Bombardier Inc. Gets Quebec Financing
Bombardier Inc. has had some recent finance problems with their aerospace division and is using its rail division as collateral so to speak.
They better make money nowAi??because if they don’t perform the CDPQ will own 42.5 % after 5 years.
What does it mean for us on the West coast? Definitely more pressure to buy more SkyTrain cars, meaning more pressure to build more SkyTrain. A sort of use it or lose it proposition.
Bombardier and CDPQ Enter Into Definitive Agreement: CDPQ to Acquire 30% of Newly-Created BT Holdco for $1.5B
Source: Bombardier Transportation Nov 19, 2015
Bombardierannounced it has entered into a definitive agreement with CDPQ for a $1.5 billion convertible share investment in Bombardier Transportation’sAi??newly-created holding company, Bombardier Transportation (Investment) UK Ltd (“BT Holdco”). Under the terms of the agreement, CDPQ will acquire shares of BT Holdco convertible into a 30% common equity stake of BT Holdco, subject to annual adjustments related to performance. The transaction will be executed through a private placement and values Bombardier Transportation at $5 billion. The investment has been approved by the Boards of Directors of Bombardier and CDPQ.
Portland’s Streetcar, Connecting The Entire Community
This speaks for itself.
I must remind the unconvinced that going from 4,000 users a day to 15,000 users a day (in TransLink’s convoluted lexicon, this equates to over 30,000 boarding’s a day), which is a big deal in the U.S.A.
So here is a thought, instead of a $3 billion subway to Arbutus, with limited capacity, how about a $1 billion LRT/streetcar connecting UBC to BCIT and to Vancouver as far as Stanley Park?
Waterloo LRT Update
The following video shows the Waterloo LRT under construction.
Ottawa Update – The Trams Are Coming, The Trams Are Comming………..
From our friend Haveacow in Ottawa, an update on the Ottawa light rail.
http://www.masstransitmag.com/
Paving Paradise – Has the Premier Washed Her Hands of Public Transit?
The grossly overbuilt Hwy 17 & 99 interchange. Why build just one overpass, when you can build three?
This is the legacy of the BC Liberals: gold plated highway and bridge construction, designed to funnel huge
portions of taxpayer’s money into the pockets of corporate friends.
As pointed out many times before, the Expo, Millennium, and CanadaAi?? mini-metro lines and the soon to be completed Evergreen Line (the Evergreen Line is the unfinished portion of the Millennium Line) were or are nothing more than vanity projects of who ever the political party was in power at the time. Rapid transit was built to cut ribbons for pre election photo-op’s; reward political friends and insiders with large construction contracts and sooth the voters angst about a lack of public transit. Ridership was assured by recycling large numbers of bus riders onto the mini-metro.
It is now clear that the Premier’s transit plebiscite was to stall transit investment in the region and with no real reforms coming to TransLink, especially with Minister Fassbender in charge. it is business as usual in BC.
Both the SkyTrain Broadway subway and the poor man’s SkyTrain being planned for in Surrey will not only be extremely expensive, they will be controversial, so much so, that they could be vote losers at election time. So it is clear that the BC Liberals have resorted to the tried and true “blacktop” politics that have won so many elections in the past.
A good example is the hugely expensive and vastly over engineered Highway 17 expansion project in South Delta, which is in the constituency currently held by the independent MLA, Viki Huntington, which the BC Liberals hope to blacktop their way to an election win in the next election.
The needlessly expensive and massiveAi?? bridge, replacing the Massey Tunnel, is another sweetener for the South Delta and South Surrey voter, even though after $3.5 billion investment, it will move gridlock about 5 km further down Hwy. 99. Never fear, the MoT is going to expandAi?? Hwy. 99 to 6 or 8 lanes, which will create traffic chaos for the Oak and Knight Street Bridges.
Endemic gridlock and congestion is coming to Richmond with the current highway’s planning.
Of course the BC Liberals are not expanding Gordon Campbell’s vanity project, the Canada line, simply if they do, it will spotlight how incompetent the original construction was and underline the fact that the Canada Line is the only heavy-rail metro in the world, built as a light metro, which has less capacity than a simple streetcar costing up to one tenth to build!
