Vancouver’s automated rapid-transit system has captured residents’ imaginations enough that many believe anything less would be a substandard solution.
Many who attended TransLink public hearings in April on proposed options to reduce congestion along the Broadway corridor told Jeff Busby, TransLink’s manager of infrastructure planning, they were concerned that light rail and other options that ran along the street would reduce parking.
The Lower Mainland’s 68.7-kilometre metro is one of the world’s longest automated people-moving networks. Other similar-sized cities around the world, however, have no similar infatuation with SkyTrain technology.
The core of the transit system for the 2.2 million people in Portland, Oregon, is at-grade light rail.
Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts is so enamoured by Portland’s transit system that she mentioned it in an April speech as a shining example of a more efficient use of taxpayer dollars than SkyTrain. She made light rail the centrepiece of her 2008 election campaign, arguing that spending $1 billion on a six-kilometre SkyTrain was an inefficient use of taxpayers’ money when that same amount could pay for a network of light-rail lines connecting several communities south of the Fraser River.
If TransLink proceeds with a network of light rail into the Fraser Valley, Metro Vancouver will be following in the footsteps of Copenhagen, Denmark.
That 1.9-million-resident city completed a 21-kilometre driverless metro system in 2002. Residents learned June 29 that they will next get a 28-kilometre light-rail transit system that will link suburban municipalities with the city centre.
The cost is estimated at $745 million, with the Danish government chipping in $298 million. The rest will be paid by the Capital Region of Denmark, which includes Copenhagen and 11 suburban municipalities that have agreed to the project.Despite its popularity in Vancouver, Bombardier Inc.’s proprietary SkyTrain system in Vancouver has failed to achieve much traction elsewhere in the world, even though many other driverless metro systems are in existence.
Vancouver built its Expo SkyTrain Line in 1985, which was around the time Scarborough, Ontario, completed a shorter line using the SkyTrain technology.
Detroit, Michigan, completed its SkyTrain line using Bombardier cars in 1987, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, followed suit in 1998.
Since Vancouver completed its Millennium Line in 2002, however, no other major city has built a transit line using Bombardier’s SkyTrain technology, according to transportation blogger Malcolm Johnston.
TransLink spokesman Ken Hardie confirmed that Hyundai built the cars for Vancouver’s Canada Line.
Other SkyTrain systems are either in airports (John F. Kennedy International Airport; Beijing Capital International Airport) or amusement parks (Everland in South Korea).