Here We Go Again!

Again last week, a local politician repeated the old trope, that Broadway was the busiest transit corridor in not only Canada, but North America. Again Zwei counters the statement with facts. Oh yes, a little birdie told me that TransLink is not running the full schedule of buses in the peak hours due to driver […]

Listen To The Experts

Currently the full program to extend the Expo and Millennium Lines a mere 21.7 km will now cost in excess of $16 billion. The now, estimated cost to complete the Broadway subway to UBC is now past $8 billion. Yet the provincial government had be carried kicking and screaming to find a few million of […]

Bi-Articulated Buses – A Solution or More Headaches?

Bi or double articulated buses have created a demand for such buses to operate in Vancouver. I believe this would be a big mistake because from what I know about bi articulated buses, they are a niche transport system, designed to solve niche transit problems. What I do know is that they are maintenance intensive […]

The Modern Tramway – What TransLink and Metro Mayors Do Not Want You To Know.

Several recent posts in local transit oriented blogs have denounced the modern tram as some sort of throwback in planning. Really? Public Transport is about a user friendly service that provides a quality product for the customer. In over 450 cities around the world (not including strictly Light Rail Operations), the modern tram is the […]

The NDP Are paving Paradise And Turning It Into A Parking Lot – An Updated Repost from 2021

First posted by zweisystem on Thursday, April 8, 2021 Updated. Reinstating passenger services on regional railways, it is what government should be doing, to deal with traffic congestion and pollution, but they are not, as government would rather spend money on prestigious “rapid transit” monuments to cut for photo-ops at election time. The E&N, the […]

And Over To You Mr. Cow – TransLink’s fiscal Realities

First posted by zweisystem on Wednesday, March 2, 2022 One of the RftV’s many friends, Haveacow is a Canadian transportation specialist. He uses the Avatar Haveacow because in the arcane world of Canadian and American public transportation, speaking the truth may find you out of a job. An American transportation Engineer who has helped Zwei […]

Five Reasons Why The NDP Don’t Want The “Return of the Interurban”.

This post was released on Wednesday, February 11, 2009, sixteen years ago under the title, “Five reasons Why Gordon Campbell and his ‘Falcon’ don’t want the “Return of the Interurban”. It is still relevant today, only the names have been changed, to expose the guilty. Under the NDP, nothing has changed and in fact has […]

Memo to the M.O.T. – Time to Reread The Leewood Study – Updated

First posted by on Saturday, May 2, 2020 Now fifteen years old, the Leewood Study, done by Leewood Projects (UK), to assess the viability of reinstating a passenger rail service from downtown Vancouver to Chilliwack via the former BC Electric R.R. route, is worth a revisit. Leewood Study The Leewood Study brought a fresh set […]

Farnsworth Is Selling Porkies – So What Else Is New!

The NDP’s master of the screw-up with the Surrey police fiasco and now the minister responsible for SkyTrain, Mike Farnsworth took to the corporate media selling porkies about the Broadway subway. Farsworth is sticking to the creative accounting by TransLink and the NDP government, that the cost for the 5.7 km subway project will still […]

Mobility Pricing – The Rapture of Megaprojects

This was first posted in 2020 and five years later mobility pricing is back on the agenda. Why? Simple, TransLink is broke. The now $16 billion price tag, for the full program to extend the Expo and Millennium Lines a mere 21.7 km has hit a financial iceberg and is $3 to $4 billion short […]