1. (in Hinduism and Buddhism) the sum of a person’s actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences: “a buddha is believed to have completely purified his karma”
The following is from the LRPPro:
Alstom has a problem on their hands with their Citadis Spirits LRV’s and they are not going to get into the LRT market in NA over it. They are no longer building the Flexity after TTC order and Kitchener will need 18 of the for the next phase in 5-10 years.
Toronto has them on Line 6 that has 18 of them that are have issues at this time. Mississauga has 27 at this time and will have up to 45 when the full line is built. Mississauga LRV’s will not be in service until late 28 to 30. May see testing late this year or early 27 considering it was to happen in 24.
It seems there is a problem with Alstom’s trams in Canada, which begs the question why?
In Zwei’s opinion, part of the problem is politcal interference.
In the Canadian politic, politcans wanted photo-ops, instead of transit workhorses and demanded politically prestigious transit systems to be built.
Transit systems are not toy trains and cost a lot of money to operate, money that has not been budgeted for by the very same politcans.
It seems karma has struck those politicians as they play the blame game.
Lack of maintenance is just not a problem back east, as TransLink is playing the “deferred maintenance” game in Metro Vancouver with both the bus and light metro fleets.
That $16 billion plus extending the Expo and Millennium Lines a mere 21.7 km may have something to do about it.
Again politicians have not dealt with the real issues, rather just look ahead to cutting ribbons on transit projects for the next election.
Those advocating for more SkyTrain, never mention the now $90 million funding needed annually in additional operational and maintenance costs, once the extension project is operational.
With Alstom selling the Kingston manufacturing plant, home to the proprietary Movia Automatic Light Metro system (SkyTrain) and the current ills which seem more centered on Canadian practices than the products, Alstom, with Canada being a very small market, may pull out of Canada completely.
That would be a major black eye to Canada, especially in these delicate times.
1. the action or crime of making a false spoken statement damaging to a person’s reputation: “he is suing the TV company for slander”
verb
1. make false and damaging statements about (someone): “they were accused of slandering the head of state”
The continued debate about the trains that operate on the Expo and Millennium Lines continues.
The SkyTrain for Surrey folks have crossed the line on this issue and Rail for the Valley call for a retraction of their recent News Release or face possible legal action.
The claim that Rail for the Valley and others “fabricated” certain facts is false.
Skytrain to Surrey also points out that somehow Rail for the valley “Strangled the Broadway Subway by 20 years“; “Sabotaged Surrey’s rapid transit, pushing for an inferior surface LRT“; and “Distorted public trust“; are false and deliberately misleading and constitute slander.
According to SkyTrain to Surrey:
The consequences of this misinformation weren’t just academic—they were astronomical. These false claims were the primary weapons used to:
Strangle the Broadway Subway: originally slated for completion in the mid-2000s, this critical regional artery was delayed by 20 years. (This statement is completely false RftV)
Sabotage Surrey’s rapid transit, pushing for an inferior surface LRT that would have offered lower capacity and lower speeds. (This statement is completely false – RftV)
Distort public trust, forcing planners to defend proven technology against recycled myths — again and again and again. (RftV would be ecstatic to have this sort of influence – RftV)
SkyTrain is the name of the regional light-metro system which was chosen via a radio contest in 1985 on CKNW Radio. The SkyTrain light metro system which consists of conventional trains that operate on the Canada Line and the unconventional, proprietary trains that operate on the Expo and Millennium Lines. These trains have been deemed proprietary since the first ALRT Trains operated in 1986.
The trains used on the Expo and Millennium Lines have had four owners, the Urban Transportation Development Corporation, a province of Ontario Crown Corporation; Lavalin; Bombardier and now Alstom.
The proprietary railway has been marketed under at least six names including, 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).
These trains can only operate within their small six system family and cannot operate on conventional railways or transit systems.
Originally seven systems were built, but only six remain in operation and no new system has been sold in the past 25 years.
The technical patents for the proprietary railway are owned by Alstom (inherited from Bombardier) and possibly SNC Lavalin may still may own engineering patents, inherited from Lavalin.
According to a News Release from Kuala Lumpur:
” A consortium made up of CRRC ZELC, CRRC Rolling Stock Centre (M) Sdn Bhd and CKM Landas MRO Sdn Bhd has surfaced as the front runner for a lucrative RM1.1 billion contract to manufacture, supply, deliver, test and commission 26 sets of four train cars for Prasarana Malaysia Bhd to be used for the Kelana Jaya light rail transit (LRT) lin“
What is being done is not a surprise as it is a replacement order with new cars being custom built by the CRRC to operate on Kelana Jay Line, which begs many questions. The same is true of many proprietary railways, where the original manufacturers has gone out of business. Germany’s famed Schwebebahn monorail is a good example where new cars were constructed to replace old stock on the only line, which started operation in 1903.
It should be of note that the CRRC is not marketing the cars, rather they are building cars for a replacement order. The proprietary system is deemed darted and unsalable, with no sales for a quarter century.
Kuala Lumpur has three rapid transit systems.
1) The now called Mass Rapid Transit System which is a conventional light metro.
2) The Kelana Jaya Line, which uses Bombardier’s ART system.
3) Klang Valley Rapid Transit metro system, a proprietary monorail system.
It was reported that officials wanted a monorail for the Kelana Jaya Line but Bombardier and SNC Lavalin were involved in a scandal where they paid “success fees” to senior bureaucrats and politicians, to build with ART, which Bombardier were having huge issues trying to sell the proprietary railway. This was ground zero for SNC Lavalin’s (they owned engineering patents) international bribery scandal.
Also of note the next rapid transit line built in Kuala Lumpur was indeed the monorail!
From further research, it seems CRRC is doing this with Alstom’s permission, which leads to three points.
1. Alstom either knew they were getting nothing from Kuala Lumpur. Due to their Bombardier connection. That they didn’t even get one of the contracts for the rehab and conversion of 2 car (sections) trainsets to 4 car (sections) trainsets, Converting the fleet’s 2 car trains (2 section trains, the 200 models). Their people invented the tech, you think they would got something.
