Saturday, May 19, 2007

How to Cross A Bridge in Rush Hour


Wait.

Yesterday I temped in my Dad's office in Port Coquitlam. Journey time there- 45 min. Time home-1 hour, 25 min. Our wait to cross the Port Mann was 30 minutes of idling, we were moving so slowly that my Dad could turn the car off each time we pulled up a car length.

There are no busses that can cross the bridge because the service would be unable to maintain a reasonable schedule as traffic is routinely backed up twenty-five minutes or more even on a innocuous Sunday morning.

Just for fun I searched the Translink website to see how I could have made the trip yesterday by public transit. The results are below:












C50, 351, 160

6:25a

9:15a

2h49 min.

2

0.16 km

$4.50


To sum up, my trip would have involved three busses, a trip to downtown Vancouver, and would have taken two hours, forty-nine minutes. This isn't even a trip to some obscure destination, but an industrial city employing "13,000 people in specialized manufacturing" many of whom, one could presume live just across the river in Surrey.

I'm big on public transit but I'd take waiting in a car over that marathon any day. To get people out of their cars transit has to provide some incentive whether its shorter line-ups or a more relaxed commute.

No comments: