TransLink: Funding shortfall could scrap Evergreen Line

[Tapioca]

Originally Posted by ncrx

Well you've got a new bridge which is being highly subsidized by translink for the first 15 years, and are getting a new giant bridge, and there's a new train line to the airport, and the highway to whistler's been rebuilt.

Also since none of you valley people pay a toll yet for using any of the highways or the port mann or the alex fraser... and your train/bus fares are ridiculously cheap compared to say places with a successful privatized transit system like japan. You wonder where the money goes...or comes from in the first place

Well, people complain about the toll on the Golden Ears and they'll complain about the toll on the Port Mann. In the States, people have been paying highway tolls for years and no one complains.

The problem for people in suburbs is that they expect service to their doorstep when it's not economically feasible. How much does it take for people to understand that if have no density, you cannot have a public transportation system that serves a large amount of people? I know Surrey is trying to make its neighbourhoods around the Skytrain more dense, but the city is still largely home to 4000+ sq ft. mansions. Not everyone wants to live in less than 1500 sq. ft, but there are choices people have to make. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

[hotjoint]

Originally Posted by ncrx

and your train/bus fares are ridiculously cheap compared to say places with a successful privatized transit system like japan.

$5 for 3 zones is cheap? how much is it in japan? I remember when it was $2.50 for 3 zones

[shenmecar]

Originally Posted by hotjoint

$5 for 3 zones is cheap? how much is it in japan? I remember when it was $2.50 for 3 zones

how many years ago was that? when gas was like 60 cents/L? haha

[hk20000]

Originally Posted by Tapioca

The suburbs do get the shaft when it comes to public transportation, but even if more buses were bought, would it be realistic to expect someone to sit on a bus for 2-3 hours to commute from Abbotsford to Vancouver? (And if someone did this commute on a daily basis, well they should consider getting a job closer to home.) Besides, buses add to the congestion - we need transportation that takes people off the roads like an automated rail system (e.g Skytrain, etc.) or a commuter rail system (like Toronto's GO, West Coast Express, Paris' RER, etc.)

If privatizing the system works so well, then name a major world city that has a fully privatized transportation system. Privatizing would create the following problems:

- Many routes that are underserved now would be completely cut because of the lack of revenues.
- How would you transfer between systems? You might end up paying two to three fares to get where you're going. (Unless you can get the companies to play nice and get everyone on-board a single payment system, like Octopus)

Public-private partnerships might be the way of the future, but we'll get a chance to see how effective these are once the Canada Line starts service. But, the line isn't off to a great start as there have been complaints about the size of trains, and the very small stations.

[Flamesuit on] HK.

You can trade MTR and KMB stocks.... they are as private as private companies get. How to transfer between companies? use the Octopussy. Discount when transferring? If there's a 3rd party (i.e. miniBus/Taxi All private btw) in the competition then the major players will join forces. It's all in supply and demand when it's a free market. Sure the government regulates the prices a little bit (just like how our government intervenes with gas prices if fuel companies want to pull off something stupid)....but they are private companies by definition.

$5 for 3 zones is off the hook expensive. Makes no sense to not drive a car if you are able to this way.

But let's not forget Japan... For example a 1 hour 4min train ride from Kumagaya to Ueno is 1110yen (13.24bux) today for 84km distance and 64 minutes (on the slow train that stops at every single stop on the way). The farthest you can go on $5 here is like across the harbour in North Vancouver to Surrey Central.... that's same 64minute ride that covers only 30.6km on rails and a ferry.....so price-wise and speed-wise we are miles behind.

