UBC expert fears Vancouver subway is still far off

Transit improvements coming soon? Don’t hold your breathe because TransLink’s planning is extremely suspect. Certainly new buses will arrive for new routes and new drivers, mechanics and the rest of the employees needed to operate the new buses will be hired, but will this actually improve transit? I doubt it because TransLink is fixated on […]

The 1986 LRTA Study: Bus – LRT – Metro Comparison

Every year I reprint this post to remind everyone of the ability to move large amount of people at an affordable cost. There is an ongoing debate today that LRT can only carry a limited number of riders and that the magic number for a subway is about 100,000 riders a day on a transit […]

Sounds of Silence

No surprise here, as Zwei has been sounding alarm bells over this upcoming fiasco for years Now TransLink has an American out of Seattle as the new CEO and this means the sky is the limit for spending on rail transit. Seattle’s LRT is LRT in name only as it is actually a light metro […]

Unlike Toronto, TransLink Can’t Cancel A SkyTrain Contract

Toronto is cancelling its contract with Bombardier, which would have provided light rail vehicles for Toronto’s planned LRT network and the TTC is also looking at dumping Bombardier as the supplier for their tram replacement program due to non delivery of new trams as per the contract schedule This is why Bombardier Inc. love proprietary […]

Broadway Subway Is Luxury Wrapped In Opulence – Designed To Sell A Mock P-3?

It did not take long for the Liberal fixers in Ottawa to hatch a scheme to keep their political friends awash in taxpayer`s dollars. Public transit schemes are generally not money makers, in fact the vast majority of public transit operations around the globe are subsidized, many heavily subsidized. A few light rail transit lines […]

Do The SkyTrain MK.3 Cars Have A Fatal Flaw?

Really. No, really, can’t TransLink come up with a better excuse than a “high tech glitch” for the recent embarrassing problems with the brand new MK.3 cars? Evidently not. Mk.3 cars high tech? No. What the Mk.3 car is a new universal body shell to fit all of Bombardier’s ‘rail’ light-metros or other like light-metros […]

In Metro Vancouver……

The subway lobby seem hard at it in Toronto and have been caught out by an independent public watchdog, set up to protect the taxpayer. Metro Vancouver and its member municipalities has no such watchdog to watch for bureaucratic or political malfeasance and with the media well in bed with Metro Vancouver politicians, the taxpayer […]

INFRASTRUCTURE

One politicians “infrastructure” is another one’s waste. It’s not transit or transportation projects we build, rather it is infrastructure. The SkyTrain Broadway subway is deemedAi?? by Vancouver politicians to be a good investment of the taxpayer’s money because it is “infrastructure” , but the subway is not based on sound transit and transportation planning, thus […]

Scarborough Subway Derailing?

Unfortunately financial reality is now setting in in Toronto and building subways are a very expensive proposition.. The cost to replace the aging Scarborough ICTS mini-metro with a one stop, 6 km. subway (about the same length as a Broadway subway to Arbutus!) is now put at $3.2 billion and rising. Plans to revive a […]

A Tale of Two Cities – The Utsunomiya LRT Versus The Shambles in Surrey

This article should give a good indication of the cost of modern light rail being built today. The proposed Utsunomiya LRT, is of course narrow gaugeAi?? and will have somewhat narrower trams, with a reduced capacity than LRT built inAi?? Canada, but it is the cost of construction which is important. The 14.6 km., 19 […]