AdiA?s TransLink? Letters Published in the Postmedia Press

The following letter has appeared in the Postmedia press including the Vancouver Province and the Delta Optimist and should start some lively debate. A valid question is asked; “Why is TransLink planning for transit on Broadway, when they know it will be decades before anything is done; or, is there already a secret agreement involving […]

Pushing a wooden stake through the heart of darkness

 I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky–seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness." – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness    It has not been a very good […]

Broadway Transit Follies – TransLink Does The Gong Show – Part 2

Want to know how TransLink spends taxpayer’s hard earned money? It is easy, TransLink studies transit options for Broadway. TransLink’s Broadway “Rapid Transit” (which means metro) study for Broadway is dated and extremely misleading, but what else would one expect from an organization that has done little, but to waste time, justifying their existence. TransLink’s […]

The Broadway Transit Debate Continues. Has The Decision To Build A SkyTrain Subway Been Already Made For 2030?

Well, it seems TransLink is again having more public consultations for the proposed Broadway Rapid Transit project, but has the decision to build a subway been already made? Just the name, "Rapid Transit", means a metro and any reference to a light rail option is equated to a slow streetcar. TransLink hasn't a clue about […]

US Light Rail News

News from Detroit, Denver and Minneapolis Detroit: The Republic, Columbus Indiana City schedules neighborhood meeting on proposed $25 million light rail project in Detroit http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/2e8de5cf80324a10a7ace0814c52098a/MI–Light-Rail-Detroit/ DETROIT ai??i?? City transportation officials are scheduled to meet with Detroit residents at Mount Olive Baptist Church to answer questions and give details about a proposed light rail project along […]

Staffing on light rail systems

From a previous post http://www.railforthevalley.com/latest-news/zweisystem/now-we-know-why-skytrain-is-so-expensive-to-operate/ we find that there are 600 or more employees (530 in the CUPE Union) that work on the SkyTrain Expo and Millennium Lines. The Canada Line is a conventional metro and employs over 200 people (with 180 in the CUPE union) and both metro systems are quite separate. The Canada Line, a […]

Susan Heyes and the Canada Line fiasco – Justice denied!

The Canada Line was never about providing good public transitAi??for the region, rather the metro was all about political and corporate prestige. The Vancouver International Airport gang wanted a prestigious metro to connect YVR to downtown Vancouver, for corporate prestige because they thought that a metro would make YVR ‘world class’; the City of Vancouver […]

Now we know why SkyTrain is so expensive to operate.

The main story here is not the strike vote taken by Expo and Millennium Line workers, but the amount of workers that are needed to operate the SkyTrain mini-metro. According to the article, there are 530 CUPE members that work on the Expo and Millennium Lines, then add in senior non-union managerial staff, transit police and […]

Porkies from TransLink!

In the UK, London's Cockney's (the East End crowd) have long had an interesting rhyming slang tradition – examples: jam jar is a car; dicky dirt a shirt and so on. Well, a pork pie or porkie is – well you guessed it. The following letter from Ken Hardie, to the Delta Optimist, is full of "Porkies" […]

Light Rail, Tramway & Streetcar news from America

The Cardinal has posted a number of news articles on European Light Rail & Tramway developments in the past month; now from the US comes news of two new transit scheme initiatives and developments on a third. Washington DC Streetcars on track for return to D.C. Washington Post 15 February 2011 http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/15/streetcars-on-track-for-return-to-dc/   Czech built Skoda Inekon […]