Category: Vancouver

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Great Vancouver transit tools of my trade

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.)

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Thoughts on transit in Vancouver at the back of the room during TransitCamp

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.

Session Discussion

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.

The world of transit in Vancouver

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.
Continue reading “Thoughts on transit in Vancouver at the back of the room during TransitCamp”

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Going to Vancouver Transit Camp

Vancouver Transit Camp 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.

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Sticking up for the Cambie Business Association

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.

#15 going through Cambie St. war zone 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]?

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The Canada Line pains me

Going back to my post about having the new day job and becoming a commuter via the beauties of TransLink, I have developed a relationship with the Canada Line that tugs at the feelings I once had for it.

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I’ve watched this project take off with extreme enthusiasm, anxiously waiting for that day that we can grab a train from downtown to YVR to escape to some (hopefully tropical) destination. I also hear a lot about this “Richmond” place, and if there is a train that will take me there, I’m more than likely going to drag Rebecca to some other place that I wanna go explore just because we can. That’s not to say that she isn’t usually up for my crazed ideas of exploring places people often don’t think of exploring, but you get the idea.

I’m still trying to nail down my commuting route, and there is no easy way of getting from home to work without transferring to at least one bus. That’s really no big deal, but the easiest way to get there is by taking the, sometimes elusive, #15 Cambie.

Broadway & Cambie construction for Canada Line

I took this picture while waiting for the #15, heading back downtown. That hole is where the street should be, and the bus stop is carved out on a ledge with only a metal, construction fence protecting you from a fifty foot drop.

I know that most Vancouverites are saying, “Dude, there’s your problem.” Trust me, I knew that going into this because for those not in the know, Cambie is the street that, starting on the same side of False Creek that I go to every morning now, is in the wanning stages of being tore up and tunneled through for said Canada Line.

In the mixing and mashing of routes that I’ve been taking, you can’t rely on that Cambie bus ever being on time. Sometimes it’s just a few minutes of waiting at the transfer point, and a few times I’ve been lucky to have it pull up just as the first bus pulls away. A few other days, it’s been much worse, 35 minutes of waiting at the worst point. Even after waiting, you might get two #15’s following each other. Pleasant and frustrating all at the same time.

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Taken: August 18, 2006 | Location: Queen Elizabeth Park

I realize that I’ve only been doing this in a total of about two weeks, but it wasn’t until that awful day of waiting of more than a half hour and being crammed in a bus full of people that I figured that this wasn’t all in my head. I guess I wasn’t just some newbie transit rider that didn’t know the system well enough yet. Some woman, somewhere in the pile of people, yells out, “More people should complain to TransLink about this because I’m tired of being the only one!”

So that afternoon, I wrote a complaint via email, and TransLink replied. They said, “I have checked our records and I do not see anything in particular regarding any service problems with this route. I do apologize, I will document and process for Vancouver Transit Centre.”

It wasn’t so much that I was late for work as to the amount of people calling on their cellphones to let work know that they’d be late, not to mention the one woman who was really ticked that she would have to miss her morning coffee break, was enough to lay effort to the cause. Trust me, I wanted a coffee that morning, too, but being on time to a new job is more uber-important.

Some mornings are good, some mornings are not. It doesn’t help that once you get on the False Creek side of the Cambie bridge that there are numerous other developments, not to mention an Olympic village being built by an army of cranes, mucking up everything. Single lane traffic, lane closures, heavy machinery, cement trucks taking numerous tries of backing into a work site just right, stupid people, high traffic volume, etc. There is always the #50 False Creek, which is way better but comes less frequently downtown.

It’ll be nice when it’s all done, and that’s all you can really say. Just really hoping it’s soon. It shouldn’t take an hour to get from the West End to Southeast False Creek. At that point, it’s easier to just walk.

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Rocking the False Creek

View from work 1

Tis true. I’ve landed myself a new gig and become one of the many public transit commuters in Vancouver. And oddly, there is something satisfying to being able to strap on my iPod in the mornings and make the trek over to the new job. There’s a lot for me to do there, and it’s very much a clock in and clock out operation. I’m all for getting things done, and only after a week, I feel like I’ve been there a month.

I’m sure details will sort themselves out, but there isn’t a need, at least by my own standards, to shout from the rooftops as to where I’m at now. Regardless, it’s a massive step up from anything I could have ever imagined, and I consider myself lucky to be where I am. I didn’t seek it out. It found me.

So my apologies for not talking about it much before now. I would say that I’ve been more busy getting used to the new lifestyle versus being crazy busy like I was over the summer. As it all sorts it self out, there will be a reprisal of content, and that goes for here and the podcasts, RZ more than TCC.

Right now, I’m having a hard time adapting to the lifestyle of being tagged with a Blackberry and released into the wild. I wouldn’t say that I’m loving it as much as getting used to it. I’ll try to give a better post about it later, but getting that “crackberry” fixation just isn’t as catching to me as I thought it would be.

