Everyone Is An Expert

Why is it, when someone is elected to office, they become instant transit experts? Why is it, when it comes to transit, common sense is tossed from the window? It seems Liberal MLA, Jane Thornthwaite, wants a SkyTrain subway to the North Shore. First question that she should be asking is: Would it be the [...]

Is It time To Say Adios To TransLink’s Kevin Desmond?

TransLink’s American CEO, Kevin Desmond, was always TransLink’s man. A consummate bureaucrat, he knows what buttons to push and what whistles to blow, but when it comes to transit, Desmond does what he is told to do. TransLink has never acknowledged the fact that the public, especially the taxpayer after the 2015 plebiscite do not [...]

Metro Madness – FastFerry Fiasco 2

Vancouver wants subways and nothing else. Vancouver wants the region to pay for those subways. Vancouver’s pet SkyTrain subway,  just to Arbutus Street, may cost upwards of $4 billion. Vancouver’s pet SkyTrain subway will use the now obsolete ALRT/ART proprietary railway, jointly owned by Bombardier Inc. and SNC Lavalin. Vancouver’s pet SkyTrain subway will have [...]

Welcome To The World Of Congestion Folks!

This should not be news but it is, congestion has returned to the Port Mann Bridge With tolls, traffic and gridlock was just moved to the Patullo and Alex Fraser Bridges and the Massey Tunnel, but with the tolls eliminated, traffic pasterns are getting back to usual. Welcome to the commuting world brought to you [...]

Is TransLink Admitting the Canada Line is a White Elephant?

It is not an either/or situation. As built, the Canada line has small stations with 40 metre long station platforms, while the ALRT/ART Expo and Millennium/Evergreen lines have 80 metre long station platforms. The Transport Canada operating certificate for the ALRT/ART lines allows capacity no more than 15,000 pphpd. It is reasonable to suspect that [...]

Expensive Projects = Expensive Costs

Most people championing expensive transit, fail to see three minutes into the future. The failure of a switch motor on the Expo Line last week caused transit chaos. Switch motors fail and on automatic railways, the regimen is to replace motors on a preventative basis before they fail in revenue service to maintain the integrity [...]

Expo Line Goes Kaput – Canada line Ills – TransLink’s Bad Day

The aging SkyTrain system is having many troubles today. One of the big problems with expensive light-metro lines is the lack of redundancy in the system. With the huge costs to build just one line, only one line is built, unlike mature light rail systems, where multiple lines offers redundancy in the system if problems [...]

Siemens and Alstom Merge Rail

As reported earlier, it has been announced that Siemens and Alstom will merge their rail units. Time will tell how this will effect Bombardier Inc., but one thing is for certain, the merger will streamline their product line and with no sales in the past decade and a greatly diminishing demand for niche light-metros, how [...]

Alstom, Siemens Rail-Merger – Is SkyTrain going The Way Of The Edsel?

This could be game changer for Bombardier’s rail division and a big game changer for transit planning in Metro Vancouver. If the Siemens and Alstom merger goes through, it could mean those expensive ART, monorail, and other proprietary transit modes currently marketed by Bombardier Inc. may be chopped from production as a new  “rail” reality [...]

The Perils Of A Proprietary Railway

ALRT/ART is what we call a proprietary railway and because Bombardier Inc. hold the technical patents for ART, they are the sole supplier of ART cars, as they can always undercut the competition, who must design a Linear Induction Motor powered car from scratch. Designing a specialty transit vehicle from scratch is a very expensive [...]