TransLinked Vancouver's unofficial transit community blog

Remember Roland's idea for better communication between transfer points? Quite a few weeks ago, he called me to inform me that between Main Street-Science World SkyTrain Station and Broadway Station, the female voice announcing stops had started saying something different as it approached the latter. Instead of just announcing the station, she made note of the fact that it was also a transfer point to the Millennium Line SkyTrain at Commercial Drive Station. I think this only happens on newer trains, and possibly just trains going from Waterfront Station to VCC-Clark.

Jeffery at Metroblogging Vancouver has documented a SkyTrain service disruption yesterday (July 28th, 2007) as the result of an apparent medical emergency at 29th Avenue Station. He's got video, which contains audio of the announcement on the SkyTrain PA system and photographs of the aftermath. This was during a very high traffic day for a Saturday for the automated light rail system, as the Celebration of Light was taking several suburban travelers downtown to see the fireworks.

I'll let others tackle the question of whether this counts as journalism at more length (I think it absolutely does), but this and another disruption, apparently near New Westminster and Columbia stations got Karen and I thinking about two things: service disruption alerts to not-yet-SkyTrain-passengers (that is, those who are en route to SkyTrain after having left their point of origin) and how service disruptions could be incorporated into the TransLink Trip Planner. The first part is fairly easy: many transit system offer service disruption information via email of mobile devices. A quick search around the Web reveals that quite a few transportation authorities and services have it where you can only get notifications during a certain time (for instance, if you don't need a notification after 1 AM). The second part would be much more difficult, introducing another degree of variability into the system. Conceivably it would be possible, feasible even, to program in the planner a method to note that track between such and such stations are inoperative, but the system would have to make clear that it's a one-time, temporary suggestion.

It looks like Translink finally changed their recording (at least Paul's friend and I heard it) to indicate that Broadway is a transfer point for the Millenium line as I and others have suggested for a while.

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.

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?

Last night I spent about an hour going through photos on Flickr tagged with 'skytrain'. (At some point I'll move on to another obsession, but until then... ) Not to be mistaken with photos of the elevated light rail in Bangkok with the similar title "Skytrain" (note the miniscule 't'), only ever having taken the Vancouver system, I had gone through the photos wondering which were the best ones. The ones I liked the most fit into two categories: photos of tracks and photos of blurry trains and/or tracks as the trains were in motion, using long exposures as well as a copule of photos of empty SkyTrain cars. Here are the highlights, with people I know personally disclosed.

Blurry or Long Exposure

• SkyTrain streak from hudrednorth
• CeeBee's "SkyTrain Vancouver
• "skytrain front seat (retreating)"
• Bill Stillwell's b&w photo
• Eldon Whalen's "G-Force"
• Terry Forrest's motion blur series
• if SMeaLLuM wins the award for coolest blurry SkyTrain tracks photo, who has a just as cool underground shot and another above ground he also wins the award for most annoying capitalization
• Will Pate's "Skytrain Under the City" wins the "Hey I Know That Guy" award (Roland, easily with the most photos tagged with 'skytrain', comes in a close second
• PoYang wins best use of stationary object (in this case, a human) of a train whizzing by
• Christopher Chen's "Bombardier SkyTrain" makes the train look like a white glob
• Eastbound train at an empty-looking Main Street Station, with a westbound train at the same station
• also at Main Street-Science World is "Expedited Parallels", with Pacific Central in the background

Tracks/Guideways

• "Commercial looking up..."
• "Tracking Over" in New Westminster
• "SkyTrain Tracks" (taken near where I took the elevated guideways shot)
• hundrednorth wins the "Hey I Know That Girl" award with what looks like a tree between the tracks (the photo appears to the right as well)
• Roland's in July 2004, one of the earliest posted to Flickr, of tracks near Gilmore Station
• a photo that makes the tracks seem higher than they are
• Travis Smith's photo of a train over Commercial Drive Station
got entered in the "Hey I Know That Guy" category (he didn't win)
• Jonathan Schwartz posted multiple photos of tracks as did Stephanie (she wins the award in the "Person Other Than Me Or Roland to Have Photos Tagged With 'skyte'" category)
• two photos (1, 2) with sky between the tracks
• two more from Zoomlens (see the "Expedited Parallels" photo linked above), both involving a shopping cart: one with it as a central figure, another with it off to the side

Empty

• MK I (older SkyTrain)
• MK II (newer SkyTrain)

The award for most interesting thing done on SkyTrain (other than kissing, of course) has to be playing board games (from another perspective). Are there any photos, posted on Flickr, that I might have missed?

A producer from the CBC contacted me asking me to post about the series about Vancouver transit culture, looking for stories from people and asking people to come the show on Friday. If you're interested, contact Dave Jones at David_R_Jones AT cbc DOT ca.

The CBC will broadcast from a new electric trolley like the one in the photo you see (that Travis Smith took; see also my blurry photo from 6 months later). Vancouver doesn't have even near the culture and enthusiasm for transit as do Toronto's, who were profiled in in a Toronto Star article about "transit lovers".

The details for the radio series, which has already started, which David Jones emailed to me, follow.

I just saw a 135 bus go by with the bus sign flashing "AMBER ALERT | LISTEN TO RADIO | 135 SFU". Walking briskly home to turn on the radio to CKWX, I hear my first ever British Columbia Amber Alert, and it sounds like a 3-month-old girl was abducted by her father (and possibly non-custodial mother) and they are in the Lower Mainland area.

Time passes and apparently some (all?) TransLink drivers announced it to their riders.

I note, however, that there appears to be no mention of Amber Alerts on the TranLink website, nor does there appear to be any reference to TransLink on the BC Amber Alerts website. Whoever thought of having Amber Alert flash on TransLink buses, though, give that person a promotion (if they didn't already get one), as this strikes me as an innovative use of digital traffic signs, which aren't prevalent in the Greater Vancouver area.

Do other areas have their Amber Alerts on transit vehicles?