Lysenkoism – TransLink’s Doctrine
The SkyTrain Lobby Is Watching You!
.This is a repost and in light of both provincial and civic elections, Lysenkoism will reign supreme!
Lysenkoism: describes the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social or political objectives
Transit is about moving people, not building high rise condos and towers!
Really, not in Vancouver, where the SkyTrain light metro system is designed to shape land use, ensuring big profits for politcal friends and insiders.
Ignoring the fact that the proprietary SkyTrain mini-metro system has been rejected by transit planners around the world as being extremely expensive for what it does and just being poorly designed, many local politicians, planners and engineers still hail SkyTrain as a ‘wonder system‘ despite the fact that only seven such systems have been built in almost years and only three are seriously used for urban transport.
Ignoring facts has been the mainstay of TransLink, countless provincial ministers of transportation, professional engineers, planners and academics, in transit debates and regional transit planning in general. Why have so many people have stained their reputations, supporting a proprietary mini-metro, when the rest of the world has moved on, regarding SkyTrain as a historic footnote?
There are two reasons for so many local so-called professional and academic people remain willfully blind on regional transit issues.
- Many people have made small fortunes by supporting SkyTrain and the SkyTrain planning and building process. Making large sums of money by doing very little is a very hard habit to give up, especially when the taxpayer is footing the bill.
- Many people have just been bamboozled by the SkyTrain lobby and are embarrassed to acknowledge it. Like sheep, they continue to baa, baa, the SkyTrain line for fear that they would be shown ignorant of transit issues.
Greed, ignorance and fear are the main ingredients of our regional transit planning and until that changes, the powers that be will still plan for SkyTrain. The continued building and operating SkyTrain is bankrupting TransLink, taxes will continually rise, further feeding greed, ignorance and fear.
Lysenkoism is the doctrine and it is practiced by the provincial government, Metro Vancouver and TransLink.
