The Seamless (No Transfer) Journey

From a 2010 post, edited for today. It has been long known with transit operators that the seamless or no transfer journey is the ‘ticket’ to attract customers to public transit as it is well understood that one could lose upwards of 70% of ridership per transfer, even inter modal. On older tramways and streetcar […]

The 1986 LRTA Study: Bus ai??i?? LRT ai??i?? Metro Comparison

I thought I would again reprint this post from May 20, 2010 as it may clear up some major misconceptions about LRT capacity, since many in Metro Vancouver are very confused about modern light rail. There is an ongoing debate today that LRTAi??can only carry a limited number of riders and that the magic number […]

Vancouver Blunders Ahead With Its Vanity Project.

Well, Vision(less) Vancouver is blundering ahead with its much cherished $3 billion subway under Broadway and our feckless politicians South of the Fraser remaining willfully blind to this billions of dollars boondoggle. One would think they would be more in tuned with the costs of this massive project. Surrey has been bought off with its […]

Portland’s Streetcar, Connecting The Entire Community

This speaks for itself. I must remind the unconvinced that going from 4,000 users a day to 15,000 users a day (in TransLink’s convoluted lexicon, this equates to over 30,000 boarding’s a day), which is a big deal in the U.S.A. So here is a thought, instead of a $3 billion subway to Arbutus, with […]

Annual Tram/LRT Statistics

The following are the annual tram/LRT ridership statistics courtesy of the Eurotrams group. In contradiction to what many local politicians; bureaucrats and academics would have us believe, modern LRT and or tram can carry large numbers of transit customers and do in annual revenue service. Let us forget the many “man-of-straw arguments” against LRT by […]

Light Rail Gets an Ally – We Welcome New Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi

For the first time since I have been advocating for better transit, now over thirty years, we now have a minister of the crown who not only understands modern light rail, he is an advocate of modern LRT! Let us hope new infrastructure minister Amarjeet Sohi is open to new ideas including the Leewood/RftV TramTrain! […]

Out of Touch

The Vancouver Board of Trade, think themselves transit experts; nope, nada, not a chance as the VBoT is absolutely clueless when it comes to public transit, but they certainly glad hand any transit initiative that will enrich BoT members, such as cement companies, with absolutely no care for the transit consumer or taxpayer. The main […]

So, Who Says That No One Builds With LRT Anymore

Over the weekend, I happen to hear a federal politician wannabe claim that; “No ones builds with light rail anymore” and went on to prattle about BRT and how it could carry impossible loads of people and subways because “everyone else builds them”. Did every politician running for office sleep through their math classes? It […]

The Fiscal Realities of Subways Surface

Taxpayers in Ontario are slowly awakening up to the fiscal realities of modern subway construction, just as their European counterparts did in the 1970’s and 80’s. Little known on this side of the pond, is that subway construction in Europe has almost bankrupted public transit en mass and by the 1990’s subways were only considered […]

Portland Streetcar spurs $4.5 billion in new real estate development

Funny that the city of Vancouver preaches that only a SkyTrain subway will spur investment along Broadway, while at the same time, treats light rail as an economic leper. Well streetcars in Portland, Oregon prove otherwise. Rail News: Passenger Rail Portland Streetcar spurs $4.5 billion in new real estate development, study says Since 1998, the […]