Surrey Langley Skytrain - Expo Line Extension | Proposed

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by Kisai

Haha.... Want to see how much of a camera-mugger Jordan Bateman is?
He used to support Light Rail:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080514...ght%20rail.pdf

But you know what's really funny?

Listen to arguments from places who have light rail and want something grade separated:
http://www.minnpost.com/letters/2015...ht-rail-issues

At least that Bateman link was text and not a video - I don't think I could handle actually seeing / hearing him.

I could see there being some kind of rail along the Trans Canada Hwy from Carvolth Exchange out to Abbotsford / Chilliwack. It just wouldn't work within most of the lower mainland, for reasons already talked about on here.

[twoNeurons]

People DO change their minds as they grow older. I haven't seen much of this guy, but holding old views against him seems kind of petty and unproductive.

I know my views have changed on transit over the years.

[Sheba]

Bateman's opinions seem to be based on who is paying for them...

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by Kisai

http://www.surrey.ca/files/Economic_...Surrey_LRT.pdf
The conversation about the roadways actually comes up in news stories from the latest consulting report from Surrey.

Economic Benefits... yay, stuff that transit riders don't care about. This pretty much touts it as a useless "make-work" project.

There is something terribly ironic when you have the Skytrain hater on your side against the Surrey LRT.
http://www.news1130.com/2015/05/15/n...on-for-surrey/

What a piece of shit report. It is 21 pages, with lots of white space and some spelling errors. It feels like a report prepared for school.

It also doesn't prove anything. Spending money on construction creates construction jobs. Thanks for the tip.

It is also misleading in the numbers. It talks about Full time equivalent, and person years of jobs. So what is it? Are 20,000 people going to be employed over the next 30 years or are there going to be 600 people with full time jobs for 30 years? Is it going to be extremely front loaded with hundreds of jobs for a couple years then dozens during operation? It vague at best. Building anything would achieve the same results. And there is no talk about the economic impact of construction negatively. It will snarl traffic for years, costing the economy thousands of manhours sitting in idle cars.

And it boasts we are going to spend over $2 billion on the project, and get back $1.5 billion in wage creating? I don't know if those are numbers to boast about (there is no comparison to anything in the whole report). How does that compare to job creation in Calgary or Portland, or the job creation caused by the Evergreen line or Canada Line. Horseshit.

It is a big circle jerk of a report. It goes on and on about the government spending money on jobs, so the government will get money back from those jobs.

And there is no rhyme nor reason about it. There is one reference to a study done in Boston to how people in their medical industry like transit. That's it! That doesn't prove that light rail has some benefit over building skytrain or even rapid bus. What have other light rail projects done in other suburbs done for suburbs in other cities?

There is some talk about how LRT is better than Skytrain, but there is no proof or evidence, or even much logical reason, given. It doesn't even follow basic logical reason report writing in that it doesn't give due consideration to the other side (Skytrain construction) and preempt counter arguments. The only logic used is that you get more KM per $ spent. But to follow that to the logical conclusion is that rapid bus gets you even more km, so why not rapid bus everywhere?

If the best reason for building light rail is that spending $2.2 billion creates $1.5 billion in jobs, I don't know if that is good enough.

[officedweller]

Posted at the Seattle Transit Blog.

Pedestrian tram safety video from Dublin, Ireland.
Note the side of street alignment.

• Video Link

[SOSS]

Wow, great and informative video. If only they could grade separate the line to protect everyone. hehehe

[BCPhil]

Is there such a thing as negligent suicide?

[Sheba]

In that video, if they had a low fence on either side of the tracks it would stop all the jaywalking type behaviour. Sure there would still be problems with intersections and crosswalks but it would be a lot less.

Now compare that with Surrey. They want to put exactly this type of thing down the center of a busy street with no barriers whatsoever. Instead of pedestrians not paying attention, you have drivers not paying attention. A single accident could potentially block not only transit but also some of the car traffic for hours. How is that better than buses?

[Kisai]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

Is there such a thing as negligent suicide?

If you take suicides out of "accident" statistics, you'd probably find that the Skytrain is the safest system in the world, next to other automated grade-separated systems, followed by metros with drivers that have PTC/ATP.

Light Rail systems never even think about pedestrian safety when they are in their design phases. If they did, they would never have grade crossings, and have 8' fences along the entire rail ROW. So suicides, pedestrian injuries, vehicle collisions and even driver/passenger injuries/PTSD all happen more frequently on light rail. The human cost is far higher for surface light rail than it is for buses and cars.

http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=10301

In other words, light rail kills 12.5 people for every billion passenger miles carried, whereas buses kill just 4.5 people per billion passenger miles. Urban roads and streets, by comparison, kill about 8.2 people per billion vehicle miles, which works out to 4.9 per billion passenger miles. While buses are slightly safer than cars, light rail is 2-1/2 times more dangerous than cars.

