Double-Deckers

Vancouver City Council is keen to see even longer buses on Broadway.  I’m not opposed to that.  But to do that they need permission from the Province which controls the length of buses.  Why bother?  Instead, why not push for double-deckers?

These are within Provincial length guidelines and handle almost double the passengers for the same footprint.  I’m certain we could find electric versions and lifting the trolley wires hardly seems an insurmountable problem.

I’m all for it!

Better Transit

As regular readers will know, I am a big booster for Vancouver’s transit system.  I use it almost every day at least once, and have done now for more than twenty years since I last owned a car.

But it is certainly not perfect and could stand some improvements.

For example, under the current governance structures (i.e. government run), Translink should make all transit fare-free.  If the government is going to monopolize a business using our tax money, then we should at least get the service free.  Besides, in today’s world, freedom of movement must be a human right.

But I am sure there are smaller changes we could make while the transition to free is agreed.  And COPE councilman nominee Tim Louis has some interesting ideas that help ignite the conversation — if only for the length of the municipal campaign.

“[Louis] said the transportation company could make “small” changes that would improve ridership, such as freezing fares and putting even bigger buses on crowded routes along the Broadway line.

“A COPE increase on council will do everything possible to democratize TransLink, to see that the TransLink board is accountable to the taxpayer,” he said. “The TransLink board is currently accountable to only one person and that is the transportation minister in Victoria. A new TransLink board would begin working in the best interests of passengers, taxpayers and workers …”

TransLink should equip all its buses with special transponders that he said would keep “stale green” lights green when a bus approaches, essentially speeding up service. “The ideas we’re putting forth today are very cost-effective with very small capital costs which would make enormous improvements for you and I when we [ride] the bus,” he said. “No more red lights.”Louis also believes TransLink should buy special “bi-articulated buses” or essentially larger versions of the current articulated buses with an extra coach. “It would cost about 30 per cent more, but would carry 50 per cent more people, making it much more efficient,” he said.

On an even more quotidian level, Translink better do a better job of clarifying their rules about baby carriages on buses. I have written about this before but I witnessed a perfect example from the weekend: seniors being forced to move out of the front seats to make way for baby carriages.  This is simply nonesense and must stop!

 

Yes To Transit Improvements

Bravo to the Lower Mainland mayors who today voted for a 2 cents gas tax increase to pay for the Evergreen Line and other transit improvements!  Approving a tax increase just weeks before each of them faces the voters was the right thing to do, but brave nonetheless.

For Richmond’s Brodie and Burnaby’s Corrigan — both representing municipalties particularly well served by transit already — to vote against improvements elsewhere showed no class at all.

Hanoi’s Subway

When I was younger, Hanoi — then the capital of North Vietnam — was subject to massive bombing by the Americans.  Between 1966 and 1972, a huge amount of ordnance was dropped on the city, causing citywide destruction.  How times have changed!

The Vietnamese government has just announced the start of work on a subway transit system for Hanoi.  They will build a 12-station 12.5 km line costing about $1 billion.  The line is scheduled to be open by 2015 and is expected to carry 300,000 passengers a day to ease traffic congestion in the city.  Financing is coming from the French Government ($384m). the Europe Investment Development Bank and the city’s state budget.

The very idea of an entrepreneurial Vietnam with the need for a major subway system financed by Western banks would have been simply unimaginable back in 1972.  Perhaps we should take another look at some of today’s “disaster areas” and recognize that the future can be better than the present. Life does move on.

Why Does Transit Set Mothers Against Seniors?

I am a big booster for transit in Vancouver. I haven’t had a car for twenty years and have relied upon transit almost every day. I happen to think that the public transportation system in Vancouver is pretty good; it certainly works for me and gets me efficiently where I want to go. But there are issues, and the biggest for me right now is a manufactured dispute between seniors and mothers.

Every bus in the system has a section near the front that is designated for wheelchairs, seniors, those with disabilities, and mothers with strollers and infants. It seems logical to me that priority should go to wheelchairs and there is rarely an issue with that. The next priority should surely go to those seniors with disabilities, who find it difficult to stand for any length of time. But no: I have on so many occasions seen drivers force elderly crippled people to stand up and make way for some fit young mother with a stroller and a baby. That cannot be right, and yet most mothers take it as an entitlement.

On the occasions when I have questioned drivers about it I have been told either that stroller priority is company policy, or that I should mind my own business. Ridiculous! I have finally written to the company to find out directly what their policy is. I will let you know. In the meanwhile, I’ll continue to steam about all this.

Update: Transit wrote back very quickly — I guess I wasn’t the first to ask.

Thank you for your recent feedback and inquiry. The priority seating goes in the following order.

1. People using wheelchairs or scooters
2. Persons with disabilities and seniors
3. Children in strollers

But will they tell the drivers?

Recycling Buses

In Atlanta, they have recycled three old city buses to create a cool bus shelter:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even the seat is from one of the de-commissioned buses.   Great idea!

This is from SpaceInvading via coolboom.

