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.

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.

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?

On Wednesday, I attended an open house at the Confederation Centre for Retired People, located on Albert St. in Burnaby. I saw the announcement the night of the open house on the outside of the cheerful corner store near my appartment complex. I talked with Ken from Translink/Coast Mountain Bus Company, and here are the details I remember:

• the company has proposed to remove the #137 Capitol Hill bus from service and replace it with a community shuttle. That makes a lot of sense, since the bus is one of the shortest routes in the entire system, travelling from behind the Safeway on Willingdon and Hastings to Grosvenor and Cambridge. Each one-way trip takes about 12 minutes, and turns into the 130 going to Metrotown down Willingdon when heading back (the "To Hasting" #130 turns into the 137 then the former goes north).
• there are plans to change the #135 which runs East/West along Hastings from SFU to Burrard Station into a B-line, tentatively numbered the #95. They say they haven't figured out which intersections they will stop at. To me the no-brainer is to stop at the same intersections as the #160, but the challenge is to figure out how to deliver the local service that the #135 currently delivers.
• rumours about a West Coast Express train station in North Burnaby are premature: they tested out some locations—including even one near the Chevron refinery but decided that it would only save commuters going from North Burnaby about 2 minutes from a #135 trip (or its proposed B-line alternative).

We talked about other things, like the Canada Line, which has the same gauge as the current SkyTrain but will be using different train technology. Ken also talked about how the design for the Mark II trains for the current Millenium Line had to be modified for the tunnels downtown. I picked up a couple of fold-it-yourself cutouts that make a community shuttle and a New Flyer bus (not articulated, unfortunately). The guy I talked to was definitely in "talking shop" mode, as he was very knowledgeable about transit systems worldwide, often using transit lingo such as OTC and "artic" where I would use "rail yard" (I had asked him where the Canada Line yards would be, but forgot to make a note of it) and not the abbreviation for "articulated" (i.e. double-length buses that often seen on the #135 and B-Line routes).

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.

Last week, I attended the open house for three of the proposed Canada Line stations, Waterfront, Robson and Yaletown.  I spend most time looking at the proposals for Waterfront station—which they are building underneath the Sinclair Centre—and talking to the City and RAVCO/CLCO representatives there.  I took some blurry photos of the line's cross section diagrams, and here are my hastily-scribbled notes of one of the conversations:

• there will be bike hangers on each train, though one of the pamphlets said the line will accomodate only 2 bikes per 2-car train.
• individual trains will have 2 cars on day one, but all stations will be built to allow for the possibility of 3 cars after they evaluate demand
• it's not feasible to connect directly to the existing Waterfront station, primarily because the radius for turning in would not be wide enough. It would be about a 100 meter walk either underground to CP Waterfront Station as part of the Granville Street Redesign.
  

I must have been slipping in my old age, because the open house was the first time I heard of plans for a downtown streetcar, though the website could use an update. As cool as it sounds, the areas served by the streetcar, at least in Phase I, seem to either be served well by existing options (trolley and/or SkyTrain) and if not, increasing or improving bus or trolley service might be a cheaper and better option.