TransLinked Vancouver's unofficial transit community blog

[Cross-posted from my personal blog]

The other day, Paul Hillsdon tantalized us combination transit geeks and web geeks with a graphic showing Google Transit and TransLink together, implying that Vancouver's transportation authority was going to have their routes and time schedule included in Google's maps. TransLink sent me an invitation (to an email address that I don't even use), and I posted an event listing on Urban Vancouver for the official launch, which happens tomorrow (Thursday, November 1st) at 10:30 AM at SFU's Harbour Centre Fletcher Challenge Theatre. I'll be there along with my citizen journalism and transit fan buddies documenting the event.

Dane Nicholson describes Translink's positioning on some of the issues surrounding transit and SFU students in an article in this week's The Peak.

Meanwhile, today was the SFU Sustainability Festival, where a representative from Translink's OnBoard program (also a former SFU student active in the sustainability organization here) listened patiently while I ranted about Toronto TransitCamp, Web 2.0, and the difference between public consultation and participation. I'm hoping to keep in touch with him, he seemed like a good guy. It was very interesting to hear that the OnBoard program, which promotes "transportation management," I believe he called it - basically programs to get people out of their cars - gets no funding for its work getting companies to purchase discounted transit passes or working with companies to provide incentives for switching to more sustainable modes of transportation. This is to be contrasted the US, where it is a federally-funded program. Though it was interesting, I personally think it just means that they need to make better use of the low-cost, word of mouth, less glitzy ways of getting a message and an experience out to people. I also pointed out to him that there are a great many number of people who work as contractors, consultants or as employees of small or medium businesses who are not at a company who can get a discounted pass (the company needs a minimum order of 25 to be eligible). Since their program is run on a shoestring, he pointed out that it was unlikely that these sorts of options would be explored. Well, boo.

...but the best part: paper Millenium Skytrains and Nova Buses for all!

[Cross-posted from my personal blog]

Last night, heading home, I decided but didn't commit to hopping on SkyTrain going in the wrong direction. That is, at Waterfront Station, many people go Westbound past the station to the switch, where the train "turns around" and heads Eastbound. People (smartly) do this to get a good seat before trains fill up with commuters, often by Stadium-Chinatown Station. As the SkyTrain pulled in, however, so did a West Coast Express train, taking people living in the Tri-Cities then on to Pitt Meadows, Maple Ridge, and beyond, all the way to Mission. In all my 10+ years living here, I had never taken the train, mostly because my final destination is pretty much halfway between the longest stretch, from Waterfront Station to Port Moody Station. And I call myself a train aficionado.

Last night I felt my shit was fairly together, so I paid my 6 bucks and boarded the train that wouldn't leave for another half an hour. Since the train was empty, I took some photos of the interior, and recorded 20 minutes of video from Waterfront to Port Moody (70 MB, BitTorrent link). The conversation in the background of the video was a group of teens discussing how awesome they were. I also took mundane video of the train leaving the station (BitTorrent link). People who do it day in and day out must think it's terribly boring by now, but the rail activity and mountain and water views, not to mention my first ever in-person viewing of an oil spill's aftermath made me almost forget I had a camera in my had documenting the trip. My impressions of the train ride were that inside it feels slower than it looks when a train goes by (as it does near my office in Gastown), and that the air conditioning gave me the same slight sickness that it does in airplanes.

Almost everybody on the train that got off at Port Moody Station either drove or took one of the many community shuttles, almost all of which were headed East. Myself, I walked back up to St. John St. and took the 160 home, not looking up from my book the whole trip back. I had taken that bus ride a thousand times while working for the library in Port Moody, so nothing new there. The train ride, however, made me feel like a kid again.

Cross-posted from my blog.

Over at Stephen Rees' blog, a comment from Vancouver City Councillor Peter Ladner started up a bit of discussion about Translink's revised fare policies. All I have to contribute to the discussion are my recent experiences with the new Fare Paid Zone, which says, good luck to getting a straight answer on that from anyone, Translink or any Coast Mountain Bus drivers.

