Money? Like every other Canadian urban area, Vancouver/Translink hasn’t pushed hard enough against the provincial government for stable funding. This goes back to when the province directly owned BC Transit, and is directly analogous to Ontario’s general disengagement from transit (downloading of GO, followed by drastic cuts in provincial transit capital and operations funding). In theory, a payroll tax, income tax, gas tax, or addition to HST could all pay for transit, in Vancouver, Toronto or any other part of Canada. The small problem is the utter lack of political will to force the issue at the respective provincial level. The capacity to pay is definitely there, the demand to justify the line is clear, but the political will to demand a new power of taxation from the province–any province–is next to zero. Hasn’t happened for AMT in Montreal, hasn’t happened for Metrolinx in Toronto, hasn’t happened for Translink in Vancouver. That’s less the fault of politicians (or the antiquated concentration of power at the provincial level) than it is the failure of the voters to demand better.

Please do not design a system that “takes care of today” but is a few dollars cheaper. in time UBC has the room to grow to 100,000 in a first class, world class , higher EDU facility.

How in heaven’s name are you going to transport that volume of traffic using some cheap system that handles today.

The Broadway corridor is undergoing a study to ramp up from a 3 FSR to a 5 FSR. With downtown now looking at FSR, in certain cases of 13, it is clear that the Broadway Corridor might be looking at 7 FSR, once day.

Please, please don’t build some cheap ass system that is obsolete from day one because of lack of vision.

And that lack of vision can include Skytrain and Canada line planners who design platforms that can handle at most a 6 car train.

From the day it opened, Canada was jammed. People are already “gaming the system” by trying to board at stations down the line because all Richmond trains are full.

Richmond trains in rush hour could 10 cars long, not 4.

Let us be long view people when we build the broadway line.

If you were to look at a BC map of the electoral districts of the GVRD when Millennium line was planned and built, you’ll notice it only went through NDP ridings when the NDP was in power.

1. Has there been an analysis of distance learning and teleworking as screens to determine how many future trips will be diverted to these virtual modes, leaving the balance for private vehicles and transit? This technology is rapidly improving while costs are dropping–and students are on the leading edge of adoption and use–just look at the videos on their smartphones

2. How many car trips will actually be diverted by these options?

3. What are the rough estimates of capital and operating costs of new rider attracted and how do these benchmark against other similar investments elsewhere?

For me, I think cost is my primary factor, as the need is great and I feel if we can take a staged approach to improving the transit capacity/mobility/quality we’ll be able to start enjoying better service sooner rather than later.

For what it’s worth here are some of my ideas for a phased plan.

1. Tom is totally right, we need to mind the gap. The Millennium Line and the Canada Line need to make friends, ASAP. Especially with the Evergreen Line coming. It’s right in the Metro Vancouver Regional Planning documents from the 90′s. We have densified these suburban communities and we need to provide fast and efficient transit between our many town centres. It’s a regional system too (especially with all cities paying for these improvements) and we need to make skytrain the better option for Tri-cities to Richmond/Airport trips.
Now it seems to me that RRT is very expensive due to the need to bore a tunnel heading down broadway or under 10th. Seeing that I’m very concerned with cost and would like to try and spread out the big dollars over a multi-staged plan I’d say extend the Millennium Line to Olympic Village Station via a raised guideway, basically the cheapest way to mind the gap. It could have a few new stops too, maybe Great Northern Way Campus and one at the Main Street side of the Olympic Village. Now that the gap is taken care of we need to get these folks to UBC/Broadway.

2. Build a LRT from Main Street Station to UBC via Olympic Village Station, the Arbutus right of way, turning on Broadway and then along W. 10th to UBC. This LRT can run in one or two car trains at 15-2 minute intervals depending on the volume for up to 15,000 people each hour, an increase over the current B-Line’s capacity by roughly 50%. The travel time should be significantly quicker on the portion of track between Olympic Village Station and Arbutus at Broadway do to the separated ROW. Speed would also increase compared to the B-Line on the Broadway and W. 10th sections do to priority signalling, having a dedicated lane and raised platforms for easier loading/un-loading. I also just plain like LRTs on a street, I’ve noticed that drivers kind of calm down when they’re sharing the road with LRT and pedestrians and cyclists are less likely to J-walk without really looking. I feel safer on a street that has a train on it, and would be curious to see if introducing them to streets has lessened accident rates in the past in other cities? Now to deal with the central Broadway corridor.

3. BRT for central Broadway(Broadway/Commercial Stations to Arbutus) to convert to LRT in the future. With 80 foot electric buses operating in convoys, taking advantage of priority signalling, raised platforms and reserved lanes BRT would be a great improvement over the current B-line. When BRT is no longer providing enough capacity we could convert it to an LRT and use the buses on a parallel new BRT line along 41st. I figure we could have the LRT in mind when the BRT is built so that we could reuse the platforms, priority signalling and maybe the overhead cables.

I think that this would create a system that would be able to grow with the region and the local area and not put all our eggs($$$$) in one basket, but enable us to provide great transit to more areas. Thanks for all of your posts, they have been very informative, Cheers.

The Canada Line was built with a small budget. Also because it was a completely separate line they could build any sized station they wanted. So they went with the smallest sized stations that they could.

Because the Broadway line would be an extension of the M-Line. They are forced from the start to have stations with 80M platforms to match the station platforms on the rest of the line. What would be even better is if they just spent the extra money up front and built 100M platforms. Although it probably won’t happen. We will most likely get the 80 M platforms.