Zwei goes to town
Zwei had some business to attend to in Vancouver on Friday morning and from casual observation, our transit system is a failure.
Hitting Oak street at 10:30, the traffic going South was gridlocked until Park Ave., yet the two North bound trolley buses I passed were all but empty.
The Broadway B-99 express buses were also lightly patronized, yet I saw a parade of three West bound B-99 buses bunched up at MacDonald, with the third bus empty.
On my whole journey, from Delta to West Broadway and home via Dunbar and South West Marine Dr., I passed no more than five cyclists!
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that TransLink’s and Vision Vancouver’s transit cycling strategies are not working and are their to placate small but very politically active pressure groups. Lots of buses, but no customers: and this is the mass of ridership that demands a $3 billion subway?
Lots of people using cars, yet very few taking transit demonstrates not just bad management, but a an extremely dangerous political hubris about public transit.
What is the moral of this little travel log?
Beware of planners, politicians, and self proclaimed transit experts, who are shilling for a Broadway subway; which will be a horrendously expensive transit project that will do more to impair public transit in the region than improve it.
Yes, it is too frustrating to watch all the empty buses heading to UBC (until 3:30 am!) and then listen to the mayor in Vancouver tell us that the subway to UBC is urgently needed! OK…
What we really require is a transit system which the large population of drivers might be inclined to use, occasionally. That is, we require transit for the majority of commuters and not ST for the few number of people who work in downtown Vancouver or travel to UBC. Metro Vancouver is lacking at grade transit, trams, for the masses (drivers who have no alternative, presently, for casual trips which ST is useless for here).
If you can convince even a small number of the essentially infinite number of drivers to make that trip on transit once in a while, it makes a big difference to traffic and transit use. Building ST lines for the few unemployed (students) or underemployed individuals who want to live in Surrey to ride 50 km on ST into downtown Vancouver for minimum wage jobs or to UBC for university does nothing to reduce road congestion here.
It seems odd to me that TransLink uses many express (articulated diesel) buses on Broadway (99 route) but only operates a few electric trolleybuses on Broadway. Isn’t this backwards? Can’t TransLink run a few diesel buses, if any, and many articulated electric trolleybuses on Broadway, instead? Broadway is a trolleybus route, supposedly.
I don’t know whether the City of Vancouver is over paying for ST service and can’t afford to pay TransLink to run trolleybuses on Broadway or whether TransLink is skimming money that the City of Vancouver gives it for the trolleybuses and using it to bail out ST. My guess is the former.
I cycled to MEC for some hiking gear today and rode my bike next to the unused railway tracks on 6th Avenue. All I could think is: how stupid of the City of Vancouver to be thinking of a subway three blocks away on Broadway when the railway tracks for the tram are right there waiting to be used on 6th Avenue. Oh well, if you are too daft to make it in life, you can always find a developer to fund your campaign and run for mayor in Vancouver.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/03/18/gregor-robertson-vancouver-developers-lunch_n_4987015.html
http://blogs.theprovince.com/2014/03/18/how-much-for-a-salad-mayor-gregor-robertsons-pricey-fundraiser-mocked-in-25klunch-meme-competitio/
It was not my intention to write the article, but the near gridlock on Oak St. (in the catchment area of the Canada Line); the lack of customers on the buses, and an almost lack of cyclists, gave me pause to wonder.
By the way, since you mentioned the Canada Line or CL for short: ironically, everywhere you have ST or elevated heavy rail transit (CL) in Vancouver, you have heightened road congestion. Here is one of my favourite pictures of the Pattullo Bridge (the woefully inadequate and overflowing with cars) managed by TransLink with the Expo Line (ST) managed by TransLink right beside the Pattullo Bridge:
http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2014/06/translink-mayors-council-proposes-7-5-billion-10-year-transportation-expansion-plan/
Obviously, if ST were the answer to road congestion, TransLink could merely increase the ST frequency more to remove the cars from the Pattullo Bridge. In the same way, TransLink could clear up Cambie Street which is almost a parking lot for drivers crawling along Cambie Street: by increasing the frequency of the CL in operation right underneath Cambie Street.
So what gives? How come roads next to major transit routes are the most terribly congested and roads far from major transit routes flow so easily?
Here’s the answer and it applies to Montreal and Toronto, also: transit users are being recycled from buses and concentrated on major trunk lines. This makes all the buses on parallel routes deprived of riders and the buses are merely used to shuttle riders to the trunk line. This also applies to the 99 BRT on Broadway where riders on parallel bus routes are recycled to the 99 route to make all the parallel bus routes mostly empty.
