Rail For The Valley

This one's for the mainland folks, and, really, it's also for anyone who gives a shit about NOT trying to solve long-term problems with short-term solutions.

If you live anywhere east of Surrey, I should hope you're at least vaguely familiar with the Rail For The Valley movement. If you're not, first: booooo; second: RFTV is a campaign to get the old Valley Light Rail passenger service back on its feet. It was started in 1910 as a passenger line connecting Vancouver with the upper valley (Abbotsford, Yarrow, Chilliwack) but as people (and developers) started shifting to private vehicles, it lost steam and eventually shut down in 1950.

However, since the Metro Vancouver region has seen nothing but colossal population growth in the last several decades, sprawl and the transportation to serve it has become a big issue, especially in light of the whole the-world-is-going-to-be-completely-fucked-up-and-us-along-with-it-unless-we-seriously-change thing. The RFTV is, in my opinion, quite possibly the easiest best thing we can do about this. What would happen is that there would be a commuter rail line running from Scott Road station in Surrey to CHILLIWACK, passing through every one of the main communities along the way (ultimately it would connect all the way from Vancouver, but the first phase is from Scott). This is easy and bloody awesome because, simply put, the infrastructure's already more or less there. The rail line is still there, it's just used only for freight trains right now; the lines would need to get some upgrading and refitting and terminals and stations would need to be built, but the point is that the main "meat" of the project is already in place.



The RFTV organisation released a full 84-page report on the feasibility and costs of the proposed project (done by an independent rail committee from London that also worked on the Chunnel project). The skinny is basically what I already said about infrastructure placement, but the best part is this:

The "whole shebang" deal, which would include a full line from VANCOUVER all the to Chilliwack, running electric-powered trains at a minimum of every half hour, ever day of the week, would cost under $1 billion dollars.

For some perspective as to why that's "cheap", here's a quote straight from the RFTV news post:

"For a better perspective, the 11 km. SkyTrain Evergreen Line extension will cost over $1.4 billion and service far fewer potential transit customers.

[....]

For the same cost as the Evergreen SkyTrain Line, a full build (Full Meal Deal) Valley TramTrain, Vancouver/Richmond to Rosedale could be built and with the remaining $400 million, a Vancouver/Richmond to Maple Ridge TramTrain operation could also be funded."

When I read this report last night, I actually started to get butterflies. I don't go home to visit my family much because I simply can't stand going. I absolutely hate cars, but it's impossible to get there without spending almost three hours surrouned by or in one; inversely, I don't really like it when my family comes to visit ME because they can't/won't do it without a car, which costs them over a hundred extra dollars each time. Furthermore, I can't stand how the valley is developing: there are just more and more people coming and all the government/translink is doing about it is just throwing money at it and expanding the highways and bridges for ludicrous amounts of money when the roads and bridges only going to be inadequate again in ten or so years. The solution to traffic congestion is not expanding roads - that only provides more space for more cars to jam up again. The solution is giving people viable, convenient, and cheap ways to get around WITHOUT cars. Putting in a rail line that goes the entire way down the valley will eliminate so many people's need for cars; since the project will cost such a relatively small amount, fares would likely be equally low, and with a travel time that's comparable or better, accounting for traffic jams, than driving (Chilliwack to Vancouver would be under two hours), I think a lot of people would stop driving as much. It certainly wouldn't alleviate small-regional congestion by itself, but the linking of communities would provide the main basis for more comprehensive transit, and then all that needs to be done is expanding and coordinating local area transit branching out from the rail stations.

If this were put in, I could get off the Tswwassen ferry, take two busses (or maybe they'd update a new route) to the train station at Scott Rd, and then get off the train a mere ten-minute walk from my family's home in Chilliwack; it'd take around two hours probably. No two-hour three-exchange bus ride followed by a forty-minute car ride.

If I were still in Fort Langley, it would take maybe fifteen minutes to bike to the station near the 72nd St station (near the highway) and I'd be in Vancouver in maybe an hour. No twenty-minute bus to Langley Centre, thirty-minute to Surrey Central, then forty-minute Skytrain.

