The Official Transit Thread

[trek]

gotta be a pretty huge pigeon to carry wheelchair-accessible baskets.

[Common sense]

gotta be a pretty huge pigeon to carry wheelchair-accessible baskets.

No problem. We'll hire Puff the magic dragon.

[BuckyHermit]

gotta be a pretty huge pigeon to carry wheelchair-accessible baskets.

That's what steroids are for.

[BuckyHermit]

For people wondering about the loads on 491/496, here's a cellphone pic I got ahold of. This is an undated pic of a 491/496 southbound trip, around 3:00ish. This isn't the fullest load I've seen, actually. (This photo taken from the red line... you can't see it clearly here, but apparently it was shoulder-to-shoulder packed, with people crammed all the way to the front doors. It was taken between 70th and Airport Station.)

Edited April 2, 2009 by BuckyHermit

[nitronuts]

Open house set for Lansdowne Canada Line station

By Matthew Hoekstra - Richmond Review

Published: April 01, 2009 4:00 PM

Updated: April 01, 2009 4:17 PM

Canada Line officials are offering the public a chance to see inside a new rapid transit line station and tour the commuter trains that will soon ride the rails.

On Thursday, April 9, from 4 to 8 p.m., the Canada Line’s Lansdowne Station will swing open for tours.

“It will be the first time for members of the public to see an almost-complete station,” said spokesperson Steve Crombie.

Trains will be parked on either side of the platform and also open for tours.

Some finishing touches on the station, such as the landscaping, still need to be completed before the line opens.

That date has yet to be set, but project officials have pledged to have it open before the Labour Day weekend.

Crombie said a few more station open houses are likely to be scheduled, including at Templeton Station on Sea Island.

The $2-billion, 19-kilometre line will connect downtown Vancouver, the airport and Richmond Centre.

[MikeGillis58]

For people wondering about the loads on 491/496, here's a cellphone pic I got ahold of. This is an undated pic of a 491/496 southbound trip, around 3:00ish. This isn't the fullest load I've seen, actually. (This photo taken from the red line... you can't see it clearly here, but apparently it was shoulder-to-shoulder packed, with people crammed all the way to the front doors. It was taken between 70th and Airport Station.)

Please move to the back of the bus. I still see some space.

[ronthecivil]

For people wondering about the loads on 491/496, here's a cellphone pic I got ahold of. This is an undated pic of a 491/496 southbound trip, around 3:00ish. This isn't the fullest load I've seen, actually. (This photo taken from the red line... you can't see it clearly here, but apparently it was shoulder-to-shoulder packed, with people crammed all the way to the front doors. It was taken between 70th and Airport Station.)

Looks like any bus travelling through Vancouver. Untill you beat my 8 bus pass up record you have nothing to complain about!

[silverpig]

Looks like any bus travelling through Vancouver. Untill you beat my 8 bus pass up record you have nothing to complain about!

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.

[nitronuts]

I believe the Richmond and south of Fraser routes are having their frequencies upped.

[BuckyHermit]

Looks like any bus travelling through Vancouver. Untill you beat my 8 bus pass up record you have nothing to complain about!

But here's the thing -- you guys don't have 30-minutes frequency. Here, if one bus passes you up, you're left waiting for another half 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.

We do get accordions -- IN THE SUMMER. But right now, they're being tied up with the 480 routing.

How can you justify having a 30-minute frequency for such a high-demand route, and then say "you guys have it good"? You guys don't have a bloody clue what suburban bus service is like, and it shows. We would give ANYTHING to have the level of service you guys have.

[ronthecivil]

But here's the thing -- you guys don't have 30-minutes frequency. Here, if one bus passes you up, you're left waiting for another half hour.

We do get accordions -- IN THE SUMMER. But right now, they're being tied up with the 480 routing.

How can you justify having a 30-minute frequency for such a high-demand route, and then say "you guys have it good"? You guys don't have a bloody clue what suburban bus service is like, and it shows. We would give ANYTHING to have the level of service you guys have.

I live in the suburbs now, and like a wise person I drive. If I need to get downtown for a game, I walk to the skytrain. I know bus service in the suburbs sucks, I have taken it. And the reason it sucks is for every picture of a full bus you show, it's easy to show a picture of an empty bus. It's always going to be cost prohibitie to have good bus service in the suburbs.

