It may be assumed that diversion of utilities was negligible. Track standards accommodate double deck trams, so should be sufficient for any modern single deck tram.

Canadian, and other NA transit experts would be well advised to contact Christchurch City Council for further information re the work being done.

Montreal -Toronto- C.N.Rail a private company owned by the giant, Illinois-Central of the U.S. owns the operation rights. Via Rail the current operator of passenger rail between these cities holds it by contract only. Owned by the government, which has an obligation to supply passenger rail, there is no incentive to improve it.
Toronto Regional Commuter Rail System operates on a lease agreement using the right of way and ajacent land.
If there were going to be high speed rail in this corridor it would have to be an agreement between railways, provinces and the federal government. This complicated method has not shown much promise so far. The arguments for high speed rail have continued since before 1992, and it no solutions for them have been approved.
School is still out in the most populated train corridor in Canada.

Edmonton- Calgary- Located in prime Conservative Alberta, this high speed rail corridor is flat, and can use maximum speed along the Highway 2 right of way. It can join both International airports together and join both light rail systems of both cities together. Weather used to be a questionable reason to maybe think twice, however with the new St.Petersburg-Helsinki high speed rail opened by Putin of Russia two years ago, its now not a challenge.
Calgary and Edmonton are poised for huge growth because of lower housing prices, and the petroleum industry.
There is not much opposition to the plan, and because in the the past the air bus hourly service between the two cities was so successful, high speed rail if it were two hours or less would be popular.
Chilliwack-Vancouver
This corridor was recommended by The Royal Commission on Passenger transportation also. I huge submission was put in by the Lower Mainland Commuter Rail Consortium which implemented The West Coast Express. The original commuter rail run was the B.N. right of way, however when B.N. refused to buy C.N. a proposal to build a susbtitute line through Sapperton to lougheed mall and west parelleling the B.N. tracks, as C.P.R. had agreed to take the W.C.E earlier in 1993. It was a decade of excitiment across the nation when at the manufacturing level the plant was making identical cars for Los Angles, Toronto and San Diego. B.C. hoped on the order form for a fleet purchase also.
At the B.C. Policing Commission hearings in Burnaby a plan was presented to Cheif Justice Wallace Oppal to have hig speed rail tofollow the freeway once all construction was done to remove overpasses to a higher level and eliminate all level crossings on the freeway. It was approved to make police response better to the public demands, with faster response times and putting people on a train to get them faster to there destination in a safe way.
When former Preimer Glen Clark recommended the North-East sector Review Committees findings and past Bill 3 in Victoria it paved the way for all this to happen and be finished by 2014. Today we are two years from that date and Abbotsford Council passed a recommendation to support any passenger rail route coming to there city or area.
Langey passed the light rail line from Willowbrook to the Freeway station and beyond allong the 200th street corridor.
Recently Surrey put light rail at the top of there list with a planed light rail line joining Gateway skytrain station to Guilford Station on the Freeway.
The proposals and City plans await the government approvals, which is the next step. The Interurban line is a south feeder line, and the milage between the freeway on the north side and theInterban track on the south side is low for a huge area of growing population that escapes accurate cencus.
This is going to be a contest for the west and it comes at a time of growth and past prosperity that seems unstoppable as real estate prices continue to rise on both corridors.
The planning and submissions of the past have prooved there worth to mass public transportation, yet today it is fragmented into groups that need to form a Consortium under one roof and speak together and plan together.
We have all this in common and the pieces are together, it will not take much to push public will our way, and the political tide will follow in the next election. I suggest this proposal be put forth at the meeting later this month at Langley City hall put on by one of the groups. Lets thow are hats into the ring.

It is Zwei’s understanding that the U-Pass was designed for 33% usage or only 33% of students using the pass, in reality over 70% of the U-passes are being used, which means the U-Pass program is being subsidized by bus revenue.

Unless there is a full independent audit of ridership on the metro and buses, TransLink can invent any ridership number it wants and has been known to do so.

As for the blog, we are read and well regarded overseas and the blog is also vetted by transportation experts, who find much of what passes for transit news in the region as a bit of a joke.