Mayors, Premier and Transportation Minister to meet next week – The Blind Leading the Blind

Talk about the blind leading the blind. BC Transportation Minister, Shirley Bond (who knows little or nothing about transit), the besieged premier (who knows that building glitzy metro lines buys votes), and regional mayors (who are equally unread on transit) are going to have a private meeting regarding TransLink’s ongoing financial crisis. The first hing […]

European News

ALSTOM ORDER FOR RATP LINE T3 Alstom has received zamA?A?wnienie for 25 tramsAi??Ai??for Paris.Ai??Ai??Twenty-fiveAi??Ai??Citadis trams ordered a French Alstom RATP – the operator of public transport in Paris. Warehouses to be delivered in 2012.Ai??Ai?? The Alstom order was announced today an option agreement signed in December 2003 . Its value is EUR 77 million, along […]

Off The Rails – From the Abby Times

An interesting tome in the Abbotsford Times. Anyone wanting to put ‘rail’ transit down the median of the number 1 highway forgets that it would be hugely expensive and the curvature and gradients along the route would mean very expensive engineering would have to be done. Going ‘greenfields’ construction is always an expensive propositionAi??Ai??which knowledgeable […]

The SkyTrain Lobby – Just The Usual Suspects!

Transit again is making front page news in the dailies and regional newspapers, with TransLink claiming that the next big rapid transit (read SkyTrain) line will be in Surrey, not Broadway. A few international transit blogs have picked up the storyAi??Ai??with the usual suspects singing hosannas about SkyTrain, while in the same breathe libeling anyone […]

Surrey mayor calls for transit expansion to be low profile to make sense – From the Vancouver Province

Surrey mayor, Dianne Watts, clearly understands the costs of ‘rail’ transit (the term ‘rapid transit’ is used by lazy or uniformed people) and that to get a larger more workable ‘rail‘Ai??Ai?? network for her city, she must opt for modern light rail. While Vancouver pines for another multi-billion dollar subway under Broadway, its politicians seem […]

The LR55 Rail System – Cheap track for trams!

This item first appeared in August 20,2009, but I think it is so important to reprint the article in light of todays interest in streetcars and light rail in Vancouver and Surrey. The LR55 rail, not only provides a cheaper solution to tram track construction, it makes a quick job of construction, making life a […]

Metro Vancouver pushes rapid transit for Surrey, not UBC – Why Not Build Both?

It seems that thatAi??Ai??METRO Vancouver’sAi??Ai??chief honcho wants to extend ‘rapid transit’ (read SkyTrain) in Surrey and not on Broadway. But don’t hold your breathe for any action anytime soon. The Tri-Cities have been waiting for their ‘rapid transit’ (read SkyTrain) for over two decades and were pipped at the post by Premier Campbell (and former […]

Why is public transit more expensive than it used to be?

The following article from the American Conservative sums up Rail for the Valley’s long standing worries about the ever escalating cost to build light rail/streetcar. It is time to get back to basics and build LRT/streetcar cheaply or it will price itself right out of the market! One start, of course, would be to stop […]

World wide Transit and Light Rail News

Nanjing. http://www.railway-technology.com/projects/nanjingmetro/ Lagos. http://www.railway-technology.com/projects/lagosrailmasstransit/ Ho Chi Minh http://www.railway-technology.com/news/news94402.html http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/single-view/view/ceremony-launches-work-on-ho-chin-minh-city-metro-line-2.html Phoenix http://www.valleymetro.org/metro_light_rail/ Keep rail local, says pteg http://www.railtechnologymagazine.com/dataview/News/News_Article.aspx?KeyValue=2262 Edinburgh http://news.scotsman.com/news/Tram-shifts-for-Pope.6498683.jp http://news.scotsman.com/transport-news/Platform-Richard-Jeffrey-defends-the.6497807.jp

News From Portland – Trams and Light Rail

The newly-redesigned Portland Streetcar website is especially informative, and is doing a great job reporting on the week-by-week progress of our forthcoming east side (of the Willamette River) streetcar line. For example, see http://portlandstreetcar.org/node/16 for a video visualization of the new line, and also http://portlandstreetcar.org/node/12 which has a good map and discussion of the current […]