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Say, someone gave you 5 billion dollars to spend on transit improvements in vancouver. how would you spend it?

i would probably bulid some surface LRT lines criss-crossing the city and connecting langley to downtown, surrey to maple ridge, richmond to delta, delta to surrey, burnaby and the north shore. Tunnel underneath burrard inlet to lonsdale and up with a subay, put a subway under hastings street... hope that i don't have cost overruns.

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Since we will build the Broadway M-Line extension in the future as well as the Arbutus streetcar line..........

1) Commuter Rail Line: Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey, Cloverdale, Langley, Aldergrove and Abbotsford

- expand current West Coast Express (WCE) system, double the tracks

- electrify the existing WCE line (overhead power lines)

- add a North Burnaby WCE station, and more stations out east

- build second WCE line to Abbotsford starting from Waterfront Station to the False Creek Flats and with a station at Broadway/Commercial to allow SkyTrain transfers, a station in Burnaby, a station at Sapperton, then it travels to Southeast Surrey (new bridge) with a station at Scott Road. Later, it goes east with another station at Cloverdale and continues on to Langley, with a stop at Willowbrook Mall. Now, instead of following the line north via Glover Road, now, build a new line, and diverge, so that it can connect to Fraser Hwy (I guess this short very part can be underground). This new railway line should travel along Fraser Hwy with a station at Aldergrove and finally to Abbotsford.

- stations in the suburbs will be serviced by frequent feeder bus service

- all lines to have double tracks, overhead electrified wires powered by wind mills in Abbotsford

- replace existing double-decker WCE trains with 12 six-car Bombardier Talent EMU trains (300 seats each, 600 overall capacity including standing room), trains include washrooms, a cafe (serving food), and wireless internet connections.

- frequency: 7-days a week: 30 minutes peak hours, 60 mins at non-peak hours, 60 mins during weekends

- COST: $1 billion

2) New Buses

- 2,000 new hybrid and hydrogen buses for the suburbs

- new bus stops with vandal-resistant shelters in each

- COST: $1 billion

3) North Shore-Hastings SkyTrain Line

- starts from Lougheed Station, goes underground to SFU with a station at SFU, goes along elevated on Hastings with two stations at North Burnaby (Willingdon and Sperling), arrives at Vancouver with a station at Boundary Road and a station at Renfrew Street-PNE, a station at Nanaimo Street, a station at Commercial Street, it submerges underground with a underground station at Clark Street, a station at Heatley, a station at Main Street, a station at Woodwards (Abbott Street), a station at Waterfront, it later goes under Burrard Inlet toward the North Shore and reaches North Vancouver with a station at Lonsdale (still underground) and it diverges into two lines just like the Canada Line at Bridgeport. After diverging, the two lines will rise and travel elevated. The line will go eastbound more towards North Vancouver with two more stations (terminus) and on the other side, going westbound, it'll head towards West Vancouver City Centre (terminus) and three or four stations in between.

- peak frequency of 90 secs in Vancouver/Burnaby/Coquitlam and peak frequency of 3 minutes in the North Shore

- COST: $3 billion

TOTAL: $5 billion

Other things I would like:

- Large expansion of Expo SkyTrain in Surrey (8 more stations; $1 billion)

- Marine Drive SkyTrain/LRT Line (from the New Westminster SkyTrain Station to the Canada Line Marine Drive Station; 11 stations; $1.4-1.5 billion if SkyTrain or $1 billion LRT)

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Rapid Transit is important but however, highways are important as well.

Rapid Transit Improvements (All of Mr. X's Improvements) and BC Highway Imrovements:

With the Gateway Project (Twinning the Port Mann Bridge, etc.) and the Golden Ears Bridge, Broadway Extension M-Line, Vancouver Downtown Street Car, TransLink or the BC Governmentshould do the following:

1) Add a new Main Street Bridge (4 lanes) from Main Street, Vancouver to Shell Road Richmond with ramps to Mitchel Island to Shell Road (from Fraser River to Bridgeport, the road would be a freeway). Project should be done by Translink (so I'm guessing 3/4 of a million [can't estimate this stuff though)]

2) Add a visible freeway/highway from McGill Street, then on top of the rail road tracks beside McGill Street, going underground before reaching Port Side Park through downtown (with exits to downtown), and merdging with Highway 99 after reaching the Stanley Park Exit, then expanding the highway to TransCanada Highway through Klahine Park on North Vancouver. Project should be done by the BC Government (I have no idea how much this is going to be but probably expensive). This would have a good flow of traffic to downtown.

