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

I thought I would reprint this post from May 20, 2010 as it may clear up some major misconceptions about LRT capacity. There is an ongoing debate today that LRTAi??can only carry a limited number of riders and that the magic number for a subway is about 100,000 riders a day on a transit line. […]

Subways dreams for dreamers

Interesting article from Toronto. I doAi??take issue with is the claim “that subways attract more riders than any other form of transit.”whichAi??is not supported by studies elsewhere, instead it isAi??modern LRT actually attracts more new ridership than other modes. That Toronto doesn’t have modern LRT and instead operates with the light rail variant streetcars (mostly […]

Why Is Victoria’s Proposed LRT So Expensive?

Why is Victoria’s proposed light rail so expensive? Our friendsAi??at Bring Back Our Trams in Victoria, like the Rail for the Valley folks on this side of the pond, are beginning to wonder aloud, why the proposed Victoria LRT isAi??very close to beingAi??the most expensive LRT in the world, on a per kilometre basis. What […]

The Real Question: What are You Willing To Pay For A Subway?

Here is the question taxpayers inAi??Metro Vancouver have not been asked; “What are you willing to pay for SkyTrain/RAV/Canada line?”Ai?? The regional taxpayer has never been asked: Do you wish light rail at a cost of $20 million/km. (streetcar) up to $35 mil/km. (LRT)? SkyTrain at a cost of $90 mil/km to $100 mil/km. Subway, […]

Eric Chris Responds To The SkyTrain Lobby

Eric Chris responds to the SkyTrain for Surrey blog. It is just not Zweisystem who has questions about SkyTrain and TransLink and Eric Chris’s reply to the SkyTrain Lobby has great merit. The Vancouver Sun has always treated SkyTrain as a “mother and apple pie issue” and has never challenged the government on building more. […]

What Fools We Mortal Be – Regional Mayors Support Road Tolling

I see many civic politicians are gambling with theirAi??political futuresAi??with taxpayer’s hubrisAi??by supportingAi??road tolling. Are they mad? Evidently so, as they all seem to have collective amnesia over the HST fiasco, which saw the humiliation of just reelected Premier Gordon Campbell beingAi??chased from office. It seems tax and spend transit policies are the order of […]

Road tolls coming – welcome to tax and spend TransLink

Road tolls, the clarion call of tax and spend bureaucrats and politicians. What the boys and girls wanting road tolls or road pricing is more taxpayers money to waste on nextAi??to useless SkyTrain expansion, new posh offices, and ever higher salaries; better public transit is just an excuse, but not in the cards. For road […]

Ida Chong is afraid to order an audit of TransLink! Those damned skeletons in the closet!

Well, good old ‘Zwei’ has been arguing for this for over a decade, but the BC Liberal government and the Liberal lickspital minister in charge of TransLink, Ida Chong, is afraid to order an audit of TransLink. Why? Audits have a strange way of uncovering misspent monies or dubious bookkeeping Ai??practices or evenAi??more sinister wastes […]

How to pay for Victoria’s proposed over priced light rail….. Don’t!…..Plan for much cheaper TramTrain on the E&N!

BC Transit is an old hand at inflating costs of LRT, so they don’t have to deal with it. In the 90’s, BC Transit increased the cost of the proposed Broadway-LougheedAi??LRT to such an extent, that there was only a 7% difference between the cost for light rail and that of SkyTrain. Sprinkled with political […]

Why transit fares must increase.

Some years ago, I corresponded with a chap in the UKAi??who was (and still is) a respected transit consultant and much what I discuss about in this blog comes from our discussions. One striking comment he made; “Building metros on routes that do not have the ridership to sustain them, only invites higher subsidies and […]