Ridding Ourselves Of Cars

Low-Tech magazine looks at bicycles this week, and concludes that cars have to go.  Boy, I couldn’t agree more.

The problem is not that there is a lack of good roads – enough of these exist to bike from here to Mars and beyond. The main problem is that these are occupied by automobiles that are not only dangerous but also very inefficient both in terms of energy use and floor space.We don’t need any new infrastructure, what we need is to clear the existing infrastructure of inefficient vehicles and replace them with efficient ones. In other words: give all streets, highways, cloverleaves and motorways exclusively to bicycles and all other human powered wheeled vehicles. Get rid of cars. Why make things so complicated if the solution is so simple?

How could we live without cars, I hear those trapped in skepticism say.  The answer is clear:

Picture this for a second. If cars are gone, we are left with pedestrians (on the sidewalk), pedal powered vehicles (one part of the streets and the highways) and public transportation (another part of the streets and the highways, separated from pedal powered traffic, or underground) … For long distance passenger transport, we have trains. For long distance cargo transport, trains again. Short distance cargo transport could see the revival of cargo trams (streetcars). Electric vehicles could be a part of the solution, too, both for cargo transport and for the disabled, provided they keep the same speed as bicycle traffic.

The whole article is well worth the read, and the possibilities should be lightly discarded.

 

Sic Transit

I have on a number of occasions in this space praised Vancouver’s transit system.  However, one item that seems to be becoming established policy is just setting my teeth on edge.

The seats near the front of the bus are designated for various groups of people — wheelchair users, others with mobility problems, seniors, and those with baby strollers.   The notices as written put these groups in the order I have listed them, presumably establishing some sort of priority.    I certainly have no problems with wheelchair riders.  Good for them to be able to get around.  However, on more than one recent commute, I have seen seniors and others with mobility problems (carrying canes, crutches, etc) forced to move because a parent with a stroller wanted to get on and use that space.

Hold on folks, that just isn’t right.  What is even less right is the entitlement these parents seem to assume by their manner, as if they and their children were somehow more worthy or important than the seniors and others involved.  The attitude of most (though not all) drivers is to accept the strollers’ rights and to assist them shooing the seniors out of their seats.

I urge Coast Mountain Bus Lines to make a definitive statement that seniors and those who are mobility-challenged do NOT have to move when a stroller tries to gain access.  And I further urge them to train their drivers in dealing respectfully with the rights of these groups.

Don’t Worry, Be Happy!

In a clear victory for free speech and secularism, the Atheist Bus Campaign raised more than $150,000 in just four days.  Yesterday, they unveiled their message on the side of 800 buses across Britain.

Next week, the campaign will put up 1,000 posters on the London Underground system with similar messages.

An interesting element of the bus slogan is the word “probably,” which would seem to be more suited to an Agnostic Bus Campaign than to an atheist one … But the element of doubt was necessary to meet British advertising guidelines, said Tim Bleakley, managing director for sales and marketing at CBS Outdoor in London, which handles advertising for the bus system.For religious people, advertisements saying there is no God “would have been misleading,” Mr. Bleakley said. “So as not to fall foul of the code, you have to acknowledge that there is a gray area,” he said.

Good old England!

Bravo Vancouver Transit!

As regular visitors will be aware, I am a serious booster for our city’s transit system.  It is one of the finest systems that it has ever been my privilege to patronize.  Having given up my car in 1991, and thus been a daily transit user for almost twenty years, I believe I know whereof I speak. Now, my faith in the system and its workers has been more than vindicated.

A few days before Christmas I went shopping downtown and on the Drive.  By the end of the day, I had a raft of packages that I was manhandling.  I got them all home safe, only to discover that my shoulder pouch had gone missing.  The pouch was worth just a buck or two, but it held my expensive and well-loved camera, my new expensive sunglasses, and my asthma inhaler.

On the days we haven’t been completely snowed in, I have made efforts to visit every store I visited that day to ask if I left my bag there.  No luck.   However, this morning we phoned Transit Lost & Found and, lo and behold, the pouch was there – and with all its contents!  It had been turned in by the driver (operator #50164:  if you ever see him or her, give them a pat on the back).

Can’t beat that for good service and honest workers!  Thanks to them all!

The Wonders of Advertising Technology

This story is from WCBSTV in New York:

New York’s transit agency is testing digital advertising screens on the sides of buses.  The screens can target ads for specific neighborhoods. The ads, which resemble TV commercials, could even advertise coffee in the morning, and beer after work.  Titan Worldwide has a 10-year, $800 million contract to sell ads throughout the city’s bus and commuter-train systems. The company says GPS technology allows it to change the ads based on the buses’ locations.   The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is testing the system on a Manhattan route, with an eye toward 200 buses in the first quarter of next year.

A Petty Annoyance With Transit

I’m disappointed with the transit’s in-bus ad management.   I was on a 135 express this morning,  the ads facing me were for an AIDS walk on 9/21 and for the 7th annual wedding show on 9/13-14.  As we are now more than a month beyond the latter event, it is disturbing to see these old ads.

