Is Bad News In The Offing?

It has been too quiet, too long, on the transit front and with a provincial election looming, unpleasant news is being quietly whitewashed. Hear no cost increase; speak no cost increase; see no cost increase of the Broadway subway seems the order of the day. The pre inflation estimates  just will not stand up today. […]

Money, Money, Money = Subways!

The Mayor of Vancouver discussing the bennefits the Broadway Subway. What could go wrong? It takes a lot of money to operate a transit system and subways tend to be a financial black hole and are avoided unless ridership on a transit line demands the multi billion dollar investment of a subway. Just the MALM […]

How The NDP Paved Paradise and Turned It Into a Parking Lot. A Repost From 2020

This is a repost of a November 2020 blog post. The estimated cost for a 21.7 km extension of the Millennium Line (Broadway subway) and the Expo Line (Surrey – Langley extension) is now past $11 billion. The NDP are setting in motion a highway’s only planning for the future, doubling down on BC’s famous […]

Vancouver Will Need To Adopt Lower-Cost LRT In Its Lesser Corridors – Updated

The consensus is the same, Metro Vancouver will need to adopt lower-cost LRT for its future transit needs. This was first posted in 2019 and the costs and the financial numbers have changed somewhat. Currently, the province and metro Vancouver is spending over $11 billion for 21.7 km of new light-metro line, including the Broadway […]

Gold Plated Union Contract For A Gold Plated Transit System

Hmmm – election coming and a fear of of another transit strike, well what can a government do? Give transit workers a “gold plated” union contract. TransLink, despite claims otherwise, is run by the premier’s office. All major TransLink decisions must have the approval by the Premier of British Columbia and this union contract is […]

Eby And The NDP Have Missed The Train

It seems Premier Eby and the NDP have been left behind at the station with this. With two railway projects that would have set BC as a leader in “Green” transportation, Premier Eby and the NDP continue to promote Greenhouse gas projects with new highway and tunnel construction: in other words, good old “rubber and […]

The Staggering cost of Subway Construction – A repost from 2019

A re-post from 2019. It seems several TransLink and City of Vancouver bureaucrats are tying the spin that subways are cheaper in the long run. Of course, they do not give firm numbers on anything! Some transit blogs seem to think that building a subway is easy peasy , costing only a little more than […]

Can A City Fall In Love With A Tram?

    Can Vancouver fall in love with trams?

User Freindliness In Berlin

In Metro Vancouver, again and again, one hears calls for the light metro system to operate 24/7. It cannot, or put in another way, it can but it would increase maintenance costs considerably and TransLink is near broke. The reason is quite simple, automatic or driverless operation. Simply, the light metro system need preventative maintenance […]

Incompatible Transit – A Taxpayer’s Nightmare

I thought this would be an interesting article as we have in Vancouver two incompatible light metro systems, the Canada Line and the Expo and Millennium Lines. The Canada Line uses ROTEM built EMU’s, standard railway fare and can be used on most standard gauge electric railways. The Expo and Millennium lines use the proprietary, […]