Editor:
I see Translink's travelling dog and pony show has reached Delta, promising visions of rapid transit to cure our transportation needs. Well a few weeks back, they promised the same for the North Shore.
TransLink's big problem is that their six-figure salaried bureaucracy (numbering almost 1,000) doesn't really know what they are talking about, as well, slept through their math classes. Those billions of dollars for rapid transit add up, something well-heeled civil servants don't like talking about, like the much needed $3 billion rehab for the Expo and Millennium Lines.
The base cost to extend SkyTrain (not including cars), is now over $200 million/km; triple it for subway construction!
TransLink can't even define rapid transit and misinforms everyone what rapid transit is. Modern light rail is not rapid transit, but could be and rapid bus is nowhere close to be rapid transit and is merely a limited stop express bus.
Light rail is a modern tram, which operates not on streets like a streetcar, but on a reserved or dedicated rights-of-way, thus obtaining operational characteristics of rapid transit, but at far cheaper cost. LRT made SkyTrain rapid transit obsolete by the mid 1980's, but no one told our politicians that as they squander billions of dollars on what are no more than prestige projects, for photo-ops at election time.
So the TransLink planning pantomime continues, selling snake oil to gullible politicians and the public, yet I have not heard one politician calling Translink out on their expensive travelling road show and calling it for what it is, pixie dust and sparkle pony planning.
Malcolm Johnston
