Not Cost Effective.

Another suicide, another death and TransLink washes it hands of the problem. The SkyTrain light-metro system doesn’t have an attendant on board to monitor the tracks. This is the darker side of driverless trains. Unlike other automatic metros, there are no sliding glass gates at stations to prevent egress onto the tracks. This costs money [...]

Meet The Canada Line’s French Cousin, REM.

REM is a clone of the Canada Line, a faux P-3 project designed to benifit land speculators, land developers and of course the financiers, which in this case is the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, or CDPQ . The local rail advocates are now fully understanding at how REM will not provide better [...]

Alstom Completes Bombardier Transportation Acquisition

Alstom is now the owner of the proprietary Movia Automatic Light Metro (MALM) system and the big question is, will Alstom continue to produce the MK.2/3 cars or even honour Bombardier’s contracts with TransLink. Will Alstom treat TransLink and regional politicians as rubes for the taking? The early resignation of TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond, and [...]

Spanish Trams On The Rise

From Wikipedia: Valencia was the first Spanish city to reintroduce the tram, in 1994. The success of the modern tramway network in Valencia led to the extension of its lines on three occasions. After Valencia came Bilbao (2002), Alicante (2003), Barcelona (2004) and, in October 2006, the inauguration of the 4.7 km long Vélez-Málaga Tram (which [...]

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 [...]

A Question Of Capacity – Reprinted from the Light Rail Transit Association

A repost from January 3 2018 A QUESTION OF CAPACITY THE CAPACITIES of different modes of transport are generally quoted as 0-10 000 passengers per hour for bus, 2000-20 000 for light rail, and 15 000 upwards for heavy rail.     * Maximum capacity is only likely to be required for a few hours [...]

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 [...]

The Realities of Subway Mania In Lotus Land

A repost from March 4 2020 The realities of subway mania. Vancouver politicians live in “The Land of the Lotus Eaters”, when it comes to transit. In Greek mythology the lotus-eaters, were a race of people living on an island dominated by the Lotus tree. The lotus fruits and flowers were the primary food of [...]

SkyTrain’s Daddy – The Krauss Maffei Transurban MAGLEV

First posted by zweisystem on Sunday, March 4, 2018 A comment from Zwei: Overheard on the radio, the silly claim that SkyTrain is Canadian technology and that we should continue building with it. HA! The Canada Line uses Korean made ROTEM EMU’s and the Millennium and Expo lines uses the now called Movia Automatic Light [...]