2. That Alstom doesn’t care about the tech itself, maybe because that are not actively marketing the system and plan to abandon production after the Vancouver order is completed.
3. That Alstom is “washing its hands” of MALM as they plan to discontinue production and any sort of legal action would be counter productive, especially with the previous dubious history. Alstom is selling the production facility and test track in Kingston Ontario and the CNR has applied to abandon the spur line servicing the facility.
Alstom did get the contract for Kuala Lumpur’s airport people mover cars.
Lastly, the fact that a company known for poor quality trains and intellectual property theft, CRRC, is going to be SkyTrain for Surrey and Vancouver’s champion to prove that their technology isn’t proprietary is a good joke on on both. Nothing like being beholden to Communist China for your rail transit technology. The CRRC ‘s winning of the contract was most likely an, “anybody but Bombardier contract” or in this case, “anybody but Alstom contract”.
The big question, which SkyTrain for Surrey does not ask is “Would these car be legal for operation in Canada?“.
Rail for the Valley would again remind everyone, the proprietary trains, operating on the Expo and Millennium Lines is just one of the seven systems built in almost fifty years. Today, only six systems remain in operation and not one sale of a new system in the past 25 years. The proprietary railway is today, as it was in the past unsalable, which illustrates the many expensive issues that comes with a proprietary railway.
Rail for the Valley demands SkyTrain for Surrey to retract their claims in their recent News Release!
The ongoing rift between Canada and the USA will have generational effects and will never go back to normal, as President Trump has forever changed how people behave. Trump and MAGA is a prelude for great change in BC.
The ongoing climate change with summer’s heat dome and subsequent wild fires shows we cannot go back to normal.
The now annual atmospheric rivers resulting in massive floods and land slides, demonstrates we cannot go back to normal.
Metro Vancouver’s regional transit system has been greatly affected by events since 2020, as thousands of of people have changed their travel habits with many either working or studying from home. This has put a massive finical strain on TransLink, which now claims huge annual deficits.
TransLink seemed OK operating empty buses, without any hint of a “plan B” for attracting new ridership. TransLink is now asking the provincial and federal governments for more money to to service its continued declining ridership, at the same time and to keep huge executive salaries being paid.
TransLink and the Mayor’s Council on Transit with their pet $4 billion, 5.6 km Broadway subway and their $6 billion+, 16 km extension to the Expo a Line, despite clear evidence that both projects are nothing more than “gold-plated” prestige projects, have all but bankrupted TransLink. Both projects, designed to further the profits of land speculators and land developers who support many of the mayors at election time. Both projects will only improve transit on paper and nothing more.
The proposed Broadway subway is being built on a route without enough ridership to justify its construction and the flip flop from LRT to light-metro in Surrey, will be again be built on a route where the ridership will not justify construction costs. An estimate of $100 million annually for increased operating costs, which translates to increased annual subsidies for both projects, has not been budgeted for.
The so called “business cases” for these two transit projects were a sham and continues the practice of business cases in BC being politcal documents and not technical documents!
Questionable ridership projections are based on future condo tower development, based on foreign investment and this is not guaranteed! The already huge cost does not include the proprietary Movia Automatic Light Metro (erroneously called SkyTrain) cars, nor the inflationary cost increases for cement and specialty steel, needed for subway and viaduct construction.
NEWS FLASH: TransLink’s ridership dropped 1.5% in 2025!
It is no secret that the often renamed and now called Movia Automatic Light Metro (MALM), as used on the Expo and Millennium Lines is obsolete, as it has been obsolete since the late 1980’s, being more expensive to build, maintain and operate than its chief competitor, light rail.
Only seven such systems have been built in the past 50 years, with only six still in operation and only two are seriously used for urban transit. despite the system being rebranded six times!
Today, modern light-metro systems such as Ottawa and Seattle use light rail vehicles, because of their cost effectiveness and their ability to operate on lesser rights-of-ways, yet because MALM uses Linear Induction Motors, it is impossible to use LRV’s on the proprietary MALM system.
MALM cannot be built cheaply, nor can it be operated and maintained cheaply. The taxpayer pays a first class cost for a second class system and this cannot continue in the future.
The recent sale of Bombardier to Alstom puts into question the future availability of MALM cars and spare parts! Production of niche transit systems like the proprietary MALM light metro, maybe discontinued. Alstom has already shown that it has little use for proprietary transit systems by discontinuing production of the TVR guided bus used in several European cities, leaving operators scrambling for spare parts.
Alstom has offered for sale the MALM production site in Kingston Ontario, with the all important test track; the CNR has applied for the abandonment of the spur line for the production facility.
Vancouver is now the only customer for MALM, as the systems built in Korea and Malaysia have mired Bombardier and SNC Lavalin (the patent holders of the proprietary railway) in legal misadventure, due in part, to healthy “success fees” paid to lobbyists and politicians, to ensure MALM was to be built!
The Broadway subway and the Expo Line extension to Langley extensions to the SkyTrain light-metro system are grossly overpriced for what they will do as light ridership on both extensions will greatly increase operating costs. Broadway, current peak hour transit customer flows are under 4,000 persons per hour per direction (pphpd). The North American standard for building a subway is a transit route with customer flows of at least 15,000 pphpd and operational subsidies increase dramatically with smaller customer flows.
Despite deliberate and misleading statements by TransLink and the City of Vancouver, Broadway is not the busiest transit corridor in Canada, as a representative of TransLink stated in a letter, Broadway was “our region’s most over crowded bus route“
TransLink and the Mayor’s Council on Transit have never been honest with the long term costs of the project, which over a fifty year period, will have grave implications for the metro Vancouver and BC taxpayers.
According to the Toronto Transit Commission, who have a long experience operating subways, the Broadway subway to Arbutus, alone, will add over $40 million annually to TransLink’s operating costs.
