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.

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).