OK children, a little history lesson, ALRT’s (SkyTrain) ancestor, The Krauss Maffei Transurban MAGLEV. For those who believe that, what we call SkyTrain, is a great Canadian invention, will be sad to hear it is not, not even close; it is a mix and match transit system, using largely discarded 1960′s and 70′s German technology. Krauss-Maffei’s Transurban was a 12-passenger automated guideway transit (AGT) mass transit system based on a MAGLEV guideway. Development started in 1970 as one of the many AGT and PRT projects of the age. Its selection as the basis of the GO-Urban system in Toronto in ..read more

When TransLink’s mouthpiece, the Hive prints negative stories about SkyTrain tells me that things are very bad. When your best friends are giving you the ‘raspberry’, maybe it’s time to do things differently. “Terrible lately”: Vancouver transit riders react to disruption frequency Amir Ali|Apr 12 2024 Daily Hive Some Vancouver transit riders are alleging an increase in disruptions to TransLink service. Over the past couple of months, we’ve seen a few periods of frequent incidents, whether police or medical, impacting thousands and bringing service to a halt. In February, Daily Hive Urbanized ..read more

Interesting news from the other side of the country. Cape Breton Island Population: 93,700 So, a population of 93,700 warrants a study to see if light rail is feasible? How about Vancouver Island and the E&N? How about restoring a passenger service on the former BC electric interurban route to Chilliwack? The distance between Port Hawksbury to Sydney, on Cape Breton, is about the same length (130 km) as the Vancouver to Chilliwack Rail for the Valley route, to reinstate a hourly diesel TramTrain service would cost around $1.5 billion to $1.75 billion, somewhat more than the Fraser Vall ..read more

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 of new line! Compare to the under $200 million that may be spent rehabbing the Minneapolis Blue Line LRT. What is disturbing is the work needed on the Bombardier built trams, where, “work to address rust from 27 of Metro Transit’s first generation light rail vehicles, made by Bombardi ..read more

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 improving their public transit infrastructure to be extremely user friendly. In Canada we have the Carbon Tax that goes into general revenue and funds mostly new highway and bridge construction, which politicians believe will win their reelection. This is classic ..read more

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 and the CoV are softening up the taxpayer for some bad fiscal news about the now $2.7 billion, 5.7 km Broadway Subway. The clincher is this; according to Thales News Release announcing thew $1.49 billion re-signalling contract; The government of Canada, the government of ..read more

Our friend Mr. Haveacow, predicted this some years ago and there were many who pooh-poohed this. I even had a local politician warning me not to spread misinformation, with a hint of legal proceedings. Why so touchy on the subject? It looks like TransLink and the Mayor’s Council on Transit are trying to hide the fact that part of the Expo line extension to Langley, includes increasing capacity of the Expo Line from 15,000 pphpd to 17,5000 pphpd. Part of this capacity upgrade includes new signalling for the Expo Line ($1.49 billion contract with Thales) and as Mr. Cow has mentioned many tim ..read more

  “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 against Rail for the Valley’s regional railway project, most arguments tend to be man of straw fallacy’s in an attempt to demonize the concept of a regional railway. The following are the six common “man-of-straw” arguments made against the Valley Rail projec ..read more

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, the maximum capacity of the Millennium Line will be a mere 7,500 pphpd. I just shake my head, as Toronto was operating coupled sets of PCC cars on select routes providing a peak hour capacity in excess of 12,000 pphpd! The following was first published in 2009 and it remains as pertin ..read more

SkyTrain’s many  ills are all but ignored by our local media, yet almost every or breakdown that happened on Ottawa’s Confederation Line was reported nationally. I call it the “MAGA Effect”, where the media ignores problems with our SkyTrain and grossly overstates issues with other transit systems, such as Ottawa’s hybrid light metro/rail system. Our local media have also ignored REM and its less than stellar performance in Montreal. Montreal’s light metro system is having many issues with its operation, yet the Ottawa system is still demonized, especially with our local media. Thi ..read more