3) Provide Counterflow Lanes/Express Lanes and/or adding additional lanes as well as putting HOV Lanes for all major sections of highways in Greater Vancouver (including Abbotsford), done by BC Government.

Even though I really like the idea of a SkyTrain to North Vancouver, I think it would be hard because we would be running into some of the First Nations Land (if I recall correctly). That project would be done really later in the year.

Since being an architect is a dream job for me still (I'm a secondary student by the way), I hope I could design one the SkyTrain stations on the NorthVancouver - SFU line. =D

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Wow, ur in secondary school? Same.

I'm gonna have to disagree with all of your road improvements. Unlike the Golden Ears Bridge - which is part of the Livable Region Strategic Plan, the Gateway Project is not part of the Strategic Plan. What is surprising to me, and disturbing, is that a broad range of urban design experts, local municipal leaders, engineers and transportation planners say that Falcon settled on his $3-billion solution long before he bothered to ask them if it was the right thing to do. This is remarkable, considering that the Lower Mainland is home to some of the continent’s most respected thinkers in urban design and transportation. What surprises me even more is that commercial use, truckers, will be tolled substantially high to use the Port Mann Bridge when we should be instead tolling SOV drivers high and second to those rates, the HOV drivers.

The LRSP acknowledged what countless studies have shown: that highway expansion never ever extinguishes congestion. What new lanes do, if they are not restricted to commercial traffic, is encourage low-density sprawl tens of kilometres away from jobs, groceries and rapid transit. Such sprawl is the most expensive and inefficient way to organize human settlement. For example look at Detroit, Houston, and Los Angeles.

folks living south of the Fraser River simply never got the decent transit they were promised years ago. The region has just two-thirds the bus fleet that GVRD plans called for back in 1994, and not a single bus on the Port Mann. Solution: more buses, more rapid transit, more SkyTrain cars and rapid-bus routes with transit priority, including a link from Central Surrey, over the Port Mann, to Coquitlam. Lack of transit is why so many are using the Port Mann and it's sister Fraser River bridges each day. If we provide people with an alternative - transit - they will take that alternative. It's also easier, and much cheaper, to provide this alternative if we centralize new residential and commercial development by building them at the dense town centres. And many municipalities have failed in doing this, especially Surrey.

If you build it, they will come. As long as there are free road lanes to fill, cars will pour into them and trucks will continue to be swamped. The solution to this is road tolling: if you charge drivers for using freeways, particularly at peak hours, they’ll think twice about hitting the on-ramp. Tolling revenues could then be pumped into transit improvements, giving residents a chance to choose how to get around.

You may say we need more roads because of our ports, especially growing Chinese trade. I agree and that's why we absolutely need the South Fraser Perimeter Road, which will directly serve the Delta port. But the fact is that Gateway is only going to add 1 or 2 percent capacity; which is obviously nothing. It's an insignificant contribution. Moving freight by rail is one-tenth of the cost of moving it by truck and it significantly costs less to build more railways than to build more road. Another thing is that we need a centralized port: not a displaced port system across the region. Once we have a unified port, or at least ports more centralized, we can build infrastructure to serve it......like moving several port facilities in North Vancouver and Vancouver to a new superport in Tsawassen. Anyway, we need to divert some federal and provincial Gateway cash into new rail bridges and rail lines to relieve rail congestion and make moving freight by rail a more attractive option.

Also, Vancouver can't handle the explosion in Chinese growth alone. The port expansion plans alone will be no match against China's growth and they're building 100 port berths in the next five years. We need Prince Rupert's help. Though the new Prince Rupert terminal will be able to handle 500,000 TEU's - one third of Vancouver's throughput - we should be building 3,000,000 TEU's instead and expanding Vancouver's port capacity to 6,000,000 TEU's. We are lacking vision and we are underestimating China's future output.

Unfortunately, Transportation Minister Kevein Falcon is swearing that nothing can change his mind about Gateway. Not one thing about the plan can be changed. He decided on everything two years ago......and of course, he's the father of Gateway. It's his pet project.

Therefore:

1) A new bridge over the Fraser River is a big NO. Instead, introduce new and improved bus service south of the Fraser and toll the Arthur Lang, Oak Street, and Knight Street bridges to make drivers think twice and take transit instead......why else would we build the Canada Line.

