Letter to Surrey Now & Surrey Leader

As a Surrey resident I am unimpressed with the continued persistence of Linda Hepner to promote at-grade Light Rail Transit over grade-separated SkyTrain.  Does the Mayors Council and Surrey City Hall continue to think that at-grade LRT will not cause havoc on the streets of Surrey?  At-grade LRT has been responsible for many accidents and traffic stoppages in many of the cities (Calgary, Portland, Atlanta) that have implemented this mode of rapid transit.  Yet Linda Hepner persists in the viewpoint that LRT is the right choice for Surrey.  There is a jarring video on Atlanta's LRT system that shows multiple collisions with LRT trains.  Pedestrians have been severely injured if not killed by LRT trains in the past in places like Calgary and Atlanta as well as several European cities.  The amount of time for accident investigators to clear up such an accident would take two to three hours thus delaying traffic on an already congested 104th, King George, or Fraser Highway corridor, not to mention plague the hospitals with injuries.

LRT has always been faster grade-separated but there are no dedicated corridors through residential areas of Surrey that do not involve interaction with either pedestrian or vehicle traffic.  And considering after all the money that Surrey will put into LRT ($2.1B), that the end result of all this expenditure is only one minute faster than the current BRT that we currently have in place is laughable and reprehensible.  This is a prime example of wasting money on an inefficient system that will not get drivers out of their vehicles.  To get efficiency out of a rapid transit system, it must be grade-separated from the rest of the traffic (for safety); it must not have to stop for stop-lights (for speed) and above all, it must demonstrate value for cost.  The LRT transit system touted by the Mayors Council and Surrey City Hall fails to meet those requirements on all three counts.

I am voting "NO" on this plebiscite precisely for those reasons.  The LRT is not efficient enough for Surrey.  It will cause more problems than it solves.  It is not the right transit system for a growing city, It will fail to do as promised (in terms of time saved and conversions from "driver to transit user") and Surrey will have a traffic safety issue on its hands if we choose LRT over SkyTrain.

The Safety Factor LRT (Driverless Versus Driver-Operated)

The debate of driverless versus drivered LRT is a crucial one to consider when talking about LRT for the South Fraser. Since it appears that all LRT implementation images involve the visual of a driver, it is safe to assume that Surrey Council is opting for driver-implemented LRT meaning that there will be someone to drive the light rail train. Both sides of the Yes/No Transit Plebiscite have to look at the safety issues involving street-level LRT.

Driverless LRT though able to increase the volume of trains on existing tracks will only serve to increase the danger of interactions - mainly due to a situation where a computer is still not able to process the information fast enough to prevent a collision unless complicated and expensive collision avoidance systems are implemented. This is especially so at street-level. As Robert A. Heinlein said, "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity." You have to factor in "human decision-making process" in understanding how train/pedestrian/automobile accidents happen and do what you can to reduce the potential of injury/death.

Driver-Operated LRT is probably the safest LRT situation where human response will be crucial in preventing train-human-auto collisions though in many cases with LRT it hasn't mainly due to human reaction not being quick enough. If given enough time to see a track incursion, the train with human driver intervention should be able to stop. The problem is when pedestrians (at the last second) thinking that they can make the crossing without realizing that the train is travelling at a higher speed than they originally thought steps into the track area thus causing a fatal train-pedestrian collision and likewise with a car. Is human reaction quick enough to prevent such a collision? No. Neither are track-brake triggering systems. This is even more important to consider as all evidence points to Surrey not implementing a grade-separated LRT but street-level. This means that "accidental" interactions with passengers and other road vehicles will be considerable.

Compare this with the track incursions on Skytrain, where people deliberately put themselves in harm's way with a track incursion; deliberate suicides. But there are considerably less fatalities on Skytrain than on LRT by someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Will the Mayor's Council be able to justify its choice with the citizens of Surrey and Langley when the accidental interactions with street-level LRT and pedestrians/automobiles increase potentially tenfold over the next few years after implementation?

Rail For The Valley - Light rail – The safest public transit mode! is already trying to justify this. Maybe the Mayor's council can look for excuses by reading this article.

The City of Surrey has plunged head-long into this without proper research, relying on unsubstantiated slander of Bombardier's ALRT system, blatant disregard of public opinion and substantiated un-biased Surrey Rapid Transit Report, and pushed an emotional sales-pitch for it's pro-LRT stance "by hell or high water". One can only hope that they are not making a colossal mistake and compounding it by trying to justify the worst possible solution to transit South of the Fraser.

