Light rail advocate believes LRT plan was destined to fail

SURREY (NEWS 1130) – It was ill-conceived, and not properly promoted.

That’s what LRT supporters are saying, a day after Metro Vancouver mayor’s council voted to suspend construction of the light rail line in Surrey.

Malcolm Johnston is one of those people. Johnston has been lobbying for LRT for years, with the help of an organization called Rail for the Valley.

He says he’s not surprised the LRT plan failed. He feels the way the LRT line was configured, it simply wasn’t going to work.

“The ridership is not there from Langley to justify light rail, much less for SkyTrain. It would have been better if a line went south to White Rock. That’s where the big population is – like at Morgan Crossing. That’s what they should have done, right down King George Boulevard.”

Plus, the light rail line, he believes, needed to extend across the Fraser, to make the commute as seamless as possible.

“If you want to make a successful light rail line, it has to go into Vancouver. They can do that. Light rail has the technology today to use existing railway tracks.”

Johnston even suggests a light rail line could be built to Chilliwack, for a fraction of the cost and time, it would be to build SkyTrain to Langley.

“We could do it for $1.5 billion for three trains an hour in each direction during peak hours. We could have it in operation in three years.” In contrast, he believes a SkyTrain extension will take ten years to complete.

He blames TransLink for not actively dispelling misconceptions about light rail.

“It’s not slower. What slows light rail down, compared to SkyTrain, is more stations. More stations attracts more ridership.”

He points out Toronto is about to scrap its version of SkyTrain. The Scarborough RT was opened around the same time the Expo line was, and is being replaced. Johnston points out only six other cities in the world use Advanced Rapid Transit technology, which was developed by Bombardier, and no additional cities have adopted ART in the last ten years.

Johnston also says he’s been told by engineers the Expo Line needs major rehabilitation, which he says is another indication that SkyTrain technology wears out too quickly.

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