Another Suicide

Sadly, there has been another suicide on the SkyTrain light metro system, as in TransLink’s lexicon, “medical emergency” means suicide or attempted suicide. In Europe, EEC rules demand station doors must be installed on all automatic (driverless) transit systems, not so in Canada. Not so in Canada, especially in Vancouver, where politicians and transit authorities […]

A SkyTrain Carol

The following is an Email I sent to metro Vancouver mayor’s and Councils. Yes I know it is long and from the response I got, such as lectures by Mayors for not crafting long Emails indicates I hit a nerve. I also copied it politcal leaders and the Mayor’s Council on Transit. Why? I want […]

Perils Of Driverless Operation

Really? At first glance one wonders why? Why the need for a bus bridge and huge inconvenience for light-metro customers? The real problem is this, automatic (driverless) transit systems, for all the expensive kit, cannot deal with problems unlike a system with a driver. The real problem is that the train may hit a person […]

Burning Bus Blues

Before TransLink goes hog wild buying battery buses, there is a slight problem, the tend to catch fire.     Third electric London bus catches fire after two burst into flames earlier this month Firefighters tackled the blaze in a bus garage in Putney An electric bus has caught fire in London, making it the […]

The 1986 LRTA Study: Bus – LRT – Metro Comparison

From 2016 I have not reprinted this for a while, but I see a rise of anti-LRT cods-wallop on local and social media and a reply must be made. 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 […]

A Cost Comparison of Transportation Modes

A Cost Comparison of Transportation Modes The 2009 study by UBC Professor Patrick Condon, the James Taylor chair in Landscape and Livable Environments at the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and the founding chair of the UBC Urban Design program can be read by clicking on the title. Though the […]

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 […]

Escalating to an Accident

Here is a story which, reported in the Breaker News which was ignored by the mainstream media, which panders to TransLink, which has now been revealed by Bob Mackin. But what I want to point out is something different. I lived in London England in 1980 and took the ‘tube’ regularly (even supped a few […]