silverpig

Here's an interesting article about abandoning skytrain: The case to abort ALRT - October 21, 1982

Heh, I was wondering when you'd be in on this thread.

Hey, I like nitronuts and don't think he's racist or anything, but his comment did set a few people off around here and does come across in an odd way to more than a few people. You have to take that to mean something. The issue is with context. He was talking about race already and then used a racial description in a negative way. If he was talking about how women generally have better hygiene than men and then said that a couple of bad smelling men came on the skytrain then, yeah, it'd be a little sexual stereotyping there. Actually, here's his post, edited to make it about sex instead of race: "lol, never. Not men. Men don't know how to pack here....and thankfully they don't as a lot smell quite awful. Women tend to have a much better hygiene. I recall a man boarding the train even though it was packed to the door. He smelled gawd awful, and several people made grimaces and left the train to board the train behind it. That's just one of many "bad smell" occurrences I've had...most others involved homeless people on buses and trains." Now imagine a woman saying it.

If it was an offhand comment maybe it'd be fine, but he was already talking about race. He brought it up in the first place, then gave an example to illustrate his point. Shortened, his post essentially was: "Asians have better hygiene. For example, this first nations couple smelled really bad." He used that particular couple to generalize to a whole race. In your dirty man scenario above, saying "man" is purely a descriptive term, not one that implies a generalization.

I know your intent but that one comment about the one first nations couple was pretty out of line. There are bad examples in every race and the implication was that natives smell. Other than that your generalization is somewhat accurate. When someone in Japan has a cold they wear a face mask so as not to spread it. No one does that here.

Heh, well I know it's easy to bulldoze a house. I meant that it isn't easy to bulldoze a row of houses to make way for a train system when the owners don't want to move. In China they can just move them and make way for the train (it happened for that maglev they've got now), but here you'll get sued if you dig up the road in front of someone's store.

It's amazing how much you can get done when you employ cheap Chinese labour (and have a nearly inexhaustible supply of it), and can bulldoze people's houses at will.

Sweet August 2nd!

Huh? Are you the guy behind transitdb?

Check out this site a UBC student won an award for: http://transitdb.ca Story: http://www.science.ubc.ca/news/295 I've always hated the translink site. The information is slow to access and not intuitive.

There are probably several reasons: 1. When a bus needs a service (oil change, engine service etc), another has to take its place. With a large fleet there are always buses going in for servicing. 2. Buses down for repairs. These things do break down and they need backups. 3. Remember in the winter when they didn't have enough buses to keep the lines going smoothly? 4. Emergency situations where skytrain goes down, or a bridge is shut down. 5. They add new routes every year too. I'm sure there's more, but that's a start.

What do they look like again? edit: n/m, found them myself

It seems the ideal spot for a node for Surrey is Surrey Central/King George. You've got skytrain there, Fraser Hwy for a diagonal route, King George for a N-S route, and 104th for an E-W route. You can put rapid buses or rail down King George, same with Fraser, and extend skytrain if you need.

inane, you're just so out of left field with this. Having a stable, professionally run committee that has industry experience and is able to plan long-term is the absolute best way to go. Look at the airport. It was a freaking mess when the government ran it, then it came under private management and we have a beautiful new airport, consistently rated as one of the best in the world, that makes money hand over fist, enough to pay for constant upgrades and renovations and buy other airports as well. It's night and day. Would you rather have the debacle that the Canada Line almost was? We'll build it, no wait, it's cancelled, no, it's going somewhere else, no it's gonna be LRT, elevated, subway, buses, oh let's do an environmental study and public consultation. It's on again. No it's off... Just pay someone who knows what they're doing to do the job right the first time.

I wonder how he gets to campus...

nitronuts: have you ever thought of starting your own transit-centric blog?

That looks pretty cool. It might be done when my wife and I are looking to buy and could be a good option for us

Just go to www.translink.bc.ca and use the trip planner. Put in your start and ending spots and time you depart and it'll tell you how to get where you want to go.

Definitely true. That's why I've learned to time my bus catching

I live at 41st and Yew. I've lived here for over 5 years and commute to UBC most days. Standing at W. Boulevard where the 41, 43 and 480 all stop I've been passed by 5 full buses during the morning rush. I've also ridden the bus all the way from W. Boulevard to UBC without stopping because the bus has been full. Several times. It's much worse in September and on poor weather days, but it definitely does happen.

I grew up in Surrey, taking the 323/393 from Surrey Central. Occasionally I'd miss them and would take the 324 which meant a walk. Yeah the 30 minute timings suck, and yeah I'm a bit spoiled living on 41st where I never check a bus schedule, but there are people here who have it worse actually. Try catching a bus near Dunbar to UBC in the early morning. By the time they hit W. Boulevard they're full and just miss all the rest of the stops until they hit UBC. And this isn't just one bus, it's several in a row. They probably wait at least half an hour.

Yeah no kidding. Make that picture one of an accordion bus, and then show 5 of them in a row and you'll have expressed a problem.

Still, it's better he does that and then posts the pretty pictures and short descriptions here for us to read than the alternative.

1. It can't happen tomorrow. They still have to do all the impact studies and what not to ensure that Broadway doesn't become the new Cambie, or so I've heard. Also, the crews will be working on the Evergreen line, and I think that means the boring machines will be shifted there. Buying more is expensive. 2. That bridge is almost not worth replacing. The Surrey side could handle some more capacity, but the New West side is a huge bottleneck. To properly do the project McBride/10th would have to be redone, and a new interchange to Columbia...