As Preddicted, Major Switch Replacement Begins.

Mr. Cow has been bang on with his predictions of the growing cost of SkyTrain light metro expansion and the following news item certainly shows the ongoing expensive problems TransLink faces. Replacing two switches should take a weekend at most, but these are new high-speed switches, which needs a lot of engineering done to the […]

Flexibility To Fight Climate Change

Flexibility is the key in today’s transit planning. More and more, freight that used to be carried on railways, then switched to heavily subsidized trucks on heavily subsidized highways, is now goring back to the railways. Ignoring Global Warming and climate change is a fools game, played by civic, provincial and federal politicians to the […]

Zwei Is Banned By The Tyee

Critical mass blockading the Lions Gate Bridge in pre covid days.   Well, it was bound to happen, good old Zwei has been banned by the on line newspaper the Tyee, because he questioned the “Left’s” sacred cow, the bicycle lobby, by mentioning that the cycle lobby has done great damage to future regional transit […]

Old Noise Issues Plague SkyTrain

This problem has been around a long time, small wheels means more revolutions and more wear of the track’ correlated rails; and a strict regimen of rail grinding and preventative maintenance of the steerable axle trucks. This costs a lot of money and TransLink has never been good with maintenance issues. TransLink is near broke […]

Can Trams Climb Steep Grades?

In Austin Texas, the often repeated claim that trams cannot climb steep grades is being cleverly used to derail a new light rail line. The same argument was used successfully by TransLink, the City of Vancouver and the Ministry of Transportation to discredit any proposed LRT/tram line in Metro Vancouver. In the early 2000’s, the […]

World’s Greatest Public Transit Systems

From Shanghai to Stockholm, these are the world’s greatest public transportation systems – as voted by the people who use them every day 1. Berlin – Metro pop. – 6.1 mil. [Trams] (Metro) 2. Prague – Metro pop. – 2.7 mil. [Trams] (Metro) 3. Tokyo – Metro pop. – 40.7 mil. [Trams] (subway) 4. Copenhagen […]

TramTrain – It’s Time To Have Another Look At The Leewood Project

While local politicians squabble about expensive transit planning and gouging the taxpayer to pay for multi billion dollar transportation vanity projects, economic and user friendly TramTrain construction and operation continue to increase. Isn’t time for politicians have another look at the Leewood/Rail for the Valley Study? Chemitz TramTrain on the mainline. A Langley to downtown […]

Why TransLink Can’t Be Honest? A Repost From March 2017

Six years later, not much has changed. Thales has signed a $1.47 billion contract for re-signalling the Expo and Millennium Lines but with capacity only increasing by 2,500 pphpd to 17,500 pphph for the Expo Line and for an astonishing increased maximum capacity of only 7,500 pphpd for the Millennium Line. A maximum capacity of […]

User-Friendly Is Not In TransLink’s Lexicon

TransLink has a problem, overall decline ridership on its transit system and resent assaults and a murder on the bus and light-metro system is not helping transit customer confidence. TransLink must adjust accordingly and is by cutting bus service. There have been cutbacks to 50 bus routes in Vancouver, North Shore, Burnaby, New Westminster, Richmond […]

Toronto Tram Update – The Waterfront Streetcar

Toronto is the only city in Canada to retain its streetcar or tram system and today the system is expanding to meet the travel needs of transit customers. The following videos explains the new Waterfront project with expanded streetcar service.