Bus or Light Rail, the Evidence Is Clear

Public transit is a necessity in today’s congested cities, yet politicians and their planners tend to ignore the importance of public transit in the 21st century city and either invest in the “cheap and nasty” rapid or express buses, or overly expensive gadgetbahnen like our Skytrain and Canada Line mini-metros. There is also the disturbing […]

Not so reliable, our SkyTrain – Eh?

SkyTrain is on the fritz again. The problem with proprietary transit systems is that they age very poorly.   SkyTrain delayed by communication system disruption Vancouver Sun March 28, 2014 METRO VANCOUVER – TransLink says there are system-wide delays on SkyTrain today following a disruption to the communication system. SkyTrain is running single-track between Broadway […]

SkyTrain Strike?

One of the big advantages touted by the then Social Credit government for the SkyTrain ALRT system, was that is was an automatic transit system and being driverless could not go on strike. Ha, ha, ha, the joke is on TransLink, as the 537 SkyTrain operators, attendants, dispatchers, andAi??office andAi??maintenance staff have voted 95% to […]

TransLink’s Subway Fiscal Time Bomb – A Repost from 2013

The SkyTrain/metro Lobby remain mute on the long term fiscal effects of operating subways, especially on routes that have low ridership, say less than 15,000 pphpd. Building a subway is a very expensive proposition and many factors should be considered before embarking on such a costly investment. The first questionAi??any knowledgeable transit planner must ask […]

Cutting edge to the cutter’s torch. (A repost from 2011)

What happens to old transportation technology? It becomes less valuable than scrap! The Birmingham airport MAGLEV was cutting edge transportation technology in 1984 (two years before the SkyTrain Expo Line opened) but by 1995 was scrapped as obsolete. This is reminiscent of another cutting edge transportation technology more than a century ago, the atmospheric railway. […]

Oops, Evergreen Line Guideway Shifts

When you do expensive jobs on the cheap, s**t happens. Looks like the guideway fell off its bearings, I wonder why? Coquitlam road closed by incident involving 300-tonne guideway at Evergreen Line construction site Ai??By TIFFANY CRAWFORD, VANCOUVER SUN March 14, 2014 METRO VANCOUVER – A 300-tonne beam dislodged early Friday on the new Evergreen […]

U.S. (And Canada) Taxpayers Are Gouged on Mass Transit Costs (a repost from 2012)

With BC Transit quoting silly prices for LRT in Victoria and TransLink doing the same in Vancouver and Surrey, the following article from Bloomberg should be essential reading. As the previous post has shown, modern LRT/streetcar can be built cheaply, if there is the political and bureaucratic will to do so. With thank to Justin […]

The Moonbeam Line

The Moonbeam Line is an apt name for the for Vancouver Mayor, Gregor Robinson’s pet Broadway subway project, as the subway planning has a foundation of stuff and nonsense. This hokumAi?? that a subway would be of “national significance”, is pure hoopla, from a mayor eager to spend vast sums of other people’s money for […]

Traffic Flows -What The Broadway Subway Boys & Girls Do No Want Us To Know

Mr. Havecow is a transit professional from Eastern Canada, who has studied our transit system and of course SkyTrain. His findings certainly point to the fact that the public have been inundated with porkies, big and small, from TransLink , The City of Vancouver, and other retread politicians and academics who are clinging to the […]

Tracks to the Cities

Light Rail for Liveable Cities A UITP POSITION PAPER http://www.uitp.org/sites/default/files/cck-focus-papers-files/01%20LIGHT%20RAIL%20FOR%20LIVEABLE%20CITIES.pdf In countries where tramways had survived the massive closures of the 50ai??i??s and 60ai??i??s, e.g. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, many remaining systems have been modernised and upgraded and may now be called ai???light rail systemsai???. In many other countries, where tramways had disappeared from the streets, […]