A Repost From 2017- La Renaissance Du Tramway en France

La renaissance du tramway en France Tours The French (Tram) Renaissance is amazing! 17 brand-new systems opened since 2000. A single line in Montpellier, line T1, carriess over 130,000 weekday riders! And thatai??i??s with no tunnels, mostly street running. Systems in Nantes, Bordeaux and Montpellier have ridership at or near 260,000 riders a day! That […]

A Tale of Three Letters

It seems there is much confusion with TransLink and metro cities regarding transit mode. It is the old shell game, practiced by BC Transit, TransLink, both the provincial Liberal Party and the NDP, regional Mayors and very sadly, both University of BC and Simon Fraser University. Rapid transit refers to metro and not light rail, […]

A Letter to Regional Politicians

Zwei has been copied a letter that has been sent out to Metro politicians. I also have been informed that the provincial NDP have blocked receiving said letter. It is of great importance that the media should ask pointed questions about regional transit, but they don’t and have given largely given regional transit a free […]

A Question Of Capacity – Reprinted from the Light Rail Transit Association

A repost from January 3 2018 A QUESTION OF CAPACITY THE CAPACITIES of different modes of transport are generally quoted as 0-10 000 passengers per hour for bus, 2000-20 000 for light rail, and 15 000 upwards for heavy rail.     * Maximum capacity is only likely to be required for a few hours […]

Fake News And The SkyTrain Lobby – Who Are They Really Working For?

A repost from November 21, 2017 A comment from Zwei (2021): The Daily Hive has become the mouthpiece for TransLink and the Hive prints news releases as if they were news, without any fact checking. Really, can’t the SkyTrain Lobby do any better? The following is so silly and juvenile because it is all hearsay […]

The Realities of Subway Mania In Lotus Land

A repost from March 4 2020 The realities of subway mania. Vancouver politicians live in “The Land of the Lotus Eaters”, when it comes to transit. In Greek mythology the lotus-eaters, were a race of people living on an island dominated by the Lotus tree. The lotus fruits and flowers were the primary food of […]

TramTrain For 2021!

Zwei has been a member of the Light Rail Transit Association for over 35 years and with membership comes a subscription to the most excellent magazine Tramways & Urban Transit. The following will be of most interest for those wanting an affordable rail connection from Vancouver to Chilliwack using the existing and former BC Electric […]

And Then There Were Six

Despite the hype and hoopla of regional mayors, five very important facts about our SkyTrain light metro system are glossed over in Metro Vancouver, by metro mayors, bureaucrats and transportation planners: The Expo and Millennium Lines operate a dated proprietary railway, now called Movia Automatic Light Metro. Only seven of these proprietary railways were sold […]

The Zillertalbahn – One of My Favourite Railways.

One of my favourite railways, the Zilleralbahn, which I visited in 1983. There is really nothing to compare this to in BC, though there could be some candidates, if our tourist authorities stop skiing at Whistler and actually craft a product other than winter skiing. Running through a valley in a well to do rural […]

Alstom-Bombardier Deal to Complete in January

This is big news as Bombardier is the sole supplier of the proprietary, linear induction motor powered Movia Automatic Light Metro system used on the Expo and Millennium Lines. Alstom may or may not continue the production of the now stale dated Movia Light Metro and give notice to its customers that they will wind […]