Don’t Talk To Me About Fast Ferry’s! The SkyTrain Fiasco Is Far Worse!

Erfurt – Germany In Germany, the average cost to construct a new at-grade, 2-track (double) street tramway typically ranges from €10 million to €20 million per kilometer (CAD $16 million to $32 million) This includes the physical track installation, embedding in the road, overhead electrification, and basic stop infrastructure.  However, total project costs fluctuate heavily […]

How This Small City Built Light Rail For Cheap

The ION’s capital cost was about $818 million in 2017 (1.06 billion in 2026 dollars) for 19 km of greenfields construction or $43 million/km to build ($56 million/km in 2026 dollars), complete. Compare this with the Expo Line extension now costing over $400 million/km to build not including signalling, cars and much more.

Transit lessons unlearned

For four decades, the lessons building ‘rai’ transit has not been learned. Politicians in BC refuse the learn the lessons of others and continue to blunder on making the same higely expensive mistakes, over and over again. It is sheer negligence on the part of TransLink, the Mayor’s Council on Transit, the Premier’s Office, and […]

List of Cities, With Populations Under 100,000 Operating Trams Or Light Rail

Zwei often hears the tired old saw that “we don’t have the population for light rail or the alternative, light rail does not have the capacity to deal with traffic flows that SkyTrain can. The “Good Burghers” in Bath England are countering this debate by actually listing 40 cities that have populations of 100,000 (with […]

From September 2010 – The Groundbreaking Leewood Study – Updated

The Leewood Study – Costs Updated To 2026 RftV cost for a Vancouver to Rosedale regional railway $5.4 billion cheaper than the 16 km Expo Line extension to Langley. Re-posted and updated on Saturday, September 19, 2020 Re-released and update July 2, 2026 On September 20, 2010, Rail for the Valley unreleased the groundbreaking Leewood […]

TransLink’s Sinking Ship

Zwei has been wondering why all the rah-rah SkyTrain posts on You Tube and it seems the answer is, ridership is collapsing on this gold plated transit system. This is very bad news because falling ridership equates to reduced service and reduced service translates to fewer buses and higher fares. Then there is the now […]

Lies, Damned Lies And The Broadway Subway

Translink, Metro Vancouver, and the provincial NDP, especially Minister of Transportation, Mike Farnsworth, are “flooding the zone”, with the Broadway subway, “nearing completion“, “on time and on budget“, “with change how people commute“, and the goody, “the line will be soon extended“. Why all the hype and hoopla? Like all big ticket items, politcans want […]

Telling The Truth About Transit In Metro Vancouver, Is A Revolutionary Act

The problem with the current transit system is simple, those in charge are doing the same thing over again, expecting different results. Not working! What is needed is a complete rethought how transit service is provided, based on customer needs and not TransLink’s or Victoria’s political needs. TransLink’s ridership has been in decline for almost […]

Lausanne’s New Tramway

Lausnne, Switzerland, with a population 144,000 and a regional population of 420,000, is building a new tramway, The city also has a two line metro system, with one line using rubber tired metro’s based on the Paris metro and the other metro line using light rail vehicles. The high cost of metro construction has now […]

The Pied Piper of SkyTrain

Evidently, the 16km Expo Line to Langley is in trouble, so who else to defend this hugely expensive project but the folks at SkyTrain for Surrey, otherwise known as FOX Entertainment North. The claims made by SFS are breathtaking and needs serious comment. True to form, the deliberate misinformation by SkyTrain for Surrey is again […]