Waterfront Canada Line Station by Miss604 on Flickr.com

It’s been nearly three weeks since the Canada Line has opened, and I keep thinking about how much it has changed my daily life every time I take it.

Sure, there might be a day when something goes wrong and the next train will take forever to show up that I’ll be reduced to the multi-bus commute to get to work (which has already happened but not on my watch), but accidents, mishaps, and generally bad days can and do happen.

I had a great experience riding the train home on the day of my first commute.

Standing at the platform, a co-worker walked down the stairs while I was waiting for the next train. I was heading downtown, and he was going to pop off into Yaletown. He doesn’t live around there but couldn’t pass up the chance to try it out.

We stood there talking about how he was using the opportunity to shop around Yaletown a little before going home, which I’m sure many businesses down there are hoping for more of, when someone else walked up to chat about how amazing this whole thing was.

“It’s so Vancouver. It looks great, works amazingly. I just love it.”

I couldn’t help but nod my head with the stranger while he sipped his frozen latte.

“I’m just so sick of all those people who say this is a waste of money. I wish those people would just go somewhere and die. Because you know, we need more of this. Out to the valley, to UBC, shut off those motors on the buses. It would be tremendous!”

This man was genuinely excited about this new form of transit, as crazy as that is to think about. But I had a very hard time disagreeing with him, minus the whole wishing people die thing.

My trek to work often takes me through the various areas in and around False Creek, and one day while heading down to catch the bus, my usual shortcut of hopping over the trolley car tracks surprised me when there weren’t any tracks to be seen.

It didn’t take me too long to recall why they were missing, and I know it wasn’t all of the Canada Line’s fault. More so, it’s the Olympics, and Paul Hillsdon mentioned this on his blog awhile ago.

It was announced today that Bombardier Transportation will bring two modern, Flexity Outlook streetcars on loan from Brussels, Belgium to Vancouver for use during the 2010 Olympics. The streetcar demonstration project will run between January 21 to March 21, 2010. The official name of the project is The Olympic Line – Vancouver’s 2010 Streetcar. [paulhillsdon.com]

The Downtown Streetcar Project is the big picture, and this demonstration is only the beginning phase of an ambitious plan to connect Granville Island, Gastown, and Stanley Park with this new transportation system.

As someone who is a big fan of public transportation, I like the idea of this project. However, it remains to be seen as to how quickly something like this can be fully implemented and operational to the extent that it will help the congestion problems currently plaguing Vancouver. It would be pretty awesome to take something like this to work from the West End, but the Canada Line is already something I’m waiting for at the top of my wish list in terms of daily commutes.

I really haven’t paid as much attention during the first Vancouver TransitCamp as I probably should have, but there are some people here today that have some wholehearted thoughts and views about transit when it comes to Vancouver. Some sessions have been filled with a lot of great ideas being shared, stories of woe, and elements of tension. That’s what happens when you present arguments in any atmosphere. Disagreements can and will happen, just like buses not showing up when you want them to.

There was a small representation from TransLink here today, and I’m not sure how they took an event like this. It’s freeform and open end topics that allow people to speak freely about whatever topic, transit related, they want.

On the flip side, I also mentioned that there were people here on the other end of the spectrum, fighting against some things that TransLink and related entities are trying to do, such as the Gateway Project.

More importantly, I love the idea of the transit system in Vancouver creating identity. I would love nothing more than some of the t-shirts that I’ve seen here today. The buttons were very creative, but the shirt that DaveO made read, “I remember the days before SkyTrain” was the best, attendee submitted concept that I saw. Also, the guy falling on the track and getting electrocuted was pretty awesome.

In the end, there are a lot of people here with a lot of ideas. Some are crazy, some are not thought through with enough foresight or hindsight. That’s where things like these events, in a BarCamp[wiki] type structure, make sense. When you are allowed to enter an open forum with little to no restrictions as to what you can or can’t say or do, you never know what might develop in the end.

There are a bunch of things that I haven’t been writing about but have been meaning to for a long time now. So let’s take a moment to highlight some really cool things that have popped up in the world of the internets that make transit, at least in Vancouver, easier to deal with.