The fifty year costs for subways and grade separated transit are staggering, estimated more than $1 billion per km for the subway portion and just under $600 million per km for the elevated sections of the light metro system. Already the original Expo Line desperately needs a minimum $2 billion to rehab (full rehab about $3 billion) the system and increase capacity beyond Transport Canada’s Operating Certificate maximum of 15,000 pphpd.
TransLink has ignored these costs, for fear of pointed questions about the massive future costs including tax increases.
The following is the 50 year costs of various transit modes, by Ontario’s MetroLinx.
Spending $16 billion for 21.7 km of light-metro pales, when one could instead invest under $2 billion on both, the proposed Fraser Valley Rail project reinstating a 130km Vancouver to Chilliwack passenger service and $4 billion rehabbing the E&N, reinstating a Victoria to Courtney 183 km passenger service and still have $10 billion left over to invest in regional transit projects in Metro Vancouver and beyond.
The current economic crisis will create long term financial hardships for taxpayers, not just TransLink. Even though there are generous government support, TransLink and its ossified bureaucracy still squanders monies on questionable projects, instead of improving the core service.
The taxpayer will very soon, be in no mood, to fund Metro Vancouver’s gold-plated, prestige transit projects, nor will the taxpayer and the transit user be willing to pay higher fares and other taxes for transit that about 85% of the population will not use.
As Premier, you must step in and say “enough” as TransLink and the Mayor’s Council on Transit have isolated themselves from public oversight and ignore public debate.
In 2015, 62% percent of the people voted against TransLink’s demands for money, yet they have done nothing but play the taxpayer and voter for fools by offering virtually the same plan with no real public input. TransLink’s public oversight is nothing but a charade; a smokescreen to carry on with their hugely expensive rapid transit agenda.
In our current economic climate, TransLink must plan for affordable transit projects; build user friendly transit projects and refrain from doing the same expensive thing over and over again hoping for different results.
TransLink needs to rethink its planning; the Mayor’s Council on Transit needs to rethink how transit is provided and funded; and the provincial government must rethink its rubber stamping Metro Vancouver’s questionable transit planning.
The taxpayer and the transit customer deserve far better than the current sham planning, complete lack of oversight and failure to correct the current mess maybe felt at the polls in the next election three years hence.
After 40 years, the taxpayer is still held hostage to expensive and myopic light-metro planning, based largely on an obsolete light metro system.
In Metro Vancouver, The SkyTrain light metro system has had an interesting issue, no noticeable modal shift from car to train.
Yes, the light metro system carries a lot of customers but the vast majority have transferred from bus to light-metro. The bus system has been so designed to feed every bus customer onto the light metro system, which in turn may account for the steady decline of ridership on the regional transit system since 2018!
Instead of planning bus routes to meed the demands of the customer, bus routes are planned to meet the demands of politicians and that is to increase ridership numbers on the light metro system!
The following article is of interest, where £19 billion (CAD$35 billion) invested in the Elizabeth Line only saw a 1% modal shift from car to train!
Will the now over $16 billion investment in the Expo and Millennium Lines, actually take cars off the road?
Probably not.
Sadly, SkyTrain has not yet shown any noticeable modal shift from car to transit and $16 billion; 21.7 km of new line probably will have the same result as the newly built Elizabeth Line.
Transport Leader Newsletter and Blog | Helping Transport Leaders Transform Mobility 11h
The Elizabeth Line in London has received rave reviews. But has it failed in its most important metric? The Elizabeth Line post-opening evaluation has been released: https://lnkd.in/gWF-TCbQ The Line carries 800,000 people every day. It’s the UK’s busiest rail service. Journey times dropped. Crowding reduced.
Accessibility improved dramatically across the network. But there’s an uncomfortable truth buried in the data. 🚇
Only 1% of riders switched from driving. Just 1%. Think about that for a moment. London spent nearly £19 billion on world-class public transport. The trains are fast and comfortable. Stations are modern and accessible. The service runs frequently and reliably. And almost nobody left their car at home.
80% of Elizabeth Line users simply switched from other trains.
They were already public transport riders. This isn’t a failure of the Elizabeth Line itself. The project delivered amazing results for London. But it exposes a hard truth about transport planning. 🚗
Here’s what the Elizabeth Line DID achieve:
• 9 million minutes saved per weekday across the network
• 71,000 new homes built near stations
• 11% reduction in step-free journey times
• Reduced crowding on other rail lines
These are real wins. They matter for people’s lives and London’s economy. But mode shift from cars? Almost zero.
This result shows we need both carrots and sticks. Better public transport alone won’t get people to give up their cars. We also need to make driving less appealing. Subscribe to my newsletter at transportlc.org/subscribe for insights like this every week.
Yes, SkyTrain the most successful transit system in the world, no one wanted to buy!
Interesting article in the Hive, which is basically the mouthpiece for TransLink.
The problem with SkyTrain is that it was a politcal decision and now with almost 45 years of deliberate misinformation and pro SkyTrain propaganda, the local media, especially with lazier younger reporters and journalists just do not do any research and print what they are told to print.
Here the old adage comes true; “if you repeat a lie often enough, the public become to believe it.“
The trains used on Vancouver’s Expo and Millennium Lines us the the proprietary ICTS/ALRT/ART/Innovia RT/MALM system, which has had four owners, the Ontario government, throught the UTDC, Lavain, Bombardier and Alstom. Only seven such systems were built and only six remain in operation.
The four systems that Bombardier sold, when they owned the patents, were fraught with controversy!
1 ) Korea, where Bombardier paid success fees to both bureaucrats and politicians to ensure a sale. The fallout from this was lawsuits and criminal investigations with the result of irreparable damage to Canadian Industries trying to do business in Korea with the scandal.
2) Malaysia, where Bombardier and SNC Lavalin paid success fees to bureaucrats and politicians including the prime minister to ensure the sale of ART for Kuala Lumpur for their second rapid transit system. This scandal started the whole SNC Lavalin and Bombardier bribery scandal, with hints that the Prime minister of Canada was involved.
