Listen To The Experts

Currently the full program to extend the Expo and Millennium Lines a mere 21.7 km will now cost in excess of $16 billion. The now, estimated cost to complete the Broadway subway to UBC is now past $8 billion. Yet the provincial government had be carried kicking and screaming to find a few million of […]

The Modern Tramway – What TransLink and Metro Mayors Do Not Want You To Know.

Several recent posts in local transit oriented blogs have denounced the modern tram as some sort of throwback in planning. Really? Public Transport is about a user friendly service that provides a quality product for the customer. In over 450 cities around the world (not including strictly Light Rail Operations), the modern tram is the […]

The NDP Are paving Paradise And Turning It Into A Parking Lot – An Updated Repost from 2021

First posted by zweisystem on Thursday, April 8, 2021 Updated. Reinstating passenger services on regional railways, it is what government should be doing, to deal with traffic congestion and pollution, but they are not, as government would rather spend money on prestigious “rapid transit” monuments to cut for photo-ops at election time. The E&N, the […]

The Ever Line SkyTrain Revisited – The Legacy

A repost. First posted by zweisystem on Friday, March 27, 2020 With all the hype and hoopla about the new SkyTrain 5-car train-sets being delivered and the media oo-ing and aw-ing about the system, I thought retelling a little history was in order. One just has to shake ones head! Except for brief mentions of […]

Toronto’s Eglinton Crosstown LRT, Well Sort Of LRT

The soon to open 19-kilometre Eglinton Crosstown LRT, (Line 5) includes a 10 km subway, which in my book, makes this project a light metro and not LRT. The Crosstown route between Mount Dennis Station (Weston Road) and Kennedy Station will include a 10-kilometre underground portion in its central section between Keele Street and Laird […]

Road Pricing – Back from the Dead

From 2018. Zwei has studied “Road Pricing” and “Congestion Charging” for over 20 years and……………… the very first rule for a successful road pricing scheme is that the region have a user friendly and affordable public transit alternative. With TransLink we don’t…….. not even close and TransLink is so incompetent at what it does, will […]

Mobility Pricing – The Rapture of Megaprojects

This was first posted in 2020 and five years later mobility pricing is back on the agenda. Why? Simple, TransLink is broke. The now $16 billion price tag, for the full program to extend the Expo and Millennium Lines a mere 21.7 km has hit a financial iceberg and is $3 to $4 billion short […]

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

A re-post. First posted on Wednesday, October 13, 2021 Memo from Zweisystem: This post is from 2021, yet we still see TransLink beating the drum for more and more money, as politicians, both regional, provincial and federal are afraid to say no more money and live within your means. All financial numbers will be updated […]

50 Years Out of Date

Memo to the Caisse du Depot: REM is a light metro and light metro is obsolete. Automatic (driverless) railways have issues in the snow. It snows in Montreal, doesn’t it? What Vancouver calls SkyTrain is a light-metro and it was deemed obsolete back in the late 70’s and why it was unsalable. Six marketing names […]

Tram Trains for Romania!

The flexibility of the modern tram to operate on mainline railways is now being exploited in Romania. This means affordable, quality public transport can be extended to service customers, who would otherwise be excluded from transportation planning. Until our politcans and public clearly understand that building subways and elevated transit is not how to increase […]