Mayor's Council Advocating For LRT (To Detriment of South Fraser)

The Mayor's Council continues to push Light-Rail Transit as their vision of Rapid Transit on the South Side of the Fraser River, regardless of the findings of the Surrey Rapid-Transit Study. As well they have flouted the impartiality of the plebiscite by continuing to push forward on Rapid Transit as their sole solution to Surrey's transportation problems despite evidence to the contrary.

Their singleminded promotion of LRT on their web-site.



We find it reprehensible that the Mayor's Council is pushing forward a non-impartial vote by tying LRT to the Yes side of the Transit plebiscite when the ballots state clearly that no one form of transit solution should be considered for South Fraser. However the clique of Mayors have determined that an inferior mode of "rapid"-transit should be implemented for South of Fraser despite forecasted and proven problems in both Calgary and in Portland, OR.

 Surrey City Hall is also campaigning hard for LRT on a sign-board just west of the Surrey Sport & Leisure on Fraser Highway.


The Yes side has become so desperate that it is resorting to highly expensive full-page ads on behalf of the Mayor's Council to push the LRT agenda as seen here in the advertisement in the March 5, 2015 Surrey Now. On top of that it persists in continuing to push the false impression that LRT will be able to outrun the same traffic that it purports to share the road with and also matching Skytrain times while the Skytrain runs at over 80km/hr on a dedicated track.


Mayor's Council Ad in Surrey Now, March 5, 2015

This defeats the "fairness and impartiality" of the Transit Plebiscite and should be overturned.

This comes even as the Mayor's Council ignores what citizens south of the Fraser River want in terms of their transit requirements. 54% of respondents to a poll in the VanCity Buzz wanted Skytrain over LRT for rapid transit south of the Fraser. Only 27% of respondents voted for LRT. So evidently the Mayor's Council, even seeing the majority of the proponents for Skytrain have opted to think that their populace is too stupid to warrant even considering their viewpoint.

The Surrey Rapid Transit Alternatives Study...

Here is a copy of the Surrey Rapid Transit Study done in March 2013. In the report, it stated clearly that: Alternative 4: RRT on Fraser Highway, and BRT on King George Boulevard and on 104 Avenue: This alternative meets forecast 2041 demand on all three of the corridors and provides transfer-free service on King George Boulevard as well as from the Fraser Highway corridor to the Expo Line. Capacity on Fraser Highway can be expanded to meet growth in demand well beyond 2041. Alternative 4 is projected to have 200,000 daily boardings (2041) and generate 24,500 additional daily transit trips in the region. It has the highest ridership and provides the greatest travel time savings. It also generates the most quantifiable transportation benefits at the highest lifecycle cost.

Light Rail advocates keep insisting that LRT will meet the needs of Surrey right now which is fine, well and good, but we all know that rapid transit brings growth to a community and the major question mark would be if LRT would be robust enough to manage more than a certain amount of trains on one line. Portland and Calgary have shown that the LRT cannot cope with urban growth and increased ridership to the point of saturation. LRT proponents will say "add more cars" to make up the difference - well the more cars you add to the LRT, the longer it gets thus creating congestion slowing down the traffic around it from cars having to wait for six or more LRT linked-cars to go past in order to make a lane change or longer light changes favoring the LRT while pedestrian traffic builds up at the intersection. Also lengthening the LRT trains will end up having to have work done on the train stops in order to allow passengers to board thus increasing downtime. All of this becomes a logistical nightmare. Skytrain on the other hand can link more cars without affecting traffic flow. Rapid transit is designed to grow communities and create jobs as well as opening up pockets of communities around the SkyTrain stations. All of those will increase ridership. Most would note that many families move into bedroom communities such as Langley and Abbotsford just so that they can afford something cheaper than the astronomical rates for housing prices in Vancouver/Burnaby. And the farther out they go, the more problems that crop up such as taking two hours to get to work downtown. Even more so, rapid transit will help to create jobs in the areas, but only if the rapid transit concept makes sense in the long term as well as the short term. When one looks at the Skytrain Lines (Millenium, Canada, and Expo), one sees communities growing, condominiums and high-rises popping up around those stations. These are due to the proximity of efficient rapid transit.

...and such would be the same with Surrey. People move where its economical to do so; and economically means both logistical economics as well as pocketbook economics (it has to make sense; which means that rapid transit has to be "rapid" and "efficient"). And if house prices are $mid 400s out in Surrey for a five bedroom; 4 bath home; then granted, that's where the families will move to in order to keep money in their pockets. And these families will want efficient rapid transit to get them from place to place or they will just get in their cars and drive to where they want to go. If Translink's intent is to get people out of cars, they need to consider how much time it takes for transit to get those folks from place to place without running into problems.

