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!).

40 years in any position is an achievement. Considering that, what kept you going in the same position year after year?

Oh, the enjoyment of the work. The change in equipment. There’s always something changing. Everybody who works here, you have to be prepared for change. Because it’s always happening on a continuing basis, and as long as you’re an employee that can deal with that you’re fine, but if you aren’t able to deal with all the various changes they keep throwing at you, it makes it more challenging.

I know you’ve always been a trolley driver. I was wondering if you could talk about how the trolleys have changed over the years.

Well, the first trolleys, the Brills, we still have two examples from the 40s and 50s, were a very good vehicle for their time. Very durable. There were no right hand mirrors, and we had to learn to drive without a right hand mirror.

Why no right hand mirror?

There just hadn’t been. And there wasn’t the traffic. They felt it wasn’t as necessary back then. But eventually it was necessary. Traffic was building, there were some accidents, so they brought in right hand mirrors and they were knocked off as fast as they put them on because we weren’t used to them being there.

I’d always been interested in driving the old Brill trolleys. At 21 I went down, I got hired, I went on my first night on my own on the Victoria, then the 25 Victoria. And we were still making change, handling money. There were various challenges on the job then. We didn’t have a long rush hour like we do now. There was a very intense rush hour at 5 o’clock. A huge surge at that time. And over the years the rush hour has extended and extended over and over until finally you could say it’s 2 pm to 7 pm now. It’s a long rush hour.

So the Brills finally reached the end of the line in 1984, and we got the Flyer 900 trolleys to replace them. And they still had manual steering. Here we were with this new equipment and the company was still buying buses with manual steering. We were the last holdout. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that we were buying buses with full power steering.

And of course I stayed a couple of extra years for the opening of the new garage at Marpole, and the new trolleys, the artic trolleys. So each generation has come along and I’ve been able to be a part of that, and that’s been quite important. We were lucky that the Transit Museum Society has been created and the old buses have been kept and used for special events and community service and so on.

And these are things that you look back on. I get behind the wheel of the Brill—we had them out for a Motor Bus Society convention a couple of weeks ago—and it all just falls into place. You sit down behind the wheel, you use a few muscles to get your manual steering going again. And even though years go by, you feel at home. And memories come back. You start looking out the window and memories come back.

What do you think of?

You drive down Seymour Street and you look at a canyon of condo apartment towers. Before, everything was low rise. There was Seymour Billiards. The Penthouse is still there. There were lots of surface parking lots. One of the aspects I’ve enjoyed is that we have this window we look out of, and we see the city change. You see it grow and develop, and in some negative ways too. You see Woodwards close, and East Hastings go down the drain. All of these memories, eight hours a day driving the streets, are kind of filed away. So the equipment is all part of it. It just ties the whole thing together.

I’d read in a previous interview that your starting wage was $3.40 an hour. I was wondering what did $3.40 bought you back then.

In the city it bought you a house. We did, we went out and bought houses. In 1977 when I bought my house in Dunbar, it took one bus driver’s salary to buy a house in the city, even on the west side. And now it takes eight bus driver’s salaries to buy the same house. And that’s a huge change, in the city and the job and everything, the affordability of housing has massively changed.

So reflecting on these 40 years in transit, what are you taking away from it? In terms of experience, in terms of wisdom? Memories?

You learn a lot about human nature, majorly. Human nature in many ways hasn’t changed a lot. There’s some basic tenets that are still there. As I explain to the newer drivers, there’s a harder edge to things now.

The other thing I’ve definitely thought of in the last week or two is that we’re getting our first test buses with a shield for the driver, that can be moved into place if you need it. That indicates to me that we’re in another time and things have changed. So it’s a time to reflect and say why are we now needing shields? Why has society changed to the point where 50 people a shift walk on the bus without paying? And we just push a button and continue on. That would have been unthinkable 40 years ago. The bus would have been parked and the police would have been there. Supervisors. Because society then, it wasn’t in their makeup to walk on without paying.

That’s been a little harder for me than for the newer drivers because I just find it hard to sit there and let this all happen. I usually say something as they get on: I’m logging them on as an unpaid fare, and this sort of thing. But you know. People tried to fudge the transfers long ago. Everything was smaller scale. The fare was 20 cents and you got four tokens for 75 cents, and that saved a nickel. A nickel was half the price of a cup of coffee.

