New Service from TransLink

As you are probably aware I am not the greatest fan of TransLink I do sometimes find their attempts to improve the service at least semi-useful.

The latest in that back-handed complimented area is their new service to provide the time of the next bus at the stop you are standing at via your cellphone and the stop number printed on the bus stop sign. Simple to use, call their transit information number 604-953-3333, press 1 and follow the directions entering the stop number and get an 'estimated' time. The bus is still subject to being swallowed by a pothole; abducted by aliens; beamed up by Scottie, passing you by too full to stop; whatever. It won't help you with the fact that the service is failing but it will give you an idea if there is any point in standing around waiting.

Or in the case last night, warning you that the bus is filled with a group of "thirty something" drunk, white girls who had clearly had their full dose of magic dust and their middle-aged, paunchy and aggressive male companions. That was a bit of circus that was clearly going to end in tears. Particularly, when they trooped off to stagger across Davie (in the middle of traffic) to make a try at getting into Celebrities. I can only imaginge the sinking feeling that must have possessed the bouncer at his velvet rope. Definitely an "Oh Fuck" moment. Not my problem but I must say I wonder what happened.

In any case, being able to figure out if the bus is due sooner then you can walk home may come in useful during the Jazz Festival (by the way here's my reviews and thoughts about the Jazz Festival). Late night bus trips home are not that common for me these days, er nights.

Is it just me or is the Transit system getting shabbier while we get asked to pay more to ride it?

I'm trying to figure out if Translink is getting worse at doing upkeep on the stations, trains and buses that make up our transit service. I see more scrapes and scratches in the elevators, graffiti on walls and dirty floors and litter everywhere in the past couple of months.

Now I know that we as users and as mostly adults are at least partly responsible for the upkeep of the system. We need to pick up our own papers and litter and drop it in the recycle bins and garbage cans as required but washing the floors, cleaning the walls and repairing vandalism is beyond our capabilities. So that gets left up to Coast Mountain, the operator and Translink the owner to clean and repair.

But the floor on the Granville station elevator has been dirty and in need of a mop for 2 weeks now. The elevator at Broadway station has been vandalized for at least a month and I still see windows too dirty to see out of on one bus out of three.

Translink sends me email requests to comment on the state of the transit services, here is an example:

Here is a list of major improvements that TransLink has underway or planned for Greater Vancouver for next year, 2008:

• The Canada Line between Vancouver, Richmond and the airport.
  
• The Evergreen light rail line from Coquitlam Centre and Port Moody to Lougheed Town Centre SkyTrain station.
  
• The Golden Ears Bridge between Pitt Meadows, Maple Ridge and Langley.
  
• Road and bridge improvements in the Lower Mainland in 2008 including:
  • Widening of the Fraser Highway in Surrey,
  • Construction of the Coast Meridian Overpass in Port Coquitlam,
  • Widening of Main Street in North Vancouver,
  • Construction of the Murray/Clark Connector which is a new overpass in Coquitlam,
  • The North Fraser Perimeter Road project, which includes existing road improvements and a new overpass at United Boulevard between Coquitlam and New Westminster to replace the Bailey Bridge,
  • Construction and seismic upgrading of the Knight Street Bridge.

• The largest bus fleet expansion in 31 years with 94 new buses to expand service and 160 buses to replace older buses that are being retired. 25 of the new buses will go to Surrey and Langley.
• 34 new Mark II SkyTrain cars ordered and arriving in 2009.
• Broadway, Main and Metrotown SkyTrain Stations will have improvements to both their capacity and passenger amenities starting in 2008.
• A 10 percent increase in HandyDART service.
• A third SeaBus built in 2008, in service in 2009.
• $6 million in regional cycling routes and facilities such as the Central Valley Greenway and BC Parkway under the Expo SkyTrain line.
• Expanded vanpool, carpool, and Corporate Car ride-sharing programs.

Having read the list of transportation projects proposed for 2008, how important would you say these transportation projects are to you personally?

Would you say they are very important, somewhat important, not very important or not at all important?

Now I think all of the above are important but not necessarily all good ideas (I will leave deciding which are good and which are bad and which are merely indifferent as an exercise for the reader) . And I don't see any comments about a commitment to keep the system clean, safe or inviting.

A further question deals with funding of the system:

Users of the transportation network pay about 70 percent of the 2008 improvements through transit fares, motor fuel taxes and a parking sales tax. General taxation pays for the other 30 percent of the cost.

Consideration is being given to increasing transit fares by 25 cents in January 2008. There has been no transit fare increase for 3 years, and unlike the Ferries and the Airport, TransLink has asked for no increase to offset increasing fuel costs.

