Death By Toll

Is anyone surprised by this? If you are, you are either residing outside Metro Vancouver or you are living in a bubble, because the taxpayer is maxed out. The BC Liberal regime of Gordon Campbell has off-loaded so many user fees, taxes and other costs on to the backs of taxpayers that he has all […]

Why we build with light rail

The following was Zweisystem’s first offering on the Rail for the Valley blog, posted on December 12, 2008. Five years and some 1,359 posts later, the message has stayed essentially the same; why does the provincial government and TransLink still pursue light metro instead of LRT, especially when light metro has proven inferior in service […]

Light Rail News from around the World

Hong Kong Tram operator proposes $2.8b Kai Tak line http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=4&art_id=140343&sid=41066028&con_type=1&d_str=20131206&fc=8 Hong Kong Tramways has proposed building a HK$2.8 billion tram system for the Kai Tak site. Under the tram operator’s proposal, there will be 23 stations in the system, which will link Kai Tak pier, Ngau Tau Kok and Kowloon Bay MTR stations in 2018. […]

More Wisdom From Ottawa

Haveacow is a transit professional from Ottawa and his most recent post in the comments section is again worthy of a post of its own. The information contained within this post should give insight to the real transit issues that face TransLink, employee’s costs and the main reason why LRT is built. One modern tram […]

TransLink’s Fiscal House of Cards

Is TransLink’s financial ‘house of cards‘ ready to collapse? It seems the independent commissioner overseeing TransLink thinks so. Certainly the ‘self proclaimed‘ transit experts are circling TransLink like vultures seem to thinks so, by advocating more onerous taxes on the public with ‘road pricing‘ and even a ‘border toll’. Zwei has not heard of one […]

Wisdom From Ottawa

  Our friend Haveacow, is a transit professional and his comment, I believe’ gets to core of TransLink’s woes. When you add in the extra costs of operating the Canada Line and SkyTrain ALRT/ICTS Lines, one can easily see why TransLink’s costs are a third higher than Edmonton and Calgary. From Haveacow and please forward […]

More tramways for Paris

What the SkyTrain and subway lobbies fail to mention, is that Paris transit authorities are also investing heavily in light rail or tramways. Something that planners should consider, when planning for new transit lines in Vancouver. Paris inaugurates tram Line T7 18 Nov 2013 FRANCE: The latest tram line in Paris opened on November 16 […]

Light Rail Is Not A Panacea

In Canada transit authorities, unlike their European counterparts, tend not to do maintenance until it is absolutely necessary to do so. This means customer affecting break downs do occur and when they do, the transit customer is ill served. Older trams need a robust maintenance routine, to prevent breakdowns and I would wager that the […]

Donai??i??t learn from the failure of the subway on Cambie Street ai??i?? copy it for Broadway

Sad to see that the best UBC can do is to copy failed 1950’s planning philosophy for the 21st century for Vancouver. In North America, subways are seen as the the great transit philosopher’s stone to solve all transportation problems – if you do not have a subway, your transit system is next to useless. […]

Professor warns of suburban sprawl, ai???horrificai??i?? congestion.

Zwei has been warning about this for several years, and now, now someone has noticed? I’m sorry, but I just do not see any improvement in our regional transit chaos, until someone has the moral fortitude to put a wooden stake through the heart of SkyTrain. For too long, TransLink has been recycling bus riders […]