One of the reasons to build a Regional Transit Nework is to solve transportation problems. The more important reason is to fix the ‘other’ problem—to access cheap land to build affordable houses thus crushing the housing crisis engulfing the region.
Update—October 2018: Douglas McCallum Back as Mayor in Surrey Complete with a Council Majority announces he will build Skytrain to Langley for the cost of LRT. Former Burnaby MP, Maratimer Kennedy Stewart is elected Mayor of Vancouver and announces a Skytrain Subway will be built to UBC.
The campaign promises of Surrey’s new Mayor don’t align with either the Transit Network or the Transit Pyramid that informs it. Neither do the dreams of building a very expensive transit system to a university poised at far end of the Lower Mainland.
Modern Tram, not Skytrain, tops the Transit Pyramid delivering 3-times more capacity than Skytrain, at 12-times less cost of a UBC subway, or 6-times less cost than the Surrey-Langley Skytrain. Deploying the transit technologies featured in the Pyramid, the Total Transit Network runs on the surface where the gains accrue to the people in the neighborhoods rather than the tower developers.
Will the new Mayor of Surrey achieve greater gains for his community building 17.5 km of Skytrain or 105 km of Modern Tram for the same price? Will the new Mayor in Vancouver build a 12 km Broadway Subway or 144 km of Modern Tram instead? Will the Mayors focus their efforts exclusively on transit? Or will they also tackle the housing crisis?
Continue reading “TTN: The Total Transit Network”