€300 (CAD $455) Million For 25 km of New Tram Line

€300 converts to CAD $455 million for 24km of tram line or about CAD $18.2km per km to build. This of course does not include vehicles or a maintenance depot, but does give a good indication of the cost for an economy light rail line to be built in Metro Vancouver. Even if the total [...]

Unacceptable

Unacceptable! The Canada Line morning rush hour fiasco, last Friday was and is completely unacceptable and demonstrates TransLink completely inane policy of forcing as many bus riders as they can onto the light-metro system. What happened Friday, demonstrates the Achilles heel of TransLink’s lack of management and the photo-op CEO’s disdain of the traveling public. [...]

Delusion Drives SkyTrain Planning South of the Fraser

The old fogies of politics are now driving the change from LRT to SkyTrain in Surrey. The same old lies. The same old deceit. The same old ignorance is now gaining control of regional transit south of the Fraser, as it has done in the rest of Metro Vancouver. The SkyTrain Lobby doesn’t care about [...]

And Light Rail Transit – Premier Horgan, Are You Listening? From 2017

And Light Rail Transit – Premier Horgan, Are You Listening?   Evidently not!   Posted by zweisystem on Thursday, July 27, 2017 What this story does not mention is that Portland has an extensive LRT/streetcar network, a transit network designed to meet the needs of the transit customer. Unlike Metro Vancouver where transit is built [...]

Common Sense Transit Planning At last!

Common sense. Want a workable public transport system? One must plan on this scale as being done in the City of Surrey. Let us just add a Vancouver to Chilliwack TramTrain, instead of LRT to Langley and one would now have 270km of rail transit in the Fraser Valley. This is called “Vision”; this called [...]

Surrey’s LRT Costs Skyrocket – As Planned?

And now, the real story. There is a growing number of politicians who want to build with SkyTrain instead of LRT in Surrey. What they ignore at their own peril is that SkyTrain will not cost $1 billion more than LRT to build, but it will cost over $6 billion! Why? TransLink has neglected to [...]

Toronto Enters the Light Rail Era as Vancouver Decends Into Traffic Hell

This what LRT is supposed to do – traffic calm, by providing a quality public transit alternative. In Vancouver, light metro is built to increase density, thus increasing auto use. The modern tram, provides transit, on the pavement, easy to use, just what the transit customer wants. Maybe trams on Broadway will bring a Renaissance [...]

The Greer Report – 20 Years On

This item is a reprint from 2009. After rereading the Greer Report, I see TransLink making the same unsubstantiated claims about SkyTrain. Another decade has passed and TransLink is still the autocratic organization, as it was twenty years ago! Who is not afraid to “Bell the Cat?” The Greer Report – Review of Rapid Transit [...]

SkyTrain Costs That TransLink Do No Want The Taxpayer To Know

Many people who advocate for more SkyTrain extensions in the metro region, do not understand the costs associated with automatic train control or ATC, necessary for driverless operation. The cost of resignalling just one subway line in Toronto is said to cost CAD $562 million. TransLink’s problem is that to increase capacity on the Innovia [...]

Is Surrey About To Abandon The Doomed Ship TransLink?

Zwei predicted years ago that current transit planning will compel South Fraser Municipalities to abandon TransLink. Well, it has happened, like it or not a new political group, Proudly Surrey, has made leaving TransLink as part of their electoral platform. The following is Proudly Surrey’s platform on transit. Transit for Surrey   In 1994, Surrey [...]