SkyTrain Gadgetbahnen Goes Ka-Put……Agian!

From our photo file: It would be a cold walk on the guideway tonight. The aging SkyTrain shows once again shows the pitfalls of building with a proprietary light metro and TransLink’s ‘hub to hub’ transit planning. There is no redundancy, no plan B, except for buses that are promised but never come, and the […]

In The International News

Some interesting news items from abroad.   An interesting Australia Government paper on long term trends in public transport. Some interesting comments have been made by an Australian observer: It can be clearly seen that the Sydney tramways were the all-time record-holding giant of any Australian public transport system and never bettered since by any […]

Bombardier Inc. Gets Quebec Financing

Bombardier Inc. has had some recent finance problems with their aerospace division and is using its rail division as collateral so to speak. They better make money nowAi??because if they don’t perform the CDPQ will own 42.5 % after 5 years. What does it mean for us on the West coast? Definitely more pressure to […]

Portland’s Streetcar, Connecting The Entire Community

This speaks for itself. I must remind the unconvinced that going from 4,000 users a day to 15,000 users a day (in TransLink’s convoluted lexicon, this equates to over 30,000 boarding’s a day), which is a big deal in the U.S.A. So here is a thought, instead of a $3 billion subway to Arbutus, with […]

Waterloo LRT Update

The following video shows the Waterloo LRT under construction. Waterloo LRT progress

Ottawa Update – The Trams Are Coming, The Trams Are Comming………..

From our friend Haveacow in Ottawa, an update on the Ottawa light rail. There is no doubt here in Ottawa that,Ai??the Rideau Transit GroupAi??will need all of the next 2 years 10 months toAi??complete the daunting list of major capital projects that will be must beAi??done so that, the first phase of the Confederation LRT […]

Paving Paradise – Has the Premier Washed Her Hands of Public Transit?

The grossly overbuilt Hwy 17 & 99 interchange. Why build just one overpass, when you can build three? This is the legacy of the BC Liberals: gold plated highway and bridge construction, designed to funnel huge portions of taxpayer’s money into the pockets of corporate friends. As pointed out many times before, the Expo, Millennium, […]

Calgary Transit launches 4-car C-Train service; capacity to increase by 33%

Calgary Transit launches 4-car C-Train service; capacity to increase by 33% http://globalnews.ca/news/2337414/calgary-transit-launches-4-car-ctrain-service-capacity-to-increase-by-33/ Today, Calgary’s C-Train is carrying over 333,000 passengers a day and is the most heavily used new build LRT system in North America. No wonder the SkyTrain lobby hate the C-Train so much! Also worth noting that modern LRV’s being delivered to Calgary, […]

Port Mann Fumble

The Port Mann Bridge is a prime example where a government replaces a perfectly good bridge with a multi billion dollar vanity project. Other examples were the Expo Line, the Millennium Line, the Canada Line, the Fast Ferries, and most recently the BC Place retractable roof. With the Port Mann Bridge vanity project, would it […]

Annual Tram/LRT Statistics

The following are the annual tram/LRT ridership statistics courtesy of the Eurotrams group. In contradiction to what many local politicians; bureaucrats and academics would have us believe, modern LRT and or tram can carry large numbers of transit customers and do in annual revenue service. Let us forget the many “man-of-straw arguments” against LRT by […]