Transit officials are quick to blame the victims when rail accidents kill. “Did he dive under the train? We don’t know,” said a Denver official. (It turned out the man was slightly disabled.) But the real problem is putting 100,000-pound vehicles (or, worse, 300,000-pound trains) in the same streets as 150-pound pedestrians.

[BCPhil]

That is essentially what Calgary has done. On the south side of the city the line is pretty much fenced in, making it a fence dividing the east from west, only crossable at controlled crossings where pedestrians have to pass through zigzag gates that force cyclists to dismount (if on the sidewalk otherwise they are stopped by the gates on the road). I don't think it is very pretty.

Sure, in Surrey, the road already divides the city, so putting the tracks down it won't change much. But I don't think it is "human scale" like they make it out to be. There are still fences, gales, overhead wires. And many of the crossing points across the road will have to be closed for simplicity and cost (you can't buy and maintain that many gates).

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

That is essentially what Calgary has done. On the south side of the city the line is pretty much fenced in, making it a fence dividing the east from west, only crossable at controlled crossings where pedestrians have to pass through zigzag gates that force cyclists to dismount (if on the sidewalk otherwise they are stopped by the gates on the road). I don't think it is very pretty.

Sure, in Surrey, the road already divides the city, so putting the tracks down it won't change much. But I don't think it is "human scale" like they make it out to be. There are still fences, gales, overhead wires. And many of the crossing points across the road will have to be closed for simplicity and cost (you can't buy and maintain that many gates).

Yeah, no kidding. You want to talk about "dividing communities," nothing will do it more effectively than an LRT.

[jsbertram]

Originally Posted by officedweller

Posted at the Seattle Transit Blog.

Pedestrian tram safety video from Dublin, Ireland.
Note the side of street alignment.

• Video Link

Looking at the YouTube suggestions, there are quite a few videos of crashes on this system.

Surrey better be careful what they are wishing for.

[xd_1771]

Anyway, just gonna heads-up that I've put up a long-form discussion type post on my blog regarding the new LRT study.
I stole a few of the great lines from the previous posts here so I hope you guys don't mind I did that. Really great insight

Daryl's Take: New Surrey LRT study wastes taxpayer money

This tidbit might be of interest:

...further amplified by the fact that Light Rail is one of the most dangerous and deadly forms of transportation. In a 505-page National Transportation Statistics report published by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Light Rail systems were found to have the second highest fatality rate of any transportation mode, second only to motorcycles. Nearly every other mode of transportation, including bus rapid transit and motor vehicle travel, was found to be safer than Light Rail.


Average fatality rates per 100 million miles, 2000–2011. Source: US Department of Transportation

Most LRT systems in North America have segregated, private rights-of-way – but of the few LRT systems that have been built so as to be entirely at street level and on the street, those were found to be the most dangerous systems in North America. The Houston Metrorail is a prime example, having suffered from a track record of frequent accidents, since its opening and continuing up to today.

The Surrey LRT system will be built this way, running at-grade through some of the most dangerous intersections in the region and introducing a massive implication to transit riders, drivers and pedestrians in terms of safety.

[WaxItYourself]

I think that in order to compare things such as crashes and such on various LRT we should define how they are laid out. Most of the automobile crashes posted occur on non-separated LRT lines where the line runs directly adjacent to the roadway. From the looks of it Surrey plans on separating the two with a barrier where left turns lanes do not run directly into the path of the LRT track.

Will there be accidents that occur? Of course there will if people do not follow the rules of the road and turn on red lights, etc... I do think that possible fatalities/accidents are over emphasized in this thread though as many of the accidents are improbable to occur due to the separation between the line and the roadway. That being said I am on the fence with regards to what technology to use.

If we are worried about j-walking pedestrians I would place bushes of medium height along the separation so that it would make it harder to j-walk across. If they are medium height the trains could still be seen and the view from the train would still be visible but it would be more of a deterrent for j-walking.

[Kisai]

Originally Posted by WaxItYourself

I think that in order to compare things such as crashes and such on various LRT we should define how they are laid out. Most of the automobile crashes posted occur on non-separated LRT lines where the line runs directly adjacent to the roadway. From the looks of it Surrey plans on separating the two with a barrier where left turns lanes do not run directly into the path of the LRT track.

Will there be accidents that occur? Of course there will if people do not follow the rules of the road and turn on red lights, etc... I do think that possible fatalities/accidents are over emphasized in this thread though as many of the accidents are improbable to occur due to the separation between the line and the roadway. That being said I am on the fence with regards to what technology to use.

