8010

12 hours ago, dover5949 said:

I've noticed a lot more traffic in the Lower Mainland in the last few weeks. I think this has been contributed by more visitors vacationing in the Lower Mainland due to the Forest Fires & High Covid cases in the Interior & Okanagan.

The forest fires and tourists are understandable, the COVID case hysteria isn’t, but I think you’re probably right that some people are probably trying to escape the case numbers in the interior even though no one is really looking at the fact that the death count isn’t mirroring the case count like it was last year.

13 minutes ago, Express691 said:

Gongshow this afternoon on the north shore as we have incidents in the Cassiar tunnel as well as on the Lions Gate

SeaBus terminals are logjammed

Then another crash just outside lonsdale quay

I like how people forget how to drive in the rain or snow when there hasn’t been any precipitation for awhile.

1 hour ago, FL04DIFN said:

7409 MVC on Granville and King Ed on July 16

Well... the transmission has been not great for over a year, that unit seems to have a difficult time changing gears, I noticed 7439 is starting to have similar issues as well but not as bad. I wouldn’t be surprised if 7409 gets retired, hopefully they’ll pull out one of the old DD50 training units to replace it (if they even bother replacing it) but they’d probably use one of the ISL units first.

5 hours ago, Express691 said:

Permanent minor adjustment to route 23 effective today:

https://www.translink.ca/alerts

From my understanding of the notice at Main Street Station, the change is temporary due to construction.

50 minutes ago, Firebrand said:

Hard to create a vast RapidBus network when you’re constantly short of a budget. The issue is that you have dozens of mayors bickering at each other demanding they get their share of rapid transit, and ONLY theirs, which gets nothing done. cough Burnaby cough

The Canada Line was the result of cost-cutting measures by the BC Libs (why do you think it’s privately run right now), since the reason is they didn’t care about rapid transit, it served the Richmond ridings (which are Liberal strongholds), and they want to get it running before the Olympics. It’s no surprise that peak ridership numbers were much higher than expected, pre-covid of course.

Many of the busy bus routes haven’t been “upgraded” since it’s often due to mismanagement. The Scott Rd corridor would’ve gotten its RapidBus route by now if Poco, Pitt Meadows, and Maple Ridge demanded they get one first, since their mentaliy can be read as “Surrey already got its own B-Line, why should it need a 2nd one when we haven’t gotten ours at all?” The suburban mayors tend to be out of touch when it comes to bus routes since they mostly drive to work, and most routes they’ve seen are often empty and at low frequencies.

Knowing how things go in this region, I won’t be surprise if Poco gets its Skytrain first before UBC gets it once the extension to Arbutus is done, despite the latter deserving it more than the former.

They wouldn’t always be falling short on their budgets if they were actually handling their money properly, and judging by how their planners implement service changes, how their entire online network can be fried (and half is still offline today), how a transit agency is being overlooked by both a board and mayor’s council with majority of the members having no background in transit or urban planning, I don’t think they’re putting their funds to the best use possible. If the mayors would stop acting like children and just let TransLink implement the changes needed the most, there’s a good chance they’ll make farebox/Compass revenue back much quicker, which would most likely speed up the implementation of the lower-demand service expansions (someone can correct me if I’m wrong).

Broadway/UBC extension should’ve been done before Evergreen (how busy was the 97 if it was using mainly 40-footers?), but politics comes before actual “expertise” from the people operating and monitoring the transit network.

2 hours ago, GORDOOM said:

The rumour we're discussing, though, is for an emergency order to replace the ExxLFRs now because they can't be used in summer without A/C anymore.

If they expedite the order (which I have doubts about) they need to add more units to the order because a one-to-one replacement isn’t going to meet the demand for the trolley network.

37 minutes ago, martin607 said:

I agree that any interim order would need to be carefully specified as a pilot to test out IMC in anticipation of the main replacement order to be placed in the middle of this decade. But given that the new NFI brochure advertises batteries capable of doing 22 miles (35km) off-wire for the XT40 and 15 miles on the XT60, they would be worthwhile demonstrators right now, e.g. tests on the R4 or using battery-trolleybus on the 9 showing how the IMCsystem can deal with wiring gaps.