3) New York, but in the USA all rapid transit systems being built, using federal funds must be peer reviewed and the JFK airTrain was duly peer reviewed and it failed badly, being far too expensive to build and not well designed. To keep Bombardier from “losing face” internationally with this fiasco, the Canadian Prime Minister authorized the Canadian Overseas Development Bank to fund the system.
4) China bought one strictly to obtain LIM technology and has never built another. Hint, ICTS/ALRT/ART use attractive LIMs, while Maglevs use repulsive LIMs and there is a technological void between the two.
No SkyTrain MALM system has been sold in now over 20 years, in fact there is zero interest, even when Bombardier would add on the LIM option at not extra cost!
What Zwei sees is that with Alstom soon going to cease production of MALM (SkyTrain), as the already have the manufacturing centre, including the all important test track, up for sale. There will be no more cars made and specialty parts will be expensive because they will have to be custom built.
As light metro costs increase and the fear that transitioning to light rail would expose the SkyTrain as a massive scandal, due to the porkies sold to the public, including faux business cases and bidding processes by all levels of government, it is hoped that BRT will squeak in unnoticed until all politcans and bureacrats involved be enjoying their generous pension plans and SkyTrain fades into the past.
Mark V train at SkyTrain’s Stadium-Chinatown Station. (Kenneth Chan)
In the early 1980s, the Government of British Columbia made a choice that would later have a profound impact on how people in Metro Vancouver move and how the region is shaped and structured for growth.
Zwei Replies: The choice for the proprietary SkyTrain was a horse trade between the Social Credit government and the government of Ontario, to sell the unsalable ICTS (ALRT) light metro system, manufactured by their Crown Corporation, the Urban Transportation, Development Corporation and in return got the use of the then famous “Blue Machine” to win the next provincial election, which the social Credit had a frail one seat majority.
It chose to build the region’s first modern rail rapid transit line using the latest state-of-the-art innovations in fully automatic train control technology, as well as new Canadian-made linear induction motor (LIM) train propulsion technology.
Zwei replies: Actually the ICTS/ALRT system used the dated components from the failed Krauas Maffei TransUrban MAGLEV people mover under development in Ontario.
LIMs on the underside of the SkyTrain vehicles used on the Expo and Millennium lines interact with a continuous aluminum strip down the centre of the tracks to create an electromagnetic reaction that propels the trains forward.
In contrast, the SkyTrain vehicles on the Canada Line use conventional electric motors — akin to most subways elsewhere in the world, like New York City, London, Hong Kong, Toronto, and many other systems. In some ways, the Canada Line trains have more similarities with a Tesla car than the trains on the Expo and Millennium lines, with an electric source powering onboard motors that push the train forward.
Zwei Replies: A rather bizarre comparison, the cars used on the Canada Line are standard railway Electrical Multiple Units and do not operate via a battery.
LIMs are well-suited for the Expo and Millennium lines because they move trains using electromagnetic propulsion instead of relying on the grip of steel wheels. This means trains can accelerate quickly, climb steeper hills, and run reliably in rain, snow, or leaf-covered tracks. As well, this provides superior rapid acceleration and deceleration for a system with relatively closely spaced stations.
Zwei Replies: Partly true, but LIM’s were only recommended for railways with continuous grades exceeding 10% and have nothing to do with acceleration or deceleration, which conforms to customer comfort. There are no such grades on the SkyTrain system.
Diagram showing the differences between linear induction motors (non-adhesion drive system) and conventional rotary motors (adhesion drive system). (Kawasaki Heavy Industries)
The narrow air gap between a SkyTrain car’s linear induction motors and the aluminum reaction plate on the tracks. (TransLink)
With fewer moving parts beneath the passenger floor than conventional motor technology, LIM-equipped trains generally have lower maintenance needs and can be built with a lower overall profile. This reduced underfloor height allows for smaller tunnels and slimmer elevated guideway structures, and works especially well with fully automated, high-frequency metro systems like SkyTrain. This was a key consideration for the Expo Line, which reused Canadian Pacific’s former freight tunnel — the tight Dunsmuir Tunnel, built in 1932 — for the downtown Vancouver segment between Stadium-Chinatown Station and Waterfront Station.
Zwei Replies: Most of this is untrue. The Mk.1 Cars were the standard vehicles for the ICTS system and similar vehicles were used in Toronto and Detroit. Detroit still uses MK.1 cars which are virtually identical to Vancouver’s MK.1s. The name ICTS was changed to ALRT to fool the locals and media that SkyTrain was new, it was not.
The Detroit ICTS system, almost identical to Vancouver’s MK.1 cars.
But no system is perfect; every advantage has its trade-offs.
The trains on the Expo and Millennium lines have a less-than-optimal narrow width compared with modern trains, which can reduce interior comfort and limit accessibility. This design constraint stems from the early legacy decision to size the Expo Line around the dimensions of the Dunsmuir Tunnel, a choice that continues to influence vehicle design today. By contrast, the Canada Line — built as a completely separate system — uses trains that are roughly half a metre wider, a difference that has a noticeable impact on interior space, comfort, and passenger flow.
Zwei Replies: Again not true, the MK.1 cars were not designed for the operation in the Dunsmuir Tunnel as they were standard ICTS/ALRT cars. The Canada Line is a heavy-rail railway that uses standard EMU’s!
1982 planning map to repurpose Canadian Pacific’s former Dunsmuir Tunnel for SkyTrain’s Expo Line segment in downtown Vancouver. (TransLink)
Another downside is that LIMs on the Expo and Millennium lines can use more electricity than conventional motors and waste some energy as heat in the track, which can, on occasion, be seen from the track’s aluminum strip as rising steam during rainfall. LIMs also require extra equipment built into the guideway, which requires very precise measurements for installation, and adds to the initial capital and ongoing maintenance costs.
Zwei Replies: Today LIMs (and the SkyTrain light-metro system uses the wrong sort of “attractive” LIM) costs more to operate and maintain than a modern rotary electrical motor.
Trains on the Expo and Millennium lines also tend to emit more noise while in motion, particularly the high-pitched whine associated with the original Mark I fleet, which is now a model being retired and replaced by the new generation of Mark V trains. This sound does not come from wheel-and-rail contact, but from electromagnetic noise generated by the LIMs.