Those were the only savings. There were no monthly passes. Everyone had to put something in the farebox. There were no seniors passes, transfers had no return trips. So I would say one of the biggest improvements I’ve seen is accessibility to the service. Through the monthly passes, and the seniors passes. People that really should have the access have it now. And they can use the seniors passes in any city in the province.

What will you miss most?

I’ll miss the equipment and I’ll miss the people. I won’t miss the traffic, or the protest marches, and disruptions and all that. [laughs] That always added a little dimension to the day – you’re cruising along and all of a sudden the street’s closed and there’s a march, and everyone’s running around. It makes the day interesting too if you have that happen, and trying to get back on time, and so on.

But I have regular passengers, friends, people that come to visit. And having worked the Nanaimo bus for a long time, I’ll miss the regulars. You look forward to seeing them on a certain trip. Carol finishes work at the Vancouver Sun at 11 o’clock every night, and there she is heading home to Dunbar, and we have a chance to chat and visit for a few minutes. And it helps her day too, it’s something she looks forward to.

The people aspect has always been pretty strong for me, right from the beginning. My first work was substituting for Marie, who was one of the conductorettes on the streetcars, back in the Second World War. She was off on compensation for a couple of months, so I did her work for six weeks. And it was 4pm till midnight with Friday Saturday off, coincidentally exactly what I’m doing now. And I started to meet all her regulars and they all wanted to know where she was, and when was she coming back, and she did come back, and I met her. And she was just a wonderful lady, every time we got together she had stories.

So that was an introduction to the job I felt very fortunate to have. Because that introduced me to the fact that it wasn’t just this crowd of people all the time coming through, but there were parts to it that were very human and close.

I look back on it and it’s just an amazing number of people. I still count passengers and I carry about 450 a night, about 700 on the Main and Victoria. I have to do some totals—I haven’t done it for a little while—I’ve had 3 million or so. Maybe 2.5 million, it’s hard to say at the moment.

Wow. I just can’t imagine having the opportunity to touch so many people’s lives!

So how do you feel about coming to this point now?

It creeps up on you. A lot of my regular passengers get on board now and say, ‘Oh, three months! It’s three months to go!’ They all know it’s coming.

Each day I leave for work at three o’clock, and now there’s a lot of things that I would like to get done that I can’t get done because I have to leave for eight hours. Ten hours when you count getting ready and travelling to the garage. There’s a lot of e-mail connections I have, there’s Transit Museum Society activities. I have a large collection of slides I’ve collected over the years in and around the city. Mostly transit related, and on trips I’ve done around North America. There’s quite a treasure trove of material I want to share with people. So I plan to do some scanning and digitizing and sharing. There’s quite a lot of people I know through the Internet, and even before there was a large community of transit fans. To be able to take these images and scan them and share them will be a big plus.

For a number of years, Heritage Vancouver has done a tour called the top 10 endangered heritage sites in the city, and I’d driven a TRAMS bus for that. And they’ve made me an honorary member of that. But I’ve never been able to go to the meetings because they’re always on a Wednesday night! Finally, I’ve gone to the meetings and they’ve expressed an interest in my collection. The Birks building, I took pictures before those were taken down. A lot of the images I even forgot I had.

Another project I really like is then & now shots, which I’d like to do. Plus I live in an old house built in 1928 and it’s had a lot of deferred maintenance. I have a lot of projects planned, and my neighbour wants me to help out. So I knew it was time when it felt harder and harder to get out of the house.

It’ll be a change because the daily commute and camaraderie with other drivers will change. But it’s a turning point and my friends who have retired can tell you that they are waiting patiently for bike rides and trips, and I can see how much they’ve enjoyed it. I’m ready to be a part of that. It’s been a big change to sit down and reflect on 40 years.

Also, I’ve been through four major labour disputes—that’s another aspect of leaving at this point. The companies change. And that’s the part people are always surprised at. Here you are doing the same job for 40 years and you’re working for four different companies.

But I always stayed driving, because even though I could have put in for training, or to be a road supervisor, or do all these different things, my real calling was driving the trolleys. And that was what I wanted to do.

