Valley Line LRT | TransEd/Marigold | City of Edmonton

TravellingChris said:
Edmonton is hardly alone. The ongoing disaster along Eglinton Avenue in Toronto is a case in point.

torontosun.com

GOLDSTEIN: Toronto’s white-elephant LRT a warning to cities across Canada

Toronto's disastrous public transit project known as the Eglinton Crosstown LRT stands as a warning to other cities across Canada.
torontosun.com torontosun.com

And Ottawa has had many of the same issues with its deeply flawed LRT.

Maybe Canadian municipal transportation departments just can't do mass transit anymore?
Click to expand...
Incompetent city staff - the whole system should be privatized.
 
The problem is they are P3s. Private companies always want to minimize financial risk. Public transit is inherently risky in Canada because of our car centric society. These lines may never open because the risk will always be too high for the private contractor to operate. We need the opposite: a leveled up province wide transit network like TransLink in BC.
 
Translink really is killing it. I’ve enjoyed their new podcast. Hearing them talk though makes me feel like ETS is even further behind. The way translink is doing development, communications, volunteers, safety, signage/wayfinding, bike integration, etc…. It’s a lot more wholistic of an approach than just “let’s operate trains and buses”. They are really a city building organization.

 
thommyjo said:
Translink really is killing it. I’ve enjoyed their new podcast. Hearing them talk though makes me feel like ETS is even further behind. The way translink is doing development, communications, volunteers, safety, signage/wayfinding, bike integration, etc…. It’s a lot more wholistic of an approach than just “let’s operate trains and buses”. They are really a city building organization.

Click to expand...
I wouldn't argue that TransLink is doing overly well. They simply look good because there are so many other major transit projects across the country that are completely off the rails. Ottawa's LRT is a tire fire, Eglinton Line 5 may never open, and the Valley Line Southeast has been a disaster of German airport proportions.

The problem is that TransLink is governed by a council of mayors from municipalities across the Lower Mainland. This actually prevents a holistic approach because mayors have to justify to their own electorate why X amount of money is being spent on a project in a completely different municipality or area of the region. Why should mayors and communities from, say, the North Shore support projects to extend SkyTrain to UBC or Port Coquitlam (two proposals on the radar at the moment) when their own communities are not served at all by SkyTrain? Indeed, you can argue that the North Shore is extremely poorly served by TransLink--with all the major investments in public transit over the past 30 years, the North Shore hasn't received a major new transportation project since the Ironworkers' Bridge in 1960.
 
trevorhayden said:
The problem is they are P3s. Private companies always want to minimize financial risk. Public transit is inherently risky in Canada because of our car centric society. These lines may never open because the risk will always be too high for the private contractor to operate. We need the opposite: a leveled up province wide transit network like TransLink in BC.
Click to expand...
Gee, I thought the problems were: concrete (in the river), then poorly poured concrete cracking and now apparently corroded cables. This line has zero passengers because it is still not operating 2 1/2 years behind schedule, so zero revenue, no benefit to the city and a lot of extra costs from having to redo a lots of things.

I would argue that financial risk is being maximized here, both by the incompetence of those building this project and inadequate oversight by the city, not minimized.
 
^^

translink has expanded seabus operations to the point where more than 4.25 million passengers a year use it.

their current 10 year plan also calls for a brt link over the second narrows bridge from metrotown to park royal.
 
If the line doesn't open by September, should the City go to court to force an end to the P3 contract and directly take over the line?
 
kcantor said:
^^

translink has expanded seabus operations to the point where more than 4.25 million passengers a year use it.

their current 10 year plan also calls for a brt link over the second narrows bridge from metrotown to park royal.
Click to expand...
What the North Shore really needs is the Purple Line. This would head east from Park Royal through North Van, cross to the South Shore, then link up with the Millennium Line at Brentwood Town Centre, then at a later stage head south to serve BCIT and link up with the Expo line at Metrotown. This would hit a lot of high-priority destinations and also provide a secondary transfer option between Millennium and Expo.
 
occidentalcapital said:
Reading between the lines the cables aren't actually holding up the opening date right now. City commissioning is the current delay. The last update said to me that opening is quite close, I'm going to guess September of this year.
Click to expand...
Are we sure it's actually going to be ready to handle revenue traffic? Or is it going to be like Ottawa and open to great fanfare, only to shut down regularly and for lengthy periods for emergency repairs to fix various deficiencies that abruptly rear their heads?
 
It's amusing to note that it was FIVE years ago this month that the city received its first LRV from Bombardier, and still not a single revenue passenger has been carried. Even more hilariously, worries were expressed at the time that production delays at Bombardier (which had affected multiple projects in Toronto) might pose a challenge to operation of the Valley Line.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top