Zwei Replies: The MK.5 Trains are a TransLink name only as the 5 car train-sets use the Innovia 300, 5-car light metro train-sets, designed by Bombardier to accept either LIM or standard electrical motors. The entire package was sold under the Movia Automatic Light Metro (MALM) system.
Mark I car for SkyTrain’s Expo Line in 1985. (TransLink)
At the time in the early 1980s, some wondered whether the then-futuristic technological combination of driverless trains and LIM applied for use on the scope of a metro rail network was a gamble — too ambitious, too expensive, and too unconventional.
Zwei Replies: ICTS/ALRT (SkyTrain) was unsalable, but as mentioned before and the choice to use the proprietary ICTS/ALRT system was politcal and had little to do with the system being automatic.
The TTC Accelerated Transit Study (ARTS) and the IBB Study found that; “ICTS coast anything up to ten times to install than a conventional light rail line to install for the same capacity, or put another way, cost more than a heavy-rail subway to instal with four times its capacity!
But over the subsequent decades, both technologies, particularly full automation, have been increasingly adopted on other large systems elsewhere in the world, with Vancouver being an early pioneer.
Zwei Replies: Not so fast. The first automatic (driverless railway) was the London’s post office Railway, opened in 1927. London’s Victoria Line, opened in 1968 is considered the firs automatic metro in the world. The big problem of automatic railways is maintenance costs and automatic operation requires a massive and expensive amount of preventative maintenance to guarantee operation.
The legacy of SkyTrain and light-metro for metro Vancouver is that to date, taxpayers have paid (including the current $16 billion/21.7 km expansion program) about $30 billion for SkyTrain light metro, fully two thirds more than what a conventional light rail system would have cost and with light rail having a higher capacity!
A simple station incorporating a passing loop on the Harlingen–Nieuweschans railway, with roofed bicycle storage for customers
Rail transport in the Netherlands uses a dense railway network which connects nearly all major towns and cities. The network totals 3,223 route km (2,003 mi) on 6,830 kilometres (4,240 mi) of track, of which three-quarters of the lines have been electrified.
What is not focused on is the number of secondary, non electrified regional railways, operated to cater to local customers.
Over 400,000 people live within the E&N catchment area, (over 500,000 if one includes the Port Alberni branch line) which only travel mode is the car. This ignored by those who want to turn the E&N into a glorified bike trail, who continue to pander the all too common “fake news” and “alternative facts” trying to drum up support for their cause.
The ‘Cycle’ lobby likes to point to the Netherlands as some sort of cycle utopia that BC should aspire to, yet they fail to recognize that Netherlands has an extensive passenger rail network. Also forgotten by the more ardent members of the ‘Cycle” lobby is that a large portion of the Netherlands is flat and cycling is far more easier for the population.
When this is mentioned for BC’s rail debates, especially on the E&N railway issue, when comparing the E&N to European regional railways they cycle lobby point out that the population of European counties is much, much greater than Vancouver island, but never admit to the fact that most European regional railways operate in areas where population densities are on par with the E&N of Rail for the Valley’s interurban service.
Of course, portions of these railways share track with the mainline, but large portions of the route, mostly single track, services small towns and villages, providing quality public transport.
What the various anti-rail lobby’s ignore is that regional railways are so designed to operate in areas of lesser populations, are largely single tracked and non electrification. They are much cheaper to operate and maintain than mainline railways, yet they provide a vital function of offering a viable and proven alternative to the car.
It is time to realize that regional railways are vital to sustain BC in this time of Global Warming and Climate Change and those who fail to realize this are strangling the province with dated perceptions and deliberate misleading information, punctuated with “man of straw arguments”.
It is time both the federal and provincial governments stop playing trains with high speed rail (which will never happen in the Pacific North West) and invest in what is needed, a program of regional railways, providing a user-friendly and affordable alternative to the car.
Single track stub terminal station at Leeuwarden.(Harlingen–Nieuweschans Railway)
Scheemda Station. Please note, cyclists use bicycles to commute to the station to take the train!(Harlingen–Nieuweschans Railway)
A single stub terminal station at Stavoren.(Leeuwarden–Stavoren Railway)
Franeker Station. Simple platform station with minimal amenities.(Harlingen–Nieuweschans Railway)
The problem in Canada, with “rail” transit, especially light rail (LRT) is that politcans get involved and when politicians get involved, costs rise dramatically.
Unlike Europe, Canadian University’s do not offer degrees in Urban Transport and the vast majority of Engineers and Planners who work on transit projects have little knowledge of what “light rail” (LRT) is!
In Metro Vancouver, both Engineers and Planners still claim that LRT has less capacity than light metro (SkyTrain), yet LRT today in many cities, carry peak hour ridership numbers far in excess what Vancouver’s light metro can achieve.
In fact the current maximum capacity of the Millennium Line is a mere 4,000 persons per hour per direction!
In simple terms, LRT is a modern tram (streetcar) operating on a dedicated or reserved rights-of-ways, thus obtaining the operating characteristics of a modern metro or subway, at a fraction of the cost.
Not so in Canada!
As Canada lacks Engineers and Planners, who have a credible knowledge of “rail” transit, including LRT and what transit experts we have, been muted from providing honest comment, because telling the truth about transit in Canada is not merely a firing offense, it tends to get one blacklisted from working in Canada altogether!
Why do you think Haveacow wishes to remain anonymous!
TransLink’s two top planners, one being considered the best in Canada, were forced to resign for stating the obvious, that; “Broadway did not have the ridership to warrant a subway“.
$4 billion later, Vancouver will have a subway to nowhere, with a maximum capacity less that what Bombardier stated would be justified to build with a light metro, to carry mainly the current B-99 Rapid Bus customers, which peak hour ridership is around 2,000 to 2,500 pphpd!
And to top it off, transit ridership is declining in Metro Vancouver, down 1.5% in 2025, when compared to 2024’s ridership!
