A Tale of Three Letters

It seems there is much confusion with TransLink and metro cities regarding transit mode. It is the old shell game, practiced by BC Transit, TransLink, both the provincial Liberal Party and the NDP, regional Mayors and very sadly, both University of BC and Simon Fraser University. Rapid transit refers to metro and not light rail, [...]

A Letter to Regional Politicians

Zwei has been copied a letter that has been sent out to Metro politicians. I also have been informed that the provincial NDP have blocked receiving said letter. It is of great importance that the media should ask pointed questions about regional transit, but they don’t and have given largely given regional transit a free [...]

Fake News And The SkyTrain Lobby – Who Are They Really Working For?

A repost from November 21, 2017 A comment from Zwei (2021): The Daily Hive has become the mouthpiece for TransLink and the Hive prints news releases as if they were news, without any fact checking. Really, can’t the SkyTrain Lobby do any better? The following is so silly and juvenile because it is all hearsay [...]

User-Friendliness – The Key For Ridership

Interesting, that an Alberta University is doing a study about how Covid affects transit use. All we hear from TransLink is yesterday’s ridership records, which were mainly for “subway propaganda” than anything else. TransLink’s ridership claims are based on boarding’s and as boarding’s inflate actual ridership numbers, means ridership assumptions and predictions are inflated and [...]

TramTrain For 2021!

Zwei has been a member of the Light Rail Transit Association for over 35 years and with membership comes a subscription to the most excellent magazine Tramways & Urban Transit. The following will be of most interest for those wanting an affordable rail connection from Vancouver to Chilliwack using the existing and former BC Electric [...]

And Then There Were Six

Despite the hype and hoopla of regional mayors, five very important facts about our SkyTrain light metro system are glossed over in Metro Vancouver, by metro mayors, bureaucrats and transportation planners: The Expo and Millennium Lines operate a dated proprietary railway, now called Movia Automatic Light Metro. Only seven of these proprietary railways were sold [...]

Alstom-Bombardier Deal to Complete in January

This is big news as Bombardier is the sole supplier of the proprietary, linear induction motor powered Movia Automatic Light Metro system used on the Expo and Millennium Lines. Alstom may or may not continue the production of the now stale dated Movia Light Metro and give notice to its customers that they will wind [...]

More Fuel Cell Train News

More fuel cell train news. The technology is coming, whether we acknowledge it or not. The “Green” challenge is not taxing people out of their cars or airplanes, rather it is providing a reliable and user friendly “Green” transportation alternative. Our politicians have not done that, on the contrary they still opt for “rubber on [...]

Hdrogen Fuel Trains Advance!

As the technology for hydrogen fueled trains continues to develop, the technology will become cheaper. Electric trains without the large cost of OHE. Very Green, isn’t it. Not in BC, where the government is OK building with prestigious light-metro and willing to spend $4.6 billion, to build a mere 12.8 km of line. For $4.6 [...]

How The NDP Paved Paradise and Turned It Into a Parking Lot.

The NDP’s refusal to give Metro Vancouver’s transit planning an independent review has condemned the region to congestion and gridlock for generations. The billions of dollars spent on rapid transit and the future billions of dollars to be spent expanding rapid transit has and will utterly fail to attract the driver from his/her cars. The [...]