The best average estimate for the operation of a light rail system in North America is $240 per service hour. This is 2.6 times as much as it costs per service hour of buses in Victoria.
For LRT to make sense when compared to buses we would need to move 85 passengers per service hour on the LRT. If we have 15 minute headway on the LRT, two cars per train and a half an hour trip time. You need to have 8 railcars operating in any given hour to achieve that schedule. Operating for 12 hours a day means 35,000 service hours per year and an annual ridership of around 3,000,000 to achieve operating costs comparable to buses. This is 8200 passengers per day 365 days a year or 4100 return trips.
If one assumes that passenger volumes on weekends and holidays is 45% of a normal day, this means a normal weekday needs to move 10,000 people, 5000 roundtrips.
Currently there are about 7800 total passenger boardings on buses running from the Westshore to downtown of which roughly 7000 are unique passenger trips. This is done in about 43,000 weekday service hours per year for a cost of just under $4,000,000. The current number of passengers per year is 2,100,000.
The current level of traffic is at about 70% of the volume needed to make the LRT comparable to buses on the same route. At a 70% traffic volume, there is a $2.5 million shortfall. Given the shorter day I am projecting for the LRT and the fewer departures - 48 LRT trips versus 89 bus trips per day - it is optimistic to assume 7000 passenger boardings per weekday can be achieved.
If we assume there will still be 18 bus trips per day during the evening hours, this would be about 500 passenger boardings and leaving us at 6500 weekday daily boardings on the LRT and a short fall of $2.6 million.
If one could achieve a 10% increase in transit use right away, optimistic but possible, we are looking at a shortfall of only $2.5 million. If we then see an ten year rise of another 25% due to growth on the Westshore and people choosing transit, we are at 8750 weekday boardings and still $1,000,000 more expensive per year than using buses. This is an accumulated $17.5 million extra in costs over ten years.
To achieve a savings of $2 million in a given year, there would have to be the loss of 60 service hours of buses per day, something in the order of a 3% reduction in daily bus service.
UVic really should be the focus of transit in this region. It is a daily destination for 25,000 people of which a very high percentage do not own cars. The passenger boardings are also more spread out through the whole day which is much more ideal for an LRT. A line from UVic along Mackenzie to Uptown and then downtown from there would attract about 11,000 boardings per day right from the start on a scope and scale of a Westshore service though it could be more frequent because of the shorter length and provide 60 trips in a 12 hour day instead of 48.
A line from UVic to downtown would also be cheaper to build, $300,000,000 versus $450,000,000 for a line to Langford. The interest alone on the extra $150,000,000 would costs us $5,000,000 to $8,000,000 per year more.
7 comments:
Good analysis, although a little short on the benefits of LRT.
What does a 10% increase in passenger(which is low in my opinion given all the benefits this has) mean for:
- LRT passengers: faster than buses, more comfortable, and more on time (not affected by Colwood crawl)
- commuters by car: less traffic, therefore faster commute
- region: more options to travel means more desirable place to live; faster connection to Victoria.
Would that be worth the extra money? I don't know, but at least include the BENEFIT into the discussion!
I don't see how the downtown to UVic route would be preferable over the Colwood-Victoria line. Students don't need to be downtown nor do the majority of students live there. The suggestion smells like a red herring to me, and probably to many others too who are stuck daily in the Colwood crawl.
There are likely many people in Colwood who currently do not consider the bus because....they would be stuck in the same crawl. LRT is a sound option, and once people get used to using it, commuters will use it. Think Vancouver Skytrain and Canada Line.
Victoria used to have LRT, a long time ago, before we got "smart" about bean counting...and now we're more backwards than ever before on the matter. What a shame, time to move forward again on LRT?
The UVic-McKenzie-Douglas corridors make a lot of sense for LRT. I used to be a student at UVic, and the buses running to downtown and along McKenzie were always full, regardless of the time of day. It is hard to imagine that an LRT system would not also be very heavily used. There are also several areas along this route that have a lot of students living there. Ridership will be high, and it will be spread over the entire day's operating span.
Ideally Victoria would have both a UVic and a western LRT line (and eventually, one out the the ferry). The Western Communities desperately need better transit, but that is an area where dedicated bus lanes, express bus routes, and timed lights can be installed at far less cost than a rail system, and they will allow bus transit to run almost as fast as LRT trains. That option is not as easy on the UVic route.
Build the UVic line first. Prove that LRT will work in Victoria. Then, the case for LRT in the western communities will be much stronger.
Here's another article on the successes of Vancouver's Skytrain, with some good pointers to consider:
1) SkyTrain is popular with the public. (of course it is; by comparison with buses it is more comfortable and way faster)
3) 45 per cent of Canada Line riders tell us they used to drive for the trip they were making. (yes, that's right, people not only switch from buses, they also abandon their cars; this can only be applauded)
4) Rapid transit has an enormous impact on how a region grows and develops, and survey after survey shows it is the most effective in attracting people to public transit.
5) Although it travels where buses travel, it has 100 million-plus riders per year.
Can 100 million-plus riders be wrong?
Mr. Squid,
The UVic-McKenzie-Douglas problems of full buses can easily be solved by adding more buses, not? Count out your savings and....
Use that money for the Western communities-Victoria LRT, where CURRENT problems (the "Colwood crawl"), are properly addressed. And why not get it right the first time?
Let's not waste any money on "dedicated bus lanes, express bus routes, and timed lights" and give the western communities the comfort and speediness they deserve.
What we do know is there is could be a business case for rail rapid transit to UVic because there is a proven ridership. There is no data to indicate that there could be enough ridership from the Westshore to make an LRT more viable than buses.
Someone has to show some form of data that LRT to the Westshore is feasible, and the problem is that all the comparable examples out there say that it is not.
Lack of data is a poor excuse for inaction. Furthermore, proven ridership isn't a guarantee for feasibility either.
Where's the "Vision" thing?
Acting on a lack of data or bad data is a guarantee there will be problems.
LRT is not a vision of a modern city, it is throw back to a old style of thinking when it comes to people's work/live patterns. The fact that many cities have chosen to build LRTs is not a reason to do the same. The LRTs are turning out to an effective way to move people or make the cities more livable.
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