$4 billion would build a lot of light rail, about 100 km’s worth, if built as light rail, on-street/at-grade.
Here lies the problem, politcans want, the Rapture of Mega Projects!
Bent Flyvberg’s Iron Law of Megaprojects specifically addresses why politicians are obsessed with infrastructure at any cost.
…the “political sublime,” which here is understood as the rapture politicians get from building monuments to themselves and their causes. Megaprojects are manifest, garner attention, and lend an air of proactiveness to their promoters. Moreover, they are media magnets, which appeals to politicians who seem to enjoy few things better than the visibility they get from starting megaprojects. Except maybe cutting the ribbon of one in the company of royals or presidents, who are likely to be present lured by the unique monumentality and historical import of many megaprojects. This is the type of public exposure that helps get politicians re-elected. They therefore actively seek it out.
Until transit planning changes and becomes independent of the politcal process (politicians make very bad transit planners) and let real experts plan transit for what is best for the transit customer, Canada’s daft transit planning and massive cost overruns will continue.
Unlike those who say, “don’t listen to the experts“; politcans should “listen to the experts“, because they will give one the best advice on what and how transit is built.
A test train departs Sloane Station during ongoing system testing for the Eglinton Crosstown LRT in Toronto, Oct. 9.GABRIEL HUTCHINSON/The Globe and Mail
A Toronto comedian just threw a quinceañera for the Eglinton Crosstown.
It has been – can you believe it? – 15 years since the birth of the light-rail transit line that will traverse the centre of the city. Authorities still won’t say for sure when it will open, though there is talk it could happen next month.
Jacob Balshin hired a mariachi band for a mock celebration of the line’s coming of age. It played merrily at a transit station as he and friends toasted the teenage project on video. “Fifteen years! Next year, you’ll be able to drive. You only cost an estimated $12.8-billion. That’s only $8.2-billion more than expected!”
Funny not funny. The Crosstown has been a comprehensive fiasco. When construction began, the completion date was set at 2020. That was pushed back to 2021, then 2022. For a while there, 2024 seemed like a possibility, but that year passed, too. Eventually, the people in charge stopped even saying when it would open, for fear of being forced to acknowledge they had missed another target.
So here we are, all these years later, waiting. The tunnels are bored, the stations are built, the trains are even running, gliding along their tracks on test runs with nobody on board, through stops with nobody in them. It is ridiculous and a little eerie – a phantom transit service.
Doug Ford, Ontario’s Premier since 2018, says he’s as frustrated as anyone, telling reporters this week that it is “driving me crazy” and urging transit officials to “get the damn thing moving.”
While he was at it, he couldn’t resist taking a shot at the party that preceded his Progressive Conservatives in office. “This thing has been a disaster since the Liberals started it,” he said.
In fact, the problem goes back farther than that. It was a PC premier, Mike Harris, who cancelled a subway project on Eglinton Avenue in 1995 as he tried to bring provincial spending back in line. The hole had already been dug. Workers filled it up again. That subway would have long ago started whisking commuters across town.
It was Mr. Ford’s brother, Rob, who further gummed up the works when he was Toronto’s mayor by cancelling a plan, called Transit City, to build a whole network of light-rail lines. The Eglinton Crosstown is a remnant of that plan – a 19-kilometre project with 25 stops, some of them underground.
Driving such a line through a dense urban area like midtown Toronto – digging the tunnels, building the stations, redesigning dozens of above-ground intersections – was always going to be expensive. But $13-billion? For what is in essence a fancy streetcar? Outrageous.
People wait for a bus along Eglinton Avenue in view of a test train.GABRIEL HUTCHINSON/The Globe and Mail
By comparison, building Toronto’s 8.6-kilometre Spadina subway extension cost $3.2-billion. That went overbudget and over time, too, but at least the city got a proper, high-speed, high-capacity subway out of it.
The mismanagement of the Crosstown has reached a whole other level. Globe and Mail reporter Jeff Gray laid it all out in a recent investigation.
Instead of giving the job to the Toronto Transit Commission, the century-old agency that operates the transit system, the provincial government handed it to Metrolinx, a new transit-planning agency with little experience building anything.
Using the public-private partnership, or P3, model, Metrolinx then passed it on to a big engineering consortium. But the public and private sides soon set to quarrelling over costs, timelines and a host of other issues, leaving the project tied up in court and adding many millions to the price tag.
Toronto simply can’t afford this kind of mess.
After decades of stalling, the city is finally building out its transit network to fit its status as a major metropolis. Several huge projects are in the works, including subway extensions into Scarborough to the east and Richmond Hill to the north. A whole new subway will run through downtown: the Ontario Line, with its eye-watering budget of $27-billion.
And yet the quarterbacks of this big play can’t even manage to open a line that has been substantially finished for a couple of years. In October, Metrolinx had to put a pause on testing the Crosstown when two trains actually collided in a storage yard.
I have updated the post but since very little has changed about BRT over the past decade, that there is little to update. Real BRT has reached its maximum potential, unless tree-articulated buses become the norm and that has made BRT a niche transit mode to deal with niche transit issues.
In metro Vancouver we are not getting real BRT, rather BRT Lite, or more to the point, tarted up express buses that will offer little advantages for the transit customer, but sound good at election time.
Brisbane BRT bus jam.
Mr. Haveacow, who frequently comments on the RftV blog, is a Canadian public transit specialist and what he says deserves to be listened to. (Zwei does listen to the Experts!) As he is active in the transit profession in Canada, he would like to keep his real name out of the media, lest he be blacklisted for his views.
The following is a repost from 2015, largely explaining BRT and the former Surrey LRT planning, which has now morphed into a $7 billion, 16km SkyTrain light-metro project.
The following diagram may help explain the capacity issue comparing bus and LRT.