2) A highway into downtown will only flood our city centre with cars and it would deter people from taking transit, e.g. SkyTrain, and instead take their cars out of their garages. Not to mention that NIMBY's would never let it happen and thank god for them (only in this case, NIMBYs are awesome!). Vancouver is so livable only because we said no to building highways....and like I've said, we don't need highways...we need more transit.

3) No highway expansion whatsoever. Instead, we should have several tolling places (charging drivers by the distance they drive from Abbotsford) and instead we should focus and simply expand and improve the West Coast Express to Abbotsford.

A rapid transit rail line, accompanied by frequent bus feeder service to the rapid transit line's stations, would solve ALL of the North Shore crossing problems. Like I've said before, if we provide an alternative to the car people will take that. We will not have to expand Lions Gate Bridge or Second Narrows and in fact congestion on these crossings would probably level out.

It wouldn't go through First Nations land and if it did, it wouldn't matter anyway even if they do oppose to it. Confronting the First Nations would also be much easier than confronting NIMBY's on regards to highway expansion.

Sadly, Translink is on the verge of being asorbed by the Ministry of Transportation. Its Board of Directors would be dismissed and instead the GVTA would be operated in the same way as YVR, like a big company. Irony...........Translink was created to give Lower Mainlanders local control of their transportation future.

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wow.... X. you have changed. more like a Y now. but ya, have i not been saying this for 4 years now? good that you clued in. one more mind on the right track. 10% increase in lanes, 9% increase in traffic in five years. time and time again. it happened in nanaimo with the parkway, sure it cut travel times... to the mall. then around it, more congestion.

so lets see... 5 to ten lanes. and 100 percent increase in lanes? i guess we can expect 90% more traffic in five years. wow... that is a lot. now if surrey actually grew by 90% in five years... then there could be more transit. not more cars.

hastings, i think it should be a subway all the way to the foot of burnaby mountain. more expensive but whatever. did i mention an atgrade LRT from 29th AV station along 33rd to Cambie then king edward to its end then through the pacific spirit park to thunderbird stadium and UBC? ya, i like that one.

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hastings, i think it should be a subway all the way to the foot of burnaby mountain. more expensive but whatever. did i mention an atgrade LRT from 29th AV station along 33rd to Cambie then king edward to its end then through the pacific spirit park to thunderbird stadium and UBC? ya, i like that one.

I think we should have it elevated, where possible, since it's significantly cheaper. Just take a look at the Canada Line....we could've saved hundreds and hundreds of millions south of Queen Elizabeth Park if we had it elevated and in return we could have longer station platforms (as suppose to the 40-50 metre platforms currently in the plans and i'm not even sure if we can expand the platforms beyond the 50 metres).

There's not enough ridership on King Edward and along 33rd for a rapid transit rail line. The 41st Avenue corridor from Joyce Station to UBC would be a much more ideal and realistic candidate, and next year this will be serviced by the new 91 B-Line rapid bus (or maybe it's the 95, can't recall).

.....and of course, another B-Line next year on Hastings from Waterfront Station to SFU.

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there is NO ridership on 33rd right now, since there isn't even a bus. but hey, if you build it, they will come. i think it would just be nice, and have it intersect the arbutus LRT at the arbutus mall (i think that is what it is called). and offering an alternative route to UBC

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I think we should have it elevated, where possible, since it's significantly cheaper. Just take a look at the Canada Line....we could've saved hundreds and hundreds of millions south of Queen Elizabeth Park if we had it elevated and in return we could have longer station platforms (as suppose to the 40-50 metre platforms currently in the plans and i'm not even sure if we can expand the platforms beyond the 50 metres).

There's not enough ridership on King Edward and along 33rd for a rapid transit rail line. The 41st Avenue corridor from Joyce Station to UBC would be a much more ideal and realistic candidate, and next year this will be serviced by the new 91 B-Line rapid bus (or maybe it's the 95, can't recall).

.....and of course, another B-Line next year on Hastings from Waterfront Station to SFU.

Speaking of 41st. Avenue, I have heard over the years that this street was, and still is, in informal proposal stages for a rail transit service of some kind for some time. It is one street that is the most familiar to me, when I was in Vancouver because of its place in conjunction with Joyce Station (Skytrain), access to Nanaimo Street (as a "residential street before it becomes a major artery), and its direction west to UBC.

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After reading more information on this fourm, I'm beginning to take back on some of the highway expansion projects, though I still prefer the major routes to be expanded.