Google Transit – This is a really cool expansion to Google Maps, and it has only been in operation for the past month or so. I probably don’t use it as much as I should, but how great is it when you can pull up a Google Map with the location of the nearest bus stop? It’s still in development, but there are certainly good uses coming from it right now.

i-Move.ca – Take Google Maps and add real time traffic information. If you are traveling from one end of the city to the other, take a peak at what’s going on with the roads. If it looks bad, then maybe the SkyTrain is the better route to go. Not much different than listening to the radio for traffic updates, but there is a lot of information at your fingertips if you don’t want to wait for the next traffic update to cycle around on the radio.

MyBus – This is a Facebook application that I think I’ve mentioned before, but I had a chance to talk to one of the developers of this wonderful tool today. Add it to your Facebook profile, put in a list of common bus stops, i.e. the one closest to your house, and it updates with the time of the next five buses that will be coming to those stops. Also gives you a much better reason to log into Facebook before you leave for work in the morning, not to mention when you leave work in the late afternoon.

Still, with all these tools are your disposal, getting around Metro Vancouver can still be a pain. At least these things help make sense of it all. If you know of more, make a comment.

Post edit (Dec. 10, 2007)

Next Bus – Rebecca actually blogged about this awhile ago, but it’s something that I haven’t personally tried until this morning. Actually, Rebecca even tried it out in front of me the other morning, and it’s impressive. The way it works is if you are standing at a TransLink bus stop, you will see a numeric code on the sign. Send a SMS, or text message, to “33333″ with the code on the sign in the body, and you will receive the next four or five buses that will be arriving at that location. Trying it out this morning, it took about ten seconds after sending the SMS to get a reply. Very useful when you fall out of your normal travel times or are in an unfamiliar location. (This is the only link I found on TransLink’s site about the service.)

There are a lot of great things being discussed and talked about here at Vancouver TransitCamp. I know this only because I’m over hearing some of the conversation. There’s so much being talked about that it makes me have a lot of various thoughts about the mass transit system that exists in and around Vancouver, the “Metro Vancouver” area for those not hip to the lingo(because it’s no longer, officially, known as the GVRD), I thought I’d hit a few topics that stick out to my mind.

First, the Gateway Project. Long story short, they want to twin the Port Mann bridge and allow a higher volume of automobile traffic flow through that area. I don’t like the plan, and there were people here this morning, SPEC, who are doing everything they can to help stop it.

Gateway is a real waste of money and the wrong thing to do environmentally. More care should be given to resist the notion of where more lanes of road will lead to less traffic congestion. Instead, the money going into that project should be given to massively expand SkyTrain service through Surrey and Langley. That expansion should loop around and come back across at the Port Mann bridge. That would help to reduce the amount of commuters coming across the bridge, from the east, if they had an accessible, reliable method like the SkyTrain.

And the SkyTrain… It needs continued expansion, and I really hesitate to say that. However, the reality is the necessity that a growing city like Vancouver needs something to handle the amount of people that are arriving in the lower mainland every day, week, and month. Could you imagine what it would be like if you could not only train from YVR but the ferry ports or even North Vancouver? Madness would precede it before it happened, but imagine what it would be like after.

The bus system… more should be done to increase its reliability. GPS tracking on the buses would certainly influence this, no matter how big brother it sounds. With my recent pains of commuting through the Canada Line construction, I would love to know if I have to wait five minutes or a half hour for the next bus to arrive. I’m not afraid of walking. What I’m afraid of is being a block away when the bus comes and makes me committed to walking the rest of the way, ending up being late for work.

I might add to this post or make more posts about other topics, but these are the issues at the top of my head.

Post edit: Dec. 9, 2007

It’s been a few days since this post that I’m making this edit, and I just wanted to add on here what Ryan and Keith said in the comments below. I applaud them for helping me understand the issue better, and it’s probably something that I needed reminding of rather than not acknowledging.

There certainly is a problem with the flow of traffic coming into Vancouver and across the Port Mann[wiki] bridge. I think it’s safe to say that there is no way that adding more car lanes will solve everything as much as saying that by adding more bus or rail transit will be the ultimate solution. However, I do like the combination of both, and that makes a lot more sense to me. Still, there needs to be a massive upgrade/expansion of service of rail transit for Surrey and Langley if the project would to really solve the problem, and I just don’t see the bureaucratic powers that be making that happen.

