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 […]

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 […]

The (AVG) Albtal-Verkehrs-Gesellschaft GmbH- KarlsruheA?ai??i??ai???s longest tramtrain route A?ai??i??ai??? S4

I am reprinting this post from last year due to a series of recent correspondence on the 210 km. TramTrain route. Those guys on the Skyscraper page really do a great disservice with regional transit with their extremely dated way of thinking. It is almost as TransLink sponsors the blog! It must be remembered that […]

Nobody’s nostalgic for the freeway to nowhere

Nostalgia over easy was the order of the day at Sinbad’s, a waterfront restaurant in the shadow of the Ferry Building. The talk turned to fern bars, and fast cars, and long lunches in places like Paoli’s. Remember the ’80s? The men had narrower ties and the women had shorter skirts. “Hey,” somebody said. “Remember […]

More transit, more traffic problems, says think tank. But is that really the problem?

Interesting study out of the USA, but unfortunately wrong conclusions will be made, especially by the roads lobby. As for buses not attracting new customers, well duh, that little gem has been known for at least 30 years and if this were not so, we would not have been building new light rail lines in the […]

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 […]

Flagship BRT Fizzles in the USA

Bus Rapid Transit or BRT is the transit flavour ‘du jour’ of BC politicians. Any mention of transit in the region ultimately leads to BRT, as if it was the grand panacea to solve our transit woes. The trouble is, our politicos have never read a book about public transit,Ai??let aloneAi??perused the chapter on buses. […]

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 […]