From the Halifax Herald

SkyTrain Strike?

One of the big advantages touted by the then Social Credit government for the SkyTrain ALRT system, was that is was an automatic transit system and being driverless could not go on strike. Ha, ha, ha, the joke is on TransLink, as the 537 SkyTrain operators, attendants, dispatchers, andAi??office andAi??maintenance staff have voted 95% to […]

Streetcar Porkies From Vancouver

You just got to hand it to Vision(less) Vancouver and its lap-dog bureaucracy in finding ways to discredit the heritage streetcar. The Olympic Line, which operated just two Bombardier Flexity trams (3050 & 3051), had about 550,000 boardings in its short two month run and was proven to be extremely successful, so successful in fact […]

Trolled by trolls

ai???If you tell a SkyTrain lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The SkyTrain lie can be maintained only for such time as the provinceAi?? and TransLink can shield the people from the political, economic and/or transit consequences of the SkyTrain lie. It thus becomes vitally important for […]

TransLink’s Subway Fiscal Time Bomb – A Repost from 2013

The SkyTrain/metro Lobby remain mute on the long term fiscal effects of operating subways, especially on routes that have low ridership, say less than 15,000 pphpd. Building a subway is a very expensive proposition and many factors should be considered before embarking on such a costly investment. The first questionAi??any knowledgeable transit planner must ask […]

Stop fighting Massey bridge, Delta mayor doesn’t get it

Some politicians ‘get it’ and many other don’t; the same goes with regional transportation planning. Delta’s Mayor, Lois Jackson clearly doesn’t get it. The proposed Massey Tunnel replacement bridge will not solve congestion, only move it a few kilometres from Delta, across the river into Richmond. Someone must explain to Mayor Jackson, that unless a […]

U.S. (And Canada) Taxpayers Are Gouged on Mass Transit Costs (a repost from 2012)

With BC Transit quoting silly prices for LRT in Victoria and TransLink doing the same in Vancouver and Surrey, the following article from Bloomberg should be essential reading. As the previous post has shown, modern LRT/streetcar can be built cheaply, if there is the political and bureaucratic will to do so. With thank to Justin […]

The Moonbeam Line

The Moonbeam Line is an apt name for the for Vancouver Mayor, Gregor Robinson’s pet Broadway subway project, as the subway planning has a foundation of stuff and nonsense. This hokumAi?? that a subway would be of “national significance”, is pure hoopla, from a mayor eager to spend vast sums of other people’s money for […]

Hutzpa!

What hutzpa! The Broadway subway a transit project of national significance, really? I think Mayor Robinson thinks that the taxpayer are rubes. According to our friend, Mr. Haveacow,Ai?? Broadway’s peak demand numbers on average of 2000-3700 passenger trips per hour per direction, which is barely enough to support light rail, let alone a subway. What […]

The Affordable Tram, a Template for Surrey?

A few posts back, Zwei looked at the affordable tram for Vancouver connecting UBC with BCIT, so now let us see how the affordable streetcar would do in Surrey. What should be of extreme interest is the low cost for the proposed Dundee tram compared to the sky high costs for light rail from TransLink! […]