I could go on and on. Suffice to say, I am so passionate about this possibly going through. The thought of this happening fills me with so much hope for the Mainland. I love the vastness and beauty of the continent, but it's just so fucking impossible to get around without a car, and guess what - not everyone can afford to shell out around eight grand a year for an ugly, noisy, smelly metal cage that's a huge danger to yourself and everyone around it.

Here are some links for the project. Please at least look at them, and you feel as strongly as I do, send emails or letters to the government (premier, transport minister) and the idiots at Translink who just want to throw money at Vancouver and make the rest of the Valley pay for it, even though they can't use it.

RFTV's new release on the report.

Media responses to the report.

RFTV website.



I do miss my Home. I just can't stand being there.

California HSR

YESYESYESYES.

I don't know how I missed this, but holy fuck I'm excited.

For those who don't know, HSR stands for high-speed rail. It's what it sounds like: it's your standard passenger train, except it's sleek and sexy as hell and goes anywhere in the range of 200-300 km/h. For some scale reference, if there was a HSR line along the Cascadia corridor you'd be able to get from Vancouver to Portland in a little over two hours - in the California model they're projecting San Fran to LA in about two and a half.

In truth, I don't know why this hasn't caught on in North America. I think anyone who's travelled by train can agree that it's exponentially more enjoyable than flying, and infinitely more enjoyable than driving. You can read, sleep, eat, work, talk with friends, or just stare wistfully out the window while you're riding a train. Hell, even the slow, standard passenger train ride from Victoria to Parksville (over three hours, probably about twenty minutes if it was HSR) is infinitely nicer than driving.

HSR's got it's downsides too, obviously. The amount of construction that it's going to take to put in all the rails and stations is going to be enormous, and rail construction, although admittedly much less messy than road buildings, is still pretty heavy business. Once everything's built, too, then you've got to power the trains. Electricity is better than oil or jet fuel, but you've still got to produce it somehow and that's where you can get problems on the Green front (although California could probably make a killing off solar and wind investments [like everywhere else, fuck]).

Above issues aside, HSR is long overdue and really, REALLY needed on this continent, and I really hope that this project doesn't fizzle out through beaurocratic processes. I'll be surprised if the system is running before 2020, but still, uuuuuuuuuuuurgh I'm really pleased that this looks like it's legitimately going.

I'm Interested to See Where This Goes

"President Obama, looking to stimulate a sluggish economy and create jobs, called Monday for Congress to approve major upgrades to the nation’s roads, rail lines and runways — part of a six-year plan that would cost tens of billions of dollars and create a government-run bank to finance innovative transportation projects....

....Specifically, the president wants to rebuild 150,000 miles of road, lay and maintain 4,000 miles of rail track, restore 150 miles of runways and advance a next-generation air-traffic control system.

The White House did not offer a price tag for the full measure or say how many jobs it would create. If Congress simply reauthorized the expired transportation bill and accounted for inflation, the new measure would cost about $350 billion over the next six years. But Mr. Obama wants to “frontload” the new bill with an additional $50 billion in initial investment to generate jobs, and vowed it would be “fully paid for.” The White House is proposing to offset the $50 billion by eliminating tax breaks and subsidies for the oil and gas industry.

Yes please. Here's the original news story, and here's the post from Treehugger that pointed me in the direction. (When I saw the heading from TH, I actually had a legitimate stop-and-stare-slackjawed moment)

Thoughts? I'm thrilled about the rail upgrades, albeit a little choked about how small the amount of rail upgrades is compared to the roads (4,000 to 150,000) but it's a great start considering the crippling damage that's been done to the continent's rail networks over the last sixty or seventy years.

I'm also pretty damn happy with how Obama's going all-out with general reforms and ideas. Everyone complains about the world and the system and then they complain when he shows us huge ideas that at least have the potential to change it. He told us he would bring change, we voted for him (well, not "we" - wrong country - but you know what I mean), and now that he is, y'know, doing what he said he would, we're all outraged? What the fuck?