Baffle-gab from the SkyTrain Lobby.

One just has to shake one’s head at this. The SkyTrain LobbyAi??is workingAi??hard toAi??haveAi??more of the proprietary mini-metroAi??built in Surrey, now with a glitzy news release claiming that the proposed SkyTrain will only cost a little more to build to Langley than LRT, so let’s build with SkyTrain. We have heard this before. The following […]

Urgent need for light rail transit in Surrey

The following editorial by Frank Buchholz continues the myth that at-grade light rail is slow and causes accidents at intersections. I am not surprised as the SkyTrain Lobby’s mouthpiece, the SkyTrain for Surrey blog is given prominence in the piece. From what I have read, SkyTrain for Surrey rehashes the same old myths about LRT, […]

Transit Planning in the Vancouver Region – The Years The Locusts Have Eaten

In the beginning, Vancouver was serviced by a sizable streetcar network and several interurban lines, but by 1960 the streetcars were long gone and the last interurban route saw its final service. There was a last ditch attempt to operate a New Westminster to Vancouver interurban service on the Central Park Line using coupled pairs […]

384510 COM Customer Service Report – Report of low ridership in bus service across the Golden Ears Bridge

Zwei receives many copies letters about transit concerns in Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley, but my focus is on the ‘Community‘ Bus Servcies or “C” routes. It has bee Zwei’s contention that the ‘Community‘ buses or ‘C‘ bus services were a sop for the lower Fraser Valley politicians so they would approve the hugely […]

Light Rail for Surrey The WKW Line ai??i?? A Rerun from May 2011

  It has been over one year since this post was printed and in that year nothing of substance has been done. In the lower mainland, transit is designed to increase density, thus increasing property values and profits for friends of the government at the expense of the taxpayer. The same is true forLRT/streetcar for […]

The Emperor has no Clothes and no Transit – First published in March 2011

Zwei has decided to reprint this post from March of last year. In the ensuing year nothing has changed; the same oldAi??tired cast of characters trundling out the same old tired transit plans,Ai??desperately tryingAi??to convinceAi??the ever increasingly skeptical taxpayerAi??to ante up more and more tax money to fund transit improvements that everyone knows will fail […]

“Lightness” of light rail

TransLink, BC Transit, SNC Lavalin, UBC, SFU, and a host of North American Engineering firms, please take note! ThisAi??”lightness” of light rail – a combination of flexibility, low impact,Ai??modest cost, and environmental softness – is ephemeral. It mustAi??be carefullyAi??guarded. Ignorance orAi??ineptitude during the planning, design, specification writing, engineering, orAi??construction phases of a project can lose […]

TransLink eliminates planning VP – The Sacrificial Lamb

It seems that transit planning is/was not aAi??TransLink forte, in fact the move to remove the VP of Planning certainly indicates that the Premier’s office is in full control of Metro Vancouver transportation planning and no encumbrances from the TransLink bureaucracy is needed.Ai??TransLink’s VP of planning has been determined to be the sacrificial lamb with […]

Bad run for TransLink as disasters pile up

More unhappy news for TransLink………. Bad run for TransLink as disasters pile up By Michael Smyth, The ProvinceApril 13, 2012 http://www.theprovince.com/story_print.html?id=6452292&sponsor= I doubt the folks at TransLink are worried about the ominous date on the calendar today. Metro Vancouver’s transit authority has had such a lousy run of late that Friday the 13th could hardly […]

AdiA?s Transit Improvements?

A hint of the shape of things to come. TransLink is imploding under its weight of inefficiencies and there is more to come; $30 million must be carved from the TransLink budget to cover the loss of the denied fare increases. Zwei has a few hints where these cuts could come from. Get rid of […]