Light Rail Denial And TransLink

There seems to be a general naivete about Light Rail or LRT in the media, due in part to TransLink’s war on LRT, with their well advertised preference for light-metro. Today, except for “niche transit” solutions, public transport is divided into three modes, bus, tram, and metro; with each mode built to economically deal with […]

The Return Of The Branch Line – Can You Say E&N, RftV?

Most railway enthusiasts in the UK treat Beeching as a leper. In fact, Beeching predicted the end of local railways altogether, leaving the UK with just three or four trunk lines, connecting major cities by the 21st century. This is not to argue that rationalization should not have taken place, but to tear up the […]

Today all Dutch trains are powered 100% by wind energy

  Something to think about. Question: Can we use wind generated power to sell the Leewood RftV TramTrain scheme? Today all Dutch trains are powered 100% by wind energy In the Netherlands all NS’s 1.200.000 train trips per day are now without any CO2 emissions. A world’s first! By Michiel de Gooijer As from 1 […]

Memo to Metro Mayors: Forget Road Pricing, build With LRT!

As Vancouver’s metro mayor’s dig themselves further into a financial morass, with the proposed now $3.2 billion Broadway subway to Arbutus and the now over $100/km Surrey LRT, which will demand more and more punitive regional taxation, why instead don’t we plan for affordable European style LRT? The trouble is, our regional mayors think they […]

Game Changer for Regional Rail!

What the FRA does, Transport Canada will soon follow. This news is of great importance to Metro and Victoria’s metro regions, bringing in a transit option that Rail for the Valley has been championing for many years. Proven European technology combined with proven European transit philosophy (which will come with the technology), just may make […]

The 1986 LRTA Study: Bus – LRT – Metro Comparison

Every year I reprint this post to remind everyone of the ability to move large amount of people at an affordable cost. There is an ongoing debate today that LRT can only carry a limited number of riders and that the magic number for a subway is about 100,000 riders a day on a transit […]

Sounds of Silence

No surprise here, as Zwei has been sounding alarm bells over this upcoming fiasco for years Now TransLink has an American out of Seattle as the new CEO and this means the sky is the limit for spending on rail transit. Seattle’s LRT is LRT in name only as it is actually a light metro […]

Calgary, Alberta: Green Line LRT tunnel option approved in principle by Calgary city council

Everyone wants tunnels and subways. Victorian railway companies in the UK, bankrupted themselves with needless and over engineered tunnels because they were in vogue. Calgary’s LRT was designed more as a light metro than light rail, but that still did not stop transit planners from putting the C-Train mostly at grade, with on-street operation in […]

New Jersey’s River Line

New Jersey’s River Line, using diesel light rail TramTrains, enables to provide a quality transit service on a predominantly single track rail line. The River Line could be a template for several rail services, both in metro Vancouver and Vancouver Island, track-sharing with lightly used freight lines.

Karlsruhe’s longest tramtrain route – The 210 km Route S4

Classic single track TramTrain operation through a rural village. I am updating this post due to a series of recent posts on Facebook and other transit oriented blogs. Karlsruhe’s TramTrain 210 km route S-4 travels through the sparely populated Schwarzwald or Black forest region of Southern Germany. There are no musings about “not enough density” […]