Canada Line Deja Vu

Subways tend to cause ground subsidence and when two two cylindrical tunnel boring machines (TBMs), six metres wide and weighing around a million kilograms, gnaws away underground, subsidence will occur. Memo to Rob Fleming, Minister of Transportation: It is not vibrations you should be worried about, it is subsidence as the tunnel boring machine chews […]

Hub And Spoke Transit Planning – Is TransLink ‘s Planning Out of Date?

A subway here, an elevated guideway in the countryside there, begs the question: “Has TransLink badly erred with their transit planning.” TransLink is completely hooked on the “hub and spoke” philosophy of transit, where buses bring passenger to light metro hubs, to be transported to another transport hub, and the either arrive or take another […]

Metro Vancouver’s Metro Mania

The following article is eerily familiar with TransLink’s continued building of light metro, especially subway construction. In Australia the state of New south Wales is spending AUD $11 billion (CAD $10.1 billion to build 23 km of rail line that will not generate the ridership that would demand such an expenditure, while Metro Vancouver is […]

Regional Mayors Want A new Funding Model, Instead They Need A New Planning Model

It seems our regional mayors have been smoking some good weed because they want $20 billion for transit and playing the old gambit that transit is really a Social Service, a human right. That sort of thinking has gotten us where we are today: a massively expensive transit system that does not attract new ridership, […]

Switzerland’s Newest Tramway – From the Light Rail Transit Association

Interesting news from Switzerland. I have reprinted this story from the LRTA’s February’s issue Light Rail and Urban Transport to illustrate the cost of a modern European style tramway (LRT). The 13.4 km Limmattalbahn cost €607 million or CAD $884 million or about $65 million a kilometre to build! Compare this with $4.6 t0 $5 […]

Vested Interests

Vested interests: Reason for involvement in an undertaking or situation, especially an expectation of financial or other gain. Vested interests is the real reason for transit planning in metro Vancouver. It is also the reason why the SkyTrain Lobby is so powerful because they are the useful idiots of vested interests. Harsh words indeed. Despite […]

TramTrain – Success Ignored

Rail for the Valley’s goal is the reintroduction of a modern Vancouver to Chilliwack interurban service, using the former and still in use, BC Electric route. This route would provide good rail communication for Vancouver, Cloverdale, Langley, Abbotsford, the burgeoning communities of Vedder/Sardis and finally Chilliwack, with regularly scheduled regional rail service. 15 years ago […]

BROADWAY IS NOT THE BUSIEST TRANSIT ROUTE IN CANADA

Here we go again! It seems trouble is brewing on Broadway and for the sixth time since Jan.1 a media outlet has repeated the TransLink and City of Vancouver’s nonsense that Broadway is the busiest transit route in North America. Well it isn’t and never was and my guess is that TransLink, the provincial NDP […]

Doing The Same Thing Over Again Just Will Not Work

After receiving a number of abusive amount of Emails about the post (all deleted), has indicated to me that most people do not have a firm grounding in modern public transport philosophy, nor a good knowledge of provincial finances. Most forget, that in the end, both LRT and light metro are trains and there is […]

Lack of A Regional Rail Strategy Is An Abandonment of Political Fiduciary Duty

The message was tragically brought home to roost Christmas Eve with the fatal bus crash on highway 97C, the Okanagon Connector, where a intercity bus crash claimed four lives, that the province desperately needs a regional transportation strategy. The provincial government, despite promises to the contrary, have not acted and in fact, seem to be […]