The Canada Line and the Evergreen Line has showed the BC Liberals that “blacktop” politics is not only are cheaper than TransLink’s transit expansion, it gives the BC Liberal government more opportunity to give ‘spreadin around money’ to political friends and insiders. Hence now all the talk of “road pricing” and “congestion fees”, to help fill government coffers for more lolly to divvy up among friends and insiders. The anti-car crowd love that kind of talk, but so does the premier, seeing even more money to blacktop more farmland to more election wins!
Joni Mitchell’sAi?? lyrics from “Big Yellow Taxi” have never rung so true; “Don’t it always seem to go; That you don’t know what you’ve got; ‘Till it’s gone; They paved paradise; And put up a parking lot.
More and more, the Premier seems to have washed her hands of public transit, seeing that there is no political gain to be made and in fact there is a lot more political capital to be made paving paradise.
Calgary Transit launches 4-car C-Train service; capacity to increase by 33%
Calgary Transit launches 4-car C-Train service; capacity to increase by 33%
Today, Calgary’s C-Train is carrying over 333,000 passengers a day and is the most heavily used new build LRT system in North America. No wonder the SkyTrain lobby hate the C-Train so much!
Also worth noting that modern LRV’s being delivered to Calgary, able to carry 200 passengers cost about the same as ART Mk.2 car which can carry about 110 persons, crush loaded.
Calgary Transit currently operates as a single fare zone, with a flat rate fare for all standard service including bus, BRT, and the C-Train. The cost of an adult 1 zone fare is $3.15, a monthly adult pass is $99.00. No need for an extremely expensive Compass Card and fare gate system.
Simplicity and affordability is just not in TransLink’s lexicon.
More and more, the SkyTrain ALRT/ART rapid transit system becomes the Edsel of public transit.
Port Mann Fumble
The Port Mann Bridge is a prime example where a government replaces a perfectly good bridge with a multi billion dollar vanity project.
Other examples were the Expo Line, the Millennium Line, the Canada Line, the Fast Ferries, and most recently the BC Place retractable roof.
With the Port Mann Bridge vanity project, would it not have been better to just twin the Port Mann spend the balance on a new road/rail bridge replacing the Patullo and the decrepit Fraser River Rail Bridges?
Ai??
From Integrity BC:
Irene Kerr, president and CEO, Transportation Investment Corporation took exception to one point in our recent commentary on the reckless rush to sign the Port Mann Bridge deal, writing in a letter to The Province newspaper:
ai???The total budget project is and always has been $3.3 billion. That’s the only budget figure ever approved.ai???
That may be true for the ai???budget,ai??? but it’s not true for the first, second or third estimates, unless the government was fudging the numbers to get public buy-in.
So once again, here are the original estimates, starting with the 2006/07 BC Budget (caps our emphasis):
B. C. Budget and Fiscal Plan 2006/07ai??i??2008/09, February 21, 2006:
ai???Among the major components of the Lower Mainland plan are improvements to roads and bridges referred to as the North Fraser Perimeter Road…estimated to cost $400 million; a new South Fraser Perimeter Road with a projected cost of $800 million; and, the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge with AN ESTIMATED COST OF $1.5 BILLION.ai???
…
Vancouver Sun, January 31, 2006: ai???$1.5 BILLION IS FOR THE TWINNING OF THE PORT MANN BRIDGE AND THE HIGHWAY THAT LEADS TO IT.ai???ai???This includes construction of an additional two lanes on Highway 1 and the Port Mann Bridge twinning, which will mean a second, new bridge supported by cables. It includes bicycle lanes and an engineering plan allowing for the future inclusion of a light-transit railway line when merited by the population and traffic.ai???
…
Bidders line up to twin the Port Mann Bridge and collect the tolls, Vancouver Sun, June 26, 2007:ai???The government estimates the cost of all this at $1.5 billion in 2007 dollars. Given the way construction costs are rising, THE FINAL TAB WILL PROBABLY EXCEED $2 BILLION by the scheduled completion in 2013.ai???
…
P3 Agreement Finally Reached for Port Mann Bridge, ReNew Canada Magazine, February 6, 2009:ai???But the estimated cost at that time (based on information from Partnerships BC) was $1.6 billion. THE COST NOW? AROUND $2.4 BILLION.ai???
