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Should SkyTrain ride the rails to UBC?

Peter Caulfield
Should SkyTrain ride the rails to UBC?
SHUTTERSTOCK

Not so long ago, Vancouver was a pleasant and rather sleepy mid-size city separated from the rest of Canada by a wall of mountains and rain. Traffic on the city’s streets was relatively sparse and, for the most part, moved smoothly. 

The mountains and rain are still here, but laid-back Vancouver has become a  mini-metropolis of 2.5 million people on the eastern slope of the booming Asia Pacific region, with the clogged streets to match.

The trend is expected to continue. 

Over the next 30 years, Metro Vancouver will become home to 1 million new residents. And they’ll all need to get to one of the 600,000 new jobs that will be created.

To accommodate some of them, an initiative called the Broadway Subway Project has been proposed by Translink, Metro Vancouver’s transportation network. An extension of the Millennium Line of the SkyTrain light rapid transit system, it will follow a mostly underground 5.7 k.m. route from VCC-Clark Station to Broadway and Arbutus.

The Millennium Line extension to Arbutus is expected to open by 2025.

Translink says “a future phase of investment” will extend SkyTrain from Arbutus all the way westward to the Point Grey campus of the University of British Columbia (UBC).

UBC is currently served by Translink’s 99 B-Line. The fleet of articulated buses moves 60,000 riders a day, making it reportedly the busiest bus route in Canada and the United States.

Opinions of Translink’s proposal vary.

Vancouver architect and developer Michael Geller doubts Translink’s proposal will turn out as it expects.

“Better to fund some other system, such as light rail of the kind Calgary and Edmonton have,” he said. “Another option is to put the money into improving transit south of the Fraser River, in Langley and Surrey, where it’s desperately needed.”

On the other hand, the City of Vancouver, UBC and the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Development Corporation say the SkyTrain line should be extended to the university’s campus as soon as possible.

The three parties, including Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart and UBC president Santa Ono, say they intend to press all levels of government to fund the project.

“It’s not surprising people are so supportive of a SkyTrain extension past Arbutus Street,” said Stewart in an announcement. “People want to see transit solutions that will alleviate the major congestion problems along the Broadway corridor, get them to where they need to be more quickly, and integrate into existing and future transit infrastructure across the region. A SkyTrain extension to UBC will help us accomplish all of this.”

And on yet another hand, Professor Patrick Condon of the UBC School of Architecture says a SkyTrain extension to the university is not needed.

“Growth along the corridor is very slow and existing density is absurdly low to justify the line,” said Condon. “Its’ justification comes only if one assumes massive high-rise development at station areas and at UBC, with tens of thousands of units in each one.”

Condon says extending SkyTrain to Arbutus only makes more sense than making it go all the way west to UBC. 

“Transit ridership drops off dramatically after Arbutus,” he said. “For years the city was extolling the logic of an Arbutus terminus, thereupon a surface-rail Y system, with one leg [southward] down the Arbutus corridor, one [northward] to downtown, and one [westward] to UBC.”

Condon says that even though such a plan would be “disrespectful of taxpayer dollars, it is far more reasonable than a hugely expensive bored tunnel under the forests of Pacific Spirit Park and low-density West Point Grey.

“Again, this only makes sense if one assumes massive new and unaffordable density along Broadway in Kitsilano, the Jericho Lands, the UBC Golf Course and at UBC itself.”

Condon says there are many better options, each of which is cheaper.

“The integrity of the bus network could be enhanced with more dedicated transit lanes,” he said. “This can be done with greenhouse gas-zero vehicles on 41st Avenue, Marine Drive, 16th Avenue, Broadway and 4th Avenue.  There is no shortage of routes available to distribute the demand.”

Recent Comments (10 comments)

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D. M. Johnston Image D. M. Johnston

What we call Skytrain is really two unrelated light-metros:
1) The Canada Line, wan elevated/underground conventional railway that uses standard Electrical Multiple Units (EMU’s) currently supplied by ROTEM of Korea.
2) the Expo and Millennium Lines, which uses the proprietary, Linear Induction Motor (LIM) Movia Automatic Light Metro, with the sole supplier being Bombardier Inc. and the rail division has been recently sold to Alstom.

MALM has gone through 6 name changes and three owners during its 40 year existence and only seven such systems have been built.

Driverless operation is a signalling issue.

The North American standard for building a subway, is a transit route with transit flows in excess of 15,000 persons per hour per direction.

At best, the Broadway corridor sees peak hour traffic flows less around 4,000 pphpd. Claims that Broadway is the busiest transit route in Canada or North America are false; mere propaganda to support subway construction.

Just to operate the Broadway subway (just to Arbutus) will add around 40 million annually to TransLink’s operating budget. Ontario’s MetroLinx, puts the 50 year costs of a subway at $1 billion per km.!

Also remember the subway will operate on a route where the majority of riders will use the deep discounted ($1 a day unlimited travel) U-Pass, thus there will be little revenue generated by the subway.

Also remember the current Millennium Line Line only operates 2 car trains, which are only full during peak hours.

The Broadway subway will just siphon monies away from other parts of the transit system, with little or no benefit, except political prestige.

Adam fitch Image Adam fitch

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