A very merry Christmas

Christmas tram in Budapest A very merry Christmas from Rail for the Valley  

Death By Toll

Is anyone surprised by this? If you are, you are either residing outside Metro Vancouver or you are living in a bubble, because the taxpayer is maxed out. The BC Liberal regime of Gordon Campbell has off-loaded so many user fees, taxes and other costs on to the backs of taxpayers that he has all […]

Why we build with light rail

The following was Zweisystem’s first offering on the Rail for the Valley blog, posted on December 12, 2008. Five years and some 1,359 posts later, the message has stayed essentially the same; why does the provincial government and TransLink still pursue light metro instead of LRT, especially when light metro has proven inferior in service […]

TransLink Spends on Station Renovations

TransLink is renovating several stations on the Expo Line and as always, the real news is what one reads between the lines. The Expo Line is near its life expiratory date and no, the Expo Line will not disappear in a cacophony of dust and debris, but extensive and expensive renovations and renewals must be […]

More Wisdom From Ottawa

Haveacow is a transit professional from Ottawa and his most recent post in the comments section is again worthy of a post of its own. The information contained within this post should give insight to the real transit issues that face TransLink, employee’s costs and the main reason why LRT is built. One modern tram […]

TransLink’s Fiscal House of Cards

Is TransLink’s financial ‘house of cards‘ ready to collapse? It seems the independent commissioner overseeing TransLink thinks so. Certainly the ‘self proclaimed‘ transit experts are circling TransLink like vultures seem to thinks so, by advocating more onerous taxes on the public with ‘road pricing‘ and even a ‘border toll’. Zwei has not heard of one […]

Wisdom From Ottawa

  Our friend Haveacow, is a transit professional and his comment, I believe’ gets to core of TransLink’s woes. When you add in the extra costs of operating the Canada Line and SkyTrain ALRT/ICTS Lines, one can easily see why TransLink’s costs are a third higher than Edmonton and Calgary. From Haveacow and please forward […]

So, Where Did The $500 Million Go?

Not before another dime is spent on TransLink, some fiscal sanity must come to TransLink. TransLink has operating expenses which are about one-third greater than the transit industry norm in Canada.Ai?? For the present annual $1.5 billion operating budget of TransLinkAi?? this works out to $500 million annually in unexplained operating expenses.Ai?? How can the […]

Surrey asks feds for $1.8 billion for light rail- Maybe It’s Time To Say Adios to TransLink

Well, Toronto’s crack smoking Toronto’s mayor Rob Ford wants Ottawa to fund his multi billion dollar subway dream, I guess Surrey feels the feds should ante up for transit projects out west. What the likes of UBC professor Larry Franks doesn’t realize or refuses to realize is that Skytrain is obsolete, a yesterday’s transit system […]

South Surrey and Whiterock’s Fifteen Year Itch

Every fifteen years or so, the good burghers of Whiterock and South Surrey agitate for the removal of the BNSF tracks that run on the shoreline from the international boarder to Crescent Beach. Not going to happen. Though safety is the supposed concern, Zwei thinks that property values is the real reason as people living […]