Or they could demonstrate it on the R5 and have it run on the Express wires along Hastings.

20 hours ago, Zortan said:

Finally, I think that the network is just plain complex, confusing, and not helpful for passengers. For example, I don't see any reason for an express bus down Main Street, which is served quite well by the 3 and can continue to be served that way. The express would likely just take passengers from the SkyTrain or other bus routes, and would overcomplicate things for riders. 

I think that your map is something that would make a King County Metro planner proud. There's still a bit of a local bus backbone, but the "premium" bus services (commuters, express, rapid) have completely flown out of control and are now covering the entire map. Not to mention the confusing SkyTrain network, which in my opinion has too much duplication between lines and has some lines in places that I just don't see demand (such as the Carvolth - Langley).

Now, it's not all bad. I love the formatting of your map (I have no idea how you did so much of it haha, I'm very jealous), and I think that you brought some much-needed service increases to places like Maple Ridge and the South of Fraser regions. I'm sorry though, overall I just can't bring myself to like the concept. I really don't mean to insult you, or throw your work out the window, so to speak, but I just think that it's far too complex, and in many cases, less is really more. 

Which aspects of my map are complex/confusing? I’ll be more than happy to address those concerns, I will add that many less-frequent routes are duplicating each other on certain corridors to provide FTN service, the stops will better reflect that when I get around to adding them, which will be fairly soon as I can see the confusion about some corridors looking like they don’t have frequent service.

Oddly enough, I drew some inspiration from King County Metro, as well as other systems around BC, Edmonton, Calgary, Montreal, Toronto (no, I am not going to make a giant streetcar network, but some areas could benefit from it), Ottawa & GO Transit, New York (not a shining star in the “state of good repair” department to say the least), London (somewhat better with the state of good repair compared to New York, just a bit less accessible with big gaps that you’re told to mind), Riyadh’s metro system, and a few others I can’t recall at the moment.

I honestly think Metro Van needs a widespread RapidBus network as well as an extensive SkyTrain network to meet 2050’s demand. TransLink has been short-sighted on nearly every project since the Canada Line (probably even before, though I don’t know how much oversight TL had over the line) and I wouldn’t be surprised if their “1 million” additional residents is a short-sighted estimate as well. Look at how the transit network was prior to the lockdowns, most buses were packed to hell during peak times (quite a few off-peak as well), even with the continuous 10-Year service expansion rollouts.

In terms of formatting: ctrl or shift + enter. There’s also little drop boxes in the data table where you can add and edit columns of information, but it’s a bit tedious to get the information to go from one layer to another and once you choose the spot for your new column, you’re either committed to it or you’ll have to delete it and make it in a different spot because you can’t move columns.

4 hours ago, Zortan said:

I'm gonna be brutally honest here, so please don't be too offended by what I have to say. I honestly think that the network is overthought, overworked and overcomplicated. I can see your logic in a lot of the routes and decisions on the map, but sometimes I think the best route is to just leave things simple, maybe not exactly the same as they are now, but not too complicated either. For example, I don't see a use in a King Edward RapidBus considering that the 25 has a lot of local demand, and has the Broadway and 41st Ave corridors on either side. I also don't think the R4 makes much sense, given that 4th is just a few blocks away from Broadway, and would probably just benefit from increased local service. Another example is the R26 continuing downtown despite stopping at the Park Royal SkyTrain Station. I get that having a direct Horseshoe Bay - Downtown route makes some sense for ferry passengers, but I don't think that it's a good move overall transit-wise, duplicating one mode of rapid transit with another. 

I kind of like the idea of having Translink take over some of the long-distance coach services with the CommuterBus brand. However, I also think that many of those routes don't make a lot of since, for example the YVR - Whistler route, which would easily make more sense using a commuter rail connection to the SkyTrain. 

