Bombardier’s Gambit, a Streetcar is not light rail: and only in Vancouver.

Interesting, that Bombardier Inc. is stumping in Surrey and Vancouver to drum up interest in their Toronto streetcar, which in reality is a reworked Flexity tram, so it can operate on Toronto’s heritage streetcar lines. After listening to a Bombardier Rep. claim that SkyTrain was cheap to operate because it has no drivers (he didn’t […]

Vision(less) Vancouver May Dump the Heritage Streetcar

It seems Vision Vancouver lacks any vision at all. There is no debate that the Vancouver heritage streetcar is nothing more than a tourist line and it operates on tracks that never saw any streetcar or interurban service at all. What some within Vision VancouverAi??are afraid of is the line becoming a demonstration line for […]

After Over $8 billion Invested in SkyTrain, Vancouver Is The Most Congested City In Canada

No surprises here, Metro Vancouver has suffered from over 30 years of dreadful transportation planning, highlighted by meddling by the former Social Credit and NDP provincial governments and the meddling continues todayAi??with the provincial Liberal government. From Zwei’s perspective, the regional taxpayer has invested well over $8 billion on an extremely dated transit system and […]

Urgent need for light rail transit in Surrey

The following editorial by Frank Buchholz continues the myth that at-grade light rail is slow and causes accidents at intersections. I am not surprised as the SkyTrain Lobby’s mouthpiece, the SkyTrain for Surrey blog is given prominence in the piece. From what I have read, SkyTrain for Surrey rehashes the same old myths about LRT, […]

Surrey to display light rail model during Canada Day celebrations

The City of Surrey wants modern light rail and planning is now ongoing for several LRT lines in Surrey. The mistake I feel that is being made is that TransLink, who are unfortunately involved with the planning process, are planning Surrey’s proposed LRT as a poorman’s SkyTrain, forcing it to act solely as a feeder […]

The SkyTrain Lobby – And The fine Art of Deception

The deliriously pro SkyTrain blog, SkyTrain for Surrey (SfS), continues its campaign of deception and misinformation in an attack against American transit expert Gerald Fox. I don’t normally follow the nonsenseAi??spouted byAi??the SkyTrain lobby because they live in a world of their own, where the rules are simple; SkyTrain good, light rail bad. The recent […]

Transit Planning in the Vancouver Region – The Years The Locusts Have Eaten

In the beginning, Vancouver was serviced by a sizable streetcar network and several interurban lines, but by 1960 the streetcars were long gone and the last interurban route saw its final service. There was a last ditch attempt to operate a New Westminster to Vancouver interurban service on the Central Park Line using coupled pairs […]

A Tale of Two Bridges: Pattullo survey in New West opposes six lane replacement

It seems the good burghers in New Westminster do not want a mega bridge dumping traffic into their city. In the 1970’s, the GVRD (pre-METRO Vancouver days) proposed a new six lane bridge, with two lift spans for railways,Ai?? plus two light rail lines to replace replacing the decrepit Fraser River Rail bridge and the […]

Editorial: Less parking, more transit a winning duo – The Van Sun’s Editors still do not get it!

Today’s editorial in the Vancouver Sun, may seem to many that the Editors support more transit, but I think not. What we see is the beginning of the soft sell for higher regionalAi??taxes to pay for a Broadway subway and other Vancouver oriented transit investment. The war on the car and now the reduction of […]

Light Rail for Surrey The WKW Line ai??i?? A Rerun from May 2011

  It has been over one year since this post was printed and in that year nothing of substance has been done. In the lower mainland, transit is designed to increase density, thus increasing property values and profits for friends of the government at the expense of the taxpayer. The same is true forLRT/streetcar for […]