A Comparrison Of Operating Costs – Revisited

First posted in 2013. If one took the ‘Way-back’ machine to the late 1980’s, the argument that SkyTrain was cheaper to operate than LRT would show the massive propaganda campaign to give the public a positive view of the proprietary ALRT light-metro. This is because it was forced upon the region by the Social Credit […]

Don’t Talk To Me About Fast Ferry’s! The SkyTrain Fiasco Is Far Worse!

Erfurt – Germany In Germany, the average cost to construct a new at-grade, 2-track (double) street tramway typically ranges from €10 million to €20 million per kilometer (CAD $16 million to $32 million) This includes the physical track installation, embedding in the road, overhead electrification, and basic stop infrastructure.  However, total project costs fluctuate heavily […]

How This Small City Built Light Rail For Cheap

The ION’s capital cost was about $818 million in 2017 (1.06 billion in 2026 dollars) for 19 km of greenfields construction or $43 million/km to build ($56 million/km in 2026 dollars), complete. Compare this with the Expo Line extension now costing over $400 million/km to build not including signalling, cars and much more.

Transit lessons unlearned

For four decades, the lessons building ‘rai’ transit has not been learned. Politicians in BC refuse the learn the lessons of others and continue to blunder on making the same higely expensive mistakes, over and over again. It is sheer negligence on the part of TransLink, the Mayor’s Council on Transit, the Premier’s Office, and […]

List of Cities, With Populations Under 100,000 Operating Trams Or Light Rail

Zwei often hears the tired old saw that “we don’t have the population for light rail or the alternative, light rail does not have the capacity to deal with traffic flows that SkyTrain can. The “Good Burghers” in Bath England are countering this debate by actually listing 40 cities that have populations of 100,000 (with […]

SkyTrain Really Isn’t A Regional Distance Based, Rapid Transit System

First published in 2022, this post remains extremity relevant today. Four years have gone by and the cost today of the Expo Line extension to Surrey is now estimated at $7 billion and that is just for the guideway, which the federal government is paying 40%of the cost. Zwei has been told privately that the […]

Trams Having Limited Capacity? – SURELY NOT!

The “gelb wand” (yellow wall) of trams in Karlsruhe Germany With the the Province; the City of  Vancouver and TransLink continued selling big porkies about LRT, the following will be enlightening! The ongoing planning and construction charade currently being played out by the usual suspects including cities of Vancouver & Surrey, TransLink and the provincial […]

Lausanne’s New Tramway

Lausnne, Switzerland, with a population 144,000 and a regional population of 420,000, is building a new tramway, The city also has a two line metro system, with one line using rubber tired metro’s based on the Paris metro and the other metro line using light rail vehicles. The high cost of metro construction has now […]

A MEMO TO PREMIER EBY

The Honourable David Eby, Premier of BC Dear Premier Eby, The ongoing rift between Canada and the USA will have generational effects and will never go back to normal, as President Trump has forever changed how people behave. Trump and MAGA is a prelude for great change in BC. The ongoing climate change with summer’s […]

BRT – A View From a Canadian Transit Expert

Originally posted in 2015 I have updated the post but since very little has changed about BRT over the past decade, that there is little to update. Real BRT has reached its maximum potential, unless tree-articulated buses become the norm and that has made BRT a niche transit mode to deal with niche transit issues. […]