Premier Horgan’s FastFerry Redux!

  Before reading on, please remember this figure of $1.3 billion, as it represents an updated (2021) cost for Rail for the Valley’s Leewood Study, offering a three trains per hour per direction from Vancouver to Chilliwack. Doing the Rail for the Valley blog for the past 12 years has been an interesting experience and […]

Langley Expo Line Extension Almost $1 Billion Over Budget!

You just got to love the NDP, as this hapless crew love budget breaking FastFerry style mega projects. Remember the FastFerries? The financial stench from that fiasco hung around the neck of the NDP as a fiscal Albatross for over twenty years and you would have thought that they would have learned…………..but no, they are […]

SkyTrain – Eight myths and the facts

Facts do not change and with SkyTrain, the world understands the facts about this proprietary light metro system; unfortunately our politicians and bureaucrats do not. We now live in an age of fake news and alternative facts and the SkyTrain lobby and TransLink with their well oiled propaganda machine exploit this extremely well. Their most […]

The Reserved Or Dedicated Rights-Of-Way Makes A Tram Light Rail

After a flurry of TransLink sponsored advertisements on Facebook, has made it very clear, forty years of anti LRT rhetoric by BC Transit, TransLink, the mainstream media, the Ministry of Transportation and the associate claques and shills that parrot the above, the public hasn’t a clue about modern light rail transit. What Zwei calls the […]

Hungary’s New TramTrain

  A new TramTrain operation has opened on Feb. 22, in Hungary and all one can say is wow. The 26.2 km Szeged-Hódmezővásárhely (please watch video) tram-train system is now open for operation in Hungary, connecting two of the cities of Szeged and Hódmezővásárhely. Costing a total of €224 842 224  (CAD$345,750,843 or $8.6 million/km)), the diesel-electric […]

The Zillertalbahn – One of My Favourite Railways.

One of my favourite railways, the Zilleralbahn, which I visited in 1983. There is really nothing to compare this to in BC, though there could be some candidates, if our tourist authorities stop skiing at Whistler and actually craft a product other than winter skiing. Running through a valley in a well to do rural […]

How The NDP Paved Paradise and Turned It Into a Parking Lot.

The NDP’s refusal to give Metro Vancouver’s transit planning an independent review has condemned the region to congestion and gridlock for generations. The billions of dollars spent on rapid transit and the future billions of dollars to be spent expanding rapid transit has and will utterly fail to attract the driver from his/her cars. The […]

The NDP – Stupid Is, As Stupid Does

  Trust the NDP, to get embroiled in extending SkyTrain. Again, the NDP proven they haven’t a clue about regional transit or transit mode and if proceeded, there will be severe financial consequences for the taxpayer and the transit user. Premier Horgan has made a very, very expensive mistake. Again, for the general benefit of […]

A Novice’s Guide To Transit – Reposted and Updated

……….. or cutting through the BS about light rail, SkyTrain and BRT. The following is a guide plus definitions. ALM: Automatic Light metro, the fourth marketing name given for the SkyTrain family of light-metros, when Lavalin briefly owned SkyTrain before going bankrupt. ALRT (1): Advanced Light Rail Transit, the second marketing name for SkyTrain. ALRT […]

A Post From Mr. Haveacow – Speedy Transit

The avatar, “Haveacow” is used by a very knowledgeable Canadian transportation specialist. He knows what he is talking about and Zwei greatly respects his input. Since SkyTrain was first foisted on the taxpayer, one of the many false claims for building with it, was that it was fast. There are problems with this claim, including: […]