An Open Letter To The New Minister of Transportation Blair Lekstrom

Dear Mr. Lekstrom; Welcome to your new ministry, with its many challenges. The Gateway project is one that will give a few headaches as it's a grossly overbuilt highway that will not carry much traffic. In BC, politicians love to build new highways because their political friends in the Road Builders Association and the trucking […]

Where’s The Transit?

It has been overAi??six months since the release of the Rail for the ground breakingAi??Valley/Leewood TramTrain report and very little of substance has happened. In BC and Metro Vancouver, it is business as usual, where civic and provincial politicians are fretting about funding for the discredited Evergreen metro line. The hype and hoopla on the […]

City of Victoria abandons Johnson Street Bridge rail plan

Victoria, B.C. – forget commuter rail entry into downtown SaanichAi??News March 10th http://www.bclocalnews.com/vancouver_island_south/saanichnews/news/117699518.html The City of Victoriaai??i??s faint hope of finding funding partners to save the E&N rail on the Johnson Street Bridge fizzled Wednesday. ai???Itai??i??s a reluctant decision that we have to take,ai??? said Coun. John Luton. ai???Many in this community are committed to […]

Nobody’s nostalgic for the freeway to nowhere

Nostalgia over easy was the order of the day at Sinbad’s, a waterfront restaurant in the shadow of the Ferry Building. The talk turned to fern bars, and fast cars, and long lunches in places like Paoli’s. Remember the ’80s? The men had narrower ties and the women had shorter skirts. “Hey,” somebody said. “Remember […]

US Light Rail News

News from Detroit, Denver and Minneapolis Detroit: The Republic, Columbus Indiana City schedules neighborhood meeting on proposed $25 million light rail project in Detroit http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/2e8de5cf80324a10a7ace0814c52098a/MI–Light-Rail-Detroit/ DETROIT ai??i?? City transportation officials are scheduled to meet with Detroit residents at Mount Olive Baptist Church to answer questions and give details about a proposed light rail project along […]

Rebalancing Our Transportation Network: A Case Study

Hamilton, Ontario has for long been promoting a Light Rail system for the city, details of their campaign can be found on the Hamilton Light Rail web site: http://hamiltonlightrail.com/index.html Details of the economic case for Light Rail are: http://hamiltonlightrail.com/article/an_economic_case_for_light_rail/index.html Similarly to Rail for the Valley in BC, the Hamilton Light RailAi??promoters are citing examples of […]

First interconnected tram-train service!

On 12 December 2010, the first tram-train service in the French region of Alsace commenced. 5000 daily passengersAi??are be able to travel from Mulhouse to Thann on an innovative, ecomobile transport route. read the article: http://www.sncf.com/en_EN/html/media/CH0004-Everyday-life/BR1122-Tram-train-Mulhouse/MD0005_20101206-Read-article.html Photograhs of the track system, internal & external views of the Alstom Citadis Tram-Trains Images courtesy of: http://www.tc-alsace.eu/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=87

TramTrain to Gloucester Estates & the Zoo

The following news item has peaked Zweisystem's interest, for the old interurban route passes just to the North of the Gloucester Industrial Estate and adding a tram stop would be quite easy and quite cheap to do. By doing so, a minibus service could be instituted to service not only the industrial estate, but the Greater Vancouver […]

More transit, more traffic problems, says think tank. But is that really the problem?

Interesting study out of the USA, but unfortunately wrong conclusions will be made, especially by the roads lobby. As for buses not attracting new customers, well duh, that little gem has been known for at least 30 years and if this were not so, we would not have been building new light rail lines in the […]

Toronto again! Ford & Gilbert sound-off & more irrelevant comparisons

Toronto owes mayor a thank you on transit Toronto Star.com February 24th http://www.thestar.com/opinion/article/943888–toronto-owes-mayor-a-thank-you-on-transit#article Toronto owes Mayor Rob Ford a big thank you for three things. [Most definitely not] The first is for raising timely doubts about the wisdom of proceeding with Transit City. This was the previous council’s expensive one-size-fits-all plan to replace buses on […]