Case in HK:
－＞
Type of travel: From bumfuck to heart of town
Citybus line #962
37.5km from Long Mun Oasis (considered bumfuck nowhere in HK standards) to Moreton Terrace, Causeway Bay (Heart Of Town by any measure) or Lan Kwai Fong where you PUAs get all the action at - $18.80HKD double decker bus $2.71CDN 45 minutes. $115HKD ($16.58CDN) is the tunnel fare each way. Divide that by say 100 passengers that's $1.658/passenger. so in practice it's $1.15CDN for the long ass ride.
13.83km/1dollar 50km/h or 32.60km/1dollar 50km/h taking the tunnel toll in mind

Case in Japan:
　－＞　
Type of travel: From bumfuck to heart of town
JR Takazaki Line
84.3km from Kumagaya JR station to Ueno JR station - 1110yen
normal train $13.26CDN 64 minutes
6.357km/1dollar 79.08km/h

Case in Vancouver:
－＞
Type of Travel: From bumfuck to less of a bumfuck, but still buttsecks.
BC Translink
25.4km from Lonsdale Ferries Terminal to Surrey Central Skytrain Station - $5
ferry and skytrain $5CDN 62minutes.
5.08km/1dollar 24.66km/h

Vancouver case would worsen if we take a route that's diagonal to most skytrain tracks...oh man.

Case 2 in Vancouver:
－＞
Type of travel: from one city node to where all the chicks are.
BC Translink
19.6km from Richmond no.3 Road to Metropolis @ Metrotown - $3.75
78minutes $3.75CDN
5.23km/1dollar 15.07km/h

Oh the shame. There is no way to grab people off their cars if the public transport doesn't go any faster than the car in 1st gear....that's not including wait time. 1dollar gets you 1 litre of gas or thereso and your average fuel efficient little car happens to be able to go say 6km(13.333L/100km) with that much gas in the city.....parking is mostly free so it is fair to say our system is far from viable enough for people to get off their cars...

Sure with every system if you want to go perpendicular to tracks /bus lines you are kind of screwed....but travelling in the same direction as the train and your car beats it 10/10 times is not acceptable.

[Chairman Kaga]

Originally Posted by Vege

Doesn't Translink have a massive funding shortfall every year? Instead of finding ways to solve the problem, they just find new ways of taxing non transit users.

Not just that but didn't those assholes take pay raises not too long ago?

Fuckers.

[Chairman Kaga]

Originally Posted by ImportPsycho

woha, sucks for the Newport village, Port moody
bunch of new condos are going up with the promise of transit linking to lougheed station
I went to one presell and they were selling like 500~600k, fking ridiculous price for a port moody condo, reason was the ocean view(ROFL) and evergreen line... LOL not....

Port Moody condo for $500-600k?

[Inaii]

Originally Posted by ImportPsycho

woha, sucks for the Newport village, Port moody
bunch of new condos are going up with the promise of transit linking to lougheed station
I went to one presell and they were selling like 500~600k, fking ridiculous price for a port moody condo, reason was the ocean view(ROFL) and evergreen line... LOL not....

Try living there now =p 97 is NEVER on time.

[hotjoint]

Originally Posted by shenmecar

how many years ago was that? when gas was like 60 cents/L? haha

Nah I believe has was like 39.9 back then. I remember in highschool I took the bus to surrey central and it was only .75 per zone

[iEatClams]

Originally Posted by CorneringArtist

Who the fuck cares about the Evergreen line? I'm not sure where it ends specifically, but it's just another bill on the tax list. The Surrey line is just as useless, there are enough buses heading out. What they need is to fucking FIX the bus service so it's more efficient, and extend the bus service to Abbotsford since people seem to want that. It'd be so much cheaper to have more buses than to build trains.

this is an ignorant post.

I've lived in surrey and coquitlam before and both places desperately need those lines. It would put soo many cars off the road in those areas and save the commute time dramatically.

[iEatClams]

Originally Posted by CorneringArtist

Buddy, I LIVE in Surrey. My primary means of transportation right now IS THE BUS. There AREN'T enough buses out here. On busy periods the buses are either full or the spacing between them is long enough that I can walk to my destination if it's close enough (but what's the point of that if I have a monthly pass)...The burbs are getting screwed.

This is very true. It's just poorly managed, sometimes a lot of the routes have like 3 people on the buses when it's not rush hour and when rush hour comes it's packed. They need to manage that better.

Surrey needs to change the city's image so more corporate people will actually build/move their companies here.

Right now everything is going to Vancouver/Burnaby/Richmond and probably soon coquitlam. We barely have any major corporate buildings here except for the Tax Centre, BC Hydro.

