Death By Toll

Is anyone surprised by this? If you are, you are either residing outside Metro Vancouver or you are living in a bubble, because the taxpayer is maxed out. The BC Liberal regime of Gordon Campbell has off-loaded so many user fees, taxes and other costs on to the backs of taxpayers that he has all […]

Why we build with light rail

The following was Zweisystem’s first offering on the Rail for the Valley blog, posted on December 12, 2008. Five years and some 1,359 posts later, the message has stayed essentially the same; why does the provincial government and TransLink still pursue light metro instead of LRT, especially when light metro has proven inferior in service […]

More Wisdom From Ottawa

Haveacow is a transit professional from Ottawa and his most recent post in the comments section is again worthy of a post of its own. The information contained within this post should give insight to the real transit issues that face TransLink, employee’s costs and the main reason why LRT is built. One modern tram […]

Surrey asks feds for $1.8 billion for light rail- Maybe It’s Time To Say Adios to TransLink

Well, Toronto’s crack smoking Toronto’s mayor Rob Ford wants Ottawa to fund his multi billion dollar subway dream, I guess Surrey feels the feds should ante up for transit projects out west. What the likes of UBC professor Larry Franks doesn’t realize or refuses to realize is that Skytrain is obsolete, a yesterday’s transit system […]

More tramways for Paris

What the SkyTrain and subway lobbies fail to mention, is that Paris transit authorities are also investing heavily in light rail or tramways. Something that planners should consider, when planning for new transit lines in Vancouver. Paris inaugurates tram Line T7 18 Nov 2013 FRANCE: The latest tram line in Paris opened on November 16 […]

Light Rail Is Not A Panacea

In Canada transit authorities, unlike their European counterparts, tend not to do maintenance until it is absolutely necessary to do so. This means customer affecting break downs do occur and when they do, the transit customer is ill served. Older trams need a robust maintenance routine, to prevent breakdowns and I would wager that the […]

Donai??i??t learn from the failure of the subway on Cambie Street ai??i?? copy it for Broadway

Sad to see that the best UBC can do is to copy failed 1950’s planning philosophy for the 21st century for Vancouver. In North America, subways are seen as the the great transit philosopher’s stone to solve all transportation problems – if you do not have a subway, your transit system is next to useless. […]

Professor warns of suburban sprawl, ai???horrificai??i?? congestion.

Zwei has been warning about this for several years, and now, now someone has noticed? I’m sorry, but I just do not see any improvement in our regional transit chaos, until someone has the moral fortitude to put a wooden stake through the heart of SkyTrain. For too long, TransLink has been recycling bus riders […]

ai???One of the consequences of making the wrong decision is that we build a subway where we donai??i??t need it and put an albatross around our neck.ai???

The self destructing Rob Ford, Mayor of Toronto and his all subway dream may soon fade from history, except the fiscal fallout from subway construction will last decades. Ford’s real quest, of course, was to clear Toronto’s roads of streetcars and/or proposed light rail and even bike lanes to create more road space for cars. […]

Are TransLink’s Broadway Ridership Claims Valid?

TransLink loves making high ridership claims for its pet bus and SkyTrain routes, but the trouble is, TransLink’s claims are just that, claims. We have seen this sort of nonsense on the Canada Line and now TransLink is claiming that the Evergreen Line or the unfinished portion of the Millennium Line, will carry “70,000 people […]