How not to do public transit

[Barrister]

Tristin Hopper: The $600 million Edmonton train that snarls traffic, slows down transit times and increases emissions

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Tristin Hopper | January 5, 2016 4:49 PM ET
More from Tristin Hopper | @TristinHopper

Canada needs public transit. We have clogged roads, densifying cities and — save for this weird Saudi Arabian orchestrated oil glut — rising fuel prices.

Bike lanes won't fix it and new highways won't fix it; the only way we can live in a Canada that isn't a squished, congested mess is if we spruce up the place with a whole bunch of trains, buses and subways.

Which is why, to ensure the prosperous and happy future of this great country, we must all now take a look at the City of Edmonton and solemnly vow to do the exact opposite of whatever the hell they just did with their new $665 million Metro Line LRT.

Edmonton's LRT project is the equivalent of a candy company releasing a new chocolate bar called Herpes Al-Qaeda
It's slower than a bus. It has slowed down the buses that existed. And it is almost certainly increasing Edmonton's net amount of carbon emissions. In short, it fails on every single possible justification for why cities should build light rail.

I am a fervent — almost fanatical — supporter of public transit. I've taken pleasure trips to foreign cities largely to soak up the sublime efficiency of an S-Bahn or a New York City A-train. But lately  I have trouble sleeping until I comfort myself with visions of the Metro Line LRT tracks being torn up, French résistance-style, so the tyrannical train can never, ever run again.

"We fully respect that it's different and taking longer," said Craig Walbaum, Edmonton's director of traffic engineering, shortly after the train's September launch.

But before designing a single new subway line or streetcar lane, be cognizant of one ironclad maxim; don't let idiots build your transit.
The chief problem is that the train was built at grade and cleaves through several major intersections. Traffic needs to be halted well in advance of its arrival, leading to the Kafkaesque nightmare of an intersection where all sides are given a red light for up to 90 seconds before a train arrives (if it does at all).

I've personally clocked a six-minute wait. A co-worker clocked an incredible 12 minutes. Online, disbelieving drivers have taken to Reddit to report waits of 15 minutes.

To put it in context, that's about half the time needed to cross the entire city by highway from one "Welcome to Edmonton" sign to the other.

During these frequent traffic stoppages, a huge swath of northern Edmonton becomes a gridlocked nightmare of idling cars, trucks and city buses.

I've counted as many as four buses filled with a cumulative 40 people forced to wait the entire length of Gordon Lightfoot's Canadian Railroad Trilogy (6:22) just so a train can pass by carrying fewer than half a dozen passengers.

The delays are so bad, in fact, that Edmonton has had to add six new buses to the schedule — at the cost of several extra bathtubs of diesel fuel per week.

But at least the train passengers are getting a speedy ride to downtown, right? Nope. Say I want to go from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology to pay a visit to my local Postmedia property, the Edmonton Journal.

Just after 5 p.m., I board the LRT at an on-campus station and arrive 17 minutes later at a stop almost within sight of the Journal. If I take the good old-fashioned number nine bus instead, I make the trip in 14 minutes — a savings of 20 per cent.

And did I mention that the Metro Line is right next to a major hospital? Ambulances can't drive through railway barriers, even if they're in a hurry. Thus, any Edmontonian unlucky enough to have a heart attack in one of the northwestern quadrants of the city must wait as paramedics wend a circuitous route through downtown.

Taken together, the whole project is the equivalent of a candy company releasing a new chocolate bar called Herpes Al-Qaeda. I struggle to understand how such an obviously horrific idea was able to pass so many levels of approval and be unleashed on an innocent and unsuspecting citizenry. And I've lived in Toronto.

Part of the problem is that a Thales Canada-designed signalling system continues to malfunction, limiting trains to a top speed of 25 km/h (I cycle during the winter, and can outpedal the things).

But more amazingly, Edmonton officials knew full well this traffic apocalypse was coming. In fact, they thought it would be worse.

According to city estimates released just before the first trains started rolling in September, vehicles were expected to be waiting 16 minutes every time the train passed. During peak hours, cars would have to wait up to four light cycles — a level of congestion virtually unknown in the relatively traffic-free Alberta capital.

Oh, and the new system breaks down all the time (11 times in November), leaving intersections clogged interminably until somebody figures out what's wrong.

"Anyone dead?" Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson asked a December council meeting during a discussion of the ongoing Metro Line crisis.

When the answer came back negative, he responded, "okay, so this thing is not a total disaster."

Well sure, but let's conservatively estimate that 40 vehicles are forced to wait six minutes every time the train goes by. If each of those cars only has one passenger, that's four hours of wasted human life with every passage of the Metro Line LRT.