You look back over 40 years and you realize, I ended up doing what I wanted, where I wanted to be. And not everybody can say that.

Will you keep on riding the bus, and driving for TRAMS?

I will still keep my license current to drive the buses for TRAMS and the old Brill trolleys and so on. A friend of mine has some antique buses and he’s asked me to drive it for some tours and so on. So that’s a very different kind of scenario, you’re not on a scheduled service, but you’re in a much more relaxed kind of situation. So that part I’m very excited about.

And they’ve already issued my new pass, the retirees pass with the yellow background. The first thing they do when they take you in the retirement session is plop you down in front of the camera and take your picture.

That’s all I had to ask. Is there anything you had to add?

Other than that… the best thing was to stay on an extra couple of years, work out of the new garage. Bring in the new garage, and do tours of it. And just see a whole new generation of diesel buses. All the Novas are here, and we’ve been watching the Canada Line zip along back and forth out there. All this has happened.

So I’ll still be part of it, but in a different way, and that’s how I’m looking at it. I’m really feeling very optimistic. I’m looking forward to my final night, running around and doing some crazy stuff.

Fantastic. Thank you so much.

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.

So what kind of adventures can people expect from the guide?

Each page you have same nine categories and a map of the neighbourhood: a suggested restaurant, bar, a café, entertainment, special points of interest, a children’s activity, heritage buildings, picnic spot, and a walking tour. It’s everything you need to spend anywhere from two hours to a whole day in the community surrounding each station. The guide provides a beautifully designed, easy to read map of each neighbourdood outlining the locations of each activity mentioned and showing the walking tour.

Out of the 16 stations, 15 have walking tours and only one is a bike tour. For Templeton Station, there’s nothing nearby by foot, but there’s wonderful destinations within biking distance: Iona Jetty and Macdonald Beach. So it’s really 15 walking tours and one bike tour.

Are there any particular favourites that you’d like to highlight?

I think for me what’s most interesting about the process was discovering Richmond.

Growing up in Vancouver, Richmond wasn’t accessible to me and I didn’t see much reason to go there. But now that getting to Richmond is easy, I’ve found the offers of places like Minoru Park, an amazing urban park. Many people know Vancouver’s Stanley Park or Queen Elizabeth Park, but few know of Richmond’s Minoru Park with it range of community buildings, sports complexes, a chapel, and a park with waterfall, lake and bunnies hopping everywhere. You can sit there and have no idea you are in middle of the hustle and bustle of central Richmond.

In my own neighbourhood, I particularly was excited about discovering Schoolhouse #472, one of Vancouver’s original one room schoolhouses — it’s now a shed in someone’s backyard! The house is on a corner lot so you can go up to it along Laurel Street. I had no idea it existed and it’s a ten minute walk from where I grew up.

How long did it take to put the guide together?

Well, I had the idea on the opening day of the Canada Line and the pocket guide came out before the Olympics, on February 12. So it took about six months in total.

The research and writing took a couple of months. I had the advantage of knowing some neighbourhoods already, so I wasn’t starting from scratch. I talked to people and used expertise of friends and contacts. And then it was two fun months of going out a few days a week, checking out the neighbourhoods, and finding the exciting things that existed there.

What took longer was development of the maps. Maps are all copyrighted and you can’t just take them and put your stuff on it. So I had a wonderful cartographer who made 17 original maps, including a 3D map for YVR airport.

Was it hard finding a publisher?

The guide is self published. It’s available on my website, www.canadalineadventures.com, and at more than 18 stores up and down the line. In addition, groups are now selling it as a fundraiser in the community. I am looking for more ways to distribute the guide so readers should contact me through the website if they are interested.

Stores selling the guide include: 3 Vets on Yukon Street and 6th Avenue, any of the Book Warehouse locations, and at a number of corner stores and mini marts up and down the line such as Broadway Mini Mart across from Broadway-City Hall Station and Plaza Market by Marine Drive Station.

What’s next for the guide? How can people get in touch with you if they want to know more?

