REVscene Automotive Forum - New Golden Ears Bridge set to open weeks ahead of schedule

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New Golden Ears Bridge set to open weeks ahead of schedule

METRO VANCOUVER — The $800-million Golden Ears Bridge is expected to open to traffic next month, several weeks earlier than planned.

TransLink CEO Tom Prendergast was expected to announce Monday morning the opening date of the bridge, which will connect Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows with Surrey and Langley.

The bridge was originally scheduled to open July 1, but it’s understood it will now open several weeks earlier, shortly after an opening celebration June 14.

The public is invited to the pedestrians-only celebration, which will feature entertainment and activities on the bridge deck.

TransLink spokesman Ken Hardie said the bridge was likely completed more quickly partly because of incentives offered to the contractors, who can start collecting operating and capital payments as soon as the bridge is open.

“There’s no huge mystery or revelation for the bridge opening earlier than scheduled, other than that the work’s been done,” Hardie said.

Once the bridge officially opens, vehicles will be able to cross it toll-free for 30 days. After that, drivers must pay a toll and can get a discount by registering for a Quickpass transponder, an electronic tolling device that can be leased from TransLink for $1 a month.

More than 2,000 people have already registered for a transponder, which attaches to the front dashboard. The transponder and licence plates link to information leading to the address of the vehicle’s owner.

As a car passes under the bridge’s overhead electronic sensors, they detect the type of vehicle — car, truck or motorcycle — and whether it’s equipped with a transponder. If a vehicle doesn’t have a transponder, digital cameras will snap a photo of its rear licence plate.

Those with transponders get a discounted toll of $2.85 for cars and standard vans, pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles. The toll rises to $3.45 per crossing for those who have registered for the payment system but drive without transponders.

Drivers who cross without registering and don’t have a transponder will be billed $4 by mail. Motorcyclists pay $1.45 to $2.55. Truck drivers pay $5.75 to $9.75, depending on the vehicle’s size and whether they have a transponder.

Drivers will not be able to renew their vehicles’ ICBC insurance or their driver’s licences if they have outstanding toll bills.

Bicycles, electric bikes and pedestrians, transit and emergency vehicles are exempt from toll fees.

Meanwhile, work will begin next Sunday on repaving the Pattullo Bridge. While the work is being done, the bridge will be closed to all traffic on weeknights from 8 p.m. to 5a.m. and weekends from 8 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday. The work is expected to take two to three weeks, depending on the weather.

Motorists, pedestrians and cyclists are advised to use alternative routes, such as Port Mann, Alex Fraser and Queensborough bridges, for night-time and weekend travel. Motorists are also warned that when the bridge is open, some parts of the deck will be rougher than others and a 30-km/h speed limit will be in effect.

The N19 Surrey Central/Downtown NightBus will be rerouted from New Westminster Station via the Port Mann Bridge, 152nd Street, 108th Avenue and the King George Highway to Scott Road station and customers should expect an additional 10 minutes’ travel time in each direction.
http://www.vancouversun.com/Cars/Gol...426/story.html

thats good it will be free for the first month at least

good thing I never have to use this bridge :)

I rarely use Pattullo but how the fuck does it take 120 - 200 hours to repave 1.2 kilometers? Are they using retarded monkeys for labour and 3 legged mules for deliveries?

Fuck they're milking the shit out of that job. No wonder Translink is a fucking joke.

Quote:

MAPLE RIDGE (NEWS1130) - The new Golden Ears Bridge has become a cash cow for Translink. The span is pulling in about $1 million a month in tolls, according to the Maple Ridge Times.

Even with half of that money going towards paying off construction costs, it will still take 10 to 12 years before the toll dollars match the overall pricetag of the bridge. Worries that shoppers in Maple Ridge would flock to Langley have also been put to rest.
More cars are travelling north over the bridge than south.

why is only half the money from the tolls going to pay for the construction? oO i thought the whole point of the toll was to pay for the bridge

don't tell me the other half is used for maintenance cuz that'd be bs

don't use the bridge but still -_-

Quote:

Originally Posted by fliptuner (Post 6436287)

One word: Canada

^ it's man hours. They need 20 ppl to supervise while 1 person does the work. Otherwise, it's not safe and they'll get their ass sued.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pandalove (Post 6595873)

One word: Canada

shakes head x 3

sigh....

