10 Questions

I do not have the answers to these questions or rather I may know the answers but with libel and slander laws the way they are, I will not offer an opinion. Why do TransLink and the Mayor’s council on Transit still continue planning for the obsolete Movia Automatic Light Metro system (A.K.A. SkyTrain), when […]

Why Not TramTrain?

Why not TramTrain? The genesis of this blog was to advocate and support reintroducing a passenger rail service from Vancouver to Chilliwack and after 13 years since the release of the Leewood Study, which created a template for such a service, the need today is greater than it has ever been. As the upper Fraser […]

Why Light Rail?

Why Light rail? This question has been asked over and over again by those who only know our MALM (SkyTrain) light-metro system. After 40 years of non stop rah-rah, propaganda by the federal and provincial governments, civic governments and bureaucracies; and the various groups made up of, what I call, the “SkyTrain Lobby”, Light-Rail, locally […]

Zwei Sends A Letter

I will send the following letter to all municipal and provincial politicians in November  and it will be ignored, as usual. This does not surprise me because our current lot don’t want to acknowledge the truth, lest they be embarrassed by past politically inspired decisions. Six figured salaried planners and engineers are merely telling politicians […]

Single Track Operation & Level Crossings – Dutch Style

  Some of the detractors of Rail for the Valley’s TramTrain or light DMU line from Marpole to Chilliwack cite that only one train can operate on the line at one time. With properly placed passing loops, preferably at stations, trains can be safely operated going in both directions on a single line. this due […]

Back To Basics

What is light rail? LRT is a transportation system based on electrically powered light rail vehicles (LRV) that operates on a track in a dedicated right-of-way (meaning separated lanes). It is the operating on dedicated or “reserved rights-of-ways that makes a simple streetcar or tram light rail! many simple streetcar or tram systems have sections […]

Can A City Fall In Love With A Tram?

    Can Vancouver fall in love with trams?

Same Opportunities – Same Excuses

Light rail is not a panacea, but it is a proven method in reducing auto traffic, something those promoting SkyTrain cannot claim. Building with trams opens an opportunity for not only providing a user-friendly and environmentally- friendly alternative to the car, the mode offers an almost universal transit mode as the modern tram can operate […]

Incompatible Transit – A Taxpayer’s Nightmare

I thought this would be an interesting article as we have in Vancouver two incompatible light metro systems, the Canada Line and the Expo and Millennium Lines. The Canada Line uses ROTEM built EMU’s, standard railway fare and can be used on most standard gauge electric railways. The Expo and Millennium lines use the proprietary, […]

Flexibility To Fight Climate Change

Flexibility is the key in today’s transit planning. More and more, freight that used to be carried on railways, then switched to heavily subsidized trucks on heavily subsidized highways, is now goring back to the railways. Ignoring Global Warming and climate change is a fools game, played by civic, provincial and federal politicians to the […]