At this point what’s next for the guide is PR and promotion, getting people to know about it and use it. Some folks have suggested I should lead regular tours, but the goal right now is to get it in people’s hands so they can run their own tours. People should know that if they’re interested in giving the guide as a gift or selling it as a fundraiser, there are bulk purchase and commission sales rates available.

Visit www.canadalineadventures.com or e-mail info@canadalineadventures.com for more information!

Thanks for your enthusiasm Jhenifer, it has been a pleasure talking with you.

Thanks Noam, and best of luck with the guide!

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!

How did you get started writing?

I went to night school for some years, and I would tell my daughter stories in the evening. We would act them out: I would play a horse or an eagle, and she would play herself.

Then when I finished night school, I had some free time, and my wife said, “Why don’t you write the stories down?” And that was in 2005.

The series is called Chantel’s Quest – Chantel is the name of my daughter – and I wrote four books in one year. I spent evenings and weekends working on it. My daughter dances quite a bit, so I would drop her off at dance and I would find a restaurant to work in for two hours.

I started with this, and within a year I found a local publisher, Simply Read Books, who was interested in the story. So I signed a deal, and the first two are now in print.
The third one is due out this year, in September or October. And next year will be the last one.

Simply Read has been publishing since 2000, publishing mainly picture books. But now they are into chapter books for young adults and middle grades.

What are the books about?

The cover of Oliver's first book (and the second book underneath!)

What I’ve tried to do for each book is focus on an underlying idea. The first book talks about sharing. Chantel is a 12 year old girl who has to find four relics. On her birthday, she finds out she is the last descendant of her family, and has to go on this quest. In the first book, she is looking for a golden sword, and it’s a symbol for sharing, not fighting.

She goes to the mountain wood to find the gold sword, and has to complete certain tasks before she can get it. She finds some friends, like a little mouse who can turn into a mighty warrior—although he doesn’t always want to. She also finds another friend, who is another girl who is 12 and has wings—she can fly. They go through all four books together, and solve challenges and riddles.

How have people responded to the book?

It’s been pretty good. There are interesting reviews in some magazines. CM Magazine is a librarian support magazine that lists all the new books – I was reviewed there. And another blog, Picnic Basket, which is done by a lady in Boston, has a review. You send her books and her readers will review it.

Both books are available at Kidsbooks and Chapters, and in libraries in Australia and Canada and the States.

What does your daughter think about being the main character in your books?

She likes it. She has the book at school and they’ve read it in her class. They were quite excited too—I think they liked seeing a classmate through a story. For me it’s quite fun. I can review what happened when my daughter grew up—she’s 12 now.

What do you like most about writing?

I just like being creative. Sometimes at work you follow a certain setup and procedure, and outside that my creativity can just flow really well, coming up with new ideas and new things to write about. My wife said it might be a bit of psychotherapy session. But it’s nice to be creative! With fantasy, you’re not bound by anything.

Have any other authors inspired you?

Because I went so long to night school, for both my BA and MBA, I only read accounting books and engineering books. But there’s one scene in the first book where she goes to the mountain and looks in the valley— it looks like a lake of clouds. I had that experience when I went to Whistler for skiing. So mainly I get my inspiration from what’s around me, especially in nature. I live close to the beach and collect shells there with my daughter. We collect sea glass, which is glass from bottles that has been washed out by the water and the edges are nice and round.

What kind of work did you do to promote the book?

I went to the Toronto Book Expo in 2007, which was so nervewracking. I had a book signing and I was like four hours early. I’m sure everyone was wondering, ‘What are you doing: you’ve passed my booth six times!’ But there was a lineup at the signing, and the people were friendly, asking what was the story about.

I also went to Denver, for the Annual American Librarian Expo event, which is a huge event they have there to share annual reviews and ideas. I went to the New York Book Expo.

I have also done school visits and have had two book launches in Vancouver. One was at Kidsbooks in Kitsilano, and the second was at Once Upon a Huckleberry Tree, at Main and 28th.

At the first event, we had 120 people coming out, and the second was about the same—they couldn’t all fit in the store! It was raining, and it was so full the windows fogged up. Mainly children and their parents came to the launch. My wife is quite active in promoting me at schools. We put up some posters and sent out invitations.

What’s next for you?

