Off The Rails – From the Abby Times
An interesting tome in the Abbotsford Times. Anyone wanting to put ‘rail’ transit down the median of the number 1 highway forgets that it would be hugely expensive and the curvature and gradients along the route would mean very expensive engineering would have to be done. Going ‘greenfields’ construction is always an expensive propositionAi??Ai??which knowledgeable […]
The SkyTrain Lobby – Just The Usual Suspects!
Transit again is making front page news in the dailies and regional newspapers, with TransLink claiming that the next big rapid transit (read SkyTrain) line will be in Surrey, not Broadway. A few international transit blogs have picked up the storyAi??Ai??with the usual suspects singing hosannas about SkyTrain, while in the same breathe libeling anyone […]
Metro Vancouver pushes rapid transit for Surrey, not UBC – Why Not Build Both?
It seems that thatAi??Ai??METRO Vancouver’sAi??Ai??chief honcho wants to extend ‘rapid transit’ (read SkyTrain) in Surrey and not on Broadway. But don’t hold your breathe for any action anytime soon. The Tri-Cities have been waiting for their ‘rapid transit’ (read SkyTrain) for over two decades and were pipped at the post by Premier Campbell (and former […]
Why is public transit more expensive than it used to be?
The following article from the American Conservative sums up Rail for the Valley’s long standing worries about the ever escalating cost to build light rail/streetcar. It is time to get back to basics and build LRT/streetcar cheaply or it will price itself right out of the market! One start, of course, would be to stop […]
500 Posts – The story so far……………..
Todays post, marks the five hundredth post on the Rail for The Valley blog and today I want to reflect on the main themes that keep out transit debates going. The Canada line Again, anotherAi??Ai??major Canada Line storyAi??Ai??by the Vancouver Province news paper…. http://www.theprovince.com/business/Canada+Line+year+later+Next+stop+construction+controversy/3400752/story.html -and I wonder why the Vancouver Province keeps writing ‘puff’ stories […]
View obscured from ivory tower – From the Chilliwack times.
The Light Rail Committee has been advocating TramTrain for the Fraser Valley since the mid 90’s, hopefully some positive news will be forthcoming soon! Sadly, in an age of financial frugality, regional and provincial transit planners still plan for hugely expensive metro and SkyTrain systems, yet with little or no method to pay for them. […]
More Light Rail Links
More links for research and general information. http://www.metromodemedia.com/features/Transitdensity0020.aspx http://netdensity.net/tag/lrt/ http://kiat.net/malaysia/KL/transit.html http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?p=4358531 http://www.examiner.com/x-11410-Fresno-Transportation-Examiner~y2010m5d2-In-the-know-series–Part-3-BRT–LRT-or-BRT-vs-LRT?cid=exrss-Fresno-Transportation-Examiner http://southwestlrt.wordpress.com/ http://lightrailjacksonville.webs.com/whylrti.htm http://www.raisethehammer.org/article/851/main-king_lrt_split_may_be_a_good_idea http://www.thespec.com/article/716331 http://www.lightrailnow.org/news/n_kc_2007-05a.htm Research. http://tris.trb.org/view.aspx?id=909553 Ai??Ai??http://ideas.repec.org/p/wiw/wiwrsa/ersa01p118.html Ai??Ai??www.britchammacao.org/download/201003MacauLRTintro.pdf Ai??Ai??http://www.jstor.org/pss/3551027 Ai??Ai??http://canadianaffairs.suite101.com/article.cfm/edmontons_light_rail_transit_issues Ai??Ai??www.edmonton.ca/…/LRTRouteEvaluationcriteriaMarch2009.pdf http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2008/09/why-phoenix-lig.html Ai??Ai??http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_light_rail_in_North_America
Krugman: Lost Decade, Here We Come – Sent by the Light Rail Now Folks
Paul Krugman’s article from several days ago (see below) drives home the point that “deficit hawkism” is NOT just an American lunacy – it’s somehow ascended to the prevailing “conventional wisdom” globally. As I pointed out in a previous recent post, “This has some very bad implications for public transportation funding, the transit budget crisis, […]
More Links for Transit oriented Development
Today, more links for TOD in low density areas. My thanks to David Cockle for sending them to Rail for the Valley! Ai??Ai?? http://www.drcog.org/index.cfm?page=TODDensity http://www.vtpi.org/tdm/tdm45.htm http://tinyurl.com/btacou http://www.sacrt.com/realestate/TODpage.stm
Smart Growth. A look into Cities, Urban planning, and the Sustainable Movement.
A reader of this blog has kindly given ‘Zwei’ some links about Smart Growth around the world and they are very much well worth having a look. http://smarturbandesign.blogspot.com/2009/04/mall-of-america-and-minneapolis-light.html http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BQQ/is_8_41/ai_81104210/ http://www.friends4expo.org/ltrail.htm http://www.drcog.org/documents/LRT%20and%20TOD.pdf http://www.thespec.com/article/717530 http://www.mindspring.com/~tbgray/lrtmaps.htm




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