At the same time, the trunk lines as well as the BRT routes are jam packed with buses creating all the road congestion and chaos for drivers trying to weave through the maze of transit buses. If you want to drive in Metro Vancouver, the fastest roads are the ones without transit buses cutting off drivers. For me living by UBC next to the Pacific Ocean, I take SW Marine Drive, Highway 99 and Highway 91 which are devoid of any real transit to reach Langley. If I have to go to Burnaby, I take West 12th Avenue which again has no transit buses interfering with vehicle flow.
This isn’t a rant against transit, merely fact. So, what I’m saying is that, yes I agree, transit here is a miserable failure.
We have too many clueless individuals and politicians who don’t understand or care (likely the later) that ST and BRT concentrating transit users are the root cause of the road chaos in Metro Vancouver. Adding more ST and BRT routes for politicians to help their developer friends market million dollar condos in China is analogous to throwing gasoline on the fire to put out the fire.
http://www.cireport.ca/2014/07/vancouver-house-tower-condos-reserved-for-asian-buyers-will-have-asset-management-program-for-absentee-owners.html
So let’s see, you drive down Oak street, glance out the window and make a conclusion on an entire city and it’s transportation policies based on that one trip?
Oak street and it’s bridge are unattractive for cycling on so most folks cycle north and south on Heather street, a few blocks over. Oak is not a typical street to judge cycling numbers on. Cycling is huge here and the city’s polices come from a grass roots movement that’s been building for decades. (In fact it’s a worldwide grass roots movement.)
The same with the buses being empty. What kind of blinders are you wearing? I see jam packed 99B buses all the time.
I’ve been reading this blog for a few years now and used to nod in agreement with it’s circular logic but when you come out with stuff like this that’s so out of touch with reality, it makes me question everything else written here. I get that you want better transit in Surrey. I think that’s a good thing but your approach isn’t going to get you anywhere. There may or may not be some conspiracy at Translink to favour Skytrain over light rail, I don’t know but the transit service for the consumer is really good here compared to most cities in this continent. (In fact, . This is an indicator that it’s a good service.)
This is the reason that I hope we never amalgamate like Toronto did. I don’t want someone from the suburbs, who views things out their windshield on the occasional trip to town and doesn’t understand people’s lives making decisions for us.
Zwei replies: Excuse me, when did you see full buses? Actually statistics do not prove your “the main problem is that it’s too popular and often crowded”, rather ridership has kept pace with population growth and TransLink does not provide the capacity needed on certain routes such as Broadway, making crowded conditions. Three more artics on the B-99 route would greatly ease overcrowding, but TransLink dos not schedule the buses. Transit service is very good in Vancouver but that is only happening because the south Fraser cities are subsidizing the service!
@Zander, care to illustrate some of the “circular logic” here? No one is right 100% of the time. Conventional views on transit are challenged here and misinformation by TransLink is being exposed. You won’t find a more frank blog on the internet about transit in Metro Vancouver. TransLink according to TransLink never makes mistakes or at least has never admitted to being wrong since its inception in 1999. How plausible is this?
Even ignorant and malicious individuals such as Rico,Daryl DC and Richard quoting propaganda by TransLink as supposed fact or simply misinterpreting information to fabricate a false reality of the supposed efficacy of ST have been allowed to make their inane comments here. They benefit from ST and honesty threatens them. Their motivation has been to flood this site with misinformation to bury the factual comments discrediting TransLink and ST.
TransLink is guilty of the same thing in the newspapers. After the two recent ST disasters, TransLink was quick to flood the “Vancouver Sun” and other papers (which it has bought off ) with feel good stories about how so many people love TransLink and how competent everyone at TransLink is. Routes according to TransLink were packed on “transit free” day when in fact it was a lie on most routes and a gross exaggeration. Mass lies contradicting the truth is the strategy adopted by TransLink to distort the reality that ST is a sham which costs too much and discourages transit use. Anyhow, you know better and nothing that I say will convince you otherwise. G’day.
Zwei replies: I wonder how TransLink will fare with the public now that one of TransLink’s greatest shills has retired from the radio scene?
Again, Zwei was in Vancouver and Oak St. was gridlocked past Park Ave. Traffic was heavy; I saw more cyclists, but about the same number of transit customers. So much for TransLink’s boast of the Canada Line taking off 200,000 car journeys a day.