A Slow Train to The Future

What is is badly needed in BC and Canada is regional railways. Local pundits have called for faster and faster rail transit, with some even advocating for high speed rail (HST) for the Fraser Valley as the only way to get people out of their cars. The current cost for the Expo Line extension to […]

Listen To The Experts

Currently the full program to extend the Expo and Millennium Lines a mere 21.7 km will now cost in excess of $16 billion. The now, estimated cost to complete the Broadway subway to UBC is now past $8 billion. Yet the provincial government had be carried kicking and screaming to find a few million of […]

Memo to the M.O.T. – Time to Reread The Leewood Study – Updated

First posted by on Saturday, May 2, 2020 Now fifteen years old, the Leewood Study, done by Leewood Projects (UK), to assess the viability of reinstating a passenger rail service from downtown Vancouver to Chilliwack via the former BC Electric R.R. route, is worth a revisit. Leewood Study The Leewood Study brought a fresh set […]

TramTrain – It’s Time To Have Another Look At The Leewood Project – Updated

While local politicians squabble about expensive transit planning and gouging the taxpayer to pay for multi billion dollar transportation vanity projects, economic and user friendly TramTrain construction and operation continue to increase. Is it not time for politicians have another look at the Leewood/Rail for the Valley Study?

Tram Trains for Romania!

The flexibility of the modern tram to operate on mainline railways is now being exploited in Romania. This means affordable, quality public transport can be extended to service customers, who would otherwise be excluded from transportation planning. Until our politcans and public clearly understand that building subways and elevated transit is not how to increase […]

The 2024 Provincial Election And Transit

How will the 2024 provincial election impact transit? Hard to answer but, the current major “rapid transit” (Expo and Millennium Lines) projects are seeing a funding shortfall of around $4 billion and it is hard to see the new Parliament in Victoria approving funding, for what is now largely seen a “prestige” transit projects. Oh, […]

Lessons

A lot has happened with Ottawa’s hybrid light metro/rail system, most of it negative, but most confuse it with the very successful O-Train, which is not light rail at all, rather a regional railway, operating DMU’s. This is what Rail for the Valley is proposing for the Valley Rail scheme and what the E&N folks […]

Back On Track

Cities across Europe are building trams (streetcars) at a rate not seen in nearly a century. Places that had torn up their tram tracks in the 1950s have realized they had made a mistake. Twenty-one French cities have built a tramway system this century. Sixty German cities now have trams. Further afield, China has built […]

Video – German Regional Railway

The following is a cab view of Dillenburg to Betzdorf regional railway – enjoy!

Video – My Favourite Public Transport Video

The following is my favourite public transport video and includes all aspects of rail to move people, including TramTrain, Intercity trains, local trains, and even a steam excursion.