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 […]

“It’s Kind Of Like Building A Subway Station On King For A Fraction Of The Cost.”

As Toronto’s Kings street streetcar reinvents itself as LRT, good things happen. But, as always with something new, people will complain, especially some restaurant owners who no longer can park their cars in front of their places of business. If public transit is to work, it must be given priority over other transportation modes and […]

Civic Maturity Comes With Light Rail

Light Rail, brings with it, civic maturity. This civic maturity puts the transit customers before political friends; it puts financial reality ahead of political prestige; it puts the public interest as a whole, ahead of car drivers and even business owners. Light rail focuses on good transit and good planning, which in the future will […]

Dublin’s LUAS 55 Metre Tram

It has been said that longer trams are cheaper to operate than a coupled set and with the Dublin LUAS 55 metre long trams, sets a new standard in the British Isles and Eire. Whether the ancient streets and bridges can handle the beasts is another issue altogether. Teething problems abound, but a quick comparison […]

Road Pricing Farce

From Bob Mackin and the Breaker. From July 2017 Zwei has studied “Road Pricing” and “Congestion Charging” for over 20 years and……………… the very first rule for a successful road pricing scheme is that the region have a user friendly and affordable public transit alternative. With TransLink we don’t…….. not even close and TransLink is […]

The Pursuit Of European Ideals In Toronto

As expected, upgrade a heritage streetcar line to a light rail standard and ridership increases dramatically. By making King St. an exclusive route for trams, increased both commercial speed and ridership, so much so, it overwhelmed the servcie. This is old news as our European friends knew his decades ago and the question must be […]

The SkyTrain Cult Is Today’s Version Of The Cargo Cult

The Cargo Cult is a millenarian movement first described in Melanesia which encompasses a range of practices and occurs in the wake of contact with more technologically advanced societies. The name derives from the belief which began among Melanesian’s in the late 19th and early 20th century that various ritualistic acts such as the building […]

“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 […]