Edit: Btw, it looked on translink and the 491 looks like it comes every 15 mins or better during the rush peaks. Also, with a much shorter route it's easy to do more with less buses.

Edited April 2, 2009 by ronthecivil

[nitronuts]

Transit planners eye growing Fraser Valley, Squamish-Lillooet regions

By Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver Sun

April 2, 2009 3:21 PM

METRO VANCOUVER -- As the population booms south of the Fraser River and north of the Lions Gate Bridge, the head of transit for Metro Vancouver envisions a transit web of rapid buses, trains and light rail stretching over roads and bridges far as Pemberton, Chilliwack and down to the U.S. border to deal with a commuter crush.

TransLink CEO Tom Prendergast said his organization can’t afford to ignore fast-growing communities in the Fraser Valley and Squamish-Lillooet regional districts as it grapples with a regional transit plan for 2040.

By then, Metro Vancouver’s population will have surged to 3.4 million, while the Fraser Valley will have trumped 462,666 people and the population in the Squamish-Lillooet region will have doubled to 68,000.

“We have to look where growth is going to occur and the level of service,” Prendergast told The Vancouver Sun. “When you do transportation planning you can’t just stop a bus on a street and say you can’t go any further.”

Metro Vancouver has warned that the continuing population growth will put “significant pressure on the land base and transportation system,” and is calling for inter-regional transportation linkages, including roads, bridges and dedicated bus lanes, for people moving to Squamish, Whistler, the Sunshine Coast and the Fraser Valley.

But despite the push, it appears Metro’s neighbours are in no hurry to jump aboard the TransLink network.

Rather, both regions say their focus is on creating their own “complete cities” by developing local transit and industry to keep people working closer to home.

The Fraser Valley Regional District, at least, it isn’t sure that joining up with TransLink — which would burden the region with a gas tax of six cents a litre and a share of property taxes to TransLink — would pay off.

Underscoring their reluctance, regional directors point to Surrey and Langley, which are both TransLink partners, yet don’t have the transit services to show for it.

“I know certain people feel we have to link up with TransLink if we want to solve our transit woes. I don’t see the reasoning in that,” said Patricia Ross, an Abbotsford councillor and chairwoman of the FVRD.

“What is of concern to us is, there will be a huge cost to joining TransLink, and will that translate to better service for us?”

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts agreed the Fraser Valley has a valid concern, noting her city has a population of 468,000 but only four SkyTrain stops and spotty bus service.

Langley, Surrey lacking

TransLink spokesman Ken Hardie acknowledges Langley and Surrey are lacking in efficient transit services, mainly because the cities came into the game late and transit patterns were based around trips to and from Vancouver.

The road networks have changed, however, as more people live, work and go to universities south of the Fraser. In the past few years, up to 40 per cent of new transit has gone south of the Fraser, Hardie said, but TransLink is “still playing catch-up in the region.”

Although TransLink is planning to extend the SkyTrain line in Surrey, Hardie and Prendergast acknowledge that it’s expensive and is not always the answer to traffic woes.

TransLink is proposing to beef up transit corridors along major commuter routes such as the King George Highway, Fraser Highway and Highway 10, develop a better grid network connecting to Langley and build a rapid-bus lane along the King George that has the potential to be converted to light rail.

Prendergast called for more mixed zoning of residential and commercial around transit hubs to provide an accessible 24-hour community. “Until you get to that level, it’s hard to convince [commuters] to use transit.”

The same links could be extended further into the Fraser Valley, which TransLink believes would benefit because it would give travellers more connections to Surrey and Langley. At the moment, Abbotsford, whose bus service is operated by BC Transit, offers only one bus link to Aldergrove in Langley, where travellers can connect with TransLink services.

“As more time goes by we’ve become more integrated,” Hardie said. “It’s not necessarily that people from Abbotsford are going to Vancouver, but they are going to Surrey and Langley.”

According to TransLink’s third-quarter report for 2008, its main bus contractor, Coast Mountain, had operating costs per service-hour of $109.40. But the more widespread the service becomes, the more economies of scale will drive that cost down, Hardie said.