I don't like seasonal service - I think that for many seasonal routes there is year-round demand, albeit with demand for a summer / winter frequency boost. Sure, it makes sense on your 198 / 199 (current 150 / 179), where the portion of the route that serves people is already duplicated by a local service, but I don't think that the 423, for example, should be seasonal, as there are people who work along Ferguson Road who currently have no transit options. 

I also think you misjudged demand in some areas. In North Vancouver, for example, you left some routes as peak-frequent or just basic that honestly would probably benefit from frequent service, like the 212. Other routes, like the 7 are seeing effectively no frequency increase, despite being important routes. Meanwhile, the 408 is seeing 8-minute peak service. I feel like there's a bit of a disconnect there between demand and frequency.

Finally, I think that the network is just plain complex, confusing, and not helpful for passengers. For example, I don't see any reason for an express bus down Main Street, which is served quite well by the 3 and can continue to be served that way. The express would likely just take passengers from the SkyTrain or other bus routes, and would overcomplicate things for riders. 

I think that your map is something that would make a King County Metro planner proud. There's still a bit of a local bus backbone, but the "premium" bus services (commuters, express, rapid) have completely flown out of control and are now covering the entire map. Not to mention the confusing SkyTrain network, which in my opinion has too much duplication between lines and has some lines in places that I just don't see demand (such as the Carvolth - Langley).

Now, it's not all bad. I love the formatting of your map (I have no idea how you did so much of it haha, I'm very jealous), and I think that you brought some much-needed service increases to places like Maple Ridge and the South of Fraser regions. I'm sorry though, overall I just can't bring myself to like the concept. I really don't mean to insult you, or throw your work out the window, so to speak, but I just think that it's far too complex, and in many cases, less is really more. 

Also, I know that I'm not qualified whatsoever as a planner, and I'm always revising my own maps and work constantly, as I learn and grow more or less comfortable with the aspects of my work. So please take my comments with a grain of salt, I will freely admit that I just do this stuff in my free time and haven't had the education or training in this area that many have been lucky enough to have. That being said, if you would like to discuss this with me, I always love talking about planning, especially in the Translink system, and I'd gladly give more specific feedback. 

My response to the “overthought” comment is this: we don’t know how dense Metro Van is going to get in the next 30-50 years. We just don’t. So I’m overdoing it in a somewhat realistic sense in terms of ridership and end-to-end and all that. The 25 is busy and slow, RapidBus and a reduced 25 makes more sense to me, regardless of the Millennium Line and 41st-Willingdon’s existing. One thing people seem to miss when pointing out adjacent rapid transit routes is the actual demand along the corridor itself. 

In terms of SkyTrain expansion, I tried to look at it from more of a fast, frequent, one-seat ride perspective that has the highest overall potential to attract development to build up the ridership. Obviously, plonking a SkyTrain line down in Maple Ridge tomorrow would be a stupid and money-wasting idea, but that could change 20-30 years down the road. The Canada Line is a perfect example of this, although some will argue the Canada Line “isn’t SkyTrain,” even though both systems are automated light metros.

In terms of service frequencies, just disregard those for now as I plan on updating the formatting to show more than just “Peak” and “Off-peak” frequencies, which will result in frequency adjustments across the board. Most of the frequencies listed are based off 2019 schedules and the TSPR, so there will be some adjustments required. 

I will look into off-seasonal service for the 423 (and possibly the 261 with the roller coaster-thing being built on Cypress (it’s not a roller coaster but I can’t remember the name of it at the moment) as I do remember that area being served by the C91 at one point.

The CommuterBus routes are nowhere near done and many of the routes are just ideas for now, but I agree Whistler - YVR doesn’t make much sense. I just threw that there as a replacement for the Skylinx (idk if that’s how it’s spelled) current service.

Just cut the Main Street Express off the ideas list because it really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

I think people going from UBC to Downtown would probably want a fast one-seat ride with the R4 4th Ave, I also put the R4 down to replace the 84’s frequent express portion while also repurposing the express potion to be a bit more than just a mere 99 B-Line mirror.
 

I’ll improve the 212 to FTN as a frequent connection between Lonsdale and Deep Cove would encourage more North Shore residents to commute to Deep Cove.

Don’t worry about offending me with your comments, there’s pretty much nothing that can offend me. Well, maybe TransLink’s overall planning and their somewhat lack of transparency.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1WEjh1N0bnU_mzweeO2wG9MS2duHzy5GJ&ll=0%2C0&z=8

I’m bored and transit hasn’t been all that exciting lately aside from the RapidBus Heat Wave Days at HTC (and technically the other 3 RapidBus transit centres as well), so I thought I’d revive this old corpse of a thread and talk about the map I’ll never stop talking about as I would like to hear what people think about any or all aspects of my map.
I’ve decided to go slightly overboard with some rapid transit expansions but I’ll explain why I made those changes. Again, keep in mind that this is envisioned for 30-50+ years from now, so I don’t expect this to come to life tomorrow. Anyway, here’s the list of notable changes (there’s a good chance I altered every route in some way):

• Re-numbered the transit network (making final adjustments). Currently updating formatting for route and station/exchange information to make the information easier to understand, this will take some time.

• Expanded service coverage throughout the entire lower mainland.

• Expanded out to Sea-To-Sky and Fraser Valley to improve regional and local connections. The networks are nowhere near complete.

• Replacing the term “minibus” with “midibus” and “shuttle” to better differentiate the two vehicle types that would be serving lower-demand areas.

• Exploring On-Demand Transit, sort of just going off Edmonton’s pilot model for now until I do more research.

• Exploring CommuterBus, a new demand-based service that only stops at major transit hubs and major destinations to reduce overcrowding and improve speeds for regional commuters. The routes are kind of a mess right now.

• Extended Hastings SkyTrain to Haney and Langley Centre. While the demand may not warrant it now, it could in 30 years. Plus, SkyTrain has proven time and time again to attract ridership and development (even if it’s 20-30+ years later like at some areas around some existing stations).

• Added the 41st-Willingdon SkyTrain line back as I don’t believe the R4 will be able to support the demand, even with a RapidBus along 49th. Converted the 130 (now 120 after renumbering the network) to artics as a result of canceling the Willingdon RapidBus.

• Extended the Canada Line along Railway Avenue to Steveston, mainly in response to their recent plans for major development to support rail rapid transit along that corridor, but also a maxed out Canada Line should probably be able to handle it, in my opinion.

• Redesigned the Burrard Inlet SkyTrain into a loop line serving the Downtown West End and East Side, and basically the entire R2 route without the stop at Lonsdale @ 3rd due to the overall route design. Brought back the SeaBus.

• Currently revising my Canada Line relief strategy. Originally, I was going to have the Arbutus LRT go to Bridgeport, but then I realized LRT isn’t going to attract many SkyTrain riders, especially from Downtown when they have to divert via Main Street Station and South False Creek. So I’m going to revise the LRT to serve False Creek to improve overall capacity and connections, especially between Arbutus, Olympic Village, and Main Street Stations. As for the actual Canada Line relief line, I’m envisioning a deep bored line with 6-8 car trains from Waterfront to Bridgeport via Granville Street (your new and improved 98 B-Line, if you will), as I believe there will definitely be demand along Granville Street. From Bridgeport, the route would exit the tunnel somewhere around Highway 99 and continue down the Highway to four branches connecting to Ladner & Tsawwassen, South Surrey & White Rock, Scottsdale & Newton, and Cloverdale & Langley. Still working on the route, probably the longest rapid transit route I’ve done but I think this is probably the best high-capacity solution to connect the suburbs to Downtown.

• Working on rapid transit routes along Highway 1, King George Boulevard & 104th Avenue, and Scott Road & 72nd Avenue.

• Extending some routes from Marine Drive Station to Marpole Loop/Station to address potential lack of layover capacity expansion.

• Exploring SafeRide; a late-night, on-demand shuttle service that would operate throughout the region from 12am-6am every night, connecting passengers to their neighbourhoods (usually from a designated transit exchange).