Skytrain over LRT makes the most sense as it is not prone to traffic problems such as car accidents which would block sections of roadway which LRT would get snarled up in major accidents of the sort that have been seen in Portland, Calgary and other locations with LRT where the entire line has been blocked with 3-4 hour delays while accident investigators comb over the accident.

In terms of urban growth and moving people; Skytrain makes the most sense...

Surrey's Central Square At Night

The City Hall and Surrey Public Library have an adjoining square - aptly named "Central Square". Went to find a place to park and go take a few shots prior to picking my wife up from work.



Took a shot looking down 135th Street from the northeast corner of 103rd Avenue.

Surrey Night Structural Architecture Photography

Trying to get back into the swing of things after the post-Gibson's throat infection - tired and fatigued, but itching to get that camera in hand. Went up tonight to go take some photographs.



I think at ISO 100 they came out a lot sharper but the ISO 100 on the Nikon has less definition and has to be pumped up a bit in post. The Nikon ISO 100 is actually a base ISO 200 underexposed by 1 stop to simulate ISO 100, but unfortunately, the highlights tend to clip earlier and the sensor is less sensitive. I wanted to shoot at LO 1.0 because I still found that when I was shooting at night that if there was definition like clouds, there would be noise. So thus I went to LO 1.0 to remove what noise that was there. These images I shot in JPG. The next bunch I'll do in RAW.

LRT: The Wrong Choice For Surrey

Surrey City Hall, regardless of the questions on the plebiscite, is still pushing to link a LRT development plan with the YES vote on advertising for the plebiscite. Those with Better Transit For Surrey would like Surrey City Hall to refrain from linking LRT as a "YES" platform and restrict themselves to voting YES for a better transit system regardless of whether the outcome is Skytrain or some other mode of rapid transit. A plebiscite is supposed to be fair and impartial. Not linking one rapid transit type to a Yes or No vote without consideration for the other side in the matter. In fact, here is absolute proof that they are trying to link the "YES" platform with Light Rail



Surrey City Services also has a video and a page up on their City Website indicating that they are pushing for Light Rail regardless of citizen's viewpoints in the matter.

Such misinformation from the Light Rail for the Lower Mainland group and the highly noted accidents from various LRT systems across North America and Europe will be common-place in Surrey; should the LRT lines go down high-traffic corridors such as Fraser Highway, 104th Avenue and King George Boulevard.



Situations such as this have occured in the Calgary "C" line and are continuing to plague a lot of LRT systems across North America.

And most people in the Lower Mainland are utilizing rapid transit to get to work; most of those employed are employed downtown which means regardless of Mayor Linda Hepner's statements that Skytrain is unsightly and will cut the city in half; it still is the most efficient way of getting downtown. The farther out you go, the travel time grows exponentially. If the LRT is constantly getting clogged down in traffic going towards the Surrey Central location, then it will make it impossible to achieve the commute times that Hepner is stating in her support of LRT. The only way that commute time to downtown will be cut down is to put in a SkyTrain line from Langley to fully connect with SkyTrain at King George Station and make King George a thru-station with the terminus being at Langley Center.

Any other way would be ludicrous. Has Metrotown suffered for not being the terminus point of a LRT line - it's been running on a Skytrain line since 1986 and Metrotown Center has been expanding - they have put in a large condo complex in Metrotown. The Rogers business towers have expanded from one to two to three in the past fifteen years. The entire argument that LRT will slow transit down so that business can grow and citizens can do shopping is laughable.

Transit is primarily so that people who work in the downtown core can live in outlying areas thus decreasing the population density of the downtown core and allowing residents in the downtown area to have some room to breathe.

The Lower Mainland is a metropolis made up of many outlying cities combined together in an urban sprawl. When you look at Google Maps, you will see that Vancouver/Lower Mainland shows up even more clearly on the map than Toronto does. We are socked into a Valley hemmed in by mountains somewhat restricting our growth, whereas Toronto can sprawl out with no mountains in sight. Pretty soon, the only way to go will be up, for Vancouver and those who have chosen to make their homes in places such as Langley will need to be able to count on an efficient grade-separated transit system to be able to get from their places of residence to the downtown core in Vancouver. Right now, the bus system is not cutting it. LRT doesn't take off much time off the bus times with average times being cut off are between 1 and 4 minutes. Whereas SkyTrain would be able to do much better at a constant 80km/hr clip and no traffic lights, minimal stops for Skytrain Stations along the route and it would shave close to 16 to 20 minutes off total commute time.

LRT is the wrong choice for Surrey, but Linda Hepner appears to be hell-bent on pushing that form of "slow"-transit through. I can only hope that people are listening and will oppose LRT because as it stands a 1-4 minute savings in time is not a savings at all. LRT has been proven to be the WRONG CHOICE for Surrey.