[Tapioca]

Originally Posted by hk20000

[Flamesuit on] HK.

You can trade MTR and KMB stocks.... they are as private as private companies get. How to transfer between companies? use the Octopussy. Discount when transferring? If there's a 3rd party (i.e. miniBus/Taxi All private btw) in the competition then the major players will join forces. It's all in supply and demand when it's a free market. Sure the government regulates the prices a little bit (just like how our government intervenes with gas prices if fuel companies want to pull off something stupid)....but they are private companies by definition.

My understanding was that in the 1970s, the MTR system was financed by public funds (the British Crown.) It may be privately operated now, but it took public money to get it off the ground.

$5 for 3 zones is off the hook expensive. Makes no sense to not drive a car if you are able to this way.

But let's not forget Japan... For example a 1 hour 4min train ride from Kumagaya to Ueno is 1110yen (13.24bux) today for 84km distance and 64 minutes (on the slow train that stops at every single stop on the way). The farthest you can go on $5 here is like across the harbour in North Vancouver to Surrey Central.... that's same 64minute ride that covers only 30.6km on rails and a ferry.....so price-wise and speed-wise we are miles behind.

HK has a population of 7 million+ in an area the size Vancouver. We have a population of maybe 2 million? The problem is that we're comparing apples to oranges. In North America, our infrastructure was built around the car and cheap oil. In Asia and Europe where there is less land and more people, infrastruture was built around dense city centres with high speed links between them. I personally like trains, but high speed trains (with electricity) cost billions of dollars to build. In fact, everything costs money and the general attitude in North America is that taxes (for anything) are bad. Also, try building rail in the city - people will be up in arms about anything that comes close to their backyards. I'm not excusing Translink at all for their mismanagement, but my point is that there needs to be a change in mentality:

- We stick with the status quo and continue to drive our cars as the price of gas eventually rises.
- We make a concerted effort to reduce our footprint and move into smaller homes which are city centres themselves, or closer to other city centres. Bus service to outlying areas can be scaled back and more money freed to building high-speed links to city centres.

[ncrx]

Originally Posted by hk20000

[Flamesuit on] HK.

You can trade MTR and KMB stocks.... they are as private as private companies get. How to transfer between companies? use the Octopussy. Discount when transferring? If there's a 3rd party (i.e. miniBus/Taxi All private btw) in the competition then the major players will join forces. It's all in supply and demand when it's a free market. Sure the government regulates the prices a little bit (just like how our government intervenes with gas prices if fuel companies want to pull off something stupid)....but they are private companies by definition.

$5 for 3 zones is off the hook expensive. Makes no sense to not drive a car if you are able to this way.

But let's not forget Japan... For example a 1 hour 4min train ride from Kumagaya to Ueno is 1110yen (13.24bux) today for 84km distance and 64 minutes (on the slow train that stops at every single stop on the way). The farthest you can go on $5 here is like across the harbour in North Vancouver to Surrey Central.... that's same 64minute ride that covers only 30.6km on rails and a ferry.....so price-wise and speed-wise we are miles behind.

Case in HK:

Type of travel: From bumfuck to heart of town
Citybus line #962
37.5km from Long Mun Oasis (considered bumfuck nowhere in HK standards) to Moreton Terrace, Causeway Bay (Heart Of Town by any measure) or Lan Kwai Fong where you PUAs get all the action at - $18.80HKD double decker bus $2.71CDN 45 minutes. $115HKD ($16.58CDN) is the tunnel fare each way. Divide that by say 100 passengers that's $1.658/passenger. so in practice it's $1.15CDN for the long ass ride.
13.83km/1dollar 50km/h or 32.60km/1dollar 50km/h taking the tunnel toll in mind

Case in Japan:

Type of travel: From bumfuck to heart of town
JR Takazaki Line
84.3km from Kumagaya JR station to Ueno JR station - 1110yen
normal train $13.26CDN 64 minutes
6.357km/1dollar 79.08km/h

Case in Vancouver:

Type of Travel: From bumfuck to less of a bumfuck, but still buttsecks.
BC Translink
25.4km from Lonsdale Ferries Terminal to Surrey Central Skytrain Station - $5
ferry and skytrain $5CDN 62minutes.
5.08km/1dollar 24.66km/h

Vancouver case would worsen if we take a route that's diagonal to most skytrain tracks...oh man.

