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, […]

Light Rail on Toronto’s King St. Increases Ridership 27%

Welcome news. When a heritage streetcar route is upgraded to light rail standards, simply by giving it priority over autos, reliability increases dramatically as does ridership. The lesson to be learned is indeed very simple. One need not segregate transit in a subway or on a viaduct, to increase ridership, one only needs to operate […]

€300 (CAD $455) Million For 25 km of New Tram Line

€300 converts to CAD $455 million for 24km of tram line or about CAD $18.2km per km to build. This of course does not include vehicles or a maintenance depot, but does give a good indication of the cost for an economy light rail line to be built in Metro Vancouver. Even if the total […]

Delusion Drives SkyTrain Planning South of the Fraser

The old fogies of politics are now driving the change from LRT to SkyTrain in Surrey. The same old lies. The same old deceit. The same old ignorance is now gaining control of regional transit south of the Fraser, as it has done in the rest of Metro Vancouver. The SkyTrain Lobby doesn’t care about […]

And Light Rail Transit – Premier Horgan, Are You Listening? From 2017

And Light Rail Transit – Premier Horgan, Are You Listening?   Evidently not!   Posted by zweisystem on Thursday, July 27, 2017 What this story does not mention is that Portland has an extensive LRT/streetcar network, a transit network designed to meet the needs of the transit customer. Unlike Metro Vancouver where transit is built […]

Common Sense Transit Planning At last!

Common sense. Want a workable public transport system? One must plan on this scale as being done in the City of Surrey. Let us just add a Vancouver to Chilliwack TramTrain, instead of LRT to Langley and one would now have 270km of rail transit in the Fraser Valley. This is called “Vision”; this called […]

Surrey’s LRT Costs Skyrocket – As Planned?

And now, the real story. There is a growing number of politicians who want to build with SkyTrain instead of LRT in Surrey. What they ignore at their own peril is that SkyTrain will not cost $1 billion more than LRT to build, but it will cost over $6 billion! Why? TransLink has neglected to […]

The Regional Mayor’s $7 Billion FastFerry Fiasco!

FastFerry fiascos tend to be common in BC, where politicians play the part of transit experts and squander the taxpayer’s money on prestige projects, that are great for ribbon cutting photo-ops, but little more. That Translink’s American CEO applauds this only shows the Mayor’s Council on Transit picked nothing more than a “Useful Idiot” to […]

Some Smart People Out There, Not Here Apparently……

In Europe, transportation needs are designed to meet the needs of transit customers. In BC, transportation needs are designed to further political careers and money laundering. Example: The $3 billion Broadway SkyTrain subway, being built on a transit route which has peak hour traffic flows under 4,000 pphpd! Who is the subway being built for? […]