LRTA – How other countries see light rail and appraise light rail investments?

From from 2009 Article from the March 1999 edition of Tramways & Urban Transit As anyone involved in a British light rail scheme knows, the appraisal system is rigorous and, many feel, fatally flawed, oriented as it is to short term and financial criteria rather than a properly broad social cost-benefit analysis. It is now […]

A Letter to NDP MLA David Eby

A letter by D. M. Johnston that is circulating around town. Light Rail – SkyTrain – subways – myth and fact Mr. Eby; On Wednesday night I was a guest speaker at the West Broadway Business Improvement Association meeting, giving a talk about modern light rail on Broadway. Those attending the meeting were quite savvy […]

Worlds Longest Trolleybus Line

In Vancouver, we think of trolleybuses as a holdover from the streetcar days; a sort of green transit system used primarily in Vancouver and a few other cities in North America. What was once the replacement for the streetcars, are themselves seeing waning days. Not so in Russia, where trolleybuses are seen as a work […]

Bus or Light Rail, the Evidence Is Clear

Public transit is a necessity in today’s congested cities, yet politicians and their planners tend to ignore the importance of public transit in the 21st century city and either invest in the “cheap and nasty” rapid or express buses, or overly expensive gadgetbahnen like our Skytrain and Canada Line mini-metros. There is also the disturbing […]

Not so reliable, our SkyTrain – Eh?

SkyTrain is on the fritz again. The problem with proprietary transit systems is that they age very poorly.   SkyTrain delayed by communication system disruption Vancouver Sun March 28, 2014 METRO VANCOUVER – TransLink says there are system-wide delays on SkyTrain today following a disruption to the communication system. SkyTrain is running single-track between Broadway […]

From the Halifax Herald

SkyTrain Strike?

One of the big advantages touted by the then Social Credit government for the SkyTrain ALRT system, was that is was an automatic transit system and being driverless could not go on strike. Ha, ha, ha, the joke is on TransLink, as the 537 SkyTrain operators, attendants, dispatchers, andAi??office andAi??maintenance staff have voted 95% to […]

Streetcar Porkies From Vancouver

You just got to hand it to Vision(less) Vancouver and its lap-dog bureaucracy in finding ways to discredit the heritage streetcar. The Olympic Line, which operated just two Bombardier Flexity trams (3050 & 3051), had about 550,000 boardings in its short two month run and was proven to be extremely successful, so successful in fact […]

TransLink’s Subway Fiscal Time Bomb – A Repost from 2013

The SkyTrain/metro Lobby remain mute on the long term fiscal effects of operating subways, especially on routes that have low ridership, say less than 15,000 pphpd. Building a subway is a very expensive proposition and many factors should be considered before embarking on such a costly investment. The first questionAi??any knowledgeable transit planner must ask […]

Stop fighting Massey bridge, Delta mayor doesn’t get it

Some politicians ‘get it’ and many other don’t; the same goes with regional transportation planning. Delta’s Mayor, Lois Jackson clearly doesn’t get it. The proposed Massey Tunnel replacement bridge will not solve congestion, only move it a few kilometres from Delta, across the river into Richmond. Someone must explain to Mayor Jackson, that unless a […]