1. Initially, when the fare paid zone came into effect, I thought, "Sweet! I don't have to show my pass anymore, because bus drivers aren't supposed to do it anyway." I have a U-pass, also known as a 4 month transit all-access pass, so I figured I could load onto buses much faster instead of fumbling for my purse every time and save the drivers some time.
2. 3 days into the experiment, a driver on the 135 told me I still had to show the pass. This is where the confusion starts. Didn't that CBC article say that bus drivers aren't responsible for checking anymore...? I figured that since Transit Police are the only ones writing fines, then drivers don't need to check. The driver was quite adamant that I still had to show my pass.
3. An incident occurred that confused me even more, so I sent an e-mail to Translink's Customer Relations e-mail.

   I would like to inquire about what Translink's actual policy is on what bus drivers do and do not have the right to do as a result of the new Fare Paid Zone on buses policy.

   Yesterday (July 24), on bus B8043 (135 SFU passing Kootenay Loop at 12:20pm), a driver asked to see everyone's passes to ensure they had paid the appropriate fare for entering zone 2, stopping the bus and walking through to the back of the articulated bus. He drove for a block and a half, then stopped at a spot that had no bus stop, and asked a gentleman to get off the bus, presumably for being unable or refusing to pay the Add Fare.

   According to reports such as the one from the CBC in June (http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2007/06/25/bc-bus-fares.html), drivers no longer have the responsibility to enforce fare payment and fines can only be handed down for Transit Authority Police, not drivers.

   I have received inconsistent information from all the drivers I have spoken to, and the activities of the driver I encountered yesterday only further confounds my ability to understand what the rules are. Clarification would be most appreciated.

4. The response from Customer Relations only baffled me even more:

   Good afternoon,

   Operators should still see valid fare, they may also check fares, what they do have is the ability to phone T-Comm (control) to have our police to board buses which have the authority to write fines and can also remove unpaid customers from the bus. With having Fare Paid Zones we have tried to take responsibility from our drivers and have consquences for our unpaying customers.

   Customer Relations
   Coast Mountain Bus Company
   604 953 3040

   Thus addressing approximately zero of the actual experiences I had. Maybe I should have been more pointed with my questions, like whether this driver was within his rights in kicking the dude off the bus.

5. Meanwhile, I have seen a variety of ways that drivers deal with non-paying passengers. Some of them are let on anyway with a stern warning (especially on the suburban route I take home). Some are told to get off the bus (typically on the 135 heading out of the downtown east side).

From a customer experience perspective, this is absolutely awful. I have a U-pass, I know my ability to use transit will never be in question unless I leave my wallet at home, and I'm grateful every day that the vote passed at SFU. I'm interested in visitors' perspectives on this, in comparison from other transit systems. My only other transit experiences have been in Toronto, New York and Hong Kong - all places with elaborate and extensive turnstile systems to curb farejumping. What other places use the honour system and hire police rather than using technological and physical methods to prevent access to trains? Discounting buses, which are an entirely different venue, and where interactions will now be CCTV'd - I'm interested to see whether there are stats from other places that might indicate whether this is actually effective in fare enforcement.

I'm not big on griping. There's been a lot of excellent virtual ink spilled on this topic and I really don't have much to add to it, except hope that there surely must exist some alternative whereby the honour system doesn't involve armed guards and inconsistency on the enforcement and communication of the rules, as well as some, oh, I don't know, participation into deciding whether these rules help create the communities that we really want? Maybe next time I'm on the bus, I'll sit at the seat closest to the driver and read that huge panel of rules already. (The last time I did that I was in Hong Kong, where I found out that buses must have their windows open on the upper level during a typhoon.)

As you can see from the video below, the new recording that says "change here for Millenium" line that Paul's friend and I heard Friday was either an experiment or hasn't been installed on all cars

Gordon Ross points to two Simon Fraser University students who have created a service to get TransLink next bus information by text message (SMS), and an article in today's Vancouver Sun about Canadian mobile phone companies charging more than their European counterparts for Internet access. (Will Pate, in his del.icio.us bookmarks, points to an unscientific comparison between American and Canadian mobile data rates.) From the looks of it, Igor Faletski and John Boxall have next bus information for the 135, 143, 144 and the 145 from either SFU's main bus loop or residences, and the 145 from Production way, as well as whatever the next bus happens to be at any stop. TransLink has unique numerical IDs for each stop, some of which appear on the bus stop's sign, e.g. a stop in Coquitlam and another at Phibbs Exchange. The students are scraping the HTML generated by the TransLink website, so providing something like an open API or Google's Transit Feed will increase the opportunity for innovation around bus schedules, such as creating a site that lists events near bus stops and SkyTrain stations and the schedules for those stops without anybody having to manually update those schedules.

