From September 2010 – The Groundbreaking Leewood Study

On September 20, 2010, Rail for the Valley unreleased the groundbreaking Leewood Study regarding the reinstatement of a passenger service using the former BC Electric, now Southern Railway of BC route. Why Groundbreaking? The Leewood Study was the first and only independent study done on passenger rail for the Fraser Valley, without political or bureaucratic [...]

Transit lessons unlearned – A repost from Jan. 2009

First posted in 2009. More than a decade later, these lessons have still not been learned. It is sheer negligence on the part of TransLink, the Mayor’s Council on Transit, and the Ministry of Transportation, that they remain ignorant of what was commonly known elsewhere, not just a decade or so ago, rather three decades [...]

An Election Is Coming. The NDP Follows The Old Script.

As with all Metro Vancouver transit projects, they are good for three or four election cycles. The NDP are just using their tired playbook from the 90′s, nothing more and, shock and disbelief, Parliamentary Secretary for TransLink, Browinn Ma is the do nothing MLA for North Vancouver Lonsdale. Need I say more. “Our government is [...]

From 2015 – The Broadway Subway, No Value For Money

The NDP have now blundered in approving the Broadway subway and photo-ops by Premier Horgan attributed what LRT is very good at and light-metro which is not very good at. Wrong script, wrong mode. LRT has a proven record of modal shift, attracting motorists from the car. SkyTrain has no such record. LRT has a [...]

A Novice’s Guide To Transit – Reposted and Updated

……….. or cutting through the BS about light rail, SkyTrain and BRT. The following is a guide plus definitions. ALM: Automatic Light metro, the fourth marketing name given for the SkyTrain family of light-metros, when Lavalin briefly owned SkyTrain before going bankrupt. ALRT (1): Advanced Light Rail Transit, the second marketing name for SkyTrain. ALRT [...]

Of Pressers, Photo-ops and Gadgetbahnen

Premier Horgan doesn’t get it. The NDP don’t get it. The Liberals don’t get it. The metro mayors don’t get it. We are governed by a ship of fools. What we are getting is a $3 billion subway, which will operate a capacity limited proprietary railway, which will drive up TransLink’s operating costs and will [...]

A Post From Mr. Haveacow – Speedy Transit

The avatar, “Haveacow” is used by a very knowledgeable Canadian transportation specialist. He knows what he is talking about and Zwei greatly respects his input. Since SkyTrain was first foisted on the taxpayer, one of the many false claims for building with it, was that it was fast. There are problems with this claim, including: [...]

From 2009 – The Light Rail Committee

A repost from 2009   A 2007 Presentation on Valley Rail – by the Light Rail Committee Posted by zweisystem on Thursday, June 25, 2009 First, before any discussion about rail transit, including Light Rail Transit, we must define LRT and other transit modes. The following is a brief descriptions of various transit modes advocated [...]

An Ongoing Charade

Gordon Campbell is gone, due to his less than honest performance with the combined GST/PST, which cost him the Premiership. The public had enough and wanted him gone. But, Gordon Campbell echoed then and what still echoes today with the Mayor’s Council on Transit, TransLink and in Victoria, that somehow SkyTrain is superior to light [...]

From September 15, 2010 – A Decade later, Nothing Has Changed

What I find amusing is that  policy on regional transit has not changed as politicians do the same thing over and over again, ever expecting different results. It’s easy and they just don’t have to waste time dithering over details and anyways; “the taxpayer has deep pockets and will ante up to pay for our [...]