TransLinked Vancouver's unofficial transit community blog

The Simon Fraser Student Society's fall newsletter contains two transit-related items: Along with TransLink and SFU, your Student Society is working hard to bring increased bus service to campus. We need to hear your stories so that we can know what aspects of the transit system are working well, and which ones need improvement. Email transit@sfss.ca and tell us your transit story.

I'll be sure to give all the gory details about the circus that is getting to SFU from my house. Another item is about a pending vote on an increase to the price of the U-pass:

The U-Pass continues to be an incredible success at SFU. Thousands of students are leaving their cars at home and taking afford- able public transit to SFU and around the Lower Mainland. Your Student Society has negotiated a contract with Translink which will secure the lowest cost transit in the region into the next decade. We’ve also negotiated increased bus service that will be rolled out in stages over the coming years. On November 5 and 6, all SFU students will be able to vote on a proposed $2 per month fare increase to the U-Pass. If successful, the U-Pass will be secured for all SFU students until 2011 when another round of negotiations will take place. Be sure to come out and vote at the Surrey, Vancouver and Burnaby campuses on November 5 and 6. For a list of polling places, check www.sfss.ca/upass later in October. Want to know more? Email transit@sfss.ca.

Undoubtedly these two items are related. SFU's not going to stop growing; nor, I suspect, will the number of students using the U-pass. My question is, will the SFSS be able to hold Translink and whoever's giving them their money accountable for making sure the improvements actually happen and stick around, so that we won't get another RAV line sideswiping our services?

Transit and university students fascinates me, as a university student who's gotten very involved in transit issues. When you have that many smart (but not necessarily politically engaged) people putting up with a system that is clearly not working, can we leverage that collective frustration into something constructive? I look forward to seeing what comes out of the SFSS on this issue.

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.

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.

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?