He said it’s difficult to pinpoint what the cost would be if the Fraser Valley were to join TransLink, because it would depend whether the valley region wanted to buy into all TransLink services, including funding for major arterial roads and a share of its minor capital program, or just bus routes.

In Metro Vancouver, municipalities pay an across-the-board property tax to TransLink for all transit services, including operations of its if bus and SkyTrain fleet. Based on TransLink’s 2009-2019 transportation and financial plan, Metro’s municipal property tax rates for transit this year will be $33.81 per $100,000 of assessed value for residents and $155.93 per $100,000 of assessed value for business.

Hardie said he suspects that if Abbotsford were to buy into its transit links, TransLink would likely do a major transportation plan covering Abbotsford, Langley, Surrey, White Rock and Delta. The Fraser Valley region would then have to consider what it costs to join TransLink and how better services balances against a lift of six cents a litre in gas tax.

Abbotsford second to Vancouver

Abbotsford Mayor George Peary said the issue is compounded by the fact his city is second only to Vancouver in the number of people who both live and work in the community. Of those who do travel, he said, 86 per cent don’t go further than Langley.

He added that Abbotsford, as a central hub between Metro Vancouver and the B.C. Interior, is also a major goods corridor with a rail line, airport and border crossing, and those links have to be enhanced.

“The challenge for us is to develop as a complete city so our citizens don’t flock west to work,” Peary said. “Otherwise we become a bedroom community that’s further and further out, and people end up commuting.”

Former premier Mike Harcourt, who takes an interest in urban planning, said Abbotsford is rightly suspicious about joining TransLink, as “it’s a whole new ethos and a transition.”

But, Harcourt said, there has to be a concerted effort to build out transit in fast-growing cities such as Surrey and Abbotsford, which are curbing urban sprawl in favour of denser residential communities.

The more sprawl, the harder it is to provide transit. Abbotsford is struggling to provide transit because it got into the density game late and development has already spread across vast distances and into the mountains.

The city’s now playing catch-up, trying to put more money into bike lanes and to get people out of single-occupancy vehicles, Peary said.

Light rail transit might be a solution, but it’s very expensive and won’t happen overnight, he said, while reviving the old Interurban rail line isn’t viable because it runs along old milk routes, not through residential neighbourhoods.

One of the problems, Peary added, is finding the money to pay for growth in infrastructure.

“We’re poised to probably accept the lion’s share of growth that’s going to occur [in the valley] in the next 25 years,” he said. “The economic viability of our community and our health is going to dramatically affect the region.

“What’s becoming increasingly obvious is the inadequacy of the property tax to finance [infrastructure]. We need other revenue streams to give us more certainty.”

Harcourt insists that if transit corridors are identified south of the Fraser now, cities can plan growth along them and use developers’ fees to help pay for amenities such as SkyTrain stations.

Harcourt jokes that he’d like to see “three light-rail transit systems, seven rapid-bus and 100 bus routes sprinkled all over, with a few bridges and roads on top of it all” across the entire region.

“The local boundaries don’t make sense,” he said. “The key is to be bullish with building out the transit system in the Lower Mainland.”

Watts agreed, noting that communities south of the Fraser will pull in 68 per cent of population growth in the next 30 years.

By 2040, more than one-third — or 333,000 people — of Metro’s growth will occur in Surrey-White Rock. Abbotsford will grow its population by 82 per cent to 226,360 by 2031.

But Surrey feels it has being left in the lurch when it comes to transit.

“We’ve contributed significantly to building out transit north of the Fraser and we were happy doing that,” Watts said, “but when it comes to work south of the Fraser there’s no money. When you’re growing so fast, you’re playing catch-up all the time.”

In a bid to push for improved sustainability, Surrey, Coquitlam, Langley and Abbotsford have signed a “livability accord” to deal with transportation, policing and health.

The group works in conjunction with Metro Vancouver in making land-use decisions around transit corridors.

“Abbotsford is growing exponentially and they’ve got no links to Metro Vancouver,” Watts said. “There were some serious gaps with them not being at the table. ... If you don’t know where the transit corridors are, you’re planning the cities in a vacuum.”