• Exploring additional SeaBus routes along the Fraser River.

• Started adding standard bus stops to the map, the rest will be added once the network is closer to 100% complete to avoid PC slow downs while working on the routes. FTN stops will be added first to better show the FTN corridors that are served by combined transit routes every 15 min or better.

• Greatly expanding Bike Parkades and adding new “Bike Repair Stations” (basically DIY bike maintenance stations, saw the idea recently in the recent engagement that I can’t remember the name of) in an attempt to reduce the overall number of bikes being used on transit.

• Increased RapidBus off-peak to every 12 min, might increase it to every 10 min.

• Restructuring transit in the Albion area as I believe there could be a surge in development in the next 5-10 years.

• Exploring new duplicate routes to reduce overcrowding and improve overall network connections.

• Exploring Commuter Rail extensions, including West Coast Express branches to Abbotsford, Chilliwack, and Hope.

• Adding washrooms to all stations and exchanges. These should be within a fare-paid zone or require Compass to enter and be regularly patrolled to ensure highest possible safety for customers.

• Considering renumbering the RapidBus routes to 9XX. I’ll probably end up doing that and just leave NightBus (and maybe On-Demand Transit) routes as the remaining routes that use letters.

2 hours ago, Phillip said:

I had a trolley on a Monday during the extreme heatwave at the end of June when it reached 40C. I brought a thermometer to record the temp, it reached 45C in the driver seat. 

Everything was hot, my water bottle, everything in my backpack.

Can’t you guys complain to the union reps? I can imagine driving around in a 45 degree hotbox not being very safe for the drivers as it can lead to heat strokes, fainting and other potential issues.

54 minutes ago, Vancouvers Trolleys said:

How is this be a general sighting? Should be special sighting, no? Yes?

Well, the heat waves don’t seem very “rare” this year, idk.

RapidBus day at HTC again.

Found an image of the interior of the Burrard Chinook. I’m so glad to see TransLink is continuing the trend of going backwards when it comes to comfortable seating. Is it really that difficult to make softer seats with vandal-proof seat covers?

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/translink-transit-app-empty-bus-seats-capacity
The bus seat predictions will be based on previous ridership data, let’s see how accurate this goes. If only there were passenger counters that counted each time passengers got on and off the bus in real-time...

Either 8156 is at VTC or there’s a trolley on the 16 pretending to be a DE60LFR. My guess is the latter.

12 hours ago, Millennium2002 said:

I think YVR actually ditched the fourth terminal idea (beside the existing International / USA Terminal) from their master plan for just existing terminal extensions. So it seems unlikely that it will ever get used.

Something about the terminal extensions does ring a bell. Capstan Station is pretty close to Aberdeen but I do understand there are provisions in place for it and support the station being built as the development around there has built up quite quickly. I’m sure many people will complain about the extra stop even though they could still be riding on a slower 98 B-Line bus today considering the line almost never got built in the first place due to short-sighted politicians. I don’t think the planners had much say in the Canada Line project as from what I’ve read around the internet it sounds like we could’ve gotten another Bombardier line but the Canada Line we got was cheaper and had a faster construction timeline to ensure it was open for the Olympics. That’s what I remember and I could completely be making that up, but I could’ve sworn Bombardier was at least a bidder for the project.

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/capstan-station-skytrain-canada-line-construction
I find it a bit strange that the station between YVR-Airport and Sea Island Centre isn’t part of the YVR expansion plans (at least from what I could see). I feel like that would sort of balance out operations along the two branches, but obviously there’s really no demand for such a station right now or probably even 3-5 years from now due to the COVID variant scares and all that.

4 hours ago, Translink69 said:

Not saying that isn’t a valid point, however one would assume that all the first employees would be offered cmbc employment.

Also, there are lots of current cmbc employees that live in the Valley that travel to Poco or Burnaby (mainly poco which is one of the reasons why the seniority required to work out of that depot is so high) and would love to work locally instead of travelling into Metro Vancouver

 

Those are fair points. I never took into consideration of any CMBC employees living outside of Metro Van, and the employment thing reminds me of the 257 going to CMBC two or three years ago.

