Bogota TransMilenio ‘BRT’ selling ‘carbon credits’ – From the Light Rail now folks

This is an interesting article, but badly marred by very poor research by the author.Ai??Ai?? It also should be noted that bus ridership figuresAi??Ai??for South American BRT’s have proven to be greatly overstated. What also isAi??Ai??not mentioned isAi??Ai??that BRT has been disappointing in operation in North America, India, Australia and Europe, failing to achieve projected […]

NYC: Transport chief pushes more livable city, but faces anti-rail BRT "booby trap" – From the Light Rail Now Folks

Ominous news for the Fraser Valley efforts to reinstate the interurban, as it seems New York City’s transit plannersAi??Ai??are going against the world trend in building with LRT and instead is planning for Bus Rapid Transit or BRT. What a coincidence that TransLink’s new CEO,Ai??Ai??comes from New York City and its long established transit bureaucracy. […]

Get ready, Seattle: You’re about to be a light-rail town – From the Seattle Times

Ai??Ai??Seattle’s LRT line is “four to six times costlier than other light-rail startups in western states“, as planners designed the light rail service as a light-metro, with miles of expensive viaducts and even more expensive subway tunnels. The same sort of nonsense happened with BC Transit’s LRT plans for Broadway and Translink’s light rail plans […]

Bus Raid Transit – A transit Panacea or a money pit?

Phileas woes in Istanbul. Ai?? Many politicians are calling for Bus Rapid Transit, but reallyAi??Ai??haven’t a clue what they are talking about. Internationally, BRT describes guided buses and/or large busway networks, but in Vancouver, BRT tends to mean B-Line style, limited stop, bus service. What is quietly forgotten is that BRT has not, except in […]

From Seattle – The end of the line, for now: Tukwila is the jewel in the crown of Link – Mike Lindblom – Seattle Times

Though Seattle’s light rail project has more in common with Vancouver’s light-metro system, it does have portions running on city streets. Through the Duwamish River valley, it operates as a light-metro, running on a 8 km. viaduct. As soon as light-rail trains head south out of Seattle, leaving the streets of Rainier Valley, the ride […]

The aging SkyTrain – Pitfalls of a gadgetbahnen

The major problem with automatic railways, is that they age poorly or should one say, the signaling and miles and miles of wiring needed for automatic operation, age poorly.Ai??Ai??A transit system that is well maintained, with lots of expensive preventative maintenance, preforms well as it ages, but if little or no preventive maintenance is done, […]

Rail reality grows with Hydro’s revelation – The Vancouver Province.

Ai??Ai??From the Vancouver Province and thanks for Brian Lewis for following this story! Advocates for establishing a light-rail passenger service in the Fraser Valley have found an ally in B.C. Hydro. And, not surprisingly, they’ve also found an opponent in mighty Canadian Pacific Ltd., the railway-based corporation that many have loved to hate throughout its […]

How green is my rapid transit?

By popular demand, another posting on ‘green’ or grassed light rail rights-of-ways. Grassed light rail lines bring a ‘cooling’ green park-like atmosphere to city tram lines. Lawned rights-of-ways are also used on heavier (fast) light-rail lines on suburban routes. Even in dense city centres, a lawned tram line is ascetically appealing. The appealing nature of […]

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.A?ai??i??A?

The title quote by Joseph Goebbels, famed Nazi propagandist, aptly describes the SkyTrain lobby’s and BC Transit/TransLink’s thirty year long propaganda campaign to sell SkyTrain and discredit modern light rail. The many pro-SkyTrain blog sites that offer little in fact, but much unfounded rhetoric. All the bumf spewed hides one singular fact; that SkyTrain has […]

Tram-train backed in the UK. Can we expect the same here?

Ai??Ai??WhatAi??Ai?? is important to note is that the very thorough and highly respectedAi??Ai??Her Majesty’s Railway Inspectorate is now investigating the safety and implementation of TramTrain in the UK; if it passes the HMRI it can be well assured that TramTrain will be safe for operation on the “interurban” line, on this side of the pond! […]