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.