West Coast Express

The Lower Mainland's commuter train, owned by TransLink.

Various Transportation Options

Cruise ship port, SeaBus port, goods movement, commuter rail, maintenance of way, and a white schoolbus thrown in for good measure. Not shown: helicopter landing area.

tags: , , , ,
Flickr icon for jehvicvbc
Submitted by jehvicvbc on Tue 2009-11-10 18:33 #

Hey, I recognize this. Interesting view. Thanks for sharing. I'm guessing the skytrain tracks are the first ones the other side of the fence.

Seen on Recent Flickr Photos by Mefites.

The above comments will not display in the recently updated section because they are syndicated directly from the Flickr photo.

group: Vancouver Transit

Vancouver Is Not Serious About Rail

(Cross-posted from Countably Infinite as part of Blogathon 2009.)

Canada Line 3:59 PM

Looking at Wikipedia's timeline of the Canada Line decisions, we see that TransLink canceled the project twice and we know that in order to cut costs, InTransitBC changed the construction from bored tunnel along much of Cambie St. to cut and cover. We also know that the Canada Line trains are completely incompatible with existing SkyTrain tracks along the Expo Line and the Millennium Line, and even if they were compatible, the system was never designed to connect trains at Waterfront Station. (An engineer at an open house years ago, before construction even started, assured me that they could—or would—not build a tunnel with the radius required to connect.)

Visiting the Vancouver City Centre station as part of the open house today (my set on Flickr), I was shocked with the visual reminder of something I knew already: that trains would not be nearly as long as the existing SkyTrain systems. Roomier, as Jim Pick notes, but shorter. The stations constrain the size of the trains to the two car trains, where on the Expo Line and Millennium Line, 6 car trains can fit snugly, as we found out last winter. The dirty trains and security guards killing me with kindness, asking me in a friendly way where I was going when I just wanted a picture of the tunnel, dispel any enthusiasm I might have had for Canada Line and rail in general in the Lower Mainland.

Dirty train on display at Vancouver City Centre Station

Longish articles in The Walrus and The Tyee by Monte Paulsen detail how Canada missed its chance for a culture where rail transportation co-exists as a first-class citizen in our supposedly modern nation. The humming and hawing about a second train from Vancouver to Seattle illustrates how various levels of government don't want this anywhere near their electoral constituencies. The recent "cancellation" of the Evergreen Line further puts to rest any claim that the Lower Mainland at its various levels of government is serious about rail. For this fan of rail transportation (I bought the Microsoft Train Simulator game at the height of the popularity of first-person shooter Half Life: Counterstrike) I have to ask myself: do I wait for Vancouver and its surroundings to seriously commit to rail as a viable mode of transportation around and inside the city, or do I move to a metropolitan area that is already serious?

Thanks to Karen for letting me write on her blog. I know she's passionate about this city and its public transit system, and it comes through on her transit blog TransLinked. I love this city and its buses, trolleys, passenger ferries and yes, its various trains, including the often overlooked and underrated (and popular!) West Coast Express. I've even gone so far as to take a trip out to Port Moody for no other reason than to ride Vancouver's commuter rail. In my capacity as administrator of the Vancouver Transit group on Flickr, I want to document and show my respect and awe for TransLink's network of transportation methods, and I want the city and its environs to seriously consider streetcar, elevated and below grade rail as well as extensions of the WCE. I'm looking forward to what comes out of Vancouver's demonstration streetcar project during the Olympics, and see it as the right step towards a serious approach to mass transit in the city proper and the Metro Vancouver region. I don't have any other signs of this, however with the Canada Line and other proposed extensions to SkyTrain.

West Coast Express TrainBus

They don't normally park on the north side of the street.

tags: , , ,
Flickr icon for Stephen Rees
Submitted by Stephen Rees on Sat 2009-02-21 09:10 #

Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Vancouver Transit, and we'd love to have this added to the group!

Flickr icon for sillygwailo
Submitted by sillygwailo on Sat 2009-02-21 11:44 #

You'd think as the co-admin of the Vancouver Transit group I would have remembered to add this photo to it. Thanks for the reminder!

The above comments will not display in the recently updated section because they are syndicated directly from the Flickr photo.

group: Vancouver Transit

TransLink iPhone App Available at m.translink.ca

Igor Faletski's screenshot of the TransLink iPhone web app showing his bookmarked buses

More TransLink mobile integration heroism from the folks at Handi Mobility here in Vancouver: Igor Faletski today officially announces something I knew unofficially-officially yesterday via Twitter: m.translink.ca as viewed in the iPhone is a web application that gives transit riders quick access to bus, SkyTrain, West Coast Express, and SeaBus information in a pleasing interface. Users of the site can bookmark not just most-used routes but individual stops along that route, and the bookmarks themselves show the next 3 scheduled buses to arrive at that stop. It's already came in handy with a couple of trips last night. No more sending text messages and waiting to receive them for information the next bus! Now I just wait as long as the Internet takes to deliver the information.

I love the nice TransLink logo icon for when you "Add to Home Screen" and the bookmarking functionality. What, I don't have to sign up for an account to do that? Neat! I like the iconography at the top, though it's too bad there's no distinctively "Vancouver" bus that one can play off of. I like the alert bar at the top, but who has seen it change on the website? Maybe the one or two times it snows we'll get a notification that SkyTrain is down again. The part of the web app I'm not feeling is landscape mode: my expectation for landscape mode, iPod app aside (and even there it bothers me) is to see the regular portrait mode screen but wider and/or bigger text. In the case of the TransLink web app, it delivers city transit maps (and miscapitalizes the name of the regional transit authority) and in PDF form. Is it just me or can I not zoom in on them? Regardless, I don't see myself using the maps all that much. Transit is more point-to-point (how do I get from GM Place to Lougheed Mall?) than trying to find myself and where I need to go on a static map. More integration, if possible, with Google Maps' directions (or Google Transit) is needed, though Apple and/or Google have some work to get that happening.

I'm looking forward to the fully-qualified app that one can download from the App store, which promises location-awareness ("show me the buses that stop near me") and getting the Buzzer blog (coming October 6th, evidently, at buzzer.translink.ca) on the iPhone through the app. Also promised, according to a post over at Techvibes, "rider-feedback", which presumably includes a panic button or the ability to tell Coast Mountain Bus Company that their operators are taking personal calls while driving. And, hopefully, point out the awesome drivers as well.

Pages