Flying a Trial Balloon

Trial balloon: A tentative measure taken or statement made to see how a new policy will be received. As the Daily Hive seems to be the official organ of TransLink, it comes as no surprise that a trial balloon is floated regarding an elevated SkyTrain to UBC. The first problem is that Vancouver City Council, […]

Oh Where, Oh Where Has Our Customers Gone………………..

TransLink must soon face a very unpleasant truth, Metro Vancouver’s transit system is crap; it is strictly a commuters transit system, with, except for the core of City of Vancouver, there is little off-peak usage. The transit system is designed to feed the light-metro system and because of this, TransLink, as BC Transit before. has […]

Are You A Transit Expert? 15 Questions.

Here are ten questions to test the knowledge of political candidates about LRT & public transit in May’s provincial election. Passing grade is 70%. What is light rail transit? What Makes a tram or Streetcar Light Rail What is a metro? What is capacity?  What grade maximum is now industry standard for light rail? What […]

Transit lessons unlearned – A repost from Jan. 2009

First posted in 2009. More than a decade later, these lessons have still not been learned. It is sheer negligence on the part of TransLink, the Mayor’s Council on Transit, and the Ministry of Transportation, that they remain ignorant of what was commonly known elsewhere, not just a decade or so ago, rather three decades […]

Is TGV Coming To The North Shore?

Yesterday’s NDP pre election telly-op on local television stations of the standard TransLink fare of having five options for rapid transit to the North Shore showed some very strange animations. Instead of animations of SkyTrain trundling through tunnels, it showed TGV style trains instead. One wonders if the NDP are going to have surprise announcement […]

An Election Is Coming. The NDP Follows The Old Script.

As with all Metro Vancouver transit projects, they are good for three or four election cycles. The NDP are just using their tired playbook from the 90’s, nothing more and, shock and disbelief, Parliamentary Secretary for TransLink, Browinn Ma is the do nothing MLA for North Vancouver Lonsdale. Need I say more. “Our government is […]

How Much Will The SFU Aerial Tramway Cost To Operate?

Cutting through TransLink’s hype and hoopla about the proposed aerial tramway to Simon Fraser University and despite their sham public input process, they remain mute on operating costs. This is a Trojan Horse, because the annual subsidies need to operate it must come from other regions in TransLink’s vast empire, notably the South Fraser. The […]

Another Gadgetbahnen Bites The Dust.

Nothing new here. Monorails are proprietary railways and suffer the same ills that come with proprietary transit systems. They are expensive to operate and maintain. Spare parts tend to be expensive and hard to get, especially when the manufacturer ceases production. With the proprietary Movia Automatic Light Metro, TransLink and Metro Vancouver will soon have […]

Gondolas, Not User Freindly

As the regional mayors are gung-ho on the $200 million SFU gondola, I went back to my files and found some more interesting information on using gondolas or aerial tamways. * I see one very big problem, the aerial tramway is a transit system and must adhere to Transport Canada’s rules and one big problem […]

A Novice’s Guide To Transit – Reposted and Updated

……….. or cutting through the BS about light rail, SkyTrain and BRT. The following is a guide plus definitions. ALM: Automatic Light metro, the fourth marketing name given for the SkyTrain family of light-metros, when Lavalin briefly owned SkyTrain before going bankrupt. ALRT (1): Advanced Light Rail Transit, the second marketing name for SkyTrain. ALRT […]