…
For Irene Kerr’s complete letter-to-the-editor:http://blogs.theprovince.com/ai??i??/letters-juno-beach-remembraai??i??/
…
Sources:www.bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/ai??i??/managingsuccessmakingthemostofbritai??i??
www.canada.com/story_print.htmlai??i??
http://www.canada.com/story.htmlai??i??
http://renewcanada.net/ai??i??/p3-agreement-finally-reached-for-ai??i??/
http://www2.news.gov.bc.ca/ai??i??/2007OTP0151-001241-Attachment1ai??i??
Annual Tram/LRT Statistics
The following are the annual tram/LRT ridership statistics courtesy of the Eurotrams group.
In contradiction to what many local politicians; bureaucrats and academics would have us believe, modern LRT and or tram can carry large numbers of transit customers and do in annual revenue service.
Let us forget the many “man-of-straw arguments” against LRT by the usual suspects, modern LRT works well ans can cater to high density traffic on a daily basis.
1. St Petersburg: tram 476 mill pass p.a., 205 route km.
2. Budapest: tram 396 mill pass p.a., 156 route km.
3. Prague: tram and light rail 333 mill pass p.a., 142 route km.
4. Bucharest: tram and light rail 322 mill pass p.a., 145 route km.
5. Vienna: tram and light rail 294 mill pass p.a., 177 route km.
6. Warsaw: tram 270 mill pass p.a., 120 route km.
7. Moscow: tram 252 mill pass p.a., 163 route km.
8. Paris: tram 233 mill pass p.a., 104 route km.
Note: Paris tram figure includes Translohr rubber-tyred guided vehicle9. Zagreb: tram 214 mill pass p.a., 148 route km.
10. Cologne: light rail 210 mill pass p.a. 195 route km.
11. Hong Kong: tram and light rail 206 mill pass p.a. (estimated), 49 route km.
12. Zurich: tram 205 mill pass p.a., 126 route km.
13. Brno: tram 188 mill pass p.a., 139 route km.
14. Yekaterinburg: tram 180 mill pass p.a., 180 route km.
15. Melbourne: tram 177 mill pass p.a., 250 route km.
16. Berlin: tram 173 mill pass p.a., 192 route km.
17. Stuttgart: light rail 170 mill pass p.a., 192 route km.
18. Dresden: tram 145 mill pass p.a., 134 route km.
19. Istanbul: tram 140 mill pass p.a.
20. Gothenburg: tram 140 mill pass p.a., 144 route km.
21. Leipzig: tram 134 mill pass p.a., 148 route km.
22. Amsterdam: tram 130 mill pass p.a., 138 route km.
23. Brussels: tram 123 mill pass p.a., 139 route km.
24. Toronto: tram 105 mill pass p.a., 150 route km.
25. Munich: tram 105 mill pass p.a., 79 route km.
LRT & BRT For London – Ontario That Is
A Steam Delight For a Stormy Saturday
We have all seen the Bluebell railway, mostly incognito in movies and television shows and now some videos to watch the Bluebell in action.
From Wikipedia.
The Bluebell Railway is a heritage line running for 11Ai??mi (17.7Ai??km) along the border between East and West Sussex, England. It uses steam trains which operate between Sheffield Park and East Grinstead, with intermediate stations at Horsted Keynes & Kingscote.
The first preserved standard gauge steam-operated passenger railway in the world to operate a public service,the Society ran its first train on 7 August 1960, less than three years after the line from East Grinstead to Lewes had been closed by British Railways.
On 23 March 2013, the Bluebell Railway commenced running through to its new East Grinstead terminus station. At East Grinstead there is a connection to the UK National Network, the first connection of the Bluebell Railway to the national network (in 50 years) since the Horsted Keynes ai??i?? Haywards Heath line closed in 1963.
Today the railway is managed and run largely by volunteers. Having preserved a number of steam locomotives even before the cessation of steam service on British mainline railways in 1968, today it has the largest collection (over 30) of steam locomotives in the UK after the National Railway Museum. The Society also has a collection of almost 150 carriages and wagons, most of them pre-1939.
Please watch.
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