverdale, Langley, Abbotsford, Chilliwack
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Are you sure a rail bridge that connects Surrey and the Valley to Richmond, with all day service and Skytrain transfers in two convenient locations, in addition to the HSR to Seattle, won't get sufficient ridership?
Plus the fact the government would be 100% responsible for the finances for the bridge that would connect to Richmond. There would be no demand for freight whatsoever and the costs of a line that doesn't even enter Vancouver doesn't make financial sense. The bigger priority would be a complete double track re-build of the 100 year old Fraser River Rail Bridge and 80+ year old Mission rail bridge. Get some private-partnership partnerships with the railroads developed and you could see a West Coast Express extension to Chilliwack and a Abbotsford-Langley-Cloverdale-Newton-North Delta Scott Road Terminus station within 10 years. The bigger issue involves the proper development, modernization of Surrey also involving transit exchanges/junctions.
The Official Transit Thread
in Off-Topic General
Posted
Kind of silly for the skybridge to connect to only 4 stations in Surrey; Although connecting it to langley is kinda ridicilious.
Priorities should be
-Skytrain to UBC
-Skytrain connecting Whalley to Guildford to King George/152th street.
-Light rail from Langley to Surrey connecting cloverdale, Newton, North Delta, Scott Road. Instead of a 1 billion dollar price tag it could be brought down to $200 million. But Campbell seems to have a huge bias for skytrain.