Here is how the 70 percent user fees and 30 percent general taxation to pay for transportation improvements would break out for 2008:

• Parking sales tax of 7 percent on pay parking in the region.
• The average transit fare would go up 7.8%, as follows: Cash transit fare increased to $2.50 for one zone, $3.75 for two zones, and $5.00 for three zones
  • A one zone monthly pass would be $73 or $1.83 per trip if you use it to commute back and forth to work 20 days a month,
  • A two-zone monthly pass would be $99 or $2.48 per trip if you use it to commute back and forth to work 20 days a month,
  • A three-zone pass would be $136 per month or $3.40 per trip if you use it to commute back and forth to work 20 days a month.
• 2008 property tax would increase about two percent to 37 dollars per one hundred thousand dollars of property value.
  
• $1.90 per monthly Hydro bill goes to transportation improvements.
  
• 12 cents of every litre of gas purchased in the GVRD goes to regional transit, cycling routes, HandyDART, car/vanpools and to major roads and bridges.

In addition, since 2005, the federal government has been returning a portion of its tax at the gas pumps each year. In 2008 the amount returned to the region for the purpose of public transit vehicles like SkyTrain cars and buses will be $61 million.

Having read the list of funding sources, do you strongly support, somewhat support, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose making the transportation improvements in the 2008 Transportation Plan using these funding sources?

Now my choices are to support or not support the entire plan. But I don't support the entire plan; I think that since transit and its users are a major carbon offset for everyone they should not be asked to fund the system. Since everyone benefits then everyone pays (increase the percentage of general revenue taxes paid into the system to 50%); do not increase user costs/fees for transit users but do increase user fees for private car users to cover the a greater percentage of the cost of transit.

So what do you think?

On the buses in the rain

Well thank god that's over with. This past week has seen me waiting for more vanished buses and broken skytrains then you could shake a fist at (and I have).

There is something quite unsettling to take a look a system that costs millions of dollars, is depended upon by thousands of people and is mostly dirty, broken and ignored by those we have entrusted it to.

I ride the buses alot and as such I mostly am used to them; but some days I actually wake up and look around me. Thursday was such a day.

Started out very good. I had made sure the night before that I was setup with everything I would need to get a good start to the day. Got up early and stayed focused as I knew that I had a complex day of meetings and would need to effectively use transit all day to do it. Got to the first bus early and caught one a full 8 minutes before my regular schedule.

My Thursday schedule requires me to get out to UBC for an 11:05 am meeting. Typically, it's one bus from Drake and Howe straight through to University Blvd and Westbrook Mall in about 30 minutes (this is a regular trip and usually I catch the 4 or the 17 at 10:18 am and get there with enough time to have a coffee before the meeting). Today though I'm early and I will have plenty of time to get to my meeting, no rushing today, NOT. The number of cars either parked in bus stop or double parked waiting for some one else to leave a parking spot or perhaps just paralysed with fear and horror at the rain (after all it is Vancouver and we are hardly used to rain) is beyond belief. Broadway past Arbutus has become impassable nearly to Alma. Road repair/sewer repair or installation and more condominium construction makes most of Broadway two lane side street.

We are going to get there in time but just barely, coffee is not quite as restful and focusing as it might be. And sitting on the bus starting to wonder if I will be in time for my meeting makes me look up and around. Most of my companions are young UBC students which means the bus smells good, a bit of wet wool but mostly of clean and healthy people, these folks have places to live, decent food to eat, a place to shower and perhaps most of all, purpose in their lives. Not much of a sense of desperation or fear; its a nice smell, human beings at their best, and since I first became aware of it one of the parts I like best of my trips in to UBC in the mornings. But the rest of the surround is not so pleasant; the windows and floors are dirty not just from today's rain and mud but several days worth. The fabric on the seats is worn and in place torn and where patched, patched with duct tape ragged along the edges. The plastic around the lights show dirt and a collection of unknown objects (dead moths? gum? discarded transfers?) casts amorphous shadows. The bus is dirty, shabby and run down a stark contrast to the mostly happy, industrious looking youth riding in it. They deserve better, I deserve better.

12:00 pm. Finished my meeting and it is on to the next. This the trip that I think will be difficult. I am going to try to follow the trip plan given to me by Translink's recalcitrant database (you know the one; the one that tells you that there is no bus service that will take you from Davie and Denman to Broadway and Granville at 7:00 pm on Sunday night or that you will need to make 3 transfers to get from Broadway and Granville to 4th and MacDonald) and go from the UBC General Services Loop to 8th Avenue and McBride Blvd in New Westminster by 1:30 pm.

