Angus McIntyre retires after 40 years behind the wheel

Longtime trolley driver Angus McIntyre will be retiring at the end of May! (We made sure to get the trolleys in the background of this picture :)

After driving buses for 41 years, Angus McIntyre has announced he will be retiring at the end of May!

His last official day will be Tuesday Monday May 31 (celebrations are planned!), but until then you can catch him driving the 7 Dunbar/Nanaimo or the interlined Main/Victoria routes in the evenings. Congratulate him if you see him!

I spoke with Angus last week, and asked him to share his reflections on the city and transit after 40 odd years of service. It’s a long period to think about—he notes that he actually worked through six decades, starting in the last four months of 1969 and finishing in the first half of 2010.

“Very few people in this company achieve that goal [of 40 years driving],” he said with a laugh. “You have to start quite young and be durable to make it through.”

You can read the full interview below (and see this post for more on Angus!).

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An interview with Noam Dolgin, author of Canada Line Adventures

It’s kind of turning into interview week here on the blog, but let’s just run with it!

So local environmental educator Noam Dolgin put pen to paper last year and came up with Canada Line Adventures, a slim pocket guide to help you explore the neighbourhoods near the new Canada Line stations in Vancouver and Richmond.

I thought I’d chat with him about the guide and what drove him to put it together, and just what kind of adventures are in store for you once you pick it up.

So why did you decide to write this guide?

On opening day and in my personal conversations, I saw how excited people in the city were about Canada Line, and I decided to give people the tools to take advantage of it. Rapid transit offers enormous opportunity for environmentally friendly recreation, as an environmental educator and advocate, I wanted to capitalize on that enthusiasm to help get people using the train for recreation.

In addition, I grew up near what is now Canada Line, in the Cambie corridor, and am very proud of what my neighbourhood offers. After having lived in New York for seven years, relying entirely on trains for my transportation needs, when I moved back to Vancouver, I was excited about the expansion in our train system and wanted to share my experience and expertise with the rest of Vancouver.

Author Noam Dolgin!

I remember saying to myself, ‘I want to show people what the Cambie corridor has to offer and explore Richmond and Sea Island.’ I was excited about transit, about showing off my neighbourhood and about exploring new neighbourhoods. I hope that comes across through the pocket guide.

Every station has nine categories of things to do around that station, from restaurants and bars, to children’s activities and a neighbourhood walking tour. It’s intentionally written to be small, easily fit in any pocket or bag, yet packed with information. Good for residents or tourists.

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An interview with Oliver Neubert, CMBC maintenance planner and children’s book author!

Oliver Neubert!

Oliver Neubert has been a maintenance planner with Coast Mountain Bus Company since 2007—but he’s also a children’s book author on the side!

Oliver’s four-book series is a fantasy adventure called Chantel’s Quest, which you can pick up at Kidsbooks, at Chapters, or your local library. (Or check the April Buzzer to see how you can win copies of the first two books!)

You may have seen a quick interview with Oliver in the April Buzzer, but since we actually had a much longer conversation, I thought I’d post the extended version on the blog. So here we go!

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An interview with Tamsin Dillon, director of London’s Art on the Underground program

Tamsin Dillon, head of the London Underground public art program.

Yesterday, we were honoured to have Tamsin Dillon give a presentation at TransLink!

Tamsin is the head of the London Underground’s art program, called Art on the Underground. She kindly agreed to come by our offices as she was also in town for a conference at the Vancouver Art Gallery. (Explore the Art on the Underground website here!)

During her presentation, she gave us background on the program and talked about its works. Art on the Underground is actually part of their customer experience strategy, and works to fulfill the Underground’s chief philosophy: “value our customer’s time.”

Under Tamsin’s direction, the art program has adopted the motto, “World class art for a world class Tube for a world class city,” and has presented works from high-profile artists like Cindy Sherman and Mark Titchner, as well as artists at early stages of their career.

Richard Long's artwork for the Tube map cover. Photo from Art on the Underground.

The program has been creative in seeking out places for art of all kinds all over the system. For example, the Tube map cover is now illustrated by artists, and one project doesn’t use system space at all – it asks Piccadilly Line staff to use a booklet of selected quotations in their announcements and conversations.

And the works continue to involve front-line staff more and more — for instance there’s a portrait series of 60 Jubilee Line staff to celebrate its 30 year anniversary.

Just in case you’re wondering, we don’t currently have any concrete plans or a mandate for an ongoing public art program right now, except for smaller projects like the Main Street public art project (here’s work 1 and work 2), or the Between Spaces partnership.

But we were happy to hear Tamsin’s insight on how art has worked for her system, and her experience will absolutely help inform our work as we move forward!

Tamsin was also kind enough to do an interview with me about her work – so for more detail on Tamsin and Art on the Underground, please continue reading below.

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TransitDB: a prizewinning Vancouver transit website

Carson Lam, all dressed up for the Microsoft FTW Ultimate App Throwdown.

At the end of June, UBC computer science student Carson Lam emerged victorious in Microsoft’s FTW Ultimate App Throwdown, a programming contest pitting a student project against a professional one.

What was Carson’s winning project? TransitDB, a super handy implementation of TransLink’s transit data!

Check out the site: you can see bus routes mapped onto Google Maps, the next buses leaving from each stop at a bus loop on a single page, and an RSS feed of current system alerts.

The site is quite prescient—many of its features are actually already being put together for the TransLink website! But we’re still absolutely thrilled to see great developers building great tools to help our customers out, and we’re working to make our data accessible to all developers so they can do even more (really!).

For more, here’s a Q&A with Carson, explaining bit more about TransitDB, the Microsoft contest, and where he and the site might end up next.

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Profile: Tafyrn & Seamora Palecloud, Canada Line construction photographers

A double rainbow over the Canada Line's Operations and Maintenance Centre --- one of the many fabulous photos found at Canada Line Photography.

For Friday, here’s the second profile in a series on Lower Mainland transit enthusiasts — our first was on the Trans Vancouver bus photo archive.

Look up “Canada Line photos” in Google, and the first hit you’ll get is Canada Line Photography, an enormous repository of terrific photographs chronicling the train line’s construction.

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Profile: the transit fans behind the Trans-Vancouver bus photo archive

Chris Cassidy, George Prior, and David Lam, the photographers behind Trans-Vancouver. (They're wearing orange vests because the docks made us all wear them for safety reasons.)

For your Friday Buzzer fix, here’s the first in a series of profiles I hope to do with transit enthusiasts from the Lower Mainland.

Poke around the web in search of Vancouver transit info, and you’re bound to come across Trans-Vancouver, an insanely comprehensive bus photo site.

Online since 2004, the site’s neatly organized galleries boast over 1,400 photos of every single bus in the Lower Mainland. That includes almost every ad wrap, heritage bus, and even one-offs like TransLink’s alternative energy test buses, or the time we tried out a double decker bus.

You can’t go through the site without wondering who’s behind it, so I got in touch and did an interview with David Lam, George Prior, and Chris Cassidy, the photographers behind the gallery. (David started the site and has taken about two-thirds of the 1,400 photos—the rest are from George and Chris, who began contributing their photos to the site a few years after its start.)

As you’ll find out, they’re all very young guys who just happen to love buses. I got to meet them in person at the send-off for the retired trolleys in October, and managed to grab some photos of them in action. (Fun fact: at the send-off, the guys told me that they had previously located the retired buses at the Fraser-Surrey docks, sleuthing out the location from just one photo they saw on Flickr. They’d already been down to photograph the buses at the docks, albeit from outside the fences.)

My full interview with David, George, and Chris is below!

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