A Light (Rail) In The Piazza

A very welcomed editorial in the Delta Optimist. Slowly, ever slowly, people are beginning to realize that modern LRT is just not a transit mode, but a transit philosophy! Here lies the difference between LRT and SkyTrain; as SkyTrain or light metro is designed to give fast service between transit hubs forcing transit customers to […]

Seattle’s “big Dig”, Is Digging The City Into a Finacial Morass

As predicted by so many, Seattle’s “Big Dig” to build an auto tunnel to replacing the decrepit stacked Alaskan Way Viaduct, has hit a pipe and stopped. It seems the entire highway tunnel under Elliot Bay, is sinking into a sinkhole created by political prestige laced with engineering hubris. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it. Instead of […]

The Broadway Subway, No Value For Money

Despite a growing number of supporters, such as the business community, the City of Vancouver; most of the regional mayors, the provincial NDP and their combined sundry of shills clamouringAi?? for a SkyTrain Broadway subway, many serious questions remain unanswered. The following op-ed commentary published by The Toronto Star questions whether the concept of building […]

Conundrum! A No Means Yes!

A “YES” vote in the upcoming TransLink referendum will probably increase the cost per revenue passenger as the transit system seems to have a hard time attracting new ridership, especially the motorist from the car! Conundrum! I am not going to make this blog, home central for a “No” vote in the upcoming TransLink referendum, […]

Some New Year’s Reading – Eric Chris’s Six Facts About Hub to Hub Transport

Eric Chris is an Australian professional engineer with a masterai??i??s degree in chemical engineering and has been living in Vancouver near UBC on the 99 B-Line route for the last 16 years.Ai?? He works in the hydrocarbon industry as a design engineer for his entire career.Ai?? His masterai??i??s thesis was on real time air dispersion […]

An Innsbruck Christmas

Merry Christmas

A very merry Christmas from Rail for the Valley! A South Shore Interurban in the snow in Michigan City. Thirty-two years later, the South Shore Interurban still trundles the route daily.

After Intense Pressure From the Provincial Government……………..

The following is part of an article, The direction of TTC planning in the 1980’s, by Philip Webb, which appeared in the December 1983 edition of Modern Tramway and Light Rail Transit. By 1983, the UDTC knew that the ICTS/ALRT system could not offer the capacity as advertised. The ICTS/ALRT proprietary transit system did not […]

Canada Line Train Catches Fire

The fire was on the Canada Line, which isn’t SkyTrain. For those who are not in the know, the SkyTrain system cars are powered by Linear Induction Motors or LIM’s and the Canada Line cars are powered by “squirrel cage” electric motors. Much of Canada Line down By DAN FUMANO, The Province December 20, 2014 […]

A trip down memory lane

The shape of things that never were; a model of an articulated UTDC ALRT vehicle. An advert for ALRT, circa 1983. Sadly for Diane Edgecomb, the Detroit ICTS has been nothing more than a curiosity, which quickly earned the name the “Mugger Mover”. Notice that the gap between the two MK.1’s have been ‘photo shopped’ […]