Notes From The Past

The preceding graph is from the late 1980’s and adjusted for 2024 Canadian dollars: San Diego: $10.25 million/km Portland: $20.25 million/km Nantes: $25.15 million/km Calgary: $30.26 million/km VAL: $56.7 million/km SkyTrain: $66.82 million/km. Please note, the current 16 km Expo Line extension to Langley is now costing in excess of $375 million/km or put another […]

For Mr. B – Dealing With The Facts

Again, a SkyTrain supporter casts doubt on veracity of statements contained in posts. So, to clarify any doubt, the following comes from a December 1983, article,The Direction of TTC Planning For the 1980’s by Phillip Webb, which appeared in Modern Tramways. This interesting item certainly raised my attention. For further clarification, ICTS was renamed ALRT […]

Thoughts For 2025

If You Build a Better Mousetrap the World Will Beat a Path to Your Door. TransLink would like the public to think that our transit system is world class and spends a lot of money on ‘spin-doctors’ to convince the taxpayer of this. Sadly, the centerpiece of TransLink’s transit empire is the now obsolete and […]

A SkyTrain Carol – Apologies to Mr. Dickens!

Merry Christmas and it is time for Rail for the Valley’s “A SkyTrain Carol”, which, like a certain Mr. Scrooge, the lessons have not been learned. We are doing transit all wrong, yet the government continues to blunder along, doing the same thing over and over again ever hoping for different results. Metro Vancouver has […]

The SkyTrain Follies Continue – SkyTrain Everywhere!

This YouTube post has been creating a lot of local chatter, until I started fact checking, then the posts disappear. Strange that. The SkyTrain Lobby hates “reality checks”. Here is one of the many issue that the SkyTrain Lobby ignores, the province can afford only one light-metro line a decade. Example: 1980’s – the Expo […]

The Transit Deficit Begins To Bite

Thursday night’s massive traffic accident on Highway 99 was to be expected, as it could not be otherwise. Zwei drives this route twice a week for my cardio-rehab in White Rock and my eyes have been opened wide at the utterly poor driving habits by both car and commercial drivers. Just on Wednesday, I witnesses […]

REM’s Escalating Costs

The following is a translation from the Quebec Newspaper La Presse which seems to to do far more investigative reporting on transit than our local fish-wrap. What is important to remember the Caisse du Depot is also a concessionaire with the Canada Lin e P-3, which I have now been told that the SNC Lavalin/Caisse […]

Feedback? When Has TransLink Ever Listened To Public Feedback?

Feedback? This is TransLink’s spin doctor CEO Kevin Quinn’s attempt to pretend that TransLink listens to the public. A perfect word salad of drivel. Ha! Ha! Remember Kevin Quinn, you know the guy they were glad to see the back of in Baltimore ……. “you are about to get a new CEO of Translink in […]

Are Hydrogen Powered Trains A Decade Too Soon?

For all the talk of hydrogen powered trains, very few are actually in operation. Oh, they open with great hype and hoopla, but then silence. Rail for the Valley preferred to stick with current technology as we have seen with the “SkyTrain” example, proprietary products tend to be both very expensive and tend to age […]

A Bad News Situation

Kevin Quinn, the American spin doctor, hired by TransLink (a.k.a the provincial government) to bamboozle the taxpayer to agree to anti up more money for the regional transit system is again taken to the media pleading poverty to the provincial government, in order to secure more funding. He is now blaming the “electric car” for […]