Beijing’s Subway Needs Fare Hikes

An interesting item from China, Beijing’s metro system, despite being one of the world’s busiest, is having funding problems and fares are escalating. Beijing metro price hike ‘squeezing poor’ 7 January 2015 Despite it being one of the biggest and busiest in the world, the Beijing metro is making huge losses and the government is […]

Seattle’s “big Dig”, Is Digging The City Into a Finacial Morass

As predicted by so many, Seattle’s “Big Dig” to build an auto tunnel to replacing the decrepit stacked Alaskan Way Viaduct, has hit a pipe and stopped. It seems the entire highway tunnel under Elliot Bay, is sinking into a sinkhole created by political prestige laced with engineering hubris. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it. Instead of […]

The Broadway Subway, No Value For Money

Despite a growing number of supporters, such as the business community, the City of Vancouver; most of the regional mayors, the provincial NDP and their combined sundry of shills clamouringAi?? for a SkyTrain Broadway subway, many serious questions remain unanswered. The following op-ed commentary published by The Toronto Star questions whether the concept of building […]

Canada Line Train Catches Fire

The fire was on the Canada Line, which isn’t SkyTrain. For those who are not in the know, the SkyTrain system cars are powered by Linear Induction Motors or LIM’s and the Canada Line cars are powered by “squirrel cage” electric motors. Much of Canada Line down By DAN FUMANO, The Province December 20, 2014 […]

The GVRD’s 1978 LRT/Rail/Road Bridge – A Bridge Too Practical

In 1978, the GVRD were poised to install a three leg light rail system on the region and to cross the Fraser river a new bridge would have to be built. Demonstrating the forward thinking of the era, GVRD planners conceived a multi-use bridge for ‘rapid transit’; the mainline railways; a cycle path; and when […]

TransLink Incompetence Continues – Again Another Fail

Incompetence, thy name is TransLink. Suffice to say, if this happened in Europe and passengers were trapped in a bus for two hours because of a downed trolley line, management would have been fired the next day. All (except for Vancouver maybe) transit services that operate trolley buses or trams have a “crash crew” on […]

Referendum Angst

It will all about the TransLink Referendum in the coming months and regional mayors who haven’t a clue about modern public transit will try to force another tax upon the beleaguered taxpayer to fund questionable transit projects, that will do little to alleviate congestion and gridlock in the lower mainland. The following is a reminder […]

The Usual Suspects Shill for a Yes Vote for the Upcoming TransLink Referendum

Yikes, the Vancouver Sun is at it again, blindly shilling for a yes vote in the not yet announced TransLink referendum. This only makes me guess that internal polling shows that a yes vote is far from certain. All the usual suspects, the B.C. Federation of Labour; The B.C. Board of Trade; and the various […]

A Conflict of Interest – The Broadway Subway

TransLink, unfortunately digs very deep holes for itself and Mr. Chris exposes what they want the public to believe as fact, is in fact pure invention. http://www.translink.ca/~/media/Documents/plans_and_projects/rapid_transit_projects/UBC/alternatives_evaluation/UBC_Line_Rapid_Transit_Study_Phase_2_Alternatives_Evaluation.ashx There are two points I would like to explore, from Mr. Chris’s letter , posted on this blog on November 18. In 1986, the Light Rail Transit Association […]

Subway Stations Flood

Some that TransLink and its allies, the Broadway subway lobby fail to mention is that subways and subway stations, by their very nature become massive sumps, if there is a flood, either by storm or by water-main breaks. Subway station flooding is not uncommon, especially on older systems, which the underground utilities above the station […]