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Go Giants when the Canucks cost too much

I know I’ve mentioned it here and on The Crazy Canucks before, but it’s worth mentioning a few more times because a lot of us know that Canucks games are a heck of a price to enjoy first hand. You can read J.J.’s post about it, but catching a game at GM place is a hefty tab.

When it comes down to it, it costs between $120-$300 for a pair of tickets, depending on location and opponent, not to mention if you are going through Ticketmaster, someone you know, Craigslist, or those friendly folks on the street corner who happen to have some extra tickets that they’d like to share with you. After that, it’s worse than going to a movie because food, beverages, and souvenirs take a bite out of your wallet as well.

If you want hockey that is just as passionate as, if not more than, NHL action, take a short drive to Pacific Coliseum to catch a Vancouver Giants game.

Kelowna presses in the last minute

Rebecca and I have had the extreme enjoyment in catching some of the regular season games so far this season, and it has been outstanding.

Some folks call junior hockey as scrappy and dirty action that only makes going to Western Hockey League game worthwhile, and I really have to disagree with that. These kids play with grit and passion in the same way that makes watching college football or basketball exciting. Kids that are giving it their all in the hopes that they not only play outstanding hockey in their early career as much as they fight their way to get noticed by some NHL scouts for that ever dreamed about draft day.

As my good pal and Crazy Canucks co-host Dave has often said, it’s your chance to see some of the up and coming stars before they become that big league player that all the sports shows start talking about. For more evidence of that, look no further than, and now former Giants captain, Milan Lucic.

Bruins decide to keep teenager on the roster
By Barbara Matson, Globe Staff | October 27, 2007

WILMINGTON – It’s time for 19-year-old Milan Lucic to move out of the hotel, find an apartment, and buy a car. He’s here to stay.

Before practice at Ristuccia Arena yesterday, the Bruins rookie was told to pack his bags and stay. General manager Peter Chiarelli called Lucic into his office and told him he would be with the Bruins for the rest of the year, instead of returning to his junior team, the Vancouver Giants of the Western Hockey League.

Lucic greeted the news with a broad grin – “Obviously, I had a smile on my face,” he said. “This has always been a dream of mine, to play in the NHL, and now it’s a reality.” – and an attitude infused with humility and confidence.

“It’s happened so quickly,” Lucic said. “That’s the most amazing thing of all. It goes to show, if you want something really bad, it can happen for you.”

The 6-foot-4-inch, 220-pound left wing, who has banged his way through the first nine games of the season for the Bruins, signed a three-year entry-level contract this summer, at $850,000 per year. A 10th game (today against the Flyers) automatically triggers the first year of his contract. Because of his age, he cannot be sent to the minors, though he could be returned to Vancouver if his performance falls off.

But it appears Lucic, who was the Giants’ captain, MVP of the 2007 Memorial Cup won by Vancouver, and captain of Team Canada in this summer’s Super Series, has done all he can in the WHL. It’s time for him to tackle the big leagues. [bostonglobe]

Late in the game penalty Sure, there stands a chance that we could see him back in Vancouver at the WHL level, but it’s proof positive that your opportunity to see some quality hockey action is easily accessible at a price that is easy to share between more than just two people. In fact, for $300, you could probably take 20 people to the game and have enough cash to spare for popcorn and some tasty beverages.

That being said, it’s exciting to hear that another kid has proven himself to be good enough for not only the NHL, but the fact that Boston Bruins fans have embraced him like they have is amazing. It’s not hard to like a drafted player that shows up at the beginning of the season and start playing like he has. The thing is, he’s been back here in Vancouver doing the same thing for the last few seasons before his name was ever called in the draft.

Minor hockey isn’t as scrappy or not as worthwhile as many hockey fans, if that’s what you really want to call yourself, might make it out to be. Go check it out because if you really want to make a point about ticket prices at Canucks games, put your dollars toward something else, preferably at some kids who just want some people to come out and cheer them on.

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Vancouver Facebook Garage thoughts and follow up

Before I talk about the event I attended tonight, let me just start out with the fact that Facebook has probably changed my, and our, lives. I’ve long lived by the principle that social networking sites are not that affective when it forces us to sit behind terminals and not interact, calling each other friends when we’ve never even met in the really real world. Doesn’t sound very social, does it?

Facebook, on the other hand, falls outside of that premise. Granted that in the days that Friendster actually held ground, I was stuck in the Midwest of the U.S. where you tend to think of meeting other users to be utterly geeky, if not insanely dangerous or bizarre. In Vancouver, on the other hand, it’s made our lives incredibly busy, and that falls outside of things you do with your friends. And those are friends that I’ve actually made contact with in some way, most likely face to face.

In a way, that kinda brings us to the Vancouver Facebook Garage that occurred last night. Rebecca was sponsored to do the live blog for the event, and I should add that she rocked it. So much so that I’m not going to do much to recap it because all the details you need to know are there.

