Movia Automatic Light Metro is the Brand Name And SkyTrain Is The name Of The Light-Metro System
So back into the archives I go.
As the hype and Hoopla of the provincial election shudders along, there is a lot of postings in the various Social media outlets about the SkyTrain Line, now called the Dave Barrett Extension (strange that as former Premier Dave Barret was very pro light rail and not too fond of SkyTrain) confirms that SkyTrain is being built more to win elections that provide an affordable and user friendly transit alternative.
And yes, since this was published, it seems a Brazilian company has trademarked the name SkyTrain for their proprietary transit system, as their Emails remind me.
The old saw dating from an Email from 2019, proclaiming to all that SkyTrain is the brand name of the transit system and that the LIM powered trains are made by various companies, is coming back to haunt transit issues in 2026.
Sorry, but Alstom now owns the patents for the proprietary MALM system and SNC Lavalin may still hold engineering patents, inherited when Lavalin owned the system and then promptly went bankrupt.
Yes, the Chinese Railway Corporation produced compatible cars for the Kuala Lumpor system but they were cloned cars of the Beijing MALM system and the design is 30 years old. As the CRRC doesn’t believe in intellectual property (patents) such cars could be illegal to operate in Canada or cause huge extra penalty costs to the operator.
No other company produced LIM powered cars that are compatible with the trains used on the Expo and Millennium Lines. There is no market for the system, therefore no investment for what is now considered an orphaned system.
The name SkyTrain is used on a lot of elevated transit systems, simple because it is railway is in the Sky, so to speak. SkyTrain is not a brand of transit, it is a name only!
Miami’s Airport SkyTrain People Mover, No Relation to Vancouver’s SkyTrain!
BTS Bangkok is a conventional railway, operating as a regional metro system and is no relation to the proprietary “SkyTrain” light-metro system in Vancouver.
The Kuranda SkyTrain or Sky-rail in Australia, is an aerial tramway.
In Taiwan, the Taoyaun airport people mover is called SkyTrain.
And I can go on.
It seems the SkyTrain “brand”, is nothing more than the local names for elevated transit lines.
Then of course the is Bombardier’s SkyTrain, a rubber tired airport people mover. As reported in RftV two years ago:
Bombardier Is Building SkyTrain at LAX…..But, It ain’t Our SkyTrain!
Bombardier’s Airport People Mover system was called SkyTrain, no relation to MALM.
Why the deliberate misinformation?
Sadly it is the old “if you repeat a lie often enough, the people are bound to believe it.”
What they are calling the SkyTrain brand in Vancouver, is not a brand, rather the name of the regional light-metro system, chosen via radio contest by CKNW in 1985.
So, as a refresher, I will start with the brands that our light-metro system has been marketed under.
- Intermediate Capacity Transit System (ICTS)
- Advanced Light Rail Transit (ALRT)
- Advanced Light Metro (ALM)
- Advanced Rapid Transit (ART)
- Innovia Rapid Transit
- Movia Automatic Light Metro (MALM)
The various brands have been owned by four companies:
- The Urban Transit Development Corporation (UTDC)
- Lavalin
- Bombardier Inc.
- Alstom
Powered by Linear Induction Motors, MALM certainly is, as most unconventional railways are proprietary. The MALM system is not compatible in operation on any other railway, other than its family of now six systems (Toronto abandoned their ICTS system) and no other company has ‘off the shelf’ vehicles that can be used on the MALM system.
As stated before, Alstom now hold the technical patents and SNC Lavalin hold engineering patents.
One should be wary of politcans pretending they are transit experts and their blatant attempts to mislead the public may come back and haunt them in the future.