Squamish combats sprawl

Christine DeMarco, Metro Vancouver’s division manager for regional development, said both the Fraser Valley and Squamish-Lillooet regions will have an impact on Metro Vancouver.

But that impact is lessened as long as they are creating jobs and their residents can work close to home. Between 1996 and 2006, she said, the Fraser Valley has added more jobs than people, while jobs in Squamish and Whistler have kept pace with population growth.

“This kind of trend is very good from a regional point of view because it means a lot of these people are finding jobs [in their own regions],” DeMarco said. “I would worry about them if they didn’t have a good job base. ... It’d be a problem if we were forcing people on a 50-kilometre commute.”

Squamish Mayor Greg Gardner said his region is trying to combat sprawl to keep infrastructure costs low. Although the focus is on transit within the region, he said it may one day look at potential transit service to Metro Vancouver.

But Squamish is more interested in having a passenger ferry service between Vancouver and Squamish, he added.

“The reality is, many people will choose to live in our area and commute, whether it’s to Vancouver or Whistler,” Gardner said. “We want to do as much as we can to give people choices.”

Harcourt said he expects the Fraser Valley will eventually join TransLink because it has no choice. Abbotsford is already working with Metro on trucking its garbage to the Cache Creek landfill and sits in on Metro meetings about parkland.

“We think we serve a pretty important role for the Fraser Valley,” Peary said. “We kind of have a foot in both worlds and that’s comforting as long as those worlds don’t move too far apart.”

ksinoski@vancouversun.com

© Copyright © The Vancouver Sun

[silverpig]

But here's the thing -- you guys don't have 30-minutes frequency. Here, if one bus passes you up, you're left waiting for another half hour.

We do get accordions -- IN THE SUMMER. But right now, they're being tied up with the 480 routing.

How can you justify having a 30-minute frequency for such a high-demand route, and then say "you guys have it good"? You guys don't have a bloody clue what suburban bus service is like, and it shows. We would give ANYTHING to have the level of service you guys have.

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.

[Common sense]

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.

Very, very false.

Ive been known for parking my car at that area and busing into UBC. Never have I gotten passed up.

If you're smart, you would know to walk back to 41st and Dunbar, where there's the 41, 43, 49, and 480.

[Common sense]

I believe the Richmond and south of Fraser routes are having their frequencies upped.

The question is: to what extent?

Sure, the 401 and 410 is getting their freqs bumped up, but that dosnt help the situation if a bus is full by Blundell.

Compare that to the current situation, where if your 491 got too full, you can always catch a 401 to Westminster and Gilbert, and hope for a 496.

Frequencies upped doesn't mean better service. If it means way less options for an area, then Id rather go with the status quo.

[silverpig]

Very, very false.

Ive been known for parking my car at that area and busing into UBC. Never have I gotten passed up.

If you're smart, you would know to walk back to 41st and Dunbar, where there's the 41, 43, 49, and 480.

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.

[Buggernut]

But Squamish is more interested in having a passenger ferry service between Vancouver and Squamish, he added.

How is a ferry supposed to be faster or more cost effecient than land based transit over the same distance?

[nitronuts]

How is a ferry supposed to be faster or more cost effecient than land based transit over the same distance?

Well, it depends on the type of ferry - i highly doubt they had the conventional type in mind.......a high speed ferry would most certainly plow the waters quickly.

[Buggernut]

Well, it depends on the type of ferry - i highly doubt they had the conventional type in mind.......a high speed ferry would most certainly plow the waters quickly.

But it'll be a gas hog. And being a small vessel, it'll probably be dependent on weather and water conditions, and subject to delays and canceled sailings.

How about commuter rail to Lonsdale Quay, to bypass North Shore traffic congestion and a quick transfer to SeaBus instead?

[nitronuts]

But it'll be a gas hog. And being a small vessel, it'll probably be dependent on weather and water conditions, and subject to delays and canceled sailings.

How about commuter rail to Lonsdale Quay, to bypass North Shore traffic congestion and a quick transfer to SeaBus instead?

Believe it or not, that's the plan Translink planners suggested last year.