Guided bus-ways have a big issue, capacity. The reason you have a guided bus-way is that, surface vehicles like buses can sway side to side quite a bit on a roadway. One of the reasons most Bus-way lanes are a minimum of 4 metres wide is to allow for that side to side sway that occurs naturally at higher speeds when we drive. Guided Bus-ways are fixed to their ‘track’ or Concrete Guideway or fixed using a laser/optical system that electronically locks them into a right of way so no side to side sway occurs at all. Optical systems also have an additional issue in that they are highly weather dependent and are very costly to service. The advantage for the guided bus-ways is that, your right of way can be considerably less wide much like a rail line right of way. Unless you design a complex concrete guideway bypass at bus-way stations or an electronic one using optical guided equipment, the buses are forever trapped behind the buses in front of them. This severely limits system capacity.
The real problem common with BRT is the operating cost of carrying the large amount of passengers, only using buses, once the passenger levels become very high. That level is different for every city and is dependent on the exact nature and characteristics of the right of way.
The picture Zwei used of the Brisbane Busway is another common occurrence on successful Bus-ways, bus back ups at choke points or stations.
The company MMM Consulting (nee McCormik Rankin Consulting) was the main designer and developer of both Ottawa’s Transit-way System and its child, the Brisbane Bus-way Network, the subject of the article’s main picture.
The main differences between the two are the fact that Ottawa’s Transit-way System was designed and mostly built in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s whereas, Brisbane’s was designed and built in the 90’s, and 2000’s. The other major difference is that unlike Ottawa, Brisbane was able to build a fully segregated right of way through its downtown which comprised below grade tunnels and above grade viaducts and a physically segregated surface route. Ottawa has painted bus lanes on a couplet of downtown one-way streets with signal modification which allow Transit-way (east-west traffic) almost the legal limit of signal priority over the north-south traffic at intersections.
The difference between the two, using roughly the same number of vehicles about 185-200 buses/hour/direction at peak the Ottawa Transit-way can move 10500 people/hour/ direction and Brisbane about 14,000p/h/d.
Both however, have the same issue, massive back ups of buses primarily at downtown or major bus-way stations because the size and handling capacity of the actual stations has been grossly under built. The issue is that, to handle these kind of crowds and move them with 12 and 18 metre single articulated buses (23 metre long, double articulated and 30 metre long triple articulated buses are not street legal in Canada or Australia and even in the USA for that matter) you must construct monster sized, at the least full metro sized or larger bus station platforms that are or exceed 150 metres in length. The stations also have to be 4 lanes wide, 4 metres per lane, not including station platform width. Most downtown businesses would not want to be located near one of these stations for obvious reasons. One of Brisbane’s bus-way stations was enlarged to this standard, the bus back up picture Zwei used for this article is the que of buses entering that station.
The other main issue is the operational cost of having to use that many bus drivers and buses. Buses in general have far too little capacity for these high traffic BRT operations.
In China and Latin America drivers cost much less as a proportion of the total operating cost of each bus 50-60% in Latin America and 30-45% in China. In the northern 2/3 North America, Western and Central Europe, Australia/New Zealand, Japan Taiwan, basically most of the so called developed world, the cost of the bus driver is 70-80% of the total cost of operating the bus.
Using 185-200 buses/hour/direction to move people becomes a great financial drain on the operating bus system as a whole and makes it almost impossible to get extra buses to other non bus-way routes that need them. In Ottawa, several suburban routes that have needed many more buses to handle their high passenger levels can’t get them and haven’t been able to for more than a decade because so many buses are tied up on the Transit way, either on it or at the stations during peak hours. There are barely enough extra buses left to handle individual bus breakdowns let alone provide extra service on other routes. Buying more buses was not an answer because Ottawa’s bus fleet was already near 1100 vehicles this is a pretty big fleet for a city and area of at most, 1.2 million people. This would put the operational budget into a serious deficit. We already had the most expensive per taxpayer transit portion on our tax bills of all Ontario municipalities it really does not need to go higher. The bus options had run out of time. Ottawa’s answer was LRT. Brisbane continues to maintain their heavily used portions of busways. Ottawa is building more Transit ways but in suburban areas with much lighter passenger traffic levels.
The Transit-way was designed to be converted to rail however, the cost to convert the first part would be an eye popping $2.1 Billion. The reason was no one ever figured how much extra work there would be like, having to build parallel temporary bus rights of way so that, all those buses didn’t totally clog city streets during conversion of the Transit-way to rail and the fact that, they waited till much the original Transit-way infrastructure was in desperate need of replacement due to age. Some Transitway right of way also was only temporary and not rail friendly. These temporary rights of way lasted for over 30 years and now have to be either totally rebuilt and or abandoned at high cost. The kicker about the high operational cost of servicing bus-ways at high passenger demands was that, even with Ottawa being forced to build a 2.5 km tunnel, with 3 very large underground stations at a cost of $715 Million under downtown for the LRT line (surface operation would have simply exchanged heavy surface bus traffic and passenger crowds for heavy surface LRV traffic and passenger crowds) operationally, Ottawa was going to save a minimum of $60 million a year, switching to LRT technology.
The take away from this is that, building “Real BRT” can be a very good way of building up ridership and up to a certain point, a less costly way, compared to a lot of rail systems, to move people in a North American low density environment.
The problem now even in Canada is that, politicians are building express bus systems like B Lines, Brampton’s Zum (pronounced zoom) and many comparable systems in the US and calling it BRT, which it really is not. Those politicians love doing it because this false BRT is much cheaper to build and operate than real BRT and they still get a ribbon cutting ceremony.
The problem is that, the amount you spend with these systems generally is comparable to the systems effectiveness in moving passengers. VIVA, (York Region Transit) for example, started with the faux BRT or what I like to call “BRT” but, had definite designs and plans to build physically separate BRT rights of way that can be converted to a high capacity LRT system in the future and has carried through on it. York Region just didn’t have the passenger count to build LRT at the beginning. But they have designed in the ability to easily convert the BRT system to LRT technology when needed. Brampton (which is part of Peel Region) just to the west of York Region has no definite plan or design to convert its Zum system to a real BRT standard now or in the future. However, the Zum System has built up Brampton’s transit ridership. I am not saying that, these “BRT” systems aren’t useful but they are not real BRT and should be labeled as that because they can confuse people into not building anything in places that need improved transit but cana’t afford to build or operate LRT and or support LRT with enough passengers. As a planner it is quite common to hear comments like this at public meetings, “I saw BRT in Brampton and it gets stuck in regular traffic all the time. BRT sucks!” Then you have to explain what real BRT is and is not, by then most people fall asleep or stop listening.
