BCIT to UBC and Picnics In The Park

First published in 2009. Updated 2014, 2016 and in 2019   A Wee Bit Of Local History In early 1996, during BC Transit’s meaningless public consultation period for the Broadway Lougheed Rapid Transit Project which later morphed into the Millennium Line, Zwei received a phone call from an European Transit specialist, who worked for Asea […]

Articulated Rail Cars – Transit 101

So boys and girls, lesson for today; what is an articulated car? Definition: Articulated cars are rail vehicles which consist of a number of cars which are semi-permanently attached to each other and share common Jacobs bogies or axles and/or have car elements without axles suspended by the neighbouring car elements. They are much longer […]

Stadler Trains For Ottawa’s Trillium Line

This is of great importance for Fraser Valley passenger  rail. The  Stadler FLIRT is a close cousin of the Stadler  GTW tramtrain and like the GTW, the articulated FLRT uses a diesel power-pack located in the middle of the train. The FLIRT DMU is really a five section, articulated diesel rail car, with four sections […]

King Street Success – Lessons for Vancouver and Surrey!

Kicking and screaming all the way, Toronto is now updating its heritage streetcar system to light rail standards and the the result is obvious, success. Modern trams, reserved rights-of-ways, all the key ingredients for successful LRT. Sadly, this puts Toronto 40 years behind most other European Cities. As found in Europe, modern light-rail has changed […]

South Fraser Community RAIL

South Fraser Community Rail South Fraser Community Rail is the latest group joining the struggle to get rail passenger service operating in the Fraser Valley. Instead of TramTrain and its variants, they opted for the hydrogen powered electric train in the guise of an electric multiple unit (EMU) passenger trains.        

King Street Versus the BS Line

I added this article to demonstrate that is Canada, simple streetcar lines can carry large volumes of people. Each day, 84,000 people ride the King St. Streetcar, while TransLink claims a modest 60,000 people a day use Broadway. The King car is not just Toronto’s busiest surface transit route. It carries as many people as […]

Valley Rail Gaining Steam

It’s good news so far. The real trick is to plan for rail properly, which is hard to do in Metro Vancouver, where politicians think they are better at planning for transit than the real experts. It is hard to think any valley mayor and council would be against a viable Vancouver to Chilliwack rail […]

BS Line To Nowhere Or The Big Dig Part 2

Oh, the BS Line, Vancouver’s great vanity project. All world class cities must have a subway, according to the “booster class” who just love mega projects. Last cost estimate for the BS Line is around $3.5 billion, not including cars. Looks like the powers that be are already planning to reduce the scope of the […]

90 Years And Counting

Well, it has taken almost 90 years for transit planners in North America to realize that by giving a streetcar a dedicated lane it becomes light rail. European transit planners clearly understood by the 1930’s that by giving a streetcar a dedicated route, its performance almost matched that of a much more expensive metro or […]

Chilliwack Is On Board

Finally! It seems the good burghers of Chilliwack see the benefits of a rail servcie connecting Vancouver to Chilliwack. A basic Vancouver to Chilliwack DMU servcie can be had for as little as $750 million and a more elaborate service using hydrogen powered trains or electric servcie, with several trips per direction each hour would […]