McCallum’s $2.9 Billion Question

From the 2017 Steer Davis Gleave – HATCH report, the total cost for SkyTrain, including fifty-Five new cars is $2,914,798,721.00. As 2019 nears, the cost is rising. Memo to Doug McCallum: we are not building SkyTrain to 1980’s cost of construction. Memo to Gord Lovegrove: I think you need to join the Light Rail Transit […]

An Idiot’s Delight In Surrey

Delusional, is all what Zwei can say. The LRT in Surrey is not a Surrey project, it is a TransLink and Metro Vancouver project and Metro Vancouver has shown no signs that it will cancel LRT as of yet. The Money earmarked for the LRT is not transferable, so if Surrey manages to stop light […]

Surrey’s Hobson’s Choice – A Choice Of Taking What is Available (LRT) or Nothing At All.

First posted April 18, 2018 Updated Surrey has a big transit and transportation problem, and now with the announcement by mayor elect, Dough McCallum, now leaves the LRT project in doubt. The cacophony of the SkyTrain Lobby with their half truths, cherry picked data, and intimidating innuendo are demanding a change from light rail to […]

An Idiot’s Delight In Langley

Idiots, what can I say, complete idiots, the pair of them. SkyTrain is an obsolete proprietary light metro system, made obsolete by light rail! This has been known by all competent transit planners since the late 1980’s! The proprietary SkyTrain system patents are owned by both Bombardier Inc. and SNC Lavalin. Again, well known by […]

The Subway To Stupidville

Patrick Condon is the James Taylor chair in Landscape and Livable Environments at the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and the founding chair of the UBC Urban Design program. Prof. Condon is worth listening to, as he gets it about transit, which is a rare commodity with Metro Vancouver’s academia […]

Game Changer, The Autonomous Tram

  This will be a game changer for transit and especially for Vancouver, where politic ans love driverless transit. What this means is that the concept of driverless transit systems must be put on expensive elevated guideways or even more expensive subways, will fade to the history books as the autonomous tram will have the […]

A Matter Of Perspective

What is interesting with this story is the matter of perspective comparing Vancouver and Toronto. In Toronto, the 504 streetcar servicing carries around 80,000 riders a day in 2018. In Vancouver, where a subway is being proposed for Broadway, as far as Arbutus and with some promoters wanting it to terminate at UBC; in 2012 […]

If the SkyTrain News Fits, the Globe & Mail Will Print It.

So, where are the important stories about SkyTrain and transit Ms. Bula? Any mention that Transport Canada’s Operating Certificate for the Innovia SkyTrain system (Expo and Millennium Lines), limits capacity to 15,000 pphpd? No? Have you ever penned a story about how the Expo line is worn out and much of it’s existing infrastructure needs […]

The SkyTrain MK. 3 – The End of an Era?

  The new Mk.3 car is really a tarted up Mk.2 car, with one noticeable difference, the MK.3 sets now include a powered “saloon” vehicle, gangwayed at both ends. This will enable TransLink operate 3-car trains. The problem with the proprietary SkyTrain is that they cannot operate larger cars than the present MK.2’s do to […]

The Sum of Zwei’s Fears – Part 3 The New FastFerry Fiasco

It is interesting indeed that Vancouver Sun columnist, Vaughn Palmer is writing about transit and the two massively expensive rapid transit projects, the Surrey LRT and the Broadway subway. With both federal and provincial backing, these two ill conceived projects will cripple transit planning for the next quarter century. In the long term at least, […]