Transit advocates say that light-rail streetcars such as the Bombardier demonstration line running between the Olympic Village and Granville Island, pictured here, could be a viable alternative to SkyTrain-style rapid transit along Broadway.
Credit: Doug Shanks
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NEWS: City mulls future of rapid-transit line on Broadway
While city officials say the proposed rapid-transit line from Commercial Drive to UBC would not bring about a repeat of the chaos along Cambie Street during building of the Canada Line, the exact timing, construction methods, and funding for the project are yet to be determined. A January 19 city council report by Jerry Dobrovolny, the City of Vancouver’s general manager of engineering services, and Ronda Howard, director of planning, notes that the Provincial Transit Plan calls for the UBC Line to be in operation by 2020, but the timing of the project is unknown. A shortlist of six rapid-transit options will be selected by spring 2010, followed by a detailed evaluation of the possibilities.
A rapid-transit solution for the congested Broadway corridor has been in the works since 1997, when city council approved the City Transportation Plan, which included a rapid-transit line along Broadway with possible extension to UBC. Broadway is now one of the largest transit destinations in Metro Vancouver, according to Dobrovolny and Howard’s report. Buses along Broadway carry more than 80,000 trips a day, with frequent passenger pass-ups and overcrowding, even with a bus arriving every 90 seconds.
Heated debate continues to swirl around the possibility of a SkyTrain-style transit system along Broadway, but some say a strong rapid-transit solution for the congested Broadway corridor is already here, with last week’s arrival of two Belgian streetcars running between the Olympic Village and Granville Island. The trains, on loan from Belgium’s Brussels Transport Company, run on 1.8 km tracks the City paid $8.5 million to upgrade. Trains will run every six to 10 minutes between 6:30 a.m. and 12:30 a.m. until March 22.
Members of the transit-advocacy group Business and Residents for Smart Transit Alternatives (BARSTA) have expressed their support of the Belgian streetcars as a strong solution for rapid transit on Broadway. “[BARSTA] is a coalition of businesses and residents who want to make sure that the community comes out of this ahead, so that businesses aren’t forced out the way they were on Cambie, and that residents aren’t forced out just because the neighbourhood changes so much,” says BARSTA co-founder Mel Lehan. He and his BARSTA colleagues consider a light-rail transit solution like the Olympic Village streetcars to be less expensive and more environmentally sustainable than a SkyTrain-style project.
“Of course they can do it better,” Lehan says of city planners in charge of rapid transit along Broadway. “Will they do it better? My experience with planners over the last 30 years is they always say the right thing, but that’s just part of their job. When it comes down to reality, they don’t often follow up.”
Part of BARSTA’s role, Lehan says, is to ensure that Broadway’s rapid transit comes with a strong public consultation process.
Public consultation will be key to avoiding a Canada Line situation while building Broadway’s rapid-transit line, says former TransLink CEO Tom Prendergast, who attended the Olympic Village streetcar opening last week. Prendergast left his post at TransLink in November 2009 to take a job as president of New York City’s public-transportation system. “What has been successful in other places is extensive outreach with the community, an examination of the different options, and then once the option is selected, you still need to go through the different ways of how you would construct it, and how you can minimize those impacts,” he says, adding that the Olympic Village streetcars should be explored as possible options for Broadway.
“In my career in transportation, light rail is a very viable option for an urban environment. It provides a different alternative than a heavy rail, like a SkyTrain. In many cases, it’s less impactful to a community, but it can provide the same utility. I think this demonstration project for 60 days is really going to give Vancouverites an opportunity to whet their appetite to how good streetcars will be.”
The NIMBYs on the west side are getting rather tiresome. Without more housing built in Vancouver, more people will be forced to live in the Valley and drive long distances to work. Even worse, there will be more pressure to develop farm land and green space for housing. We all need to do our part to protect the environment and that means being open to change, even if it does mean more people living in your neighbourhood.
When I went to UBC I was lucky to have a 1.5 hour commute from Surrey as a minimum. Half of my commute was from the last 13km from Broadway to UBC. A street car would not improve this, in fact if it made as many stops as the #9 bus would it would be closer to 2 hours. We should be improving travel times to get across the city. Street car type transportation on busy streets can also be built but we should have a good network of fast transportation built first.