I just looked at the basic distance from Waterfront to Hope and from Waterfront to Whistler, roughly the same distance so I’d say Sea-To-Sky shouldn’t be taken out of the equation when considering expanding the overall reach of the network.

8 hours ago, Express691 said:

Cant recall

=====

Speaking of Rapidbus, there were a bit more of them on the 99 today compared to other days.

And I was on one of those, 19021. Sat on one of the front seats in the priority seating area and noticed the seats don’t have that 30% extra padding they boasted about during RapidBus’ launch. You can also tell which XDE60s have been working out of Burnaby because they’re already rattly as hell.

Forgot to mention, I went to UBC Exchange this morning. No progress on the real-time displays but it looks like they’re doing something with the electrical wiring beneath Bay 3. Could be completely unrelated to the displays, though. Does anyone know if electrical work was done for the RapidBus displays?

32 minutes ago, InfiNorth said:

Politics aside, it's almost like TransLink should control the entire Fraser Valley instead of having what is effectively one metro area having three and a half transit systems... but at least we're not the GTA, right? 

The 66 needs to be more frequent and needs a few more stops on onramps/offramps (similar to how the 70/50 operate in Victoria - yes I know that's a very different scale, just looking at the good mechanics of those bus stops). It's telling that whenever I drive through the Fraser Valley (what has it been now, a year?), when I see the 66, I think wow I saw a rare bus. That shouldn't be case, nor should it be the case that the bus flies through all of the Fraser Valley without a park-and-ride here and there. Yes, I am not a fan of park-and-ride oriented bus systems, but there's no way we're ever going to see a community bus along Interprovincial Highway to feed the 66.

I’m fine with TransLink taking over the Fraser Valley transit if they keep First as the contractor because I don’t think many CMBC employees want to travel all the way to the Fraser Valley to go to work. I think Sea-To-Sky is a bit of a stretch in my opinion.

I also think Park & Ride-oriented transit is fine if there’s no major developments planned for those interchanges as it will definitely improve transit access to many people who currently rely on their vehicles.

All I’m going to say when talking about the conclusion of the survey is: Why the hell do they care about race? Seriously. What difference does it make if it’s an Asian man taking transit or a black woman? Never in the two years that I’ve been working on my map did I ever think “gee, I wonder what the white people of this particular neighbourhood are going to think of this change.” Metro Vancouver is probably the most diverse place in Canada, so I don’t think race is applicable here, nor do I think it should be applicable to any sort of transit planning. I have a politic-based theory for it but I know politics are a no-no so I’ll just say this: TransLink is more or less a government entity as I’m fairly certain tax dollars are used to cover part of their operating costs along with farebox revenue, so I think they’ll say whatever the government wants them to say. Obviously you can bring up isolated events that shouldn’t be overlooked that contradicts what I’m about to say, but I’ve always considered transit to be a very inclusive place, am I wrong? I’m also fairly certain TransLink was created as a way for the province to not deal with Metro Van’s transit, which is fair enough to be quite honest, except when we look at Fraser Valley connections in the forms of the infrequent 66 and the 21 that sounds to be running as well as the 749 according to what @Express691 said.

On 7/29/2021 at 12:07 AM, Express691 said:

...Speaking of route creation, here is the phase 2 engagement report for Transport2050

As discussed/predicted the options are rather polarizing as highlighted by some generational differences:
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/translink-transport-2050-skytrain-lrt-brt-preferences

A selection of content:

P.27

 

This is going to sound very rude and inconsiderate but I don’t know how else to word it; but are we going to listen to the people who have less time on Earth or are we going to listen to the people who have more time on Earth for a long-term rapid transit plan? Plus, RapidBus is just a cheap excuse for BRT, so I don’t see why some of the street-level routes from Network B couldn’t be added to Network A. I mean, they never gave the rough budget estimates for the overall costs of either network even though they claim to have similar budgets. There’s a reason why I only take so much of the information they throw at face-value and question the rest.