Then you get into a half technical half ethical problem with BRT and or any other transit operating technology for that matter. How do you study the differences between operating technology so that you are being fair as well as being accurate in the final choice of technology? The best recent example of what not to do is right here locally in Vancouver, South of the Fraser River, to be exact.
Trying to convince people in Surrey that, their LRT plan is useful, TransLink used a SkyTrain option as well as a surface BRT option to compare to LRT capability, pointing out the superiority of LRT in this case. The SkyTrain option had many problems cost and general usefulness being the main ones. The BRT example they used is actually an LRT line using buses operating on a layout and design which is not even close to what a real BRT line in a on-street environment would or should be using. Its not even close to the best Canadian practices, let alone best practices used in the rest of the world, with BRT systems in a on-street environment. Did the staff doing this know enough to do this purposely or were they ignorant of the differences of what good BRT design is or is not.
Their example of LRT also displays a a serious lack of knowledge about best surface LRT operating practices in the US and Canada.
More importantly it shows to me, how committed or in this case not committed, TransLink staff really are to studying LRT technology at all. In fact, I don’t blame the people who supported SkyTrain technology for this area, like Daryl from SkyTrain for Surrey, he had a point, on the surface this study definitely made it look like that to me that the SkyTrain Light Metro was the superior technology choice. The difference as a professional is that, I know the real differences in all the technologies that were studied. I also have no belief that, I am the be all and end all of studying these things in the world and would also ask for much help in studying these technology choices from other friends and companies I am familiar with, whom are experts at it. To me a whole new study should be done using the actual best practices for all technologies not just the preferred LRT technology, you should seriously question major aspects and assumptions that were made in this particular TransLink study.
I was sent a following link The Transit “Experts” That Derail Transit. (click here)
It is by a fairly well known YouTube type who has ‘taken the wrong tack’, but he has a large following.
It is obvious that the author has a preference for metros and a disdain for light rail and in fact much of his comments about light rail borders on myth and invention.
Metros, due to their cost, are only built on the heaviest used transit routes; transit routes with traffic flows in excess of 15,000 pphpd (North America) and 20,000 pphpd (Europe). Most major cities in Asia build with a metro and why is that?
Simple answer is that traffic flows, due to huge populations, demand a high capacity transit system and so densely packed are major cities, that grade separated transit is a must.
Yet, China has 23 and Japan has 21 tram/light rail systems.
The new light rail system in Wuhan China.
Because Metro is so expensive to build and operate (just ask German transit authorities) and (pre light rail) trams capacities were limited a new transit mode evolved, the light metro.
Light metro suffers from three major three problems: capacity, expensive operating and maintenance costs (those small cars needed to do two to three times the work as a standard metro carand the automatic train control needed constant, daily preventative maintenance) and the then emerging light rail (which provided the same operating characteristics of a light metro, at a cheaper cost).
Light metro was not the bargain it proponents expected it to be.
Around the time light metro was being marketed, the modern articulated tram made an appearance and to increase commercial speeds and capacities, the modern tram was operated on dedicated rights-of-ways. In Germany this was called Stadtbahn or city railway, it later became better known in North America as LRT.
In the 1980’s there was much competition between light metro and light rail and despite the many claims made for both modes, LRT became the clear winner because it had two very important factors in its favour; cost and flexibility.
LRT was much cheaper to build (up to 10 times cheaper to build according to the Toronto Transit Commission, ART and IBB studies) and it could easily integrate with in situ streetcar of tram tracks in city centres (OK, not Toronto due to different track gauges) Light metro, especially driverless light metro could not.
Now we travel to France, which was mentioned in the article, and see why light rail has such a foothold in the country.
France developed their own light metro system, VAL (Véhicule Automatique Léger) and like all automatic light metros, was expensive to build and operate.
The major issue was VAL was produced by MATRA, then Frances largest military manufacturer. Sales of the VAL system was weak and the French government was afraid that lack of sales of VAL translated in a lack of confidence in MATRA’s weapon systems. To rectify this, the French government offered to fully fund construction for the first VAL Line in the city choosing VAL.
Sounds good doesn’t it!
Not so fast. French politcans tend to be more attuned to costs and taxes than most and soon questioned the future costs of extending the newly built VAL Lines.
VAL, like most light-metros was and still is extremely expensive to build.
Lille also operated a metre gauge tramway, which was going to be replaced by a future VAL extension, but the good Burghers of Lille and surrounding cities, did some sums and it was found to be far cheaper to completely rebuild the Lille, Raubaix and Tourcoing tramway, which they did and today the “Mongy” operates as a stark reminder that light rail is far cheaper to build and operate than the VAL system. This singular fact has spurred the French tramway revolution. In 1980 there were only four operating tramways in France and in 2025 there are now thirty.
Raubaix and Tourcoing tramway
What the author of the article ignores (on purpose?) is costs and funding issues for transit construction and continues to use “man of straw” arguments, such as speed, capacity and more seriously, mixing streetcar performance with light rail.
The graph is from Metrolinx comparing the 50 year costs of various transit modes.
Experts know this, most amateurs do not.
Transit authorities do not just ‘magic’ a light metro or metro into operation. Transit authorities have to secure funding for both construction and operation and light metro systems tend to be money-pits. Just look at Metro Vancouver’s 16km Expo Line extension to Langley, originally a $1.63 billion light rail project has now grown to a now over $7 billion SkyTrain project! Operational costs have also risen to now almost $50 million annually!
Definitely not “chump change”.
If ridership on a transit route does not meet the traffic flows needed for a heavy-rail metro, then light rail is the next best choice and this seems to make may people uncomfortable and the “metro lobby” apoplectic as TransLink’s “Mayor’s Council on Transit” are now finding out.
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