If there was ever a corridor that would provide exponential time savings commuting via rapid transit, this corridor would be it. This 13-km stretch passes through so many densified regions that the corridor would greatly benefit in a segregated, ROW, high capacity transit system. Given current Expo line speeds, on average the 13km stretch would be covered in 15-16 mins. This is a minimum of 50% time travel savings along this corridor, which is most likely the most singular quality that the average transit rider will look for. Without a segregated high capacity line, you’re essentially trading the B-line, trolley for the same thing, which doesn’t seem to make sense if you’re trying to build a backbone to your transit system.
The light-rail Olympic Line, while fantastic, is running on an almost entirely segregated right-of-way which would not be possible on Broadway. There is no unused space on Broadway - so any surface rail solution will have to take space away from traffic, bicycles, other bus routes, and pedestrians walking on the already-too-narrow sidewalks.
BARSTA’s goal of “ensuring residents aren’t forced out because the neighborhood changes” sounds like thinly-veiled NIMBYism to me, and it is frustrating to see people in this city promoting ineffective transit solutions in order to ensure low-density neighborhoods in the city core while causing suburban sprawl as a result.
I support both: LRT projects such as the Olympic Line around False Creek, which is
*amazing* for local transportation and tourists, and true rapid transit on a grade-separated (preferably underground) right-of-way on Broadway. After all – that’s how they do it in Brussels.
I have to agree with everyone above.
The Broadway Corridor is an extremely busy and vital road in our transportation network. To add just a LRT to it would be quite foolhardy. Why build something that only competes with the car time-wise? Don’t we need something that will save time and get people out of their cars? Not only that, an LRT would slow down car and bus traffic by taking up at least two existing lanes of the Broadway Corridor leaving us with even more congestion above ground.
Yes, building a skytrain/subway is more expensive, and yes it will disrupt the urban fabric while it is under construction, but the benefits to the region in the long run (less congestion, faster travel times, more people out of their cars) far out way the temporary inconveniences it may cause while unde construction .
Mel Lehan is a great visionary man, working relentlessly and with altruism for the good of our community.
I heart fully agree with Mel Lehan and the Barsta. A streetcar is already way “rapid” enough for Broadway corridor, a slower one than the Olympic line gently mixing with traffic will allow better windows shopping, and frequent stop a great convenience for store, is a perfect solution for Broadway
I saw here people from the eastern Vancouver and suburbs eager to spread poverty and all sort of devil to our well preserved neighborhoods, and we will never be grateful enough for the stand out of the Great Mel Lehan against the crime train vision.
May God Bless Mel Lehan and the Barsta.
When I rode the olympic tram last week, it was SLOW as hell, and that’s on its own righ of way. Now, imagine the same thing on Broadway, mixed with congested traffic… there is no way Vancouver would allow that.
you skytrain dumbasses are stupid. skytrain is slow and it doesn’t do sh!t. lrt is fast and wont cause congestion along broadway.
broadway can go screw itself. go rail for the valley!!!
@Mary
Your elitist, prejudiced, creme de la creme attitude is inexcusable. Ironically, a streetcar, LRT, a bus or even a road is just as likely to bring crime. The police were all worried about this when the Golden Ears Bridge was opened. When lanes on the Second Narrows Bridge were closed for construction a few years ago, crime plummeted on the North Shore.
Why don’t you just surround your “well preserved neighborhoods” with gates, moats and security cameras (they should have some you could buy cheaply after the Olympics) to keep the “people from the eastern Vancouver and suburbs eager to spread poverty and all sort of devil” out.
A study on technology options such as streetcar vs LRT vs SkyTrain for the Broadway corridor project is currently being done by independent transportation consultants Steere Davies Gleave (who have no relationship with TransLink beyond previous work done for the Golden Ears Bridge project, and no stake whatsoever in one technology or another)
Mel Lehan and BARSTA are not transportation experts and frankly do not know the realities of different technology options. They can speak only for their own personal preferences.
We will, however, have the report out this year from independent experts who actually know what they are talking about. How about let’s wait until we actually know the realities of the different options before deciding which one is best?
