How Not to Be left At Station, For A Train That Will Never Come

A letter sent to the Mayor and council’s of the Two Langley’s and Delta, sent by Malcolm Johnston, on Jan. 2, 2019.   “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the [...]

Waitng For SkyTrain And Other Fairy Tales

When one is conned, very seldom will one admit to being conned. Well, the good burghers of Langley are being conned by the new mayor of Surrey and by their lack of due diligence, will condemn Langley residents with congestion, gridlock, and very poor transit options. SkyTrain is not coming to Langley. The evidence is [...]

Common Sense Transit Planning From Patrick Condon. Oh, Yes And From Rail For The Valley

Hats off to Professor Patrick Condon for this! The mayor of Surrey may wish he had kept his mouth shut about light rail and SkyTrain. Oh, he will get his toy train to Fleetwood, no doubt, but after that fiscal reality will hit like a Tsunami. From the Tyee Dear Surrey Mayor McCallum. Congratulations on [...]

A Stationless SkyTrain In Surrey

Charlie Smith of the Georgia Straight gets it, but that is no surprise, Charlie Smith and the Georgia Straight has always been the newspaper of note when it comes to SkyTrain? Why, you say? Because he asks real questions. By building SkyTrain, the new mayor of Surrey wants a funnel to take commuters out of [...]

Has The SkyTrain Flip-Flop In Surrey Derailed?

Ah, the realities of political promises as the new Mayor of Surrey has now discovered; a very big $514 million problem. Even the most ardent of SkyTrain supporters, except for the tin foil hat brigade, realize SkyTrain costs a lot more to build than light rail and even may concede it costs more to maintain [...]

Dated Thinking From A Dated Mayor

Dated transit thinking comes from SkyTrain, because light-metro is a dated transit system. There is no backbone for transit, except for a network of transit lines and only if it is designed properly, designed for the needs of its customers and not the electoral needs of politicians. One $2.95 billion SkyTrain does not a backbone [...]

Did TransLink Design Surrey’s Light Rail To Fail?

  Surrey’s rejection of light rail in favour of SkyTrain with hardly a whimper from TransLink and without any rebuttal to the mayor of Surrey spurious claims about LRT, makes me think TransLink purposely designed light rail to fail in Surrey. There is an established SkyTrain Lobby within TransLink that plays very dirty when it [...]

No SkyTrain For Surrey For A Decade

Don’t shoot the messenger. Didn’t old Zwei didn’t try to warn everyone, the Mayor of Surrey’s juvenile anti LRT crusade may mean no SkyTrain in Surrey for ten years or more and if Bombardier closes down production of SkyTrain cars, could mean no SkyTrain period. The indoctrinated believers, will still demand the obsolete SkyTrain, and [...]

Surrey’s Hobson’s Choice – A Choice Of Taking What is Available (LRT) or Nothing At All.

First posted April 18, 2018 Updated Surrey has a big transit and transportation problem, and now with the announcement by mayor elect, Dough McCallum, now leaves the LRT project in doubt. The cacophony of the SkyTrain Lobby with their half truths, cherry picked data, and intimidating innuendo are demanding a change from light rail to [...]

A Matter Of Perspective

What is interesting with this story is the matter of perspective comparing Vancouver and Toronto. In Toronto, the 504 streetcar servicing carries around 80,000 riders a day in 2018. In Vancouver, where a subway is being proposed for Broadway, as far as Arbutus and with some promoters wanting it to terminate at UBC; in 2012 [...]