Madness

Good old Zwei has been blogging on local transit issues for the past 10 years, I can say that both recently announced “rail” transit projects are both hugely expensive, will not ease congestion and will fail to achieve their objective, except giving the excuse for land development adjacent to the routes. As advised by real […]

Of Fast Ferries and Casino Money Laundering, The Broadway Subway

One can draw a straight line from BC’s current money laundering scandal and the Broadway SkyTrain subway. It is the only conclusion one can make with the proposed Broadway subway, as customer flows on Broadway just do not warrant a subway. Building a subway, will enable developers and land speculators to assemble properties along the […]

Those Who Do Not Read History Are Doomed…………….

………….to make the same expensive mistakes. In Toronto, metro madness is the order of the day, but the overlooked story is the Scarborough R/T, SkyTrain’s first cousin, being torn down because it will be soon “life expired”. The current debate is whether to build a hugely expensive one stop subway to replace the SRT or […]

An Idiot’s Delight At UBC Or Is UBC Offering Courses In Money Laundering?

And here I thought universities were filled with intelligent people; people who crave education and research. At UBC, evidently not! The ignorance and displayed by the UBC types is nothing more than appalling. Lysenkoism and jingoism has now become transit planning doctrine. The current cost of the proposed UBC subway is in excess of $3 […]

Surrey’s Hobson’s Choice – A Choice Of Taking What is Available (LRT) or Nothing At All.

Surrey has a big transit and transportation problem, and now with the announcement that the current Mayor, Mayor Hepner, will not to run this fall, now leaves the LRT project in doubt. The cacophony of the SkyTrain Lobby with their half truths, cherry picked data, and intimidating innuendo are demanding a change from light rail […]

An Essay on TransLink, SkyTrain and Carbon Emissions

A new player in Vancouver politics,Ai??Vancouver Green Citizensai??i?? Group, is emerging and is taking critical aim atAi?? Metro Vancouver and TransLink. I have always said that Translink’s ridership numbers are inflated and the recent news releases; re releases and re re releases are indicative of TransLink’s desperate attempt to coax the public to accept Metro […]

Common Sense & FastFerry’s

Common sense. Common sense: something that TransLink, the City of Vancouver, the Mayor’s Council on Transit, TransLink and its CEO, Premier Horgan and is entourage lack. Common sense: the industry standard for customer flows on a transit line needed to even think of building a subway is 15,000 persons per hour per direction. Common sense: […]

The Myth

The current transit philosophy is that transit be used to density the route it travels, to increase ridership potential. In Metro Vancouver, this has been taken to the extreme, where properties along a transit route have been up-zoned to permit high rise condominiums. The downside, of course, is that affordable accommodations are torn down and […]

Unintended Consequences

The unintended consequences of transit planning are embarrassingly many. What planners expected did not happen and the unexpected, proved challenging. In Germany in the 1960’s and 70’s, there was a big push to build subways. Subways were thought of great public works projects and many cities decided to abandon their surface tramways and build subways […]

How a New Transit System Could Hobble Montreal, As It Hobbled Vancouver

Light-metro, the great philosopher’s stone for urban transportation in the 1970’s has turned out to be nothing more than a wet squib. BC’s provincial politicians have continually forced light-metro onto metro Vancouver, forcing bus riders by the tens of thousands to make transfers to pretend there is high ridership. Light-metro was so expensive that a […]