I just finished editing the third Chantel book for the ninth time. It took longer to edit than to write the whole series! I’m going to edit the fourth book before the summer and we’ll see what’s coming up next. I’ll try to see if a publisher will buy my next book or if I should get an agent yet.

In the meantime, I’ve written 6 books, and four stories for a Korean English as a Second Language program. My next books are a three-book series called Vita – it means life in Latin. It tells the story of two different tribes: one is in the mountains, and they have wings and can fly, and the other is in the flat lands and they can run really fast. There are old laws saying that if there is a baby born without wings in land, they must die, and vice versa. And the story develops. The two tribes used to be one tribe, but due to some past events they separated. The idea to overcome some old stories and old hatred. I also try to have a bit of a moral.

I am also working on getting the word out about my books. I have my own website and I have a Twitter account. It is tough though. Lots of publishers went out of business last year. The big question is e-books. It doesn’t affect our writing and our writing style, but the publishers and the royalty deals are different when there are no printing costs.

What do you do with Coast Mountain Bus Company?

I’m working out of Burnaby Garage — I’m a maintenance planner. I review the bus schedule to see when they come up for repairs, and review the annual budget to see what repairs can be done.

What do your coworkers think of your second role as an author?

My coworkers are quite excited. Another maintenance planner said that he’s quite proud of me! It’s very nice to hear.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I do want to add is that production of my books is Canadian. I have a Canadian editor who lives in Vancouver, and the books are printed in Winnipeg.

Thanks Oliver! For more on Oliver and his books, please visit his website at oliverneubert.com.

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.

How did you come to be curator for the London Underground public art program?

Well, I originally trained as a curator at the Royal College of Art, and my underlying principle is that I would like to find ways to work with artists not just inside the gallery but outside the gallery context.

So in 2003, the opportunity arose at the London Underground. I’ve been there since then, developing the program.

I did see enormous potential in working with artists in that site. As long as I had the opportunity to drive it forward, in a way that was going to be taken seriously, by not just the Underground itself but by the art world. I thought if that could happen, then they would see much better benefits than they had not necessarily realized.

So what was your first big project?

Cindy Sherman's exhibition at Gloucester Road. Photo from the Art on the Underground website.

What I wanted to do was first of all set a high level of expectation in terms of the quality of work we produced, the level and calibre of the artist, and the potential for collaboration with other organizations.

The opportunity to work with Cindy Sherman with the Serpentine Gallery at Gloucester Road: that was my first major project. [An unused track and platform at Gloucester Road Station is one of the main art spaces for the Underground.] At the same time, I was also concerned that it’s an enormous network, and how we could have an impact in other parts of the network, which was quite a challenge as well.

A work from Mark Hosking featured on a poster from the Go to the Gallery project. Photo from Art on the Underground.

At that point, you could put poster based works into an awful lot of other sites that the advertising company wasn’t using. So what I did was produce a project called Go to the Gallery. I contacted a whole range of galleries in London, public and commercial, and asked if they were interested in working with us and could they let us use some images of the artwork they were showing.

We would produce an artwork poster of that image, and then put the artist name, the gallery name, and the name of the nearest tube station to the gallery.

So we managed to produce a whole range of these works we could put out in the network, which had the effect of improving the environment, raising our profile, and working in partnership. It was immediately going out and developing a much stronger impact on the network, and it was thinking of those strategic ways of developing the program. So those were the main two things I delivered in the first year I was there.

What was public response like?

Really positive. With the Cindy Sherman one, obviously the gallery were really delighted to work with us. It gave them an opportunity to work alongside us. They do an awful lot of offsite projects. In some sense this fell into that category for them. We also got really strong media response to the project. That was partly because of the partnership with the gallery as well. We did a big feature on the exhibition and on the Gloucester Road site, on the TV news. Cindy was interviewed, and I was interviewed, and that got a really strong hit in that way.

The response from our customers already started to come in as well. We didn’t have a feedback opportunity on our website. But that’s really been an important development for us – it suddenly seemed an obvious thing to do. But people were sending in positive feedback and email spontaneously, telling us how much they liked the program.

We did have other strategies some of which we don’t have any more. We had something called an opinionmeter at Gloucester Road. It was an electronic device where people could plug in what they thought of the art. We don’t have that any more, but it always did have strong positive results.

