What Is The Real Cost For The Expo & Millennium Line Extensions?

It is the civic election season, or more fondly called the “silly season” and all sorts of claims and promises are made. Recently on a local radio talk show a politcal wannabe claimed that; “SkyTrain operates almost free because it does not have any drivers and is cheaper than LRT” and the host agreed with […]

Driverless Trains

Old Zwei has told you so, operating driverless trains is very expensive. In December 2019, it was reveled that the SkyTrain Light metro system (Expo and millennium Lines, had over 900 employees. That is over 900 workers for just two rail lines. The Canada line, being a P-3, has it own employees and the number […]

SkyTrain Really Isn’t A Regional Distance Based, Rapid Transit System.

Something to think about. What Zwie has tried to convey for decades, that the driverless light-metro is a money hog and building more, will only see more tax money sucked into this heavily subsidized black hole. Part of the problem is that the mainstream media and TransLink’s lil darlin, the Hive do not report on […]

And Now – Here Is The Real Story

  With my long association with the LRTA, I have made many contacts with professionals in the transit industry, who have guided me and given me much information on modern public transport. The following questions deserve an answer. Is current regional transit planning viable in the post Covid world? Is the current light-metro only planning […]

Surrey’s Board of Trade Reality Check!

The business types with the Surrey Board of Trade don’t seem quite up to date with the cost of Transit projects in Metro Vancouver. The provincial governments Friday news release (Friday is always used for bad news which is hopefully forgotten by Monday) that the “B.C. government commits $2.4B to transit in Metro Vancouver“, was […]

Expo Line Extension To Langley Bafflegab. Has The Cost Risen To $5 Billion?

The Daily Hive has become TransLink’s official mouthpiece and sadly the Daily Hive, knows very little about transit and even less about SkyTrain light metro. * It is my belief that this article, in part, is in response to this letter to the editor which appeared in the Langley Advance Times. The article below is […]

The Caisse Du Depot Bails From REM East

Montreal’s politicians listen to the public far more about transit than Metro Vancouver’s politico’s. The public were growing very disenchanted having an elevated railway go through Montreal’s downtown and maybe would take such disenchantment to the next civic election. Well, the civic government has pulled the carpet from under the Caisse and in response, they […]

A New Low For Reporting In The BC Media

Zwei gets a lot of Emails and this caught my attention. Slow-pitched questions and the continued referring that the tunnel is a mistake, the entire show seemed like an infomercial for the BC Liberals. Why all the angst for the tunnel and why do the Liberals still want a bridge? The answer probably is that […]

Too Expensive – AirTrain (SkyTrain) Is Scrapped

What is now called Movia Automatic Light Metro is known as Airtrain in New York. AirTrain JFK, is a 13 km elevated, ART system built by Bombardier serving John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK Airport) in New York City. The system consists of three lines and ten stations within the New York City borough of […]

Where Metro Vancouver Went Wrong

Zwei has belonged to the Light Rail Transit Association since 1983 and I first learned about the LRTA while I lived in Nottingham England in 1974/75. I attended a free lecture in Nottingham about bringing trams back to the city, while I was waiting for my girlfriend who was attending night school at Nottingham University. […]