Liar, liar, liar……….
It seems the SkyTrain Lobby has started a wee blog to compete with Rail for the Valley, called Surrey needs SkyTrainAi??and true to form, if one supports light rail, one is a liar.
It is so sad to see so much time and effort is wasted on what is now an obsolete proprietary transit mode, but if it makes the SkyTrain lobby happy, so be with it. In the real world, SkyTrain is classed as a light metro and light-metro is now a ‘niche’ transport system, best suited for theme parks or airports. For the cost of a light-metro, one can build a heavy-rail metro, with the benefitAi??of higher capacity, or on the flip side, one can build several light-rail lines for the cost of one light-metro line, creating the ‘rail’ network that has proven to attract the all important motorist from the car.
What the SkyTrain/light-metro lobby do have, is a profound ignorance of modern public transit and 21st century public transit philosophy and instead pretend that truncated mini-metro lines, force fed bus passengers are a successful way of moving people. Successful light rail lines operating elsewhere are ignored, while every little LRT accident or problem is magnified to such a degree, one wonders how light rail survives today!
What drives the SkyTrain Lobby to continue their vehement attacks on LRT and its proponents is that modern light rail works and works very well; light-rail works so well in fact that it has made the SkyTrain proprietary light-metro mode obsolete, all but killing the market for light-metro. The only way a company can sell light-metro is to ensure that it doesn’t have to compete against light rail for a transit project, such as Vancouver, Honolulu, Kuala Lumpor and the few other cities that have built with light-metro. If modern LRT is to compete directly with SkyTrain and/or light-metro, light rail wins hands down, being far more cheaper to build and operate and much more flexible in operation. In short, one gets a far greater bang for your buck with LRT.
One will not hear that from the SkyTrain Lobby as their daily moan about modern LRT is becoming more and more tiresome with weary taxpayers, who are maxed out paying for prestigious light metro, either in the guise of SkyTrain or a truncated heavy-rail metro like the Canada line.
For the SkyTrain Lobby, money is no object and those who dare to say that there is a cheaper and better way to provide ‘rail‘ transit the refrain is: “liar, liar, pants………………”
I to have been continually insulted and called a liar when I post some positive tome about LRT on the various local blogs. It is fascinating the ability of the SkyTrain Lobby to pervert the news to such an extent, especially when there are only 7 such systems in existence and that number will be reduced to 5 when Toronto’s Scarborough Line and the Detroit Mugger Mover are closed down and retired.
I let myself get dragged into a debate with the Skytrain Lobbyists on SSP. They actually claim mini-metros can achieve same capacity of a full subway line, because the stations are small, and trains can run frequently!
These people are techno-fetishists. They cannot accept simple surface rail can do the job just as well.
Well, one of the Skytrain Lobbyist just told me, Toronto has no need for it’s subway network,. because the density isn’t there to support. Are these people for real? Replace the Yonge Subway with Skytrain?