TramTrain For 2022

A re-post from earlier this year. With the devastation caused by this years heat dome, wild fires, tornado, atmospheric rivers, flood and of course our modern day plague, Covid, the provincial government must rethink its plans to spend over $10 billion to build less than 22 km of the SkyTrain light metro network. $10 billion […]

Time To Put Freight Back On The Rails!

A rolling motorway in Europe The recent fiasco with our regional highways, due to the “Great Deluge” has again spot lighted the massive amount of freight traffic that is carried on the public highway system. The trucking industry is highly subsidized by using the existing highways and the motor freight companies undercut the freight rates […]

SeaTrain – The Ongoing Columbia St. Station Fiasco

Yes, this is an ongoing problem but………………. The flooding and closing of the strategic Columbia St. Station should have been dealt with ages ago, but no, not TransLink. Always put off to tomorrow what should be done today and to hell with the customer! I wonder if anyone at TransLink knows what a sump pump […]

A Repost – McCallum’s $2.9 Billion Question – From 2018 – Updated To 2021

From October 20, 2018; well its November 2022 and the cost for The Expo Line extension to Langley has now surpassed $4 billion and Zwei’s prediction has come true. SkyTrain construction is not to be started until 2028, if ever and transit for the Fraser Valley has been set back not 20 years, but 40 […]

REM

The following article also aptly describes metro Vancouver’s transit planning, which is mostly dictated by the premier’s office and camouflaged in layers of bureaucracy. The result is very expensive, politically inspired rapid transit lines that soon become financial anchors. As a final note, the then Gordon Campbell BC government rejected LRT from the start, dropping […]

Building Back Better

In BC, we do the same thing over again hoping for different results. While in the UK the modern tram or light rail or supertram is now seen as one of the proven remedies for urban congestion.

Entering The Land of Unicorns and Pixie Dust – TransLink’s Current P.R. Gamble

Well, the first surprise was that this news item came via the Alaska Highway News of all places. This tells me TransLink is spinning the story to everyone it can to give the good news to! The big problem that there is no money to fund these grand schemes and the post Covid economy may […]

What’s wrong with the REM?

The Canada Line’s big cousin, Montreal’s REM. The problem with REM. like the Canada line is that it is more of a financial tool than a public transit line and because of this, the transit customer has been ignored. A healthy transit system offers multiple ways to get between points A and B — not […]

Letters

Letters From the Langley Advance Times Dear Editor, For over 12 years, Rail for the Valley has been advocating the reinstatement of the Vancouver to Chilliwack interurban service and in doing so, are being advised by professionals and engineers who have a sound knowledge of public transit systems and transportation modes. The following are pertinent […]

Ottawa’s Troubled LRT, Er……. Light Metro ~ Updated

UPDATE OCTOBER 14, 2021: City manager Steve Kanellakos said Rideau Transit Group reported on the root cause of the derailment: a gearbox came loose and dragged along the tracks. Kanellakos said RTG learned the gearbox bolts weren’t torqued properly.   What was going to be a showcase LRT has turned into a Light Metro fiasco. […]