And You Think SkyTrain is Cheaper Than Light Rail -Think Again!

Who says LRT is too expensive? The estimated cost to rehab both the Expo and Millennium Lines is now topping $4 billion (now, not including rail, OHE, stations and cars) and with already $1.47 billion spent on resignalling the proprietary automatic railway, the cost now seems to be well over $5 billion for 16 km […]

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 […]

Man of Straw Arguments

  “Man of Straw” argument: The straw man fallacy is an informal fallacy, which means that the flaw lies with the arguer’s method of arguing rather than the flaws of the argument itself. The straw man fallacy avoids the opponent’s actual argument and instead argues against an inaccurate caricature of it. When dealing with arguments […]

Five Reasons Why The NDP Don’t Want The “Return of the Interurban”.

  This post was released on Wednesday, February 11, 2009,under the title, “Five reasons Why Gordo and his ‘Falcon’ don’t want the “Return of the Interurban”. It is still relevant today, only the names have been changed. Under the NDP, nothing has changed. So, with a little tweaking here and updating there, we have the […]

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 […]

The Foynes-Limerick Rail Line

If you want to reduce auto use, you must provide a affordable and user -friendly alternative. The Irish government believes that and is rebuilding a former rail line as a cheaper and more environmentally friendly way to provide affordable and user-friendly transportation. The cost is €104 million (CAD $152 million) for 42 km of reinstated […]

Those Who Do Not Read Transit History…………….

A more grist for the mill. There is a belief in North America that subways are the great panacea for urban transit. This poses a question, what is exactly meant as a subway in North America? Generally, the term subway is used to denote heavy or light metro traveling in a tunnel under the city, […]

Provincial Election In 2024!

SkyTrain has always been used at a photo-op for provincial elections. And the David Eby NDP government is no different. Announcing SkyTrain extensions win votes. Whether spending huge sums of money actually does anything to improve transit is another question. Contrary to the claim in the news article; “The project is estimated to cost $4.01 […]