Zwei’s Road Trip To The Future

  During this Covid-19 emergency, getting housebound is just collateral damage, so Zwei fired up the family chariot and went on a road trip through south Surrey, Langley, Huntington, Yarrow, Vedder Crossing, and Chillwack/Rosedale and was astounded by the mass of development, especially in the Vedder, Promontory areas. Any politician today, who states or claims […]

Hungary’s New TramTrain

  A new TramTrain operation has opened on Feb. 22, in Hungary and all one can say is wow. The 26.2 km Szeged-Hódmezővásárhely (please watch video) tram-train system is now open for operation in Hungary, connecting two of the cities of Szeged and Hódmezővásárhely. Costing a total of €224 842 224  (CAD$345,750,843 or $8.6 million/km)), the diesel-electric […]

German Tram Redoux

In the 1970’s, German trams were on the decline. Two decades of subway mania fragmented tram lines and tram routes and on the whole, ridership on German public transport was declining. Despite eager promises from planners and politicians of futuristic rapid transit, the new subways were not attracting predicted ridership and car use increased dramatically, […]

Alstom Completes Bombardier Transportation Acquisition

Alstom is now the owner of the proprietary Movia Automatic Light Metro (MALM) system and the big question is, will Alstom continue to produce the MK.2/3 cars or even honour Bombardier’s contracts with TransLink. Will Alstom treat TransLink and regional politicians as rubes for the taking? The early resignation of TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond, and […]

Spanish Trams On The Rise

From Wikipedia: Valencia was the first Spanish city to reintroduce the tram, in 1994. The success of the modern tramway network in Valencia led to the extension of its lines on three occasions. After Valencia came Bilbao (2002), Alicante (2003), Barcelona (2004) and, in October 2006, the inauguration of the 4.7 km long Vélez-Málaga Tram (which […]

A Repost From 2017- La Renaissance Du Tramway en France

La renaissance du tramway en France Tours The French (Tram) Renaissance is amazing! 17 brand-new systems opened since 2000. A single line in Montpellier, line T1, carriess over 130,000 weekday riders! And thatai??i??s with no tunnels, mostly street running. Systems in Nantes, Bordeaux and Montpellier have ridership at or near 260,000 riders a day! That […]

A Tale of Three Letters

It seems there is much confusion with TransLink and metro cities regarding transit mode. It is the old shell game, practiced by BC Transit, TransLink, both the provincial Liberal Party and the NDP, regional Mayors and very sadly, both University of BC and Simon Fraser University. Rapid transit refers to metro and not light rail, […]

A Letter to Regional Politicians

Zwei has been copied a letter that has been sent out to Metro politicians. I also have been informed that the provincial NDP have blocked receiving said letter. It is of great importance that the media should ask pointed questions about regional transit, but they don’t and have given largely given regional transit a free […]

Fake News And The SkyTrain Lobby – Who Are They Really Working For?

A repost from November 21, 2017 A comment from Zwei (2021): The Daily Hive has become the mouthpiece for TransLink and the Hive prints news releases as if they were news, without any fact checking. Really, can’t the SkyTrain Lobby do any better? The following is so silly and juvenile because it is all hearsay […]

User-Friendliness – The Key For Ridership

Interesting, that an Alberta University is doing a study about how Covid affects transit use. All we hear from TransLink is yesterday’s ridership records, which were mainly for “subway propaganda” than anything else. TransLink’s ridership claims are based on boarding’s and as boarding’s inflate actual ridership numbers, means ridership assumptions and predictions are inflated and […]