The Ignorance Of Light Rail Knows No Bounds – Distinctly In Vancouver

Posted by zweisystem on Monday, December 4, 2017 · 1 Comment

It is sad that anti-tram journalist, Francis Bula, writes such tawdry articles about transit and by doing so, demonstrates that she does little or no research and repeats the anti-tram myth.

Citing Jarret Walker as a renowned transit expert is stretching it a bit, as he is a bloggist, catering to the anti-tram crowd. He is merely a planner and lacks that core knowledge which a European degree in Urban Transport would bring and offers yesterday’s solutions to try to solve today’s problems.

Zwei has never liked the term “streetcar” as it it brings visions of clanky and rattlely vehicles trundling down city streets, while trams give a vision of modern low-floor articulated vehicles, operating mostly on dedicated rights-of-ways.

It is the modern tram that has rejuvenated transit planning in the past 30 years and bringing livability to the 21st century city.

As early as 1984, it was recognized that the simple and flexible tram was a good solution for congestion and pollution in major cities. Mature city planners opted for transit systems that had a good record of providing efficient servcie and rejected the expensive and gimmicky “gadgetbahnenn” style light-metros or monorails.

Vancouver’s SkyTrain is a good example. An over hyped proprietary mini-metro with limited capacity, extremely expensive to build, operate and maintain,Ai?? has bamboozled local politicians, planners,Ai?? and most journalistsAi??for almost 40 years and continues today!

The mythical “rapid transit’ again raises its ugly head from the swamps of ignorance, as the great solution for transit, but there is no definition of “rapid transit’ other than it is not light rail and that is good.

Really?

Mr. Bracewell, at the city engineering department, said

Ai?? “We see the need for rapid transit to UBC. A streetcar is not rapid transit.”

Sorry Mr. Bracewell, the modern streetcar or tram, operated as light rail has a greater capacity than our so called rapid transit and is far more user friendly than our Rapid Transit, which I guess is SkyTrain and costs a fraction to build. What don’t you get?

That our universities are turning out engineers and planners so ignorant about modern public transport is appalling, but the very same engineers and planners remain so ignorant about LRT is equally appalling.