I live in the suburbs for the summer and I don't have regular access to a car, I could if I wanted I guess, my family has three. But I generally bike within the area where I live to go to the gym, run errands etc. Interestingly enough its kind of difficult.
There are bike lanes on the major roads which don't really need them because they are not all that busy but they start and stop. I am a pretty experienced cyclist but for someone new I would find it pretty intimidating to find the bike lane I was riding in to disappear as I came up behind a bus parked at a bus stop. Choices in this situation:
a.) wait- could be awhile since this is the first stop
b.) ride around on the sidewalk-illegal and dangerous due to marauding seniors on electric scooters that take up the entire sidewalk
c.) merge into traffic and go around the bus- also dangerous and kind of scary 50m from the busiest intersection on the peninsula in a town where 35% of citizens are over the age of 65
What to do?
A few nights ago I was riding home from the pool and a van of kids drove up behind me and screamed as they drove by....mature.
Arriving at a yoga class the other day with my bike I was dismayed to find there was not a bike rack to be seen in uptown White Rock. After wandering around for a few minutes I gave in and removed the wheels from my bike and locked the frame to a chain link fence to a few stares from people as I carried my bike wheels around with me on my errands.
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:
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.
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.
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