It cannot be too difficult to establish a list of date-sensitive ads currently in the system, to maintain the currency of that list, and to remove old ads in a timely fashion based on alerts generated by the list.

If no new paid ads are available to fill the slots, then PSAs, recruitment posters, maps of the route and/or system could be used — anything useful or interesting for the rider to spend some time with.

Finally, I want to congratulate the designer who came up with the concept of the 11 x 35 cardboard card for in-bus advertising.   Cheap and easy to produce and install/replace.  And yet with an area large enough to stretch the skills of the finest designers.

Transit As Piggy Bank

How about this for a lede:

A person can achieve an average savings of $9,499 per year by taking public transportation instead of driving based on yesterday’s gas prices and the average unreserved parking rate according to the American Public Transportation Association’s “Transit Savings Report”.

Almost $10,000 a year!   There’s more:

“As Americans look for ways to tighten the family budget, public transit riders know the cheapest gallon of gasoline is the one you never have to buy,” said William W. Millar, president of APTA.  “This report reminds commuters that taking public transportation is the quickest way to save money from the high cost of commuting by auto or light truck.” The analysis also includes the cost of parking.  On average, according to the 2008 Colliers International Parking Rate Study, the national average for the monthly unreserved parking rate in a city’s downtown business district is $143.  Over the course of a year, parking costs alone can amount to an average of $1,720. In addition to the annual savings, the report calculates the monthly savings for public transit users at $792 per month based on yesterday’s gas price of $3.524 as reported by AAA.

I haven’t owned a car since 1991 and take transit most everyday.  I’m not sure we see these levels of “savings”; but even with our increased use of cabs and a monthly weekend car rental, I know we are well ahead of the car game.  Not to mention the health benefits of walking in the fresh air.

Many will disagree with me, I’m sure, but I think we are lucky of transit in Vancouver.  I travel to the Richmond suburbs every day from Commercial Drive.  A good walk, two express buses, and I’m there, rested and ready to go in about an hour.  During that hour, I can nap or read or listen to music or surf the net.  Hard to beat.

The Market Is Working

Long time readers will know from postings in my earlier incarnations that (a) I don’t much care for cars (having given up my last car back in 1991); and (b) I think Vancouver’s transit system is swell and keeps getting better (I use it every day). I am, therefore, interested in gas prices only in so much as I see higher prices as a fulcrum against which behavioural changes can be leveraged.

And so far, the mechanism of high gas prices seems to have achieved at least one laudable objective. Transit ridership in the US continues to increase at a fast rate — 85 million more trips in the first quarter of 2008 than in the same period last year. They are on track for an annual total in excess of last year’s record 10.2 billion trips.

“There’s no doubt that the high gas prices are motivating people to change their travel behavior,” said American Public Transportation Association president William Millar … In a survey released last month by IBM’s Institute for Electronic Government, a total of 31% of commuters who normally drive to work said they would change their transportation habits if gas were to cross $4 a gallon. IBM also found that a total of 66% of drivers would seek other means of transportation if gas hits $5 a gallon.

I haven’t seen local figures, but anecdotal evidence and personal experience indicates a greater ridership on the buses in Vancouver, too. This is good stuff!

We Got The Good Buses

As of last Monday, the #20 bus route that runs down Commercial Drive is handled by the wonderful new articulated buses.

For years we have had to live with the old buses on The Drive, and boy did they get crowded! Bigger buses, increased schedules — this is a good time!

Update:  It has taken me a week to realize that the big new buses on the Drive are trolleys, running on electricity.  This makes then even better than my old favourites, the 98 and 99 B Lines, which are powered by gas or diesel!

A Fragile Line

Having been brought up in England in the 50s and 60s, I have a deeply ingrained sense of what is right and wrong when faced with a queue or line. The queue is the physical embodiment of that civilized leveling principle — first come, first served. An orderly queue is not something one should mess with. In North America generally and Canada in particular, the orderly queue is a rare event, saved mainly for those lining up days in advance to buy concert tickets or an attractive condo. Even then, I suspect, orderliness and decorum is better at the front of the line than closer to the back.

I am acutely aware of the lack of queue etiquette here, traveling as I do by bus every day. A day didn’t go by without someone barging into the line or to the front of it without a single thought for those who had been waiting patiently. When challenged on their rudeness, most of them genuinely seem baffled that something else might have been expected of them. Now, it is worse.

The otherwise wonderful express 98 and 99 B-Line buses have three set of doors. Since Tuesday, the system has allowed riders to board through all three doors. No longer do you have to show your bus pass to the driver at the front (financial integrity is now maintained by the goons with guns otherwise known as the Transit Police). This is an improvement in convenience, certainly, but it has dealt a death blow to the fragile flower known as a bus queue.

In my youth, I am sure, riders would have worked out where the doors would be when the bus was at the stop and would form three lines corresponding with the entrances. Not here, oh no. Now, here, the crowd schmeers itself along the whole length of where the bus will be and, upon its arrival, the crowd rushes pell-mell for the doors. What a damn mess!