In the original post, I forgot entirely, as most people do, about the Pattullo Bridge[wiki]. It’s not another, simple or easy solution to the problem, but what would an overhaul of that bridge do for traffic around the lower mainland? The bridge is in desperate need of being replaced because repairs will not cut it on a bridge that is outdated in many aspects.

If the bridge were to be widened and better planning was done to the traffic patterns to and from the bridge, could that help the congestion of the Port Mann as well? Combine that with twinning and SkyTrain expansion, and you might see more people taking the Pattullo rather than the Port Mann. I shouldn’t fail to mention the Golden Ears Bridge[wiki] project that might aid in less congestion at the Port Mann once it is completed. Once again, not the answer, but a potential release valve for Highway 1.

Still, I don’t like the idea of where more means less problems, especially in an area that is a major traffic problem on each side of the bridge. I used to drive around that area on a consistent basis with large, diesel fueled, broadcast vehicles. The notion of getting it wrong, or whatever is done to help the problem, is what should concern more people about this project.

Better late than never, but I wanted to mention that I was going to be attending the first ever Vancouver Transit Camp on December 8, 2007.

I’m really unsure what to expect from the event, but ever since moving to Vancouver, mass transit has become an important element of day to day life, not to mention a nearly everyday occurrence. My daily commute relies on the bus system, we probably take the SkyTrain at least once a week, and that SeaBus gets us to see our friends on the north shore without too much of trouble.

I’m fascinated with it. There’s probably no better way to explain it than that, and I’ve been apart of many conversations as to why something is the way it is and how it could be so much better if they just tried some idea that I have.

We’ll see what happens, and I’ll do my best to report back on what happens.

I hate the idea of lawsuits to get anything settled, but there is some validity to their argument. Being that I am commuting into the heart of the Canada Line construction, the businesses in that area are truly suffering from the mind numbing construction going on in that area.

Cambie Business Association considers lawsuit against TransLink

[...]They’re calling it a last resort. Leonard Schein with the Association says they would have preferred to negotiate with TransLink, but says after that went no-where, they’ve decided to take it to the next level. “The merchants would prefer not to have to go to a lawsuit because it costs everybody a lot of money, and we were hoping to negotiate a fair mitigation for the merchants, but we heard last Wednesday from TransLink that they aren’t going to pay one penny for any of the losses.”

Schein says many businesses have been suffering. “The Park Theatre has lost $160,000 from January 1st to October 31st and we still have another month of construction in front of the Park.”

A survey conducted by the Federation of Canadian Businesses last summer has found the average merchant has lost over $100,000 during the project. Shein says it’s not fair that merchants will have to pay out of their own pocket. A decision and vote on the lawsuit will take place December 12th.[news1130]

I will admit that a majority of my interaction with this construction is in the area where Cambie Street intersects with Broadway, so how the rest of the world on down the path exists is beyond personal experience. However, I’ve heard horror stories.

On the other hand, I will say that I spend as little extra time that I need to because of the Canada Line. Additionally, there are three other areas being developed that screw that entire neighborhood up in conjunction with all the TransLink construction. When you factor in a those three other buildings in their various phases of development, it’s a complete disaster, and that makes me not place the sole blame on TransLink.

I don’t know how many times I have heard people say how much they go out of their way to avoid the area around Cambie and Broadway[googlemaps], but it happens daily. Sure, this headache will be temporary, and I know it sounds like I’m a true Vancouverite that is complaining about anything and everything that annoys me. But, how much will the businesses in the area change after all this is done and over with?

You have to consider what the personal, economic effects this will have when it is complete. Sure, millions of people will be able to easily reach the airport via rail transit, but the lives it will complicate, if not destroy, when their businesses are forced to close down because we dread the traffic snarls just to get there is depressing. Life can and will go on, but the price might be too much for some to recover.

Will it be better that, down a major portion of the Cambie corridor, the trains will run underground so those who pass through don’t have to gaze upon an area of Vancouver that has been shocked into rediscovering itself once this is all said and done?

It’s not so much that these entrepreneurs deserve monetary compensation as much as they deserve a break for sticking through the tough times when everything is finished.

Unless, and this is a total conspiracy theory, your plan is to drive out existing tenants so you can overhaul the neighborhood, a la Coal Harbour[wiki] or Yaletown[wiki]?