Quote:

Originally Posted by pandalove (Post 6595873)

One word: Canada

2 years ago, one night i was at shenzhen, they closed an intersection the equivalent of georgia/burrard (3/4 lanes each way) and 2 blocks in each direction at 10pm, and had it dug up and repaved, and painted by 7am the next morning.

and then when i come back and drove down cambie street during a weekday at around 3pm, i see 2 people working in the fucking canada line.

what the fuck???

gotta love translink :), motheruckers!

haha...sooner or later people are going to wise up that translink's people are fairly much useless...you do not need a ceo that gets paid millions to think that tolls / tax increase are needed to fund their mafia...they just need to get rid of the ceo and board of crappy directors

Quote:

Originally Posted by hotjoint (Post 6596081)

gotta love translink :), motheruckers!

most unreliable worth piece of shit

it still floors me that between 33rd and 25th on cambie its still a disaster...

How hard is to repave that section?

And the sections that are repaved... Its almost like the road was paved by a bunch of people that didn't know the meaning of the word SMOOTH...

Everywhere else seems to have no problem paving and patching roads so that the end result is as smooth as glass... but here this is a near impossible task... and don't get me started on the construction at 25th and main... they have been working on that area for a month... WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY DOING!? :rolleyes:

Quote:

Originally Posted by StylinRed (Post 6595870)

http://www.bclocalnews.com/tri_city_.../59397537.html

Quote:

New bridge pulling in a million a month

It will be years before toll revenues rise to cover the entire payments.
By Phil Melnychuk - Maple Ridge News

Published: September 15, 2009 4:00 PM
Updated: September 16, 2009 3:02 PM

0 Comments

More people are northbound on the Golden Ears Bridge than drive south to Langley, according to numbers from TransLink.

With tolls now in force for almost two months, stats are showing the traffic trends for the $808-million structure after fees were applied in mid-July.

For residents or businesses worried about customers fleeing the north side of the Fraser River for Langley shopping malls, the numbers indicate otherwise.

Actually, in August, at least 16,000 more motorists drove to Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows than vice versa. Specifically, 329,985 vehicles drove north across the bridge and 313,102 drove south.

While tolls are raking in cash, the monthly bills far exceed the $315,000 in monthly maintenance costs and $500,000 monthly payments to Golden Crossing General Partnership, the consortium that built the bridge. Those other charges include direct financing for property, tolling, project development and third party costs, plus payments to the toll contractor. Any surplus is going to cover future debt.

But according to TransLink numbers, the bridge is hauling in at well more than a million dollars a month. That’s based on an average during the slow summer time of 21,000 vehicles a day.

TransLink says 88.5 per cent of those vehicles are cars – which works out to about 18,585 cars crossing daily. It also says 31 per cent already have transponders, earning them the rock-bottom rate of $2.75 per crossing.

With 31 per cent of the 18,585 cars crossing daily having transponders, it means 5,761 vehicles are paying that bottom rate – working to out $15,842 a day. But the rest of the cars crossing are paying at least the $3.30 rate charged video customers – working out to $42,319 a day.

Multiply both figures by 30 days in a month and the dollars add up to $1.7 million, not counting trucks and motorcycles fares.

Still, according to TransLink’s value for money report and traffic and revenue study, it will still take 10 to 12 years before toll dollars match the entire costs of the bridge, even with $5 million annually flowing in from the former Albion ferry subsidy.

To the outsider, maintaining a brand new concrete structure would have minimal costs, but the list is extensive, including such chores as landscaping, mowing, ditching the approaches the bridge, sweeping the deck and roads, electrical fees, inspection, incident response and management, general repairs and parts replacement. Signal maintenance, electrical maintenance, drainage and cleaning, litter, public communication, vandalism and graffiti repairs are also considered maintenance.

