An Idiot’s Delight In Surrey

Delusional, is all what Zwei can say. The LRT in Surrey is not a Surrey project, it is a TransLink and Metro Vancouver project and Metro Vancouver has shown no signs that it will cancel LRT as of yet. The Money earmarked for the LRT is not transferable, so if Surrey manages to stop light […]

Surrey’s Hobson’s Choice – A Choice Of Taking What is Available (LRT) or Nothing At All.

First posted April 18, 2018 Updated Surrey has a big transit and transportation problem, and now with the announcement by mayor elect, Dough McCallum, now leaves the LRT project in doubt. The cacophony of the SkyTrain Lobby with their half truths, cherry picked data, and intimidating innuendo are demanding a change from light rail to […]

An Idiot’s Delight In Langley

Idiots, what can I say, complete idiots, the pair of them. SkyTrain is an obsolete proprietary light metro system, made obsolete by light rail! This has been known by all competent transit planners since the late 1980’s! The proprietary SkyTrain system patents are owned by both Bombardier Inc. and SNC Lavalin. Again, well known by […]

The Subway To Stupidville

Patrick Condon is the James Taylor chair in Landscape and Livable Environments at the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and the founding chair of the UBC Urban Design program. Prof. Condon is worth listening to, as he gets it about transit, which is a rare commodity with Metro Vancouver’s academia […]

The Sum of Zwei’s Fears – Part 3 The New FastFerry Fiasco

It is interesting indeed that Vancouver Sun columnist, Vaughn Palmer is writing about transit and the two massively expensive rapid transit projects, the Surrey LRT and the Broadway subway. With both federal and provincial backing, these two ill conceived projects will cripple transit planning for the next quarter century. In the long term at least, […]

Signal Failure – The Achilles Heel of a Driverless Light Metro

Portend of what is going to be more and more common on SkyTrain, signal failure. As our SkyTrain ages, more and more service is disrupted by signal or a switch failure and with almost no redundancy in our transit system, the results for the transit customer is a fiasco! The lesson is simple, the more […]

Never Attribute to Malice What Can be Explained by Incompetence – Factbender on Transit

You don’t have to be smart to be the Minister responsible for TransLink, rather you just to have to be a very good BS artist, that’ all. As the LRT or SkyTrain tap dance continues south of the Fraser, many politicians reveal that their knowledge about SkyTrain comes mainly from picture books and not engineering […]

How America Killed Transit – How the Americans (and we) Are Getting it Wrong

I think the author, a PHD candidate, seems unread on what modern light rail is. He still defines light rail vehicles, different than a streetcar Memo to PHD candidate: it is not the vehicle, but the quality of rights-of-way, that defines LRT. His comment; “And though cheaper to build, light rail lines are often too […]

The $11 billion Solution!

It seems our politicians and political wannabees are living in a financial ennui. The massive costs of our current transit planning are being ignored, with the rah, rah rant of the various rapid transit promoters glossing over the real costs of their various pet projects. Our so called experts ignore the costs and it is […]

Mayoralty Candidate, Doug McCallum Wants To Delay Rapid Transit In Surrey Until The Late 2030’s

Why do politicians always think they are transit geniuses? Mostly because they are too stupid to understand the basics of transit planning and the application of modern public transit philosophy. Doug McCallum is one, a former Surrey Mayor who was and still is completely out of touch with regional transit planning, now claims if elected, […]