If you thought using a toll road was costly, try building one

From down under. As we are finding out with the $1.3 billion South Fraser Perimeter Road (which is both poorly designed and built) road projects tend to be as expensive or more, than comparable rail projects. If you thought using a toll road was costly, try building one The Sydney Morning Herald Melbourneai??i??s giant East […]

Zwei goes to town

Zwei had some business to attend to in Vancouver on Friday morning and from casual observation, our transit system is a failure. Hitting Oak street at 10:30, the traffic going South was gridlocked until Park Ave., yet the two North bound trolley buses I passed were all but empty. The Broadway B-99 express buses were […]

It Ain’t Rocket Science Folks

Really, do the math. TransLink has 170 full time attendants (part time attendants unknown); TransLink operates 57 trains during peak hours; how hard is it to schedule an attendant to be on a train at all times? Why doesn’t TransLink force management types to be on the trains, and act as attendants as well? Unless […]

Zwei Told Ya so!

Sorry folks, I mean the SkyTrain Lobby, Zwei told ya so, SkyTrain should have attendants on board every train……………….. From the Georgia Straight. SkyTrain disruptions like the July 17 and 21 outages have happened in the past. Indeed, a report addressed this issue 21 years ago. Thatai??i??s why Ron Stromberg, who was the one who […]

Oh Please. Once Again The Vancouver Sun Again Shills For SkyTrain

Really! The Vancouver sun continues to unashamedly shill for the SkyTrain mini-metro system. I know this is tiresome, in fact downright boring, but the folks at the Sun should know better than take TransLink Press Releases as fact. The old arguments, the apples to oranges comparisons, is none other than editorial BS, from a newspaper […]

The Small Minded Anti LRT Conspiracy

A certain Randall O’Toole, a conspicuous member of the Cato Institute hates LRT and streetcars. A favourite of the roads lobby he is also the darling of the United States rising Libertarian and Tea Party. Much of what O’Toole writes about come from the theory that public anything is bad and individualism reigns. The problem […]

SkyTrain Whitewash Continues

TransLink can’t help it. It is inbred in them. Honesty is just not in their lexicon. They hire a SkyTrain type, at $1,200 a day to do a review of the two recent embarrassing shutdowns. It is like the police investigating itself. What should be a truly independent review, will be another SkyTrain “whitewash”, with […]

SkyTrain Fizzles Again! Passengers Abandon SkyTrain Like Rats leaving a Sinking Ship!

Oops, SkyTrain fizzles again with scores of passengers abandoning the Skytrain and walking down the tracks to escape the damned thing. It certainly looks like transit customers are completely fed up with SkyTrain and TransLink wants to build more? ‘Computer glitch’ shuts down SkyTrain again; some passengers walking on tracks to stations July 21, 2014 […]

SkyTrain Fizzles Again

The problem with driverless transit systems is that when there is a problem, there is no driver to drive the damn thing if things go wrong. As SkyTrain ages, stoppages like this will become more common. Computer problems cause major SkyTrain disruptions Crews are working to fix the problem, but it could take a while […]

In Search of the Light Rail Renaissance

A little history. On April 22, 1978, the city of Edmonton heraldedAi?? a new era of what we now call light rail transit, with the opening of its first 6.9 km, LRT line. Using the now venerable Siemens U-2 vehicle, which was designed for the Frankfurt U-Bahn metro system. Edmonton’s new LRT line set the […]