If you tell a SkyTrain lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

This is an updated post from 2009.   The title quote by Joseph Goebbels, famed Nazi propagandist, aptly describes the SkyTrain lobby’s and BC Transit/TransLink’s thirty year long propaganda campaign to sell SkyTrain and discredit modern light rail. The many pro-SkyTrain blog sites that offer little in fact, but much unfounded rhetoric. All the bumf […]

The Big SkyTrain Sell – Eby And The NDP Are Worried

 The Vancouver Sun has always shilled for SkyTrain. They repeat government hype as factual news. What this huge infomercial in the Vancouver sun tells me that Eby and the NDP are extremely worried that their agreement for the flip flop from originally planned LRT to extending the Expo Line 16 km to Langley will not […]

“Even Your Auditor General Seems To Have Done His Sums On The Back Of An Envelope.”

From 2013, updated. I am reposing this from 2013 because I just heard on the radio, the often repeated nonsense, that SkyTrain has a greater capacity than light rail.   The SkyTrain light metro system doesn’t and it never did. From Thales News Release concerning the $1.47 billion signalling upgrade of the Expo and Millennium […]

Vanity Project Reality Check – The SFU Gondola

The realities of a gondola going to SFU are beginning to hit home. Simple fact is, there is no need for a gondola to SFU and the project is a “quid pro quo” for Burnaby’s support for Vancouver’s subway project and the now former mayor of Surrey’s flip flop from light rail to MALM. It […]

Number One Highway Constructions Costs Climbing

This bodes ill for the Expo Line extension to Langley. Transportation Minister Rob Fleming attributes the delays to soil and geotechnical issues. These are the same geotechnical issues that the Langley extension also must face. The following quote is also of interest: This is in addition to the previously approved budget of $2.34 billion for […]

Provincial Government Wants On the Towers-and-Skytrain Milk Train

I welcome guest author Lewis N. Villegas. Lewis N. Villegas has over 35 years of experience working as an urban design specialist in Canada and the U.S. He completed revitalization projects in British Columbia, and New Urbanism projects in California, Utah, Oregon and Alaska. In Vancouver he designed Chinatown Square, and provided the Concept Plan […]

Those Who Do Not Read Transit History…………….

A more grist for the mill. There is a belief in North America that subways are the great panacea for urban transit. This poses a question, what is exactly meant as a subway in North America? Generally, the term subway is used to denote heavy or light metro traveling in a tunnel under the city, […]

Edomonton’s Valley Line Southeast LRT Officially Opens

News from Edmonton. The $1.8 billion and delivered on budget,  Valley Line is a low-floor urban light rail line in Edmonton, Alberta. The 13.1-kilometre (8.1 mi) line runs southeast from downtown at 102 Street stop to Mill Woods Town Centre at Mill Woods stop, and connecting to the Capital and Metro lines at Churchill station […]

Provincial Election In 2024!

SkyTrain has always been used at a photo-op for provincial elections. And the David Eby NDP government is no different. Announcing SkyTrain extensions win votes. Whether spending huge sums of money actually does anything to improve transit is another question. Contrary to the claim in the news article; “The project is estimated to cost $4.01 […]

Surprise, Surprise, Rail For The Valley had it right all Along.

TransLink has now admitted that they are $4.7 billion in the hole and Rail for The Valley has told you so, many times in the past. The $11 billion to extend the Expo and Millennium Lines has now landed, like the financial time bomb it is, onto the Mayor’s Council’s lap. RftV has warned for […]