A SkyTrain Carol

The following is an Email I sent to metro Vancouver mayor’s and Councils. Yes I know it is long and from the response I got, such as lectures by Mayors for not crafting long Emails indicates I hit a nerve. I also copied it politcal leaders and the Mayor’s Council on Transit. Why? I want […]

Perils Of Driverless Operation

Really? At first glance one wonders why? Why the need for a bus bridge and huge inconvenience for light-metro customers? The real problem is this, automatic (driverless) transit systems, for all the expensive kit, cannot deal with problems unlike a system with a driver. The real problem is that the train may hit a person […]

A Cost Comparison of Transportation Modes

A Cost Comparison of Transportation Modes The 2009 study by UBC Professor Patrick Condon, the James Taylor chair in Landscape and Livable Environments at the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and the founding chair of the UBC Urban Design program can be read by clicking on the title. Though the […]

If you tell a SkyTrain lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

This is an updated post from 2009.   The title quote by Joseph Goebbels, famed Nazi propagandist, aptly describes the SkyTrain lobby’s and BC Transit/TransLink’s thirty year long propaganda campaign to sell SkyTrain and discredit modern light rail. The many pro-SkyTrain blog sites that offer little in fact, but much unfounded rhetoric. All the bumf […]

The Big SkyTrain Sell – Eby And The NDP Are Worried

 The Vancouver Sun has always shilled for SkyTrain. They repeat government hype as factual news. What this huge infomercial in the Vancouver sun tells me that Eby and the NDP are extremely worried that their agreement for the flip flop from originally planned LRT to extending the Expo Line 16 km to Langley will not […]

“Even Your Auditor General Seems To Have Done His Sums On The Back Of An Envelope.”

From 2013, updated. I am reposing this from 2013 because I just heard on the radio, the often repeated nonsense, that SkyTrain has a greater capacity than light rail.   The SkyTrain light metro system doesn’t and it never did. From Thales News Release concerning the $1.47 billion signalling upgrade of the Expo and Millennium […]

Escalating to an Accident

Here is a story which, reported in the Breaker News which was ignored by the mainstream media, which panders to TransLink, which has now been revealed by Bob Mackin. But what I want to point out is something different. I lived in London England in 1980 and took the ‘tube’ regularly (even supped a few […]

Perils of a Proprietary Railway

Perils of a Proprietary railway. TransLink, the Mayors council on Transit and the provincial NDP have tried to whitewash the fact that the Movia Automatic Light Metro, used on the Expo and Millennium Lines is not a proprietary railway. TransLink has deliberately mislead local politicians that SkyTrain is not a proprietary railway and in the […]

Number One Highway Constructions Costs Climbing

This bodes ill for the Expo Line extension to Langley. Transportation Minister Rob Fleming attributes the delays to soil and geotechnical issues. These are the same geotechnical issues that the Langley extension also must face. The following quote is also of interest: This is in addition to the previously approved budget of $2.34 billion for […]

Snap Election Coming? The $4.01 Billion Lie

One wonders if Premier Eby is going to call a snap election in January or February? Surrey will be hotly contested as the police, flip-flop, issue is hurting the NDP MLA’s there. Nothing like “good news everyone” photo ops and 10 second sound bytes for the evening news, to try to steer the voter away […]