Facebook Developer Garage
Photo credit: kk on Flickr

I will say that my major contribution to the night was bringing along my tripod for Roland to use for the live video stream of the entire event, but all of the presentations were of unique interest.

They all had something that you could take away from them if you looked at the overall, big picture of how a Facebook application could imply a concept to a different or new idea. I know that I took a lot of ideas away from the night for potential projects in the future, but those will remain to be seen. Plus, I wouldn’t have a clue as to where to start to make my own Facebook application.

Not to rip into the event, but there were some certain aspects of the evening I would have reconsidered if I had planned it. Perhaps I should have payed more attention to the Facebook event, but I didn’t know that the evening was scheduled from 5:30PM to 8:30PM. By the time the evening was over, there wasn’t much time within the eight minute break to find some food to put into my very empty stomach, not to mention any ideas as to where I could get water or find the washroom. Being the maiden event in Vancouver, I’m sure things will adjust for the next one.

Also, Kris Krug took some amazing photos during the evening, so you can check his flickr out for more shots from the event.

I’m not sure what or how I can take away some of the things that were presented last night, but there are a number of concepts that I can think of as to what I would add to Facebook in terms of an application. I’m just a little fuzzy as to how I’d do it, yet alone where to start. Maybe I’ll learn that in the next session where someone can point me to how a newbie can make a Facebook application.

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Giving a presentation at the Vancouver Drupal Meetup

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Photo credit: uncleweed on Flickr

Last night, I was invited to the monthly Drupal Meetup for October in Gastown. Boris and I have had numerous conversations about various projects that I’ve been working on, and the one that stuck out to him was the site I generated for knox-church.org. I wrote about this project some time ago, and you can read that post here.

The point of having me talk about the site was to talk about the development process of how the site was originally created in WordPress and then ported over into Drupal. As Boris was saying in the meetup, it’s not often that you hear of a site having this done because using Drupal was seen to be easier than WordPress.

Allow me to explain that a little better because WordPress is something I am familiar with and use it for this blog on a regular basis. I’d even say that I love WP. I’ve built five sites using WordPress, so it is a CMS that I am comfortable with. It was that reason that, and this would make it six WP sites that I’ve built, I originally chose to have knox-church.org based in WordPress. On top of that, the plan was to build something that would enable church members the ability to interact with the site, adding and removing content as needed.

The site was based primarily on categories and a few, key plugins. The categories made particular posts appear in certain locations in the site, and not choosing these correctly would cause the post to not show up when and where it was intended. The plugins were subtle manipulations of posts, listing certain posts in an event list as well as an automatic deletion plugin to remove the posts once they expired. Both are very cool tools, but those are two extra fields in the post editor that the submitter had to parse through.

Vancouver League of Drupalers October 2007 -Image1010
Photo credit: roland on Flickr

Being contacted about the site after a time of decreased to little activity by church members, they wanted to be retrained on how to add posts to the site. Over time, they forgot the process and were confused by the site after logging into it after an extended period of time away from interacting with it.

It was at this point that I decided, based on things I knew about Drupal, to port the site into the new CMS. There wasn’t a lot of content to contend with, so manual transfer was the path I took. However, I knew that the CCK and Views modules could solve the multi-step process that came from WordPress and, in turn, having to teach that process to users with novice to intermediate understanding of how to interact with a web based CMS.

With the revamped look to the site in Drupal, the Calendar module brought a new level of listing events to the site that wasn’t there previously, but requested. When a user logs into the site now, they are directed to the area of choosing which type of content they wish to create(using the Login Destination module). The only fields they have to worry about are the ones they are presented with, making it a streamlined, simplified process of making sure everything they need is there before they hit the submit button.

Vancouver Drupal Meetup - October 2007 Additionally, step-by-step instructions are at the top of the page to guide them through the process, something much more difficult to do inside of WordPress, and these can be adjusted as need be to better reflect the needs of the users over time. This helps when someone goes for extended periods of time between logging into the site, forgetting how to interact with the editor that is presented in WordPress versus the custom page they are presented with in Drupal. Listing events on the front page, displaying news items, and listing sermons are all things that are coordinated on the back end through the Views module.

When it comes down to it, Drupal was a better route to go for what the church wants and needs. They want to be able to interact with the site and need to have something that can work for them without being overly difficult to use when it comes to their level of understanding. It’s also not as much as the ability for a church to have a website for its current members as it is to have a way of expanding their community and allowing others to find the site to get information about becoming apart of their organization.

I had a lot of fun speaking to everyone about the project and did my best to answer their questions. Not being the Drupal ninja compared to some other folks I know out there, I never felt out of place, and that is a very welcomed feeling. However, I did spike a massive fever when I got home and am still recovering from it today, so let’s hope that isn’t Drupal related.

If you would like to find out more about Drupal user related events going on in Vancouver, check out their page at groups.drupal.org/vancouver or visit groups.drupal.org to find a Drupal community near you.