TransLink says less than one per cent of the vehicles on the bridge are from out of province and it’s not tracking the number of cyclists using the Golden Ears.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Soundy (Post 6596880)

http://www.bclocalnews.com/tri_city_.../59397537.html

While tolls are raking in cash, the monthly bills far exceed the $315,000 in monthly maintenance costs and $500,000 monthly payments to Golden Crossing General Partnership, the consortium that built the bridge. Those other charges include direct financing for property, tolling, project development and third party costs, plus payments to the toll contractor. Any surplus is going to cover future debt.

But according to TransLink numbers, the bridge is hauling in at well more than a million dollars a month. That’s based on an average during the slow summer time of 21,000 vehicles a day.

With 31 per cent of the 18,585 cars crossing daily having transponders, it means 5,761 vehicles are paying that bottom rate – working to out $15,842 a day. But the rest of the cars crossing are paying at least the $3.30 rate charged video customers – working out to $42,319 a day.

Multiply both figures by 30 days in a month and the dollars add up to $1.7 million, not counting trucks and motorcycles fares

thanks for the info
so a number far exceeding $315k for maintenance? (why did they type $315k and not something closer to the amount?)

anyway they calculate $1.7mil a month just from cars and not trucks/motorcycles $315k+ for maintenance and $500k to repay the construction? leaves $1mil for gardening/dusting/toll cameras ... oO

not to mention $5million a year extra from what the Albion Ferry received :/

i dunno seems like it should take a lot less then 10-12 years to repay

Quote:

Originally Posted by StylinRed (Post 6596947)

thanks for the info
so a number far exceeding $315k for maintenance? (why did they type $315k and not something closer to the amount?)

Umm, no... reading fail. (Okay, in fairness, not the clearest wording).

Maintenance is $315k. $500k goes to pay down the construction. What they're saying is that the TOTAL bills "far exceed" that $815k, as they include "direct financing for property, tolling, project development and third party costs, plus payments to the toll contractor."

Quote:

anyway they calculate $1.7mil a month just from cars and not trucks/motorcycles $315k+ for maintenance and $500k to repay the construction? leaves $1mil for gardening/dusting/toll cameras ... oO

i dunno seems like it should take a lot less then 10-12 years to repay

"Any surplus is going to cover future debt."

Sounds to me like $500k is a fixed repayment schedule.

From my trips over the bridge at various times of the day, I think I've seen a motorcycle ONCE, and I have yet to see what they would classify a "truck", so I don't expect those numbers add to the totals significantly. The truck count will likely increase once the North and South Fraser Perimeter Roads and the new Pitt River Bridge open.

I must be missing something because 2 million a month for 12 years doesn't equal 800 million.

The payoff would necessarily be calculated based on projected growth - obviously they expect a LOT more vehicles to be using the bridge in the future, or they wouldn't have made it with so much capacity. I go over it (both ways) at least a couple times a week, and my wife takes it daily commuting between Pitt Meadows and Langley... 18,500+ cars per day sounds like a lot, but that bridge looks like a ghost town most of the times I've been on it. You could easily put four times as much traffic over it daily without people even slowing down - that bumps your monthly take to almost $8M right there.

Found this, quoted from a Sun article:

Quote:

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.”

Rest of the article is quoted here: http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...&postcount=480

ahh i see thanks soundy ^^

here i thought once the bridge was paid off they'd stop tolling :/

Now why would you think that? Look how long it took them to remove the tolls from the Coquihalla... and they actually claimed that they WOULD stop tolling that once it was paid off! I don't recall any such claims ever being made for the GEB.

Look at it this way: once its construction is paid off, ongoing maintenance still has to be paid for... and there will be more money for other infrastructure projects.

Yeah thats true, its just i thought i heard them say the tolls would just be used to pay the construction off and begone... but i think i got that from the chinese news and thats always unreliable :/

I dont like the idea of paying $8 more to go watch a movie at colossus when it was free before (ferry) ;)