silverpig

Several problems. 1. Bathrooms are a no-no. They'd be used by hookers and druggies. And don't say you want to staff security at every station 24/7 just to guard the crapper. 2. Most of those problems are going to be resolved by the smartcard/turnstile program translink is working on.

Gah, I was at an event with translink CEO Ian Jarvis last night, but I didn't get a chance to talk to him. Really wanted to though.

Opening up the lane will mean that you can put more buses on it and have them be effective. Because each bus can now make a round trip in less time, it increases the number of trips per day that each bus can make. This is essentially the same as adding more buses under the current system. Combine that strategy with the ability to buy extra buses and it'll probably work quite well for a number of years. What's more, is they can then look at turning the extra lanes into dedicated bike/trolley bus lanes after the subway goes in.

What do you mean? There's not enough buses or there's too many?

Because it's not needed right away so long as we can put a cheaper alternative in. A dedicated bus lane would cost next to nothing compared to LRT/skytrain and would be quite effective for a long time.

It'd be a fairly straightforward study to do. You'd need to know the loss in parking revenue and offset that against the savings against LRT construction. The consider capacity of bus vs LRT and the ease/difficulty of expansion of the two. Throw in construction costs/savings, and also compare to a bored subway. I'd be willing to bet that a b-line trolley service using the existing double length trolley buses in a dedicated bus lane would do just fine for several years, allowing the city/province to properly do a bored subway when the bus becomes too crowded.

Did you ride the streetcar? It's slower than a bus, and it's really narrow. They'd be better off taking the space they want to use for rails, and turning into dedicated bus lanes. In fact, they could have that now for no infrastructure cost if they just took out all the parking along Broadway and turned it into a dedicated bus lane like they had during the olympics.

Hopefully you either come home very early or very late. Traffic on 41st in Kerrisdale at 3pm SUCKS. I've gotten off the bus at Elm, and walked up to Yew in time to hop on the bus IN FRONT of the one I was on.

QUIT STALKING ME!!! <--- also lives in Kerrisdale and goes to UBC :D

I'm in the same boat. It'd be great to keep if there was a huge False Creek South development and people needed to get around the creek. Really though, with what Expo86 did for the area, maybe this isn't outlandish with what the Olympics are sure to bring in coming years.

This. We've just been given a transit gift in the experience of a vastly expanded transit system. If we just go back to what we had without learning anything, then it will be spoiled. Hopefully we can get things changed and for the better.

Yeah I saw that last night. Imagine if that happened on the UBC line.

lol @ this comment: anonymous 7:08 PM on February 12, 2010 Darn! It's too late! My sister lived in San Diego, but she died a year ago

These weather guys are so BS.

It'll likely be used on highways and major roads. I doubt you'd see it rolling down a side street.

I wonder which way that absent lady would have voted.

This week is gonna suck. 10-15cm of snow followed by 9C and rain. Joy.

My wife and I have 1 car and she uses it for work, so I'm relegated to public transit. We also live in Kerrisdale and it is possible for us to walk for all of our shopping. We do use the car to visit family and to do big grocery shopping runs, but if it wasn't for her job, we could be carless and just use a zipcar for the other stuff.

Great news about the Arbutus stop for the 99. Now I might actually use it, although it's not very likely. Odd that the 43 and 480 both stop at Granville, W. Boulevard (Arbutus), then Carnarvon (MacDonald/MacKenzie), while the 99 goes straight from Granville to MacDonald.

Apparently only 5% or so of those tickets get paid, so really it's more like $8-$9 a piece.

I guess you didn't make it.

I still see them as often as I did at the opening. It's not every day, and it seems to be more of a morning thing. I wonder what the costs of putting green shirts at every station are vs. turnstiles... I guess it's what, 4 people per station per day (2 people in an 8 hour shift) So 14 stations * 4 people * 8 hours * 7 days * 52 weeks * $25/hr = $4 million /yr I may have gotten the number of stations wrong. I just guessed.

I got on at Oakridge during the delay. Actually it was funny, I was on the 43 and zoned out and missed the Cambie stop. I noticed a bunch of ambulances as we went past. Got off at Main and hopped on another 43 back to Cambie. Only had to wait for 5 minutes until a train came. They actually had a southbound train come to Oakridge, switch tracks, and then had everyone get off and go to the other platform to let us north-bounders get on. I found it odd that some of those people were supremely pissed. The attendant was polite and apologized and this one lady was yelling at him: "Your apology means nothing!" I mean, some guy had a medical emergency which shut the system down, and your inconvenience is to switch trains. Cry me a river. I thought the whole incident was handled quite well by the staff.