Mobility Pricing – The Rapture of Megaprojects

The first rule of mobility pricing is: One must have an affordable and user friendly public transit alternative. Metro Vancouver doesn’t, nor is planning for one. Instead metro Vancouver is planning for politically prestigious mega transit projects and like all megaprojects, they cost a lot of money and government, whether it be civic, provincial or […]

Broadway Subway: Based On Inaccurate And Manipulated Assumptions

Haveacow is an avatar of a very knowledgeable chap from back east who works with public transport. In the arcane world of transit in Canada, speaking one’s mind or even being truthful can send one to Coventry. To send someone to Coventry is an English idiom meaning to deliberately ostracize someone. Typically, this is done […]

TransLink Underestimated Capacity Of LRT By 150% And The Time Penalty By Infinity

It verifies what we all knew: that TransLink underestimated the capacity of surface rail by 150% and the time penalty by infinity. Professor Patrick M. Condon, James Taylor Chair in Landscape and Livable Environments, UBC Yes we all knew; American Transportation Expert, Gerald Fox told us in 2008: The Evergreen Line Report made me curious […]

Quebec Follows The Vancouver Model Of Transit Planning

The Vancouver Model Of Transit Planning: If you build with light-metro, make damn sure you don’t build LRT anywhere near it In Quebec, Montreal’s REM Lobby, including the Caisse and city, provincial and federal politicians could not afford to have LRT interfere with their light metro propaganda campaign and made sure Quebec City’s $3.3 billion […]

How The NDP Paved Paradise and Turned It Into a Parking Lot.

The NDP’s refusal to give Metro Vancouver’s transit planning an independent review has condemned the region to congestion and gridlock for generations. The billions of dollars spent on rapid transit and the future billions of dollars to be spent expanding rapid transit has and will utterly fail to attract the driver from his/her cars. The […]

SkyTrain On Fire!

Lost amidst the hurly burly of the American election and the just announced almost total lock down in BC, a fire at New Westminster Station caused the shutdown of service Sunday morning. What is interesting is that this fire on the main public transit route to downtown was not given great play in the media […]

For Whom the Tolls Toll.

You operate a very expensive transit system that is not user friendly. You build a subway on a route with nowhere near the ridership to sustain it. You persist in planning and using a very expensive, yet obsolete proprietary light metro. You pretend that public transit is a right and not a convenience. You persist […]

And Now, Back To The Real Storey

  The election is over and promises have been made and the winners and the winners the SkyTrain Lobby. Premier Horgan has promised billions of dollars to extend then Expo Line to Langley and with a hint, beyond. The Broadway Subway, now refereed by many as the BS Line is first in line for a […]

TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond Jumps Ship.

No surprise here, as I stated before, 2021, will make 2020 look child’s play. Desmond was hired because of his ability to massage the truth to build the Broadway subway. He seemed ignorant of transit mode and that the Expo and Millennium lines operated with a proprietary light metro system. I think this is evidence […]

Could Increasing Capacity of the Canada Line Cost $4 Billion or More?

The following should give one pause to think. Toronto’s Yonge-Bloor Interchange Station Expansion To Cost $1.5 billion From Drum, via the LRPPro Report going to TTC Oct 22 is how the current Yonge-Bloor interchange station can be expanded to deal with overcrowding. This idea been around for a number of years and been placed on […]