Is TransLink’s Real Problem Just Bad Management

No surprises here, where over 130,000 deep discounted U-Pass ‘cheap fare cards’ (unlimited travel for a $1 a day) issued to post secondary students comes into play. As rental costs soar past the unaffordable, post secondary students must either commute from home or commute from areas of cheaper rent. This means more students, taking more […]

An Open Letter To The NDP & Leader John Horgan

To the Leader of the Official Opposition, John Horgan, Dear Sir; As the NDP have been extremely weak with urban and metro transportation policies in the past two elections, may I offer a suggestion that the NDP take another look at the Rail for the Valley TramTrain plan, providing a TramTrain service from Vancouver to […]

Three Minutes Into The Future!

More wise words from Mr. ‘Haveacow’ who is an extremely experienced transit planner working on Ottawa’s new regional light rail line. This was originally a post from the recent Calgary blog and contains a wealth of information that the powers that be don’t really want in the public realm. What this boils down to is […]

Calgary’s C-Train Development & Operating Costs

First published in 2009 A note from Zwei: These costs were taken directly from Calgary Transit, which once had a fine web page giving accurate statistics about the C-Train, unlike TransLink and BC Transit, which hid the real costs in a baffle-gab of nonsense and phony news releases. One did not need a F.O.I. to […]

Over to You Mr. Cow – The Vancouver Sun’s Recent “Puff” SkyTrain Story

This comment from Mr. Cow deserves a post of its own as there is so much information here, it deserves a wider audience. As Mr. Cow is a Canadian Transit Engineer, his comments are well worth reading. When SkyTrain ‘crapped-out’ in the Summer of 2014 there were no drivers or attendants to oversee the evacuation […]

More SkyTrain “Puff “Stories From the Vancouver Sun

The Vancouver Sun is famous for its ‘puff’” stories about SkyTrain but with each “puff” story comes little slips and new information. 870 employees seems a lot for a “driverless” system, which was sold to the public that it had fewer employees, thus cheaper to operate than light rail. Somewhat inconveniently, SkyTrain costs about 40% […]

Rail for the Valley – Where do we go from here?

It has been six years since the release of the Leewood Study,Ai?? yet to date most regional politicians do not even realize that it exists. Internationally, the Leewood Study is a winner, featured in two international transportation magazines, locally though the Leewood Study has been ignored or discredited by neanderthal thinking municipal politicians. There are […]

Montreal, Quebec – op-ed: death of Canadian light metro ??

An interesting read. Why would Quebec’s Caisse de dAi??pA?t et placement du QuAi??bec, invest in the obsolete SkyTrain? Could the real reason be to help Bombardier out of its aerospace financial embarrassment, by buying ART? At the current rate, the proposed 67 km Montreal ART light-metro system will cost well over $8 billion or more […]

The Desperate Hours – Basket Weaving Grade For TransLink

The only agency that can come close is assessing public transit systems in Canada is the Canadian urban Transit Association and they do a reasonable job at it. The preceding graph is from C.U.T.A. and shows that the cost per revenue passenger in Metro Vancouver is about one third higher than Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto. […]

Now do you beleive Zwei!

Zwei has stated over and over again, one modern tram and tram driver is as efficient as six to eight buses and six to eight bus drivers and for every tram or bus operated one needs a minimum of four people to drive, maintain and manage them. As wages account for 70% or more of […]