Igor and John are my new heroes, at least until the end of March, which is when they say on mytxt.ca that the experiment is slated to end. If there is interest, we will work to make it permanent, the site notes. I'm definitely interested, and I know others that would use this service multiple times a week, especially those who will have phones that integrate mapping directly.

Going downtown to Richmond, the 98 B-Line's stop request indicator was going loco, rebooting every 5 minutes or so. Here's what it showed:

1. 1105-6004A 210C
2. 32K RAM
3. SUN 8:06 PM
4. ADDRESS = 03
5. Then whatever the message was supposed to be, in this case, "The next stop is Seymour and Davie."

I took more than one video of this, but the one that came out the best (i.e. the least blurry and shaky) after the jump.

This year, I've been travelling to Toronto often, to visit my girlfriend, and I noticed what Hirosan pointed out with his three photos on Flickr: when going from (or even to) the airport on public transit you don't have anywhere to put your bags. From the airport, the regular bus does not have any space for baggage, nor does the 98 B-line as you can see in an overhead shot. This is in contrast to the much more expensive Airporter (which does not stop between downtown and the airport) and the express bus from downtown Vancouver to the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal, which has shelves where people can put their suitcases and other heavy things they don't want clogging the aisles. I'll be interested to see how the Canada Line, which goes directly to the airport from downtown, handles this problem, as this will likely replace both the Airport-to-Airport Station bus as well as the Richmond-to-Vancouver express bus.

[Cross-posted from Urban Vancouver and my personal weblog.]

While catching up reading what people have written about the World Urban Form—I attended the last day's wrapup with former Vancouver mayor and BC Premier Mike Harcourt which doubled as a send-off for Nanjing's conference in 2008—I skimmed through Charles Montgomery's recaps and commentary at The Tyee. Walking the booths around after the wrap-up, I wondered why so little focus in the booths on public transit, but apparently there was some discussion early in the forum. After noting low ridership for an elevated light system in India, William Batt "also spent a lonely Sunday afternoon on Vancouver's Millennium SkyTrain Line. What shocked him most were the vast parking lots along the way, like that at Brentwood Mall. 'Parking lots! That land is begging to be used.'"

I wasn't in town, otherwise I would have tried to catch Richmond mayor and TransLink chair Malcolm Brodie's presentation on Monday. My scans for World Urban Forum mentions in weblogs didn't catch anybody talking about the presentation (other than The Tyee's coverage), and that's all that seems to have been covered at WUF with regards to affordable and sustainable public transit issues.

Will Pate, a former Vancouverite now living in the San Francisco Bay Area, posted a photo notifying BART passengers that today's rides were on the the house. (Today it is also apparently customary to stick out one's tongue while riding the BART.) This is part of Spare the Air, where:

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District declares a Spare the Air day when it expects air pollution to reach unhealthy concentrations, which typically occur on hot, windless days. Spare the Air advisories are issued the afternoon before a Spare the Air day.Ride BART free Thursday, June 22 AND Friday, June 23

The copycat in me wondered whether the Greater Vancouver Area's transit authority, TransLink, should get into the act with Free SkyTrain Days. They'd of course need to do it for a reason—does Vancouver even have enough smog to warrant advisories?—and possibly increase (if slightly) the amount of trains running during the day meaning an increased cost without any revenue. And then what would us poor monthly pass holders think? (I take the bus far more than SkyTrain, and would probably take a bus to SkyTrain anyway.) We have fairly cheap fares anyway with flexible—compared to, say, Toronto—mobility within the system during 90 minutes allowed for a trip. And Vancouver gets very few if any hot, windless days. But if Vancouver's not going to have a fare-less zone downtown, maybe we can, every now and then, get free system-wide (or just SkyTrain-wide) commutes to and from where we need to go?