An Essay on TransLink, SkyTrain and Carbon Emissions

A new player in Vancouver politics,Ai??Vancouver Green Citizensai??i?? Group, is emerging and is taking critical aim atAi?? Metro Vancouver and TransLink. I have always said that Translink’s ridership numbers are inflated and the recent news releases; re releases and re re releases are indicative of TransLink’s desperate attempt to coax the public to accept Metro […]

How a New Transit System Could Hobble Montreal, As It Hobbled Vancouver

Light-metro, the great philosopher’s stone for urban transportation in the 1970’s has turned out to be nothing more than a wet squib. BC’s provincial politicians have continually forced light-metro onto metro Vancouver, forcing bus riders by the tens of thousands to make transfers to pretend there is high ridership. Light-metro was so expensive that a […]

Will This Be The End Of The Innovia Light-Metro?

Bombardier Inc. is in big trouble. The company lost Montreal’s tailor made tender for its REM light-metro project and continues to be late in delivering trams to Toronto and combined with a sundry of other problems has, made the Bombardier product a piranha. If Bombardier lays off a good number of its employees at its […]

How SkyTrain Zealots Want To Crush Rational Transit Thinking

Recent articles, by the SkyTrain Lobby are nothing more than the old adage; “Repeat a lie often enough and the people will come around to believing it.” What we call SkyTrain, a combination of three railways of which one is not compatible in operation with the other two, are just simply railways. To try to […]

Has Metro Vancouver Past The Point of No Return With Transit Planning?

  Metro Vancouver is approaching a critical decision on transit, but has the region already past the “point of no return” with regional transit? The Metro Vancouver region has been able to afford one light-metro line every decade; the 80’s saw the the Expo Line; the late 90’s the Millennium Line; the 2000’nds the Canada […]

Light Rail For Surrey Fights Back

After the CBC’s fawning over the largely discredited SkyTrain for Surrey lot, Light Rail For Surrey fights back. Just a reminder, in 2016, CKNW outed SkyTrain for Surrey for fudging the truth and now, they are at it again with the CBC. The questions I would like answered is: “Who is really behind the SkyTrain […]

Perils of a Proprietary Railway – The End of SkyTrain

Zwei has often warned of the perils of a proprietary railway. Our friend Mr. Cow has warned of the perils of a proprietary railway. And now, Bombardier’s current fiasco supplying 21st century trams of a proven European model, may be the final straw in the collapse of Bombardier’s rail division. If and when the production […]

“We do not have to watch reruns of Monty Python for our amusement, we just have to tune in to Vancouver’s transit planning for our entertainment”

It is now 2017 and the transit year is off with a dull thud. The title comes courtesy of an old transit acquaintance from the UK who was badly burned by his Canada Line experience. With the planned Pattullo Bridge replacement bridge having only 4 traffic lanes; the Surrey Hawthorne Park road debacle (where a […]

Their NDP May Do, What Our NDP Should Do!

The Scarborough subway soap opera continues. What is interesting is that the NDP in Ontario may very well kill the now $3.45 billion, 5 km., one station subway for a much cheaper light rail line. “There is a tipping point beyond which the unjustifiable becomes unsustainable.” and as TransLink and the Mayor’s Council on Transit […]

Scarborough Subway Sticker Shock

More info on the Scarborough controversy. First, modern LRT can carry more than 15,000 pphpd, in fact modern LRT can carry well over 20,000 pphpd. In Karlsruhe Germany, one tram line carried over 35,000 pphpd in the peak hour! Toronto’s old Bloor Danforth streetcar line, using coupled sets of PCC cars were known to move […]