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.