Public Meeting Re: The Arbutus Corridor

The Arbutus Corridor: A Way Forward? You might think that thereai??i??s no solution to the conflict over the Arbutus rail corridor. Canadian Pacific Rail wants $100 million for its right-of-way. The City of Vancouver has offered $20m. Neighbourhood gardens, longstanding although trespassing, have been ripped up just before harvestai??i?? and electionai??i?? time. Trains, moving or […]

Streetcars and LRT, A Quick Primer

First published in the RftV blog in 2011, it is still pertinent today. Updated to August 2014. The silly season continues in the Vancouver region, with TransLink desperately trying to persuade regional mayors to levy more taxes to mainly pay for the Evergreen SkyTrain light-metro line and a SkyTrain subway under Broadway. The following is […]

The Vancouver Province Shills For The Canada Line

40 metre to 50 metre station platforms limit the Canada line train to just two cars, severely limiting capacity. I see TransLink is calling in its markers from the mainstream media and a staff writer (infomercial maybe) has penned a puff piece for the Canada Line. No mention is made of the tens of thousands […]

Speaking of the Arbutus Corridor…………..

A Marpole bound interurban crosses 41st. Please note trolleybus and the overhead. ……. why TransLink will never support LRT on the Arbutus and why the City of Vancouver wants the ‘Arbutus” for a glorified bike lane. Evergreen Line is said to cost no more than $1.4 billion for just over 11 km of line and […]

Zwei goes to town

Zwei had some business to attend to in Vancouver on Friday morning and from casual observation, our transit system is a failure. Hitting Oak street at 10:30, the traffic going South was gridlocked until Park Ave., yet the two North bound trolley buses I passed were all but empty. The Broadway B-99 express buses were […]

It Ain’t Rocket Science Folks

Really, do the math. TransLink has 170 full time attendants (part time attendants unknown); TransLink operates 57 trains during peak hours; how hard is it to schedule an attendant to be on a train at all times? Why doesn’t TransLink force management types to be on the trains, and act as attendants as well? Unless […]

Zwei Told Ya so!

Sorry folks, I mean the SkyTrain Lobby, Zwei told ya so, SkyTrain should have attendants on board every train……………….. From the Georgia Straight. SkyTrain disruptions like the July 17 and 21 outages have happened in the past. Indeed, a report addressed this issue 21 years ago. Thatai??i??s why Ron Stromberg, who was the one who […]

Oh Please. Once Again The Vancouver Sun Again Shills For SkyTrain

Really! The Vancouver sun continues to unashamedly shill for the SkyTrain mini-metro system. I know this is tiresome, in fact downright boring, but the folks at the Sun should know better than take TransLink Press Releases as fact. The old arguments, the apples to oranges comparisons, is none other than editorial BS, from a newspaper […]

SkyTrain Whitewash Continues

TransLink can’t help it. It is inbred in them. Honesty is just not in their lexicon. They hire a SkyTrain type, at $1,200 a day to do a review of the two recent embarrassing shutdowns. It is like the police investigating itself. What should be a truly independent review, will be another SkyTrain “whitewash”, with […]

TransLinkai??i??s seven ai???deadly sinsai??i??

The reverberations of TransLink’s double SkyTrain fiasco continues to echo in Metro Vancouver. I think transit customers can understand system wide shutdowns, but when the captain and crew leave the passengers to fend for themselves, then very pointed questions will be asked. Jordan Bateman has become a serious thorn in the side of regional bureaucrats, […]