Unloading Only

24 minutes ago, Express691 said:

Artic 430 and artic 351/601 are no more.

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9237 did a 412 yesterday. Unless someone can prove to me that Orion C92s were a mainstay after HTC opened, then this will be a special sighting. 

Also can't remember If artics made an appearance at all on the C92 (need pictures)

The thought of an artic on a community shuttle route is rather amusing

53 minutes ago, GORDOOM said:

But if that's the case, they're not living in the real world. In the real world, book-outs are made from anything you can push, pull, or drag out of the yard, and maintaining subfleets only makes that harder. Maintaining a subfleet purely for branding purposes is IMO a luxury TransLink cannot afford right now.

At least with andrewjoystick's design, it wouldn't feel so un-natural to see that branding on other routes on occasion. Many of the D60LF today are painted in a B-Line livery and often used on non-B-Line routes. Imo the green livery would make that 100 times worse. I agree that it seems like a silly sacrifice to make from an operations standpoint for a little bit of branding.

40 minutes ago, Brando737 said:

There are lots of changes in progress right now to improve the transit system as a whole and customer image is a major one.  There are ways to manage a sub fleet for certain services and that could be one reason why they are reassessing all the depot's for how many busses they can hold and if they can add more than originally measured.  Keep in mind, all new artics coming are for the B-Line's which will displace a number of 40 footers so that will create some room.  Also at BTC North where the artics are stored the big building that runs along the length of most of the property is for facility maintenance so if the money is there they could put those departments on other properties or locations to take down the building and make room for several more buses.

September 2019 will most likely see a shuffle of several routes between depots which will help with this as well.  I believe they are wanting all depot's to be 100% within 2 year's.

TransLink / CMBC have always seemed to me like they really have things together, at least compared with other transit agencies I know. Besides service expansion, I can't really think of much they could improve. TransLink's branding, and customer satisfaction with transit service in this region is amazing compared with most other places I've seen. Hopefully things will keep getting even better (but please no green buses).

3 hours ago, Large Cat said:

THIS is fantastic. Still some dark blue/charcoal so that it matches the rest of the fleet, but with a speedy orange that solidifies the B-Line branding begun on Translink's system maps and ID posts.

If they're considering that green monstrosity, a distinctive B-Line branding is clearly important to them. This design is a great compromise.

32 minutes ago, 8010 said:

Is this including extending platform lengths for 6-car MK II & IIIs or not?

This is assuming 5-car MK II trains. It appears some platform extensions will be required, but only at some stations. The PDF I linked above has more details.

Quote

As part of the upgrades, the Strategy assessed future fleet alternatives (base case, all 4-car, and all 5-car) and recommends that the Expo Line be upgraded to operate all 5-car Mark II (MKII) trains. This will increase the capacity to 25,700 passengers per hour in the peak direction (pphpd) from 16,000 in 2010. Other upgrades to support a 5-car MKII fleet of 300 vehicles by 2031 include the following:

...

Lengthening existing platforms at Commercial-Broadway Station; and,

Extension of the platforms and reconstruction of the existing footbridge and circulation facilities at 29th Avenue Station.

...

Quote

The ultimate design capacity originally envisaged for the Expo Line was 19,400 pphpd using trains consisting of 6 MKI vehicles operating at 93 second headways. With more recent design innovations the system can now increase line capacity to 25,700 pphpd based on running a fleet with 5 MKII vehicles per train, operating at 93 second headways. To achieve this new capacity target, physical upgrades to stations, subsystems and the Operations and Maintenance facility would be needed.

Quote

The platform length currently provided at most Expo Line Stations is 80 metres. This length would enable operations of five vehicle MKII trains with four stations requiring modest platform extensions. Although six vehicle MKII trains were also considered initially, it is not possible to accommodate this train length without significant and costly reconstruction of all stations, which would be particularly costly for the underground stations.

It appears the plan is to eventually upgrade the Expo line to its "maximum" capacity of 25,700 pphpd, from the last improvement to 16,000 pphpd in 2010. Looks like we're already getting close to the 16,000 pphpd capacity during peak hours along some parts of the line. I suppose you mean that Expo will likely reach 25,700 pphpd by 2050?

https://www.translink.ca/~/media/documents/plans_and_projects/rapid_transit_projects/expo line upgrade strategy/expo line upgrade strategy project summary.ashx

"... if you build a streetcar instead of a good bus line, that money you spend above the cost of the bus line is not helping anyone get anywhere any faster."

https://humantransit.org/2009/07/streetcars-an-inconvenient-truth.html

3 minutes ago, ThomasW97 said:

I'm sure people will recognize still as a T/L vehicle with the destination sign 

For sure, but I think most people wouldn't look at that bus and immediately think "TransLink", from a branding point of view. Maybe the idea is to give the high frequency express buses more distinctive branding, to sell them as a different "higher quality" service (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_rapid_transit#Prominent_brand_or_identity)?

I'm not sure if I'd recognize that as a TransLink bus if it pulled up at my stop. It's such a departure from all of the other liveries in service, which are at least some combination of the normal TransLink yellow / blue / white / gray colors. This also seems like it would make it more uncomfortable to use that coach on other routes / loan it to other depots?

1 hour ago, Brando737 said:

All current and future bus orders are supposed to have the barriers factory installed.  At least that's the plan. 

All current Xcelsior's will begin to be retrofitted shortly over the span of 6 months to a year.  Trolley's may follow soon if the temperature study hasn't come back as being negative.

Has there been much discussion about them yet? I'm curious to know the general feeling. I've heard mixed reviews from the drivers I've talked with.

5 minutes ago, Express691 said:

For now these are all in Surrey, all the 181xx CNG buses

Hmm, so they are missing on the new LFSe that have been spotted at Prevost, etc..?

Are all of the buses in these orders supposed to have a driver barrier pre-installed? I imagine this has been mentioned already but I couldn't find it

8 hours ago, buizelbus said:

All the Canada Line stops appear to be getting Bay numbers.

 

Not in Service was changed to I believe the old font. I prefer it.

That makes sense, it just feels a bit strange seeing the bay number in place of "Cambie St" on the stop information display. Interesting that the terminus at Commercial-Broadway doesn't have a bay number.

It's interesting that the "sorry" part is still in the "new" font. I guess it was a mistake?

Another note about GTFS: The stop name as shown on the bus passenger information displays ("WB W 10 AVE FS SASAMAT ST") no longer appears in the GTFS data. Something similar to what was previously in the stop_desc field ("W 10 AVE @ SASAMAT ST") is now in the stop_name field ("Westbound W 10 Ave @ Sasamat St"), and the stop_desc field is now empty.  There are similar types of changes to some of the other parts too. You can really tell they're using some new program / version.

Some small things related to service changes today:

The 99's EB/WB Cambie St. stops have been renamed to "Broadway-City Hall Station @ Bay 1" / "Broadway-City Hall Station @ Bay 4".

The stop and route names in the GTFS data TransLink publishes are mixed-case now, instead of all uppercase. The trip headsigns are still all uppercase (as displayed on the buses). It looks like their GTFS-Realtime feed has also changed formats slightly.

The "not in service" part of the "SORRY" "NOT IN SERVICE" signs appear to no longer be in bold face or something?

15 hours ago, pepperman said:

7115 was in danger of retirement a few months ago, when the transmission blew. It received a transmission from a scrapper and is back in service.

Wow. Is this normal? You'd think it would be much easier just to retire it instead of another working D40LF. 7115 must really have some fans on the inside too.