Case 2 in Vancouver:

Type of travel: from one city node to where all the chicks are.
BC Translink
19.6km from Richmond no.3 Road to Metropolis @ Metrotown - $3.75
78minutes $3.75CDN
5.23km/1dollar 15.07km/h

Oh the shame. There is no way to grab people off their cars if the public transport doesn't go any faster than the car in 1st gear....that's not including wait time. 1dollar gets you 1 litre of gas or thereso and your average fuel efficient little car happens to be able to go say 6km(13.333L/100km) with that much gas in the city.....parking is mostly free so it is fair to say our system is far from viable enough for people to get off their cars...

Sure with every system if you want to go perpendicular to tracks /bus lines you are kind of screwed....but travelling in the same direction as the train and your car beats it 10/10 times is not acceptable.

I have lived in Japan for well over 2years and have been there countless times in the past couple of years. You are forgetting to factor cost of driving in Japan. Cost of parking, ALL HIGHWAYS are TOLLED, Fuel, parking at your home also costs money in some areas. ie. Drive from Tokyo to Osaka return, look at spending close to 300$ in tolls alone. This is the same distance to kelowna and back.

These places also have the density of the entire country of Canada in the GVRD. So public transit is cheap relatively speaking for the amount of population and the system in place. Plus nobody here is willing to accept a train line built through their already established neighborhood.

Also try travelling from Koshigaya Saitama to Futako Tamagawa in South Tokyo. It's a 40km distance, it will cost you 10$. Also you are assuming you are sitting on one line and it takes you where you need to go. If you transfer to a different system or go any further distance, you will be dinged.
Your argument is valid, but incomplete

[you]

Originally Posted by bcrdukes

Looks like Aircare will stay!

ffuuukkkkkk

[CorneringArtist]

Originally Posted by azndude69

this is an ignorant post.

I've lived in surrey and coquitlam before and both places desperately need those lines. It would put soo many cars off the road in those areas and save the commute time dramatically.

The Surrey line is pretty useless since it's only goes out to about the Fraser Highway, and there's about 5 or more buses that already connect into Surrey Central that run frequently enough to not constitute the need for a new line extension. Evergreen seems useful, but putting more buses on the road to connect the two destinations would be better for taxpayers in the long run.

[q0192837465]

My company is still spending a lot of time working on the Evergreen line. In fact, I just received a shit load of data from Translink this morning. I think they'r still on it.

[too_slow]

Originally Posted by ImportPsycho

woha, sucks for the Newport village, Port moody
bunch of new condos are going up with the promise of transit linking to lougheed station
I went to one presell and they were selling like 500~600k, fking ridiculous price for a port moody condo, reason was the ocean view(ROFL) and evergreen line... LOL not....

I'm with you on that one.. Onni and Polygon's smoking some good shit with their pricing..

[hk20000]

Originally Posted by ncrx

I have lived in Japan for well over 2years and have been there countless times in the past couple of years. You are forgetting to factor cost of driving in Japan. Cost of parking, ALL HIGHWAYS are TOLLED, Fuel, parking at your home also costs money in some areas. ie. Drive from Tokyo to Osaka return, look at spending close to 300$ in tolls alone. This is the same distance to kelowna and back.

These places also have the density of the entire country of Canada in the GVRD. So public transit is cheap relatively speaking for the amount of population and the system in place. Plus nobody here is willing to accept a train line built through their already established neighborhood.

Also try travelling from Koshigaya Saitama to Futako Tamagawa in South Tokyo. It's a 40km distance, it will cost you 10$. Also you are assuming you are sitting on one line and it takes you where you need to go. If you transfer to a different system or go any further distance, you will be dinged.
Your argument is valid, but incomplete

Your argument has just been backstabbed by the Japan highway group. Recently they have announced that during weekends (Saturday 12:01am to Sunday 11:59pm, including ferry rides where necessary) you can go any distance on the highway system for 1000yen. Except the shutogo system, but it's still discounted to 500yen.

w00t.