And once or twice we did do a dedicated survey and hired a company to do that survey, face to face interviews with something like 2,000 customers at a time. And the result was always incredibly positive. All of those things have contributed to us being seen as a positive element of London Underground.

It’s really interesting that your program features a great many international artists.

Well, that’s where the focus lies in terms of the London Underground. London is internationally important in terms of particularly contemporary art practice. We’re also an internationally diverse city. And we want to reflect both of those aspects in the program. Certainly the workforce reflects that diversity of the city. And so the program ought to, and it ought to reflect the calibre of the quality of the artwork that you’re going to see in galleries in the city.

So how do you go about selecting artists or working with artists for the public art program?

There are five of us on the team, and three of us are trained as curators.

We have a curatorial practice each of our own. It comes from constantly having personal research and development, being aware of contemporary art practice, being aware of who is exhibiting in London, and internationally as well. Reading art press and magazines, constantly keeping ourselves up on who is making interesting work.

And between us we might make decisions on what projects need to be planned in the next few months, and what the brief might be. Whether or not we want an artist to think about a particular site on the station, or on the tube map cover. One that might engage staff or other communities in some way. And what sort of medium we want the artist to be working in.

Linear: Dryden Goodwin, the portrait project for the Jubilee Line. Photo by Daisy Hutchison, from the Art on the Underground website.

For the portrait project, for example, each of the three curatorial members of the team suggested a different artist. And once we were all happy that those were serious artists, we arranged studio visits, talked with them on what their approach might be, and invited them to make proposals. And we decided what would be the best proposal. Sometimes we go back to members of the wider team. But that’s the chief process we go through in order to make a selection.

For the more permanent works we need to sometimes engage particular stakeholder groups and involve them in selection some way. For example, we’re doing a permanent project in Green Park, which is part of the local authority of Westminster, and they are very protective of their built environment. They also have a public art advisory panel as part of their planning process. So we brought a member of that panel onto our team for that project. We also have the architect for that station design on the team, the Royal Parks, etc.

So what we tend to do as trusted professionals in our field is shortlist the range of artists. And we might decide for a particular project that we’re looking at early career artists, or for another project we might need a much more established artist and this project has another impact. Or are we looking for an artist who is mainly a sculptor, or a photographer.

[My colleague Liz chimed in here:] Some of these programs have quite prescripted selection process models. And I think that prevents major damage, but being professionals you have the confidence to adjust the process to the task.

Life is a Laugh by Brian Griffiths. Photo from Art on the Underground.

We make recommendations, I can put it that way. We will shortlist the artists and take them to the group and say, these are the artists we recommend. These are the reasons why they fit this brief.

We meet the artists, draw up a brief, invite the artists in to talk us through them. If we’re just presenting, typically we might already as a team have thought for these reasons, the proposal we will recommend following a discussion. The team, there might be discussion or debate, and we’re not trying to preempt the decision. But we can make that kind of recommendation in advance.

That whole process in itself is an interesting one. And it’s important to have that as a possibility because it generates a strong sense of ownership among those stakeholders.

But at the same time, it has to be very well managed and controlled, because it can become sort of lowest common denominator. “Oh that’s a nice bright colourful butterfly, let’s have that, that’s not going to cause any problems or issues.”

You sort of learn how to make recommendations about choices that they might think are going to cause more problems, but in the long term, are going to be a better project.

Is it unusual to have a fine art person in charge of the public art program?

I imagine it is, and I think they’re really seeing the benefit of that. But there’s a benefit to the fact that we’re employees of London Underground. When we get out there and talk to the operational staff, and they know we’re not people who are parachuted in or out, you get that sense of advocacy there.

I think that arts background is important to have in the team. But I think it has to come from someone who is keen and enthusiastic about London Underground itself. And I must say the two curators who work with me really wanted to work in that environment, because they thought it would be challenging but really fascinating. We do get on very well as a team.

Has it been interesting, coming from the arts, and working with public transit?

It’s not an unchallenging environment. The bureaucracy can sometimes drive you crazy. I don’t know. At one point in terms of my career path, I could have been going into a gallery or into a context like this. And I find this such a challenging and interesting environment that I wouldn’t want to necessarily go back into a gallery context.

