
TramTrain – Regional Railways – Why Not Here?
As all levels of government pretend they are fighting Global Warming and Climate change, via the much hated Carbon Tax, real solutions such as TramTrain and regional railways are ignored. Germany has been a forefront in the fight against Global Warming and Climate change and part of that fight is reopening abandoned rail routes and […]

TransLink for Dummies
……….. 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 after ICTS for […]

TramTrain – Success Ignored
A Karlsruhe tram at night The birth of what we call TramTrain or a streetcar that can operate on the mainline railways, came about after much research and public consultation, to provide the the city and region of a ‘user-friendly’ public transit system. In the 1980’s cities with trams or streetcars were seeing a steady […]

Surrey’s One Percent
A bit of news from Surrey, the Surrey Board of Trade did a survey and like all board of Trade survey’s, it point ts to widening roads, but the following caught my eye. The survey also found that more people were driving their own vehicle to get to work in 2023 compared to the year […]

Single Track Operation? More common Than You Think!
OK folks, the following is a small list of the many European regional railways, operating on single tracks or which route operates on portions of single track. Why am I posting this, you say? Last week I received an angry phone call from a gentleman who claimed had done some work for Metro Vancouver […]

10 Questions
I do not have the answers to these questions or rather I may know the answers but with libel and slander laws the way they are, I will not offer an opinion. Why do TransLink and the Mayor’s council on Transit still continue planning for the obsolete Movia Automatic Light Metro system (A.K.A. SkyTrain), when […]

Why Not TramTrain?
Why not TramTrain? The genesis of this blog was to advocate and support reintroducing a passenger rail service from Vancouver to Chilliwack and after 13 years since the release of the Leewood Study, which created a template for such a service, the need today is greater than it has ever been. As the upper Fraser […]

Why Light Rail?
Why Light rail? This question has been asked over and over again by those who only know our MALM (SkyTrain) light-metro system. After 40 years of non stop rah-rah, propaganda by the federal and provincial governments, civic governments and bureaucracies; and the various groups made up of, what I call, the “SkyTrain Lobby”, Light-Rail, locally […]

They Could Not Even Operate a Christmas Tree Train Set
Regional mayors think themselves somewhat of transit experts. They are not, not even close. What needs to be done before another nickle is spent on transit is a full independent review of TransLink and its operations. That is not going to happen as there are far too many skeletons in TransLink’s closet and best keep […]

Single Track Operation & Level Crossings – Dutch Style
Some of the detractors of Rail for the Valley’s TramTrain or light DMU line from Marpole to Chilliwack cite that only one train can operate on the line at one time. With properly placed passing loops, preferably at stations, trains can be safely operated going in both directions on a single line. this due […]
Recent Comments