BARSTA and other community input is important when it’s decision time - after knowing what options will give us what benefits at what cost - to help decide which is most important to our region. HOWEVER, we have not yet established what the costs and benefits re. a streetcar line will actually be. Sorry, but community members do not posess God-given a priori knowledge of construction prices and operational realities of various transit modes by simple virtue of living in the area. Thus, at this point, BARSTA really has absolutely nothing of value to contribute to this discussion…
So why do outlets such as the West Ender continue to devote disproportionate attention on these lobbyists?
Broadway is the second busiest corridor in the Greater Vancouver area. Why anything other than ROW rapid transit that integrates with the existing system—IE SKYTRAIN—would be considered is unbelievable and short-sighted. My issues in point are:
-Road accessed LRT is a glorified B Line. Commutes would be no different time-wise than currently; comfort level for commuters would be only marginally better when the novelty of the ‘cute factor’ wears off
-Gridlock on one of the busiest corridors in the city would only get worse as population levels increase
-No sense is densifying Broadway or surrounding areas if you go with LRT as such a system wouldn’t be able to tolerate the increase in population.
-BLine is currently at capacity; LRT would not change that significantly. Portland is now struggling with the LRT that it’s built.
-LRT is pennywise and pound foolish. Cheaper today but more expensive in the long run when we have to pull it all up and put a proper skytrain, rapid transit, dedicated ROW in its place.
-Capital costs for skytrain may be higher; over time it becomes cheaper than an LRT system that would require more labour (DRIVERS).
-An LRT glorified streetcar would not get drivers out of their cars. Rapid transit will—Canada Line has (I am someone that takes the Canada Line but drove previously).
-An underground skytrain would only impede street traffic DURING construction. After it’s been build, Broadway will become more manageable than it is currently as there wouldn’t be those annoying articulated buses going down them nonstop.
That’s my rant. As I said, anything other than an extension of the Millenium would be exrtremely short-sighted.
I believe the only solution for transit along Broadway to UBC is grade-seperated (underground) skytrain extension of the Millenium Line. I directly contract an above entry, and say that Sky train is faster than LRT, and MUCH faster than the Belgian streetcars, which are very good for local use in a high density core or neighbourhood, but not for a commute from Burnaby to UBC.
Skytrain cars have a maximumoperating speed of 90k/h and that’s fast.
The real reson, in my opinion, that people don’t want skytrain, is that it would dig into their lawns or disrup traffic during the construction process. People on the West Side may be statistically welthier than elsewhere in the city, but should not enjoy special, protective, “priviledge” when it comes to a metro-wide transportation policy.
Moreover, construction can be done via boring, leaving major construction disruption only around stations; and an underground line can run under 10th, with exits along Broadway - meaning stair-free access to at least one of the platforms due to the slope - plus the major construction is off of the main street and Broadway can run relatively unaffected even during construction. Disruption during construction a la Canada Line is more an issue of project management rather than technology choice.
Wow Mary, you sound like a very personable and gracious person:
“I saw here people from the eastern Vancouver and suburbs eager to spread poverty and all sort of devil to our well preserved neighborhoods, and we will never be grateful enough for the stand out of the Great Mel Lehan against the crime train vision. “
If you think I was spreading poverty from Surrey you are a very mislead person. UBC is a regional school. People commute from all over. I attended my Civil Engineering classes there, the only place I could in Western Canada. I stayed out of debt living with my parents and commuting, I would have been poorer if I lived on my own beside you and renting!
where are disappeared all the 14+ comments?
It looks westender doesn’t like too much the constructive contradictory view…
(http://voony.wordpress.com)
Having moved to Toronto from Vancouver about 20 months ago, I’m begging Vancouver NOT to go the ‘streetcar’ route. The streetcar system in Toronto is terrible - both for riders and the city in general. Riders have to step off the sidewalk and cross the street to the middle of the street where the streetcars run. I’ve almost been hit twice by a driver in their car that wasn’t watching. Also, because the streetcar runs in the middle of the road it actually slows the flow of traffic, where as a bus runs along the outside lane and can travel a little faster than it would in the middle of the traffic on a busy street. Same can be said about the traffic in general. If you want lots of headaches Vancouver, go with streetcars !