I have to say if we even have the 5 billion dollars, some of it must go into installing turnstiles and improving transportation along Broadway/Commercial St. Stations.

Speaking of 41st. Avenue, I have heard over the years that this street was, and still is, in informal proposal stages for a rail transit service of some kind for some time. It is one street that is the most familiar to me, when I was in Vancouver because of its place in conjunction with Joyce Station (Skytrain), access to Nanaimo Street (as a "residential street before it becomes a major artery), and its direction west to UBC.

I forgot, question. When the Vancouver Streetcar Projects starts/completes, it would be owned by the City of Vancouver, and what will the transfers be like? Can I still continue to use the same TransLink transfer on the StreetCar? (If we can, that would be excellent, if not, I prefer the Translink to own the Vancouver StreetCar?

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I forgot, question. When the Vancouver Streetcar Projects starts/completes, it would be owned by the City of Vancouver, and what will the transfers be like? Can I still continue to use the same TransLink transfer on the StreetCar? (If we can, that would be excellent, if not, I prefer the Translink to own the Vancouver StreetCar?

The streetcar project will happen but currently, they are just finishing the studies. Phase I-A from Granville Island to Science World along South False Creek will likely be completed by 2010 with two modern streetcars with peak frequencies of 8 minutes, at a cost of $15-18 million. You can transfer from Main Street SkyTrain Station and the Olympic Village Canada Line station. You can use the same transfer; it's the same ticketing system. It will be owned by the City of Vancouver.

DTStreetcarMap.jpg

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B.C. to make 'significant' transit investments

VANCOUVER SUN

June 03, 2006

KELOWNA I Premier Gordon Campbell promised more money for transit on Friday at the launch of the first pontoon for a new bridge over Okanagan Lake in Kelowna.

Campbell said there will be "significant" investments in transit across B.C., but didn't say when the money might come or how much it will be.

As for the new William Bennett Bridge, Campbell said the span will be important to both the region and the province when it opens in 2008 because Kelowna is the fastest-growing area in B.C.

Former premier Bill Bennett said witnessing the launch of the pontoon is part of a dream.

Campbell, asked about calls for a second span to provide an alternative route to the Bennett Bridge, said the federal government would have to be involved in any such discussions.

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  • 1 month later...

hmm, i know that this thread is a little old but i could't resist. Any how heres what i would do:

1 i would extend the evergreen line south east to port coquitlam and further on to Maple ridge in that area, and futher north to douglas college and possibly north east from there(though i don't know population densities in that area)

2 Freaking extend the mellenium line to Arbutus steet now, also add a bunch of extra skytrain cars to the fleet Cost around 1 billion , this would add a perfect connection to the Canada line at cambie too

3 On arbutus street put a tram/lrt and meet it up with the extended mellenium line at broadway and arbutus

4 build the downtown streetcar line and connect it to the arbutus tram/lrt

5 with the left over money add a bunch of busses to the whole gvrd

I know that this plan seems simplistic and stuff but all of these things i listed are only listed as "planed, so i figure i needs to be don sooner rather than later.

Cool, this thread i neat, hopefully a couple more people will post there ideas

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2 Freaking extend the mellenium line to Arbutus steet now, also add a bunch of extra skytrain cars to the fleet Cost around 1 billion , this would add a perfect connection to the Canada line at cambie too

I'm quite sure extending the M-SkyTrain Line to Arbutus would alone cost much more than $1 billion, I would actually say $1.3-1.4 billion, not including the Mark II cars which each cost nearly $4 million.

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Well, the Evergreen Line would probably not happen (read the Evergreen Line Forums), 'North Fraser'. And the Downtown StreetCar would eventually be extend on Arbutus Street (read the Vancouver Website, or below for more information).

DTStreetcarMap.jpg

As you can see where the line terminates south of False Creek, you can see an arrow moving closer to Burrard St. Bridge and an arrow moving South West, the arrow moving South West is the rail line that is deserted, and eventually meets up with Arbutus Street. The rail line also reaches the many residential communities.

One thing I have to say is that when they do have the Downtown StreetCar, they should build a second rail so that there would be train frequency. Currently, there is only one car that can run the Downtown Historic Railway because there is only one rail.

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well, the forum is about what i would do with 5 bilion dollars, not what probably would or would not happen to the evergreen line, also mr x you are probly right aout the mellenium line cosing around 1.5 billion with the extra cars and stuff

oh and could anyone provide a link to the evergreen line forum(if there is one)

cool thanks

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