Your front-line staff is involved in the program. What has their response been like?

The staff are becoming more and more impressed, and wanting to be involved in the program.

So what advice do you have for public transit systems thinking about public art programs?

Do it! [Laughter] Hopefully the program we’re developing can be inspirational, and some of the strategies that we have in place for securing the program and bringing budgets to the fore will be helpful, I hope. But by all means look at our programs and other programs as models of practice. And other commissioning agencies, which I mentioned to others before. Artangel is a commissioning practice that I would like to consider ourselves quite closely aligned with as well.

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.

How did you come up with the idea for TransitDB?

One of my pet peeves has always been how difficult it is to get the transit information that I wanted. I could complain about it, but it wouldn’t be productive. This was one of those situations where if you want something done fast, you have to do it yourself. And as a computer science student, I had the skills necessary to do something about it, while also learning from it – so I did!

The catalyst for starting TransitDB was when I was at work, fiddling with the iPhone app we were working on. I came across the official TransLink iPhone app, and my coworkers told me that it was originally done by independent developers. I thought I could improve on it, and so I started TransitDB to work towards this and other improvements.

Are you a regular transit user? What’s your history with the Metro Vancouver system?

I started using transit regularly once I entered UBC. I think the U-Pass is the best thing ever, and I can’t imagine what UBC was like before the U-Pass.

What features did you start with on TransitDB? What have you added since?

I started showing TransitDB to friends and colleagues after I had rough implementations of the current features: route diagrams, nearby stops, bus loop overviews, next bus, and route details.

The last actual feature I’ve added was mirroring system alerts from the TransLink website, and providing RSS feeds for them. Most of my work in the past weeks were tweaks to the underlying framework. It’s rather boring, and not visible to users, unfortunately.

How much time have you put into TransitDB so far?

I started the project in April. I generally work on it whenever I have free time and energy. Back in May, I pretty much worked on it whenever I wasn’t at work.

Can you talk a bit about the Ultimate FTW Throwdown? What did you think of the experience? What was your competitor’s entry?

At the end of April, I received an email about the competition from the UBC computer science department. Over two weeks, I mulled over whether it would be wise to make an effort to convert the application. What finally convinced me was the opportunity to learn to use a new database, Microsoft SQL Server, and how it would make testing and further development easier.

I didn’t submit my entry until the day before the deadline, because I wanted to keep my options open in case I missed my own goals and expectations. Or I was procrastinating. ;) I was a bit anxious when I clicked the submit button.

The contest entry deadline was June 3. I got a call from Microsoft Canada on June 5, telling me that I was chosen as the student finalist, and that they would like to fly me to Toronto so I could participate in the ‘throwdown’ against the professional finalist. The conference was on June 10, so I had to immediately commit to going!

The actual ‘throwdown’ part of the Web Not War event was very fun, but also very embarrassing. The theme was ‘boxing match’, so they got us boxing robes, boxing gloves, and a boxing ring as part of the setup. It was awkward at first having to present my project and describe the technical details while in a boxing outfit, but in the end I really got into the theme because the environment was just so intense.

The professional finalist, Dac Chartrand, created a blogging application that used Bayesian probability to automatically categorize posts. This is the same kind of mathematics behind spam filtering software.

Who ultimately voted on the sites — was it the Microsoft developer community or another audience?

It was the audience of attendees of the Make Web Not War conference in Toronto. The conference was intended for Open source developers who develop platform agnostic applications.

Why do you think your site won?

I was told that Torontonians can relate to difficulties regarding access to transit information. Apparently, they have it worse, since each city in the area has their own transit authority, while commutes are often across cities.

What do will you do next with TransitDB? Are there any new features in the works?

There are new features planned, absolutely! TransitDB still can’t do all the things that would make my commutes easier, so I’ve got a massive to-do list for myself. One of the things I really want to work on is a TransitDB mobile app – it would make TransitDB much more useful—one of the first suggestions I got at the Make Web Not War conference was to consider a mobile version. There is a lot of interest in moving in this direction.

How committed are you to keeping it going indefinitely? Are you open to having others help you work on it?

