Man of Straw Arguments

  “Man of Straw” argument: The straw man fallacy is an informal fallacy, which means that the flaw lies with the arguer’s method of arguing rather than the flaws of the argument itself. The straw man fallacy avoids the opponent’s actual argument and instead argues against an inaccurate caricature of it. When dealing with arguments […]

A QUESTION OF CAPACITY

Catching a local radio last week, the old saw about capacity and that SkyTrain had a higher capacity than Light Rail, again was used as a example why light rail was not as good as SkyTrain. Sadly, there was no fact check, just blind acceptance of fake news. Really, after the $1.49 billion resignalling contract, […]

The “MAGA Effect”

SkyTrain’s many  ills are all but ignored by our local media, yet almost every or breakdown that happened on Ottawa’s Confederation Line was reported nationally. I call it the “MAGA Effect”, where the media ignores problems with our SkyTrain and grossly overstates issues with other transit systems, such as Ottawa’s hybrid light metro/rail system. Our […]

Five Reasons Why The NDP Don’t Want The “Return of the Interurban”.

  This post was released on Wednesday, February 11, 2009,under the title, “Five reasons Why Gordo and his ‘Falcon’ don’t want the “Return of the Interurban”. It is still relevant today, only the names have been changed. Under the NDP, nothing has changed. So, with a little tweaking here and updating there, we have the […]

Much Ado About Nothing

Lots of bad news around the NDP this week so including Selina Robinson’s resignation letter, which claimed antisemitism among her colleagues and indifference, so why not a SkyTrain announcement, as everyone loves SkyTrain. The key point in this story is “the province remains in final contract negotiations…..”, so it is obvious the claimed cost from […]

Lysenkoism – TransLink’s Doctrine

The SkyTrain Lobby Is Watching You! Lysenkoism: describes the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social or political objectives. Transit is about moving people, not building high rise condos and towers! Really, not in Vancouver, where the […]

TransLink for Dummies

……….. or cutting through the BS about Light Rail, SkyTrain and BRT. The following is a guide plus definitions. ALM: Automatic Light metro, the fourth marketing name given for the SkyTrain family of light-metros, when Lavalin briefly owned SkyTrain before going bankrupt. ALRT (1): Advanced Light Rail Transit, the second marketing name after ICTS for […]

TramTrain – Success Ignored

A Karlsruhe tram at night The birth of what we call TramTrain or a streetcar that can operate on the mainline railways, came about after much research and public consultation, to provide the the city and region of a ‘user-friendly’ public transit system. In the 1980’s cities with trams or streetcars were seeing a steady […]

Eby’s Ignorance Of Regional Transport, Makes Taxpayer’s Nervous

There is only one taxpayer Premier Eby! The preceding cliche is all but forgotten by current premier Eby and the provincial NDP as they spend billions of tax dollars on dubious transportation projects. “Shoveling money off the back of a truck”, is the NDP’s answer to transportation woes, but the feds now seem to be […]

TransLink’s BRT – What Is The Real Story?

BRT – A View From a Canadian Transit Expert – A Repost from 2015 Today’s post is a re post from 2015  and 2023, is an an interesting piece offered by Mr. Haveacow, a transit specialist from Ottawa who has good knowledge of Canadian public transit. He wishes to be anonymous because of Canada’s arcane […]