Sorry City of Vancouver, Movia Automatic Light Metro is the Brand Name…….
……..Of What We Call SkyTrain And It Is A Proprietary Light Metro! Get Over It!
This was first published in 2021, but with all the hype about building the Broadway subway, the city of Vancouver has reverted back to to the old song that, what we call SkyTrain, is a successful brand and definitely not proprietary.
So back into the archives I go.
And yes, since this was published, it seems a Brazilian company has trademarked the name SkyTrain for their proprietary transit system, as their Emails remind me.
The term SkyTrain is used on a lot of elevated transit systems, notably Vancouver and Bangkok.
BTS Bangkok is a conventional railway, operating as a regional metro system and is no relation to the proprietary “SkyTrain” light-metro system in Vancouver.
The Kuranda SkyTrain or Sky-rail in Australia, is an aerial tramway.
In Taiwan, the Taoyaun airport people mover is called SkyTrain.
And I can go on.
It seems the SkyTrain “brand”, is nothing more than the local names for elevated transit lines.
Then of course the is Bombardier’s SkyTrain, a rubber tired airport people mover. As reported in RftV two years ago:
Bombardier Is Building SkyTrain at LAX…..But, It ain’t Our SkyTrain!
Bombardier’s SkyTrain, no relation to MALM.
What is the city of Vancouver playing at? Why the deliberate misinformation?
What they are calling the SkyTrain brand in Vancouver, is not a brand, rather the name of the regional light-metro system, chosen via radio contest by CKNW in 1985.
So, as a refresher, I will start with the brands that our light-metro system has been marketed under.
- Intermediate Capacity Transit System (ICTS)
- Advanced Light Rail Transit (ALRT)
- Advanced Light Metro (ALM)
- Advanced Rapid Transit (ART)
- Innovia Rapid Transit
- Movia Automatic Light Metro (MALM)
The various brands have been owned by four companies:
- The Urban Transit Development Corporation (UTDC)
- Lavalin
- Bombardier Inc.
- Alstom
Powered by Linear Induction Motors, MALM certainly is, as most unconventional railways are proprietary. The MALM system is not compatible in operation on any other railway, other than its family of now six systems (Toronto abandoned their ICTS system) and no other company has ‘off the shelf’ vehicles that can be used on the MALM system.
As stated before, Alstom now hold the technical patents and SNC Lavalin hold engineering patents.
The city of Vancouver should be wary, as this blatant attempt to mislead the public could come back and haunt them legally in the future.