At 70 trips daily, that's 280 hours of life a day. So every year, under optimum conditions the Metro Line LRT extinguishes enough human existence to equal the total waking life of a 15-year-old.

And that's not even accounting for the spiritual cost of idling at an intersection with no green lights, staring at a track with no train and wondering at the cruel deity who forsook you.

By all accounts, Canada stands on the cusp of a transit infrastructure boom akin to the highway-building boom of the 1950s.

We have a Liberal government that has pledged to build $6 billion of public transit over the next four years, and $20 billion by 2025. We are seeing the imposition of carbon taxes and climate change legislation that make the economics of public transit more feasible than ever. And we are seeing a generation of new transit-riding workers who are happy to  shun driver's licenses altogether.

But before designing a single new subway line or streetcar lane, be cognizant of one ironclad maxim; don't let idiots build your transit.

Recently, a referendum to fund critical Metro Vancouver transportation infrastructure with a sales tax levy was roundly rejected. The "no" vote succeeded largely on the strength of a campaign led by the Canadian Taxpayer's Federation to convince Metro Vancouverites that TransLink, the regional transit authority, was full of untrustworthy spendthrifts.

I suspect the people of Edmonton would be similarly sympathetic to such a claim. They live in a city, after all, that openly agreed to keep them away from their family for an extra 32 minutes each day as penance for running a near-empty 25 km/h train to downtown.

It's why I urge you, policymakers of Canada; come to Edmonton. Examine its failure. Immerse yourself in its incompetence. Gawk at its ineptitude.

Because if this happens again, good luck trying to convince decent, right-thinking people that a light-rail project will bring them anything except misery and pain.

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http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/tristin-hopper-the-600-million-edmonton-train-that-snarls-traffic-slows-down-transit-times-and-increases-emissions

[mongers]

Sounds like Al-Qaeda have taken up a new attack vector*





* And no I don't know or care what that means, it just kinda sounded securityish**.




** New word, first use on the whole wide web, here at dear old languish. :proud:

[Liep]

securityish**.

** New word, first use on the whole wide web, here at dear old languish. :proud:

That certainly isn't true, but I do believe that sentence to be unique.

[garbon]

He took a pleasure trip to see the A-train?

[Barrister]

He took a pleasure trip to see the A-train?

I hope he was exagerrating, but as a tourist to New York one of the "experiences" I had to do was ride the subway.

[Admiral Yi]

#1 tourist attraction in DC is the Metro.

[Liep]

He took a pleasure trip to see the A-train?

There are plenty of train nerds about, surely the A-train has something to offer. Especially if you're from a city that has such incompetent metro offerings.

[garbon]

He took a pleasure trip to see the A-train?

I hope he was exagerrating, but as a tourist to New York one of the "experiences" I had to do was ride the subway.

Well sure, the subway system is great - but the A-train is not the line to be extolling. I just looked at it was ranked 16 out of 19 lines last year by the Straphangers group.

edit: or rather tied for 16th out of the 20 lines.

[Barrister]

He took a pleasure trip to see the A-train?

I hope he was exagerrating, but as a tourist to New York one of the "experiences" I had to do was ride the subway.

Well sure, the subway system is great - but the A-train is not the line to be extolling.

Tell it to Duke Ellington.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

#1 tourist attraction in DC is the Metro.

Not for long, at the rate it's deteriorating.

[garbon]

He took a pleasure trip to see the A-train?

I hope he was exagerrating, but as a tourist to New York one of the "experiences" I had to do was ride the subway.

Well sure, the subway system is great - but the A-train is not the line to be extolling.

Tell it to Duke Ellington.

I'm not sure why I'd want a speedy trip to Harlem. Also, I'm sure things have changed since last century.

[Josquius]

Sounds worse than Edinburgh trams.
Which is an achievement. 

[DGuller]

He took a pleasure trip to see the A-train?

I hope he was exagerrating, but as a tourist to New York one of the "experiences" I had to do was ride the subway.

Well sure, the subway system is great - but the A-train is not the line to be extolling. I just looked at it was ranked 16 out of 19 lines last year by the Straphangers group.

edit: or rather tied for 16th out of the 20 lines.

I'd take the Q line from end to end.

[celedhring]

He took a pleasure trip to see the A-train?

I hope he was exagerrating, but as a tourist to New York one of the "experiences" I had to do was ride the subway.

Well sure, the subway system is great - but the A-train is not the line to be extolling.

Tell it to Duke Ellington.

I'm not sure why I'd want a speedy trip to Harlem. Also, I'm sure things have changed since last century.

Well, when I lived up there I wanted a speedy trip *out* of Harlem 

[jimmy olsen]

Daejeon is building a public tram line to compliment the subway line, I'm sure it will have many similar effects. Edmonton is leading the way!