Zwei Sends A Letter

I will send the following letter to all municipal and provincial politicians in November  and it will be ignored, as usual. This does not surprise me because our current lot don’t want to acknowledge the truth, lest they be embarrassed by past politically inspired decisions. Six figured salaried planners and engineers are merely telling politicians […]

Single Track Operation & Level Crossings – Dutch Style

  Some of the detractors of Rail for the Valley’s TramTrain or light DMU line from Marpole to Chilliwack cite that only one train can operate on the line at one time. With properly placed passing loops, preferably at stations, trains can be safely operated going in both directions on a single line. this due […]

Back To Basics

What is light rail? LRT is a transportation system based on electrically powered light rail vehicles (LRV) that operates on a track in a dedicated right-of-way (meaning separated lanes). It is the operating on dedicated or “reserved rights-of-ways that makes a simple streetcar or tram light rail! many simple streetcar or tram systems have sections […]

Adding More Highway Capacity Only Increases Congestion And Gridlock

Where will the new traffic go? You cannot build yourself out of congestion, as it never works. A good example is Boise Idaho, where between 1993 and 2017, roads expanded 141 percent while population grew 117 percent. But congestion increased 446 percent. The previous example is what is happening across the united States and Canada. […]

How The NDP Paved Paradise and Turned It Into a Parking Lot. A Repost From 2020

This is a repost of a November 2020 blog post. The estimated cost for a 21.7 km extension of the Millennium Line (Broadway subway) and the Expo Line (Surrey – Langley extension) is now past $11 billion. The NDP are setting in motion a highway’s only planning for the future, doubling down on BC’s famous […]

Vancouver Will Need To Adopt Lower-Cost LRT In Its Lesser Corridors – Updated

The consensus is the same, Metro Vancouver will need to adopt lower-cost LRT for its future transit needs. This was first posted in 2019 and the costs and the financial numbers have changed somewhat. Currently, the province and metro Vancouver is spending over $11 billion for 21.7 km of new light-metro line, including the Broadway […]

Eby And The NDP Have Missed The Train

It seems Premier Eby and the NDP have been left behind at the station with this. With two railway projects that would have set BC as a leader in “Green” transportation, Premier Eby and the NDP continue to promote Greenhouse gas projects with new highway and tunnel construction: in other words, good old “rubber and […]

Can A City Fall In Love With A Tram?

    Can Vancouver fall in love with trams?

Same Opportunities – Same Excuses

Light rail is not a panacea, but it is a proven method in reducing auto traffic, something those promoting SkyTrain cannot claim. Building with trams opens an opportunity for not only providing a user-friendly and environmentally- friendly alternative to the car, the mode offers an almost universal transit mode as the modern tram can operate […]

Incompatible Transit – A Taxpayer’s Nightmare

I thought this would be an interesting article as we have in Vancouver two incompatible light metro systems, the Canada Line and the Expo and Millennium Lines. The Canada Line uses ROTEM built EMU’s, standard railway fare and can be used on most standard gauge electric railways. The Expo and Millennium lines use the proprietary, […]