If we are worried about j-walking pedestrians I would place bushes of medium height along the separation so that it would make it harder to j-walk across. If they are medium height the trains could still be seen and the view from the train would still be visible but it would be more of a deterrent for j-walking.

This was another priceless "dismissed" study I found earlier today from Sydney,AU that was also dismissive of pedestrian safety, only being concerned with Passengers and Vehicle collisions:



Unfortunately I counldn't really find anything clearer since it was sourced from a "leaked" source for the Syney Light Rail projects here: http://www.smh.com.au/cqstatic/gh68lk/report.pdf .

"for the IWLR Only the low speed section has the potential, the medium and high speed sections are fully segregated. For CSELR, this risk affects all speed sections, since 90% (the exception being the tunnel) of the route is not segregated."

There are pieces that basically go "since at high speed, we assume that everyone would not be so foolish to try and beat the train through a crossing"

The thing is, when you go look at the most dangerous light rail systems (Houston, Sacramento being at the top) most of the vehicle-on-vehicle accidents are caused by vehicles trying to make left-turns. Passengers and drivers aren't usually injured except when an accident results in derailment.

Like I'd like to see the same "platform edge door" argument being used on light rail. Why are there none at the platforms? Why aren't there any at grade crossings?

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by WaxItYourself

I think that in order to compare things such as crashes and such on various LRT we should define how they are laid out. Most of the automobile crashes posted occur on non-separated LRT lines where the line runs directly adjacent to the roadway. From the looks of it Surrey plans on separating the two with a barrier where left turns lanes do not run directly into the path of the LRT track.

Check out this youtube video (it's also on Surrey's website) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D57Iy50twXM
http://www.surrey.ca/city-services/10797.aspx

This is how Surrey is planning on laying out it's LRT lines - on non-separated lines with no barriers.

http://www.lightraillinks.com/

[xd_1771]

Put up another post on my blog to continue the discussion, with a focus on what's been happening in Edmonton.

So far, to summarize what's been happening, the 3.3km "Metro Line" LRT project has:

• just passed its latest "May 2015" opening deadline
• Been "delayed" at least 4 times in total
• Taken over 4 years to open 3.3km (versus Surrey/Mayor Hepner's promise for 10km LRT in < 3 years)
• Cost more per km than the SkyTrain Evergreen Line (despite subsantial on-street portions and no elevated portions)
• reduced service frequency on opening day to just 15 minutes between trains, in order to be "opened faster"
• ^ resulting in crippled service on the city's existing LRT line
• been decided to operate its regular schedule at 10 min frequency or half the initial promised service frequency (apparently the extra trains aren't necessary for the ridership)
• resulted in 20 train-cars being added to the Edmonton LRT system that will now seldom ever be used as service has been halved (wasting millions of taxpayer dollars).

All in all huge warning flags for a proposed Surrey LRT, which has similar specifics including required interlining in city centre and a questionable economic case.

“Delay after delay after delay after delay after delay. I thought at the end of the tunnel there would be at least a five-minute frequency train.”
Josh Stock – Edmonton transit user

Daryl's Take: Edmonton cheats riders on new LRT service

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by Sheba

Check out this youtube video (it's also on Surrey's website) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D57Iy50twXM
http://www.surrey.ca/city-services/10797.aspx

This is how Surrey is planning on laying out it's LRT lines - on non-separated lines with no barriers.

http://www.lightraillinks.com/

Yeah, there just isn't enough infrastructure present in the videos. They are either glossing it over, making it look prettier, "more integrated", than it will be, or they are confused themselves.

Without the barriers of fences, it basically is like the system in that video, or like in Denver. The lack of separation results in accidents and a much lower speed for the train.

Plus, the Luas in Dublin might run like that on city streets in the town centers, but is also operates in dedicated ROW in the country side (increasing speed) as well as on other, much less busy rural streets. The entire Surrey system will be on the cities busiest roads. So, it will either be pretty but slow and accident prone, or ugly but faster and safer. The city seems to think it will be both.

[makr3trkr]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...-lrt-1.3089323

Surrey to cut down hundreds of Green Timbers trees to make way for LRT
By Jesse Johnston, CBC News Posted: May 27, 2015 10:28 AM PT



The City of Surrey plans on removing hundreds of trees from Green Timbers Urban Forest to clear the way for a proposed light rail transit line that will run along Fraser Highway.

A report that went to council this week outlines the city's plan to widen Fraser Highway between King George Boulevard and 148 Street.

The project will make room for two additional lanes of traffic, an LRT line, a bike path, a sidewalk and drainage ditches.

[xd_1771]

Notice how the red-marked "surplus areas" were apparently not legally a part of Green Timbers, allowing the city to claim that it's actually increasing the Green Timbers area despite widening Fraser Highway by reclaiming those back.

Very, very clever =_=