A MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL – FROM RAIL FOR THE VALLEY

From the Zweisystem and the rest of the Rail For The Valley Gang A very merry Christmas and a very happy and safe New Year! A Darmstadt tram plowing through a snow storm.

TransLink Faregate Fiasco – Mr. Dobell wins again!

Stephen Rees’s blog has a good article on TransLink’s faregate fiasco and is well worth a read. The fare gate issue is not one of safety or making people pay, rather it is one of political influence and meddling. If the cost of implementing and operating faregates is $30 million annually as claimed by TransLink […]

From the New York Times – Why Is the M.T.A. Always in Trouble?

It seems that TransLink’s former CEOAi??Ai??may haveAi??Ai??jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire, as New York’s Metropolitan Transportation authority (MTA) seems to be in severe financial distress. There has been much positive news here of late about the MTA, but it seems the transit authority faces the same problems as most others […]

Global Warming, Copenhagen, & Light Rail – The Solution That Is Ignored

When one looks past the European street theater of riots, the embarrassment of Canada, the intransigence of the USA, China and Russia, what will Copenhagen climate conference accomplish? Probably very little. The world is not ready for global warming and if a few island nations submerge due to rising sea levels, no one will really […]

Overseas news From the LRTA – Wuppertal ‘Monorail’ Closed

The following news item shows the problems of not doing proper maintenance on a transit system, especially a ‘grade seperated’ transit system. In the winter, in the least desirable time, the Wuppertal Schwebebahn is closed due to serious safety concerns with the support columns, until they are replaced, sometime near Easter. The problem with expensive […]

Has SkyTrain become British Columbia’s Greatest Bamboozle?

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. Carl Sagan Is SkyTrain a colossal bamboozle? Does the SkyTrain lobby and […]

The Night of the Blunt Butter Knives – TransLink Fires Three Executives

It looks like TransLink has sacrificed three executives, to give an appearance of “getting their house in order” after two very recent uncomplimentary reports; nothing like firing three top executives (of course leaving with handsome golden handshakes) to give the public confidence that TransLink is cleaning house. Sorry, no it’s not – not even close. […]

Trams for the 21st Century – Alstom Citadis

Ai??Ai?? Bombardier and Siemens trams also have stiff competition from France’s Alstom’s Citadis modular tram. Alstolm’sAi??Ai??Citadis family of modular tramsAi??Ai??includes both partially low-floor and 100% low-floor trams,Ai??Ai??which can be delivered inAi??Ai??three, five, and seven sections, to suit the needs of individual costumers. The Citadis family of modular tramsAi??Ai??comprises of: Citadis 100 – three section, 70% […]

Trams for the 21st Century – Siemen’s Combino

With Bombardier’s two Flexity Outlook trams arriving in Vancouver, let’s take a look what the other companies have to offer for trams for the 21st century. Siemen’s Combino modular car The Combino is a low floor tramAi??Ai??made by Siemens Transportation Systems and firstAi??Ai??model came off the assembly lineAi??Ai??in 1996 at the Duewag works in DA?A?sseldorf, […]

The Streetcars are coming, The Streetcars are coming – or are they?

There has been some media attention given to the arrival of the the two BombardierAi??Ai??Flexity OutlookAi??Ai??trams from Belgium, for a demonstration operation on a short section of Vancouver’s ‘Downtown Historic Railway’, during the Olympics. I was very disappointed in BCTV News when the commentator described the trams as “old fashioned“, as the Flexity generation of […]