From the Tri City News – Olympic transit wasn’t as good as the hype

An interesting letter that appeared in the Tri-City news, reflecting that transit service during the Olympics wasn’t all what TransLink claimed. The reason for reproducing the letter is that Zwei has heard from several people that the regional transit system wasn’t working as advertised and many just took the car instead. Olympic transit wasn’t as […]

Costly SkyTrain technology choices baffle – From the North Shore News

It seems that the efforts of Zwei and others have paid off’ asAi??Ai??others in the region are taking note of LRT and TramTrain and the hugeAi??Ai??costs that go along with the SkyTrain light-metro system and subway construction. TramTrain andAi??Ai??especially “Rail for the Valley” itselfAi??Ai??may find some welcome allies to their cause from the North Shore, […]

Is the Hawaii SkyTrain Project Bombardier’s Last Kick At The Can?

The i L i n d . n e tAi??Ai??blog has been asking many questions about the proposed SkyTrain transit project in Hawaii, questions which should be answered before embarking on a multi billion dollar rapid transit project. Recent postings point to the fact that light rail was quietly dropped from theAi??Ai??planning process, not unlike […]

Hawaii SkyTrain Project Heats Up

A Hawaiian blog by Ian Lind posted Zwei’s ‘Debunking SkyTrain Series’ and continues the hot debate on the elevated SkyTrain project in Hawaii. http://ilind.net/2010/03/03/responses-show-rail-a-very-hot-topic/ It is good that the locals are beginning to ask questions about SkyTrain and may be beginning to see that the proprietary light-metro isn’t as great as ‘sliced bread’ which the […]

Olympic Hubris – Will The Wrong Conclusions Be Made By Our Planning & Political Elites?

In the last days of the 2010 Olympics, much has been made about how well our transportation worked during the event. What has been overlooked is that for the two week extravaganza, Vancouver had much warmer seasonal weather, meaning noAi??Ai??snow to stall the SkyTrain metro and make a shambles out of the bus schedules. Added […]

Note to TransLink: Toronto’s Streetcars operate 24/7

A post from confirms what Zweisystem already knew, many streetcar/LRT systems operate twenty-four hours a day! Here we have an excellent example of the flexibility of modern LRT. 501 Queen and 506 Carlton. The routes are numbered 301 and 306 at night. From Wikipedia: The Blue Night Network is the overnight public transit service operated […]

All Party Parliamentary Light Rail Group (APPLRG) report – Should we do the same in BC?

Some interesting news from across the pond. Urban transit development in the UK has been hamstrung by a very powerful and vocal ‘Roads Lobby’, within the central government (not unlike the SkyTrain Lobby in Victoria), which has all but stopped light rail development in the UK. In an era of peak oil and global warming, […]

Hamilton Looks to Europe for Light Rail Plans – How About Vancouver?

The good Burghers in Hamilton have realized that it isn’t the amount of money you spend on transit, rather how you plan andAi??Ai??build rail transit, that makes it successful. This is a lesson that BC politicians and TransLink fail to acknowledge and continue to plan for expensive light metro. The Canada line is a good […]

Light-rail ‘vision’ elevated track would run along I-405 – From the Seattle Times

It seems the hoary old elevated, tunnel, or at-grade debate continues in Bellevue Washington, which is across the lake from Seattle. The success of LRT is to be able to penetrate into city centres cheaply, on-street, where the transit customer wants to go, which is something that a certain rookie Bellevue councilor doesn’t want to […]

More Financial Woes For TransLink

Instead of doing what most other ‘rail‘ transit projects have done, offer compensation packages to affected merchants and residents along the construction route, TransLink did nothing and now has to pay the ‘piper’s price’. Not only will future awards drive up the RAV/Canada Line’s price tag, the legal costs alone will take money away from […]