And you don't have to pay a lot of fees if you choose the K-car class cars. Plus you can also use alternate free roads for most travellings. Plan your travelling around rush hours and the byways are really nice and not much slower than rush hour highway speeds.

But then hauling ass at like 160km/h down paid highways is a BLAST. haha.

My argument has been put up to "simulate" the situation in Canada, actually. Consideration has been made so that neither ends of the stations are away from cities yet neither end are actually going into the metro area (then the end station would be Tokyo station or Odaiba, making it difficult to compete) Kumagaya is a farming town, for crying out loud. The famous thing there is their Girls' Highschool, apparently, coz in googlemaps it says Kumagaya Girl's High even from a far distance rofl. I also picked the start and end point where there are major city attractions/stations for direct comparison.

HK is different, it has 7million people in a place the size of Langley, like you said. But that illustrates what's the "evolutionized" public transportation should look like. With that many riders a day that system cannot afford to have ANY fat. If Translink system is a fat chick the HK version needs to be a supermodel that does your laundary and cook you dinner, and then probably knows kung-fu. The idea is a doube decker bus that uses half the road space as a bendy bus riding 1.5 times the people, with freaking air conditioning, and a train system that charges by the station instead of by "zones" to attract short distance travellers is an absolute MUST. I find it ridiculous that if I hop on a bus on Granville St. in Richmond and ride to say Lansdowne it costs WAY more than if I drive (some 700m at most? But it's a bit of a distance if I have been shopping at Zellers, right?) Why is it charged by zones and not by distance!? The system is basically saying "don't ride me, drive yourself" whenever short distances travelling is to be done. Similarly you have to pay for the same price to go to 54th Avenue from Granville St. Richmond and to Hastings St. from Richmond it makes no freaking sense.

We have a really crap version here... The pricing per km is alright with the number of people I suppose but what boggles my mind is the speed and the retarded pricing system..... 16km/h is a lot slower than an average bicycle. $5.00 gets you pretty good food in Richmond....

[ncrx]

Originally Posted by hk20000

Your argument has just been backstabbed by the Japan highway group. Recently they have announced that during weekends (Saturday 12:01am to Sunday 11:59pm, including ferry rides where necessary) you can go any distance on the highway system for 1000yen. Except the shutogo system, but it's still discounted to 500yen.

w00t.

And you don't have to pay a lot of fees if you choose the K-car class cars. Plus you can also use alternate free roads for most travellings. Plan your travelling around rush hours and the byways are really nice and not much slower than rush hour highway speeds.

But then hauling ass at like 160km/h down paid highways is a BLAST. haha.

My argument has been put up to "simulate" the situation in Canada, actually. Consideration has been made so that neither ends of the stations are away from cities yet neither end are actually going into the metro area (then the end station would be Tokyo station or Odaiba, making it difficult to compete) Kumagaya is a farming town, for crying out loud. The famous thing there is their Girls' Highschool, apparently, coz in googlemaps it says Kumagaya Girl's High even from a far distance rofl. I also picked the start and end point where there are major city attractions/stations for direct comparison.

HK is different, it has 7million people in a place the size of Langley, like you said. But that illustrates what's the "evolutionized" public transportation should look like. With that many riders a day that system cannot afford to have ANY fat. If Translink system is a fat chick the HK version needs to be a supermodel that does your laundary and cook you dinner, and then probably knows kung-fu. The idea is a doube decker bus that uses half the road space as a bendy bus riding 1.5 times the people, with freaking air conditioning, and a train system that charges by the station instead of by "zones" to attract short distance travellers is an absolute MUST. I find it ridiculous that if I hop on a bus on Granville St. in Richmond and ride to say Lansdowne it costs WAY more than if I drive (some 700m at most? But it's a bit of a distance if I have been shopping at Zellers, right?) Why is it charged by zones and not by distance!? The system is basically saying "don't ride me, drive yourself" whenever short distances travelling is to be done. Similarly you have to pay for the same price to go to 54th Avenue from Granville St. Richmond and to Hastings St. from Richmond it makes no freaking sense.

