[Canadaka]

http://thetyee.ca/News/2009/03/25/LightRail/

[ridenrain]

Oh look. Vancouver is telling Surrey and the rest of the province what's good for it. I'm so tired of these experts trying to sell us on transit instead of properly finishing up the Trans Canada Highway.

Light rail won't move freight, service people, deliveries or even most of the commuters. Their stuborn pipe dream of everyone getting on the bus is what got us in this problem to start with.

[sandorski]

Light Rail

[Canadian_Mind]

bridge.

take into account that 200 km of light rail for 3.1 billion is something like 15 million dollars for 1 km of light rail.

Vancouvers new street car line costs more then that. This system, even in the diagram, is called a tram system, and not a rail system, so essentially it is a street care, and would be no mre efficient that just buying more buses for much less money to do the same routes.

A more realistic figure for light rail, as we percieve it (skytrain) is 1km for about 40 million dollars, which gives you around 70km of light rail, which while the perferable option for daily commuters, does not give commercial transportation many efficient options. Like it or not commercial transportation needs room too, as if it doesn't have room, industry is literally smothered, and while the city may not die, it will love it's quality of life.

Just my $0.02

[sandorski]

Increase Light Rail/Transit, Decrease Traffic, Increase room for Commercial Transportation. It needs to be done sooner or later, I prefer sooner as our Need is Now. If we can do both, I wouldn't mind a new Bridge, but if it's one or the othe, Light Rail all the way.

There are many advantages to LR:

1) Decreased Traffic by taking more Commuters out of vehicles
2) More Efficient use of Energy
3)related to 2: Decreased Pollution
4) Decreased Cost of Living of City Residents as they no long Need a Vehicle or not Need a Vehicle as much. This is especially important for those with Lower Incomes who have difficulty affording to live in the City
5) Decreased Need for Parking or more efficient use of Parking using Park and Ride lots.
6) Improves Density Construction by making developement Hubs both feasable and desireable.

*Note: Ya, I made up my own terminology

[poquas]

Both, but bridge now.

In some future when cars don't pollute I'll guarantee that there will be more of them than there are now. The roads here are 1960s design and are some of the worst in the country.

[herbie]

OMG riden must be the only other person who's looked out the window and noticed how goddam many of those "evil cars" are delivery trucks!

[N_Fiddledog]

lily lily:

Bridge.

Expensive upgrades to transit can wait till they clean up their own house.

It is time to put a stop to TransLink's tax grab

Yes, we need a better transit system, but look what they're doing with all the money... and they want even more? They voted themselves a raise. The raise alone is more than the average person makes in a year.

That's a great link Lilly. When you look at it that way those guys are kind of scary, and anything connected to them spooks.

I change my vote to bridge.

I've got a dumb question though. If you put a toll booth in front of the bridge doesn't traffic slow down? So wouldn't the bottleneck (which is what you're trying to unplug) just get worse? They still want the toll, I assume.