It starts okay. The driver doesn't sit and watch us huddle under the inadequate rain shelter (by the way, could someone please tell me why (other than the City's and Translink's intense fear that a homeless person might try to stay dry ) we can't have bus shelters that actually provide shelter, I mean we all know that we will be standing there for a long time, could we at least be out of the wind and cold) but pulls up as soon as he arrives at the loop and lets us board even though we won't be leaving for another 10 minutes. This bus is a little better than the trolley that I came in on but the windows are still filthy and I don't think I would want to touch the floor with my bare skin.

12:15 pm. We leave on time this is looking good! Speeding through the campus, out on to Chancellor, down 4th. The time is work out perfectly. Whoops! Stop for someone in a wheelchair, nothing major, both the driver and the guy in the chair know what they are doing, so not too long a stop, I think. But you know the schedulers of bus routes and trip plans rarely put any wiggle room in there timing and certainly not enough to pick up someone in a wheelchair that require a little attention and assistance. Almost at VCC station and a final traffic snarl of timid drivers trying to make left hand turns slows us down for an extra light. Get up to the platform just in time to watch two trains flash their lights off and on for a couple minutes.

Finally some cybernetic resolution is attained and one of them rolls forward and let's us on, and then sits there burning more minutes and more minutes. I am now officially pretty sure that the schedule is blown and I am not going to make my connection. But I am not without hope, I think I will miss the connection with the 154 at Braid Station but I'm sure that I can connect with it on its way back from the 22nd Street Station. All is not lost and it is not certain that I will miss it at Braid.

1:15 pm. I am now rolling up to Braid Station and I have missed that connection, but I am confident that can catch the 154 on its trip back (my meeting is almost perfectly between the two stations and the 154 stops directly outside of it) so I will be late but only a few minutes. I call my client and inform them that I will be late due to transit problems but only a few minutes. I arrive at 22nd Street Station and I'm 5 minutes early!! Success.

1:35 pm. The 154 is now 7 minutes late and its sister route the 155 has pulled up. The 155 driver has no idea where the 154 has vanished to (I think that he is lying, but I also suspect that if he were to tell me what he knows about what happens to the disappeared buses, he would never see his family again!!).

1:42 pm. I bite the bullet I get on his bus which will get me within three blocks of my goal, not such a big deal except for the torrential downpour. I get to my stop and make my walk through the rain. I arrive for my meeting to a mostly understanding client. I have no idea of what the condition of the bus wa although I did engage in a slight murderous fantasy about the oaf standing blocking the exit door but that's just me.

4:30 pm. The meeting is over and I have plenty of time to catch the next bus, it's about 15 minutes before it leaves Braid Station and it takes around 7 or 8 minutes to get to the stop outside the office so I have plenty of time, except as I step out of the office there it is pulling up either 20 minutes early or 10 minutes late. The is a long line of people getting on which argues for the late scenario, which give me time to join the end of the line and step on board.

Heading home. It is a nice bus, happy humans going home, a woman and her bright and chatty daughter talk to a friend in seat ahead, people looking tired but happy to be on their way home. The bus has dirty floors and windows but that seems less of an issue at the end of the day then at the start of one. Everything has worked out but not because the transit system works well but because I'm reasonably patient and the people I work with understand that the transit system doesn't work very well and make allowances.

But why are we making allowances? A significant part of civic taxes, gas taxes and as far as I know income taxes go to make the transit system work. Why are we sitting on dirty, ill maintained buses, waiting in intentionally poor shelters for buses that never come, never informed if there is a problem, never assisted by supervisors, at the mercy of databases that are either psychotically optimistic or just plain wrong. Why are we held in such contempt? As transit users we are part of the solution to the great problems facing our environment, so why would most of us rather drive a car and push us all, our children, our partners, ourselves, into the abyss rather that put up with the contempt that we are daily treated to on our transit system? I don't know, if you do I wish you'd tell me.

later

jack

Been awhile but I'm still here

Hey.

I hear (on CBC morning radio) that the 1 million + new buses may be back on the streets next week if all goes well. Well I for one can hardly wait for another chance to swim through the spacious confines of our new sardine cans on wheels. Who decides that it is better to have few seats on a bus? The drivers, the passengers, or some translink guy who gets a leased car to drive because his job requires travel and the transit system can't guarantee he will get there in a timely manner?

Other interesting sights:

• A driver refusing to pick up a wheelchair bound woman and explaining over the PA system that she did so because the woman was "abusive". I don't know what the history here is but I've got to hope there is better solution than leaving someone in a wheelchair by the side of the road.
• The age old practise of standing in the rear door way blocking the exit so that you won't miss your stop (20 blocks away) is still alive and well.
• One good thing about the new buses without seats is that seniors, disabled persons, parents with small children will no longer need feel aggrieved by the young, the able bodied and the unencumbered to move out of seats marked for the use of seniors, disabled persons, parents with small children since there are no seats for anyone.

