Toronto council lacking critical transit information ahead of key decisions

Sound familiar? Vancouver Councillors utterly clueless about subways and transit in general. Surrey Councillors completely naive about light rail. TransLink blunders along, without a clue what they are doing. Bureaucrats kowtowing to political whims, with no thought about the negative effects on the taxpayer. “We’re OK Jack, coz we all have six figure salaries.” Yet […]

TramTrain Gains Favour In The UK

TramTrain development in the UK is gaining momentum as the Yorkshire Post reports that a study indicates a tram-train link between MANCHESTER and its airport in north-central England would be a better choice than passenger rail because of grades along the route. Victoria and Metro Vancouver are candidates for TramTrain, yet the powers that be […]

Subways Are Very Expensive

Despite the cries of shock and disbelief from the peanut gallery, subways are very expensive to build and equally expensive to maintain. * Dusseldorf’s 2.11 mile (3.4 km) cost USD $960.6 million (CAD $1,317.45) billion works out to CAD $387.5 million/km to build, which is the upper end of the cost estimate given by our […]

Professor Condon on CBC Radio

  A BCIT to UBC surface light rail line would reduce traffic congestion, while at the same time allow cars to access merchants along Broadway UBC Planning Professor Patrick Condon was on CBC Radio on Jan. 29, echoing the growing concern about the proposed Broadway SkyTrain subway sucking away federal monies from other local transit […]

Lund Sweden – New TramWay to Cost $23.3 Million/km to Build

Contrary to TransLink’s habitual gold-plating of its LRT projects, modern light rail can be built reasonably cheaply, when compared to other modes of transit. The cost of the 5.5 km. starter tram line in Lund Sweden, with seven trams is estimated to be CAD $128.1 million or about $23.3 million/km to build. Not bad considering […]

Professor Patrick Condon: Dear PM: Don’t Waste Billions on Bad Transit Projects

I see the good professor is taking the same track a Zwei, with my earlier letter to the PM. Expensive vanity projects like the Broadway subway drive up transit costs, yet provide negligible transit improvements. The only benefit a Broadway subway will bring is excessive profits to land speculators and developers, who are now assembling […]

Good News Everyone – Valley Rail One Legal Step Closer

The following is from our friend Mr. Haveacow, from Ottawa, who is a transportation engineer. Zwei has always stressed that for modern LRTAi?? and TramTrain to operate in BC, the legalities of both must be dealt with. For trams and LRT, the rules of the the road must be addressed, such as who has the […]

One Tram Line Moving 250,000 Daily

On the radio last week I heard one of the SFU types go on and on about the Canada Line and how successful the mini-metro was. Really? Again, I have to remind everyone that the Canada Line has station platforms only 40m to 50m long and can operate 41m coupled sets of EMUs. The official […]

Broadways Subway – A Boondoggle In The Making

Subways are very expensive items and only built when there is no other alternative available. SkyTrain ICTS/ALRT/ART, was supposed to mitigate the high cost of subway construction, but it didn’t as it proved to almost as expensive as a heavy-rail metro to build, with the capacity of modern light-rail. The result: No one builds with […]

Broadway Subway Reality Check – Toronto’s 8.6 km Spadina Line Subway Now $3.2 Billion!

For those of you who have been pooh-poohing, Zwei’s cost estimate for the Broadway subway, the following news item from Toronto should send a not too subtle message that subways are very expensive to build and are only built when there is the massive traffic flows that demand long trains and large stations to accommodate […]