Another Dayliner crash on Vancouver Island – Why Do Car Drivers Believe They Have The Right To Go Through a Red Light?

Here we go again, another car driver ignoring railway crossing lights and bell and proceeds to crash into a train. One has little sympathy for car drivers ignoring the rules of the road, but until our provincial ministry of transportation takes seriously the fact that car drivers deliberately disobeying ‘red’ lights should be prohibited from […]

Campbell’s "Reshuffling of The Deck Chairs on TransLink" Can’t Hide The fact That TransLink, is Steering Directly Into a Financial Iceberg!

The provincial government has in effect (to use that old clichA?Ai??) “Rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic“. Unable and/or unwilling to admit to the real problem with TransLink and regional transit is that building hugely expensive metros on routes that do not have the ridership to sustain them, requiresAi??Ai??large subsidies and those subsidiesAi??Ai??takes moniesAi??Ai??from […]

Two Tram projects planned in northern France. What no VAL?

What is interesting about this announcement is that the new tram projects are planned near Lille France, which operates the VAL automatic mini-metro. The two approved tram or light-rail lines are very close to the City of Lille and the VAL mini-metro system. This poses the question: Why not build with VAL? French cities that […]

Light Rail & Tramways Growth Continues With new Openings in 2010

From May’s issue ofAi??Ai??Tramway’s & Urban Transit comes a list of new LRT openings in 2010, almost one every six weeks. The following is a partial list of new LRT/tram and TramTrain systems. It is interesting to note the increase of TramTrain expansion, both in Europe and in North America. Also, when compared to metro […]

The Broadway Follies – TransLink does the Gong Show

Here we go again, TransLink’s famous planning exercises that in the end will please no one and achieve very little. There is no bold ‘grand plan’ but more of the same, a little BRT here; a little SkyTrain there, with a hint of LRT thrown in to keep the trolley-jolly types happy. With all the […]

Parry People Movers For Granville Island?

Ai??Ai??Granville Island was once a large industrial site, serviced with rail and when Granville Island was commercialized in the 1970’s the tracks were left in situ, with a promise of a (at the time) funky horse drawn tram. The tram service did not materialize, but the tracks and switches remain. With very little capital outlay, […]

Transit Agency Approves Cuts, and More Bad News Looms – From the New York Times

It seems that New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority is in dire fancial straights, just like our TransLink. What should not be forgotten is that even though New York has a vast subway system and massive daily ridership, mainteneace cost for that subway are massive and contributing to their finacial plight. For those preaching a subway […]

Clean, affordable light rail also delivers economic lift

Shades of the Broadway LRT/metro debate. It seems the metro lobby is hard at it to derail Toronto’s LRT plans, just like how the metro/SkyTrain lobby is trying to do the same in Vancouver. Ai??Ai?? Added to the metro/SkyTrainAi??Ai??debate is that our friends South of the boarder are trying reinvent light rail into light-metro, a […]

The Livable Blog Talks Broadway Transit

The Livable Blog has an interesting discussion about “rail” transit on Broadway. http://www.livableregion.ca/blog/blogs/index.php?blog=5&title=broadway_rapid_transit_alternatives_lack&page=1&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1&disp=single#c2151

Some Sunday Reading – The "Automatic Metro" or AGT Debate – Too Much Bunkum By The AGT Lobby

In various other transit oriented blogs, the myth that automatic operation of trains saves operating costs is perpetuated ad nauseum. Those who try to set the record straight are subjected to a sort of ‘Spanish Inquisition’ and are treated as latter day heretics. What is so Monty Pythonish about this is that back in the […]