That feels better, see you all on the bus.

Vanishing Buses

On Sunday one of Translink's buses vanished. Swallowed by a pothole; abducted by aliens; beamed up by Scottie, I'm not sure but it never turned up at Nanaimo Station.

The bus that did turn up did know that a bus had broken down and that there was supposed to be a bus coming to replace it but he couldn't, wouldn't, didn't move his bus out for 20 minutes because that was when he was to scheduled to leave. Yep. Not moving even though we know that people are standing in the cold waiting for a vanished bus.

There are times when I am completely convinced that Translink doesn't want us to ride their buses.

"They got upholstery?!!"

This comes from Boing Boing:

Cory Doctorow: Flick user Ludd takes beautiful photos of horrible public-transit upholstery all over the world. The Flickr set is glorious. Link (via Monochrom)

Great photos and all I can say is "They got upholstery?!!"

But the Flickr set is beautiful.

Back door please!!

Today (and I think for the last couple of weeks) I noticed that the back door of the new buses - the ones without seats - almost always fail to open for passengers when the bus stops, requiring them to yell "Back door please!" in various intonations of irritation.

Normally, when a bus stops at a requested stop, the back door unlocks and is ready for passengers to step down on the first step or push to door handle, as the case may be, to open the back door and let them out. There is usually a very short pause between the bus stopping and the door unlocking, some kind of safety interlock but on the new buses, like the one I rode back from UBC today, at least half of the time the door did not unlock and passengers had to call to the driver to open the back door, which he did manually.

Is this a design flaw, bug or are our new buses breaking down already?

Now do I have to much time on my hands or what?

New buses in Vancouver

We have new flashy looking buses here in Vancouver but they're not that easy to ride. Very few seats mean that most riders have to stand, but in their favour the also can accommodate wheelchairs, scooters, and baby carriages/strollers.

The real problem that I see is that the handrails are often too far apart for many passengers to reach meaning they are often trying to move from one part of the bus to another (to get to the exit door to make room for others) with no hand holds. This is dangerous especially when combined with the sudden stops that seem more prevalent. The sudden stops and jerky motion that I am more aware of lately may have to do with the many new inexperienced drivers that are coming on, or it may be some design failing with the buses, we'll have to wait and see.

I'm interested in what others think of the new buses. Also any "good" stories about the service you receive from Translink?

Snow Alert

Snow in Vancouver. Never a good idea.

It is a little strange, Vancouver is a city of immigrants, not many of us born here and fewer still with ancestors from here. Lots of us from away who have never seen snow until they got here but there are just tons of people who have fled here from parts of Canada, the US and Europe because we only get one, maybe two significant snow falls in a year. So why is it that no one can drive in the snow (or shovel driveways and sidewalks)?

In any case, the best road report I heard was that someone counted 50 buses jammed up heading north on Granville Street behind a couple of buses that first, couldn't get past the hill at 16th Avenue and then ran into each other blocking traffic quite effectively (now is that an exaggeration?? who knows).

I'm about to head out to go downtown and I will report back if anything of interest happens.

Translink Traffic Advisory

First post

Hello.

I've been riding the buses here in Vancouver since I was nine and now I'm 54, so that gives me about 45 years of experience of our transit system.

I've been a regular user of the system throughout the Greater Vancouver area, from Richmond (where I grew up in '60s and '70s) to Burnaby, North & West Vancouver, Surrey, Delta, Coquitlam and Vancouver (where I have lived and worked from the mid '70s to the present).

I have used the bus or Skytrain or Seabus to get to work, school, home, a bar, a meeting, a party or anything else you or I could think of to go to.

I like public transit or perhaps I should say I like the idea of public transit. It's got a lot of things going for it:

• environmentally friendly
• cheaper than owning a car
• I don't have to park it
• I can read my book or stare out the window or talk to my companions or whatever I don't need to pay much attention to where I'm going

I'm not always that pleased with the implementation of public transit:

• late or vanished buses
• crowded buses/skytrains/seabuses
• angry or rude bus drivers
• angry, rude or crazy passengers
• you can't always get there from here, least ways after 9:00 pm on a weekend
  
• Trip planning databases that give bizarre responses like "there is no service to that point on the system" when you have asked it for transfers and times to go from the West End to Commercial and Broadway by 4:00 pm on a Saturday

So I'm going to write about my adventures on the buses in Vancouver, if you have a story or an adventure you would like to share please do in the comments.