Ottawa’s LRT Is Opening

Ottawa’s LRT is Opening. The term choo-choo, used by ill informed opponents of light rail is standard across the country but really has no basis as LRT remains one of the most effective way to move people. The problem in North America is that our universities are still mired in the 1950’s and all subjects […]

Caen Opens Its New 16km, $373 Million Tram/LRT System

The new 16.2 km tramway in Caen, France has opened after a nineteen month build. Granted the new tramway has used the the previous trouble prone, 15.7 km,  TVR rubber tire guided bus line, which opened in 20o2 and abandoned in 2017. The Euro €260 million (CAD $373 million) tramway opened six weeks earlier than […]

Streets Paved With Gold – Transit Planning is Driven By Politics

Footnotes: The author,  Adrienne Tanner,  was city editor at the Sun, a newspaper that prevented any real reporting of our regional transit issues and took orders from back east to report “SkyTrain” in a positive light. As well, there was little investigative reporting on SNC-Lavalin’s B.C. operations. Detroit’s ALRT system officially called a People Mover […]

Less Transit For More Money – The Canadain Way

Here we go again. The combined naivete of regional mayors about regional transportation and the abandonment of their fiduciary duty protecting the taxpayer from ill advised “prestige projects” such as the Broadway subway and the Expo Line extension in Surrey, is just simply breathtaking! * Both the ill conceived Broadway subway and the now equally […]

Quebec City’s $3.3 Billion Transit Plan – 23 km of LRT, 16 km Of Real BRT & More!

An interesting comparison can be made with the just approved Quebec City light rail and BRT projects and Metro Vancouver’s Mayor’s Council/TransLink project, extending the light-metro system. In Quebec City, $3.3 billion will buy you 3.5 km of tunnel, 23 km of LRT, 2 lines totaling 15 km of electric powered BRT, 16 km of […]

Calgary LRT Angst

The anti LRT schlock continues from the mainstream media. The BRT/LRT debate has been long over, but not in Canada it seems, where disgruntled bus-boy types whine that buses are cheaper. Well no, not really. The problem is that about $2 billion of the estimated $4.9 billion cost is a 4.2 km subway under the […]

The Canada Line – Mediocrity Is Deemed Successful In Metro Vancouver

In one of the most biased reporting yet by the media yet, the Canada line is deemed a success. Really? The $2.4 billion plus projects paved the way for Vancouver to get rather ineffectual regional and provincial politicians to sign blank cheques for subways in Vancouver; paid for of course, by higher gas property taxes. […]

Another Look At Gerald Fox’s Review Of The Evergreen Line Business Case

I cannot stress enough the importance of this short letter as it shreds TransLink’s Business Case for the Evergreen Line. I did not support the Evergreen Line because from what I gleaned from all the studies and documents, that there was not the ridership to sustain the uncompleted portion of the Millennium Line to the […]

Politcal Penis Envy Drives Subway Costs

This is rather old news and one questions why the media have not picked up on this earlier. Subways cost a lot of money to build, yet they provide no better service than modern light rail, unless traffic flows on the transit route surpass around 20,000 pphpd. Vancouver does not have one route that has […]

A Stark Choice

The stark choice for the Fraser Valley. Does one want to spend $1.6 billion for seven or eight kilometres of a now obsolete light metro metro system, ending in  Fleetwood, with vague promises of future funding to go to Langley or a Vancouver to Chilliwack, via North Delta, Cloverdale, Abbotsford, Sardis and Chilliwack regional rail […]