Really? TransLink Tries To Spin The Evergreen Line

In the real world, modern trams or LRT lines are not considered unless traffic flows are 2,000 pphpd or more. Light-metro’s like SkyTrain, on the other hand, need traffic flows of at least 10,000 pphpd, to justify construction. Now, TransLink is trying to spin that a meager 30,000 boarding’s a day is good news. It’s […]

Even Your Auditor General Seems To Have Done His Sums On The Back Of Envelopes

Let us hearken back to the days of yesteryear and remember Zwei’s take on the AG’s audit of the Evergreen Line was. SkyTrain cheaper than LRT, not a chance unless it was deliberately designed to be so! As one overseas expert succinctly put it; “”Even your Auditor General seems to have done his sums on […]

TransLink – Extremely User Unfriendly

As Zwei has said before TransLink and its SkyTrain mini-metro system is extremely user unfriendly. The current fare regimen is fraught with complications and contradictions, people make mistakes, yet TransLink seems unable or unwilling to fix it. IT IS A HELL OF A WAY TO RUN A TRANSIT SYSTEM. TransLink may boast of more fares […]

More Pre Election Transit News – Monty Python Plans For Transit

Unlike the mainstream media, the Georgia Straight always has better reporting on the local transit scene. This is nothing more than a staged media event featuring two growingly unpopular Mayors, Hepner and Roberts and the ever unpopular TransLink. With a May election looming the Liberals need to show that they are doing something, while the […]

Memo to Metro Mayors: Forget Road Pricing, build With LRT!

As Vancouver’s metro mayor’s dig themselves further into a financial morass, with the proposed now $3.2 billion Broadway subway to Arbutus and the now over $100/km Surrey LRT, which will demand more and more punitive regional taxation, why instead don’t we plan for affordable European style LRT? The trouble is, our regional mayors think they […]

SkyTrain – What TransLink Is Not Telling Us

This reply from Haveacow who is an Engineer, to an earlier post and I think worthy of a post on its own. He is familiar with SkyTrain and worked on the Ottawa LRT and inn other words he knows his stuff. Despite the ‘huff and puff’ from high paid TransLink spokes people about how the […]

Fare Gates – Not As Advertised

TransLink’s fare-gates and Compass Card system was forced upon TransLink, not to reduce fare evasion, which was well within industry norms, but to ensure then Premier Campbell’s good friend, Ken Dobell, work as aAi?? lobbyist for Cubit Industries who make the fare gates. Lobbyists must be successful with their lobby of government or no one […]

Game Changer for Regional Rail!

What the FRA does, Transport Canada will soon follow. This news is of great importance to Metro and Victoria’s metro regions, bringing in a transit option that Rail for the Valley has been championing for many years. Proven European technology combined with proven European transit philosophy (which will come with the technology), just may make […]

UBC expert fears Vancouver subway is still far off

Transit improvements coming soon? Don’t hold your breathe because TransLink’s planning is extremely suspect. Certainly new buses will arrive for new routes and new drivers, mechanics and the rest of the employees needed to operate the new buses will be hired, but will this actually improve transit? I doubt it because TransLink is fixated on […]

The 1986 LRTA Study: Bus – LRT – Metro Comparison

Every year I reprint this post to remind everyone of the ability to move large amount of people at an affordable cost. There is an ongoing debate today that LRT can only carry a limited number of riders and that the magic number for a subway is about 100,000 riders a day on a transit […]