More Bussing Fun

How about adding buses for special events such as fireworks?

I tried to catch the 6:57 bus from first at 128 & 24 and the got a ride down to the Park & Ride when it was late and I decided that I'd missed it. It ended up being 15 min late and completely full when it got there- didn't even stop.

Left 15 people standing there to wait an hour or do as I did and attempt a 2 1/2 hr transit marathon via 321(also late and very full) -skytrain-99 B-line to get into Kitsilano.

Quite the reward for CHOOSING the environmentally-conscious route and taking transit. I left a car in my driveway because I thought I should use my U-Pass!

Fortunately I've found a blog full of comments from people who share my pain - Improve the 351 (see links on the side) shares a variety of suggestions to deal with the issue. Pretty much it boils down to more buses, more often as the population of the Peninsula continues to grow frighteningly fast.

Density in MY neighbourhood

When does what we feel become detached from what we know is right?

This is a huge issue in planning and other fields. Our choices are always influenced by emotion regardless of how much we try to distance ourselves from them. Increased density has many benefits yet when faced with it in our immediate environs people are denfensive and NIMBY becomes the slogan of choice.

My Nana lives a block from Ocean Park- a small community node, shopping centre type area and has been approached lately by developers buying up her block of detached, single family residences hoping to turn them into condos.

She doesn't want to move and my family had been encouraging her to hold onto the property. She has an ocean view and the real estate market is still booming. In the long run though our family would love to own the property-but it should be denser, that's all there is to it. To have even some semblance of efficient public transit we need concentrations of people, shops and services. This means that the neighbourhood is going to change shape a little- I'm not going to like how it looks- I've lived here all of my short and sheltered life but I will tolerate it because I know there is reason behind the madness that most fail to see.

Education is a very convincing tool, one that we often forget to use. People protest for mostly aesthetic reasons but if we gave them a chance and told them why....who knows, maybe for once we'd be able to see past the ends of our driveways.

Waiting...

For a bus that will come in 56 minutes since its a Sunday and I've just missed the suburban commuter special that will take me into Vancouver. To add to the insult of waiting 56 minutes in the rain the bus will be full because the Park and Ride is the last stop before the highway and I'll have to stand the 45 minute trip with my awkward combination of baggage.

That's not so bad but when an hour passes and I find that the next bus has been cancelled or 'rerouted' according to Translink I am pretty frustrated, possibly to a point where I will not choose transit the next time I go into Vancouver. To think that this regularly happens on weekdays to commuters trying to get to work on time and not just to people heading into town on the weekend is ridiculous. To do this to people who have made a concious choice to forgo the status quo and take transit rather than joining the 1000's of SOV's which make their way into the city each morning seems backwards.

Once the Canada (RAV?) Line is completed all the suburban busses will likely be funnelled into Richmond to take the train into Vancouver. That's fine if you're headed downtown but for those headed to UBC its another transfer and a cross-town bus from Cambie instead of Granville adds atleast 10 minutes to travel time if you consider the 99 B-Line as an example. This means that students who don't have an affordable alternative mode of transport will suffer simply because theyhave no other choice while those who can't handle their altered commute will be forced back into their cars.

Congestion is a huge problem outof White Rock/South Surrey. With no rapid transit in sight and increasing populations both in the city centre and developments on the outskirts this problem can only get worse.

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.