A Pre Election Band Aid

When the provincial government spends in excess of $16 billion to extend the somewhat obsolete Movia Automatic Light Metro (a.k.a. SkyTrain) system a mere 21.7 km, the regional transit system as a whole suffers. The federal government is partly at fault for this growing financial debacle by compelling the provincial government to continue building with […]

$7 Billion to Move 56,000 (or less) Persons A Day.

If one wishes to know why emergency rooms are being closed on weekends in hospitals around the province, the NDP are spending $7 billion to move 56,000 people a day. 56,000 thousand riders a day? According to Wikipedia, the Broadway 99-B Line bus to UBC, averages 39,900 customers a day (2023)! One thinks that the […]

The Geneva Model

The problem in Canada, is that transit is built to win elections and not move people. Transit projects become “gold-plated”, ponderous and not user-friendly. In Canada the transit customer is all but ignored. In Switzerland transit is built to meet the needs of the transit customer and the transit customer approval is needed at all […]

Eby’s Reality Check On Transit

From what I can read, Eby is playing footsie with the Broadway subway to UBC. Farnsworth, who is now minister in charge of transit is doing penance for his complete screw-up of the Surrey RCMP/police fiasco, which many in the NDP blame their poor showing in the recent election. Subways are expensive, both to build […]

The Transit Deficit Begins To Bite

Thursday night’s massive traffic accident on Highway 99 was to be expected, as it could not be otherwise. Zwei drives this route twice a week for my cardio-rehab in White Rock and my eyes have been opened wide at the utterly poor driving habits by both car and commercial drivers. Just on Wednesday, I witnesses […]

A Bad News Situation

Kevin Quinn, the American spin doctor, hired by TransLink (a.k.a the provincial government) to bamboozle the taxpayer to agree to anti up more money for the regional transit system is again taken to the media pleading poverty to the provincial government, in order to secure more funding. He is now blaming the “electric car” for […]

The 2024 Provincial Election And Transit

How will the 2024 provincial election impact transit? Hard to answer but, the current major “rapid transit” (Expo and Millennium Lines) projects are seeing a funding shortfall of around $4 billion and it is hard to see the new Parliament in Victoria approving funding, for what is now largely seen a “prestige” transit projects. Oh, […]

Lessons

A lot has happened with Ottawa’s hybrid light metro/rail system, most of it negative, but most confuse it with the very successful O-Train, which is not light rail at all, rather a regional railway, operating DMU’s. This is what Rail for the Valley is proposing for the Valley Rail scheme and what the E&N folks […]

Back On Track

Cities across Europe are building trams (streetcars) at a rate not seen in nearly a century. Places that had torn up their tram tracks in the 1950s have realized they had made a mistake. Twenty-one French cities have built a tramway system this century. Sixty German cities now have trams. Further afield, China has built […]

Are You A Transit Expert? 15 Questions.

Here are ten questions to test the knowledge of political candidates about LRT & public transit for this coming provincial election. Passing grade is 70%. Answers: 1) LRT is a transit mode, generally electrically powered, able to operate in mixed traffic, that can economically carry between 2,000 and 20,000 persons per hour per direction. (Light […]