And You Think SkyTrain is Cheaper Than Light Rail -Think Again!

Who says LRT is too expensive? The estimated cost to rehab both the Expo and Millennium Lines is now topping $4 billion (now, not including rail, OHE, stations and cars) and with already $1.47 billion spent on resignalling the proprietary automatic railway, the cost now seems to be well over $5 billion for 16 km […]

TramTrain – Regional Railways – Why Not Here?

As all levels of government pretend they are fighting Global Warming and Climate change, via the much hated Carbon Tax, real solutions such as TramTrain and regional railways are ignored. Germany has been a forefront in the fight against Global Warming and Climate change and part of that fight is reopening abandoned rail routes and […]

Here We Go Again!

BROADWAY IS NOT THE BUSIEST TRANSIT ROUTE IN CANADA It seems trouble is brewing on Broadway, buildings are sagging and media keeps repeating 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 […]

Man of Straw Arguments

  “Man of Straw” argument: The straw man fallacy is an informal fallacy, which means that the flaw lies with the arguer’s method of arguing rather than the flaws of the argument itself. The straw man fallacy avoids the opponent’s actual argument and instead argues against an inaccurate caricature of it. When dealing with arguments […]

A QUESTION OF CAPACITY

Catching a local radio last week, the old saw about capacity and that SkyTrain had a higher capacity than Light Rail, again was used as a example why light rail was not as good as SkyTrain. Sadly, there was no fact check, just blind acceptance of fake news. Really, after the $1.49 billion resignalling contract, […]

These Guys Could Not Even Operate A Christmas Trainset

When it comes to Vancouver politicians, I just shake my head. According to to the Vancouver City website: Accessibility The entire site is wheelchair accessible. The train has an accessibility carriage and passengers in wheelchairs should be accompanied by an attendant to facilitate the boarding process. We offer free tickets for: Wheelchair-accessible seating Attendants for […]

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

  This post was released on Wednesday, February 11, 2009,under the title, “Five reasons Why Gordo and his ‘Falcon’ don’t want the “Return of the Interurban”. It is still relevant today, only the names have been changed. Under the NDP, nothing has changed. So, with a little tweaking here and updating there, we have the […]

Lysenkoism – TransLink’s Doctrine

The SkyTrain Lobby Is Watching You! Lysenkoism: describes the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social or political objectives. Transit is about moving people, not building high rise condos and towers! Really, not in Vancouver, where the […]

TransLink for Dummies

……….. or cutting through the BS about Light Rail, SkyTrain and BRT. The following is a guide plus definitions. ALM: Automatic Light metro, the fourth marketing name given for the SkyTrain family of light-metros, when Lavalin briefly owned SkyTrain before going bankrupt. ALRT (1): Advanced Light Rail Transit, the second marketing name after ICTS for […]

TramTrain – Success Ignored

A Karlsruhe tram at night The birth of what we call TramTrain or a streetcar that can operate on the mainline railways, came about after much research and public consultation, to provide the the city and region of a ‘user-friendly’ public transit system. In the 1980’s cities with trams or streetcars were seeing a steady […]