We have a really crap version here... The pricing per km is alright with the number of people I suppose but what boggles my mind is the speed and the retarded pricing system..... 16km/h is a lot slower than an average bicycle. $5.00 gets you pretty good food in Richmond....

i also forgot to add, we pay for time here. in tokyo you pay per distance. nobody here will pay for distance... until they start tolling the highways.

for example, i lived in koshigaya, not walkable to the subway station i had to take the bus. the bus to the station alone cost me 4$ each way, then another 10$ to get to shibuya. travel is cheap in vancouver, whether its by car or transit. you are also excluding the costs of maintenance and operation of a vehicle. insurance, gas, maintenance, cost of vehicle. driving isn't actually cheaper, but it appears cheaper when you don't include those things.

and the point about taking other roads and finding alternate routes to get places, well if you have a ton of time to waste then sure, but not everyone has hours upon hours to waste taking non direct routes. furthermore, their economy is in such dire shape its almost shocking.

[hk20000]

If I pay for time, but the vehicles in the system travel at retardedly slow speed, I get NO distance either!

Your case is not in the same considerations as the ones I posted, think about it, you aren't on any major train lines, and you are in Koshigaya. Your case would be like..... Living down by Whiterock and trying to get to Downtown. About the same distance but also about the same inconvenience to the rails.

It's not considered "equivalent" to my examples. So THAT'S an apple to orange comparison.

You can't compare Skytrain to regular in-tokyo trains either the Skytrain is setup to have stations really far apart it's silly to walk from one station to another on the Skytrain and it's not so silly inside Tokyo where most of the time you can walk around Yamanote line from one station to the next station fairly quickly. Skytrain stations are far enough that the Yamazaki line is more like it (except skytrain is slower LOL)

Also I don't know why you are even taking cars into account, the point here is to COMPETE. So the transit should COMPETE with private transportation, regardless of how expensive or cheap it is the competition is. There has to be MERITS in taking the transit vs the car to get people to ride it. Regardless how cheap and easy it is to own a car in their corresponding locations.

We don't toll our roads, but we don't do 5% sales taxes either. We PAID for the roads regardless if we use them or not. So it's not cheap, we just happened to have shared the cost among drivers and "others".

[ncrx]

if u want to bring taxes into account, taxes are nearly the same in japan, you get dinged by prefecture, by ward, by national.

also we are not charged 15$ an hour in downtown to park like tokyo, perhaps its something vancouver should consider.

and tolls were reduced on the highway to help stimulate the economy, 5 straight quarters of decline... japan is in so much trouble u wouldn't believe.

[Tapioca]

Originally Posted by hk20000

Also I don't know why you are even taking cars into account, the point here is to COMPETE. So the transit should COMPETE with private transportation, regardless of how expensive or cheap it is the competition is. There has to be MERITS in taking the transit vs the car to get people to ride it. Regardless how cheap and easy it is to own a car in their corresponding locations.

Transit can't compete with private transportation until the following things happen:

- More money is pumped into the system whether it's from the public or private sector, or a combination of the two (e.g. billions)
- The political will to build infrastruture (e.g. Sure the merchants on Cambie St. got screwed when they tore up the road for the Canada Line, but as the saying goes, you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs)
- Increased density
- Car ownership becomes expensive and/or inconvenient

But, frankly, even if transit were convenient, people would still opt to drive their cars. I'm as guilty as the average joe who likes to spew hydrocarbons into the atmosphere while bouncing his engine off the rev limiter a few times a week.

[Noir]

Where the hell is all the money? Haven't they been taking a general of 30% of everyone's annual pay?

[q0192837465]

Originally Posted by Noir

Where the hell is all the money? Haven't they been taking a general of 30% of everyone's annual pay?

The money is all in their frd's & their own pockets

[achiam]

Vancouver should have more trains like European large cities

[achiam]

I say legalize pot sales and production, tax the shit out of it, and build a Weed Line train around the GVRD - "BC'S POT DOLLARS AT WORK"