I’m 100% committed to keeping TransitDB going and growing, and I would love to have people contribute. I can’t think of a justifiable reason for this project to be closed to contribution from others, though right now I don’t want to open contribution to the general public, as I want to accomplish all that I can on my own first.

I hope to collaborate with TransLink to improve transit data access. TransLink has access to a wealth of information that would be immensely useful if it were publicly available in friendly/open formats. The City of Vancouver is going in the direction of open data: following this trend would be prudent and economical.*

*Editor’s note: TransLink is working to make its transit data publicly available: we are currently in talks with the Province to get the data released, since the Province owns the proprietary information in the Road Atlas included in our data.

What’s next for you personally? Are you graduating soon? Where do you hope your career takes you?

I’m currently on an 8-month co-op work term at Ayogo Games, Inc., a Vancouver-based startup that makes casual social games enjoyed on social networks (Facebook, MySpace, etc.), and smartphones (iPhone, Android, etc.). I’m returning to studies this September. I’ve only just reached third-year status, and I won’t be graduating until 2012 (co-op pushes back graduation by a year).

I’m still not sure what industry in computer science I want to be in. There are so many options! Right now I’m just trying to get a taste of everything. A greater breadth of experience is never a bad strategy! I think I’ve got plenty of time to explore.

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.

There are two people behind the site, Tafyrn and Seamora Palecloud, who were kind enough to do an interview with me for the Buzzer blog. (And I did ask about their unusual names: Tafyrn just laughed, saying, “As you probably know, it’s good practice not to use our real names on the internet.”)

So, here’s the interview, and sprinkled throughout you’ll find some of the Canada Line photos that Tafyrn and Seamora consider favourites—they link back to related pages from the Canada Line photo blog, too.

Tafyrn, Seamora — thanks again so much for helping me put this together!

1. Tell me a bit about yourselves.

Tafyrn
Well, Seamora is a student in Los Angeles, and I work for a company in Vancouver. We travel back and forth fairly frequently. We’ve both always been interested in transportation, so we’ve been able to follow the growth of the Canada Line and the Gold Line in L.A.

2. Do you have a site for the Gold Line too?

Tafyrn
We don’t have as many Gold Line photos as those of the Canada Line, because we do most of our walking up in Vancouver. But we have easily taken 5,000-6,000 pictures of SkyTrain and other public transportation systems all over the continent. They are fascinating subjects for photography.

Seamora
Another reason we decided not to put our Gold Line pictures up is that we didn’t catch it at the beginning, not like with the Canada Line.

3. How did you get started with the Canada Line photography blog?

The rail tunnel curves under False Creek.

Tafyrn
We started the blog in late 2006. It was a combination of a couple of things. Seamora and I enjoy going for long walks—going down Cambie Street, seeing what’s going on. Every time you walk around, something’s new, and these large construction projects have fascinated us.

So, we took photos of the project and eventually realized we had several thousand photos specifically of the Canada Line, and we thought that other people might want to see them. Putting the photos on a blog seemed to work in a better way compared to sites like Flickr. It allowed us to organize the photos in a gallery for each major section of the project, and to post the photos chronologically. It took quite a few months to process all of our photos and backdate the entries.

On average, we put up five posts a week, although in winter it’s slowed down. It’s dark in the morning and in the evening, so the only times we get out to the site is weekends when we’re visiting or when I go out to get lunch. During the summer it’s much easier, as I can take photos on the way to work and back from work.

4. How do you decide what stations to photograph? Do you have a system?

The dedication ceremony for Sweet Leilani, the Tunnel Boring Machine used to tunnel under False Creek and Downtown Vancouver.

Tafyrn
We use transit quite extensively and our photos often follow the common routes we take. For example, we take the #100 bus out to the airport and stop at Marine Drive station to take pictures there. We also take the 98 B-Line down to Richmond centre and walk up No. 3 Road.

Ultimately, we focus on what’s changed, as walk the line fairly frequently, and there’s natural points where you take the photos from. You do tend to see the same angles from week to week and month to month, but it’s not really like time lapse photography. Actually, that’s something we would have liked to do — put an anchor point in on a railing and every week take a photo from that same spot. That would have made a really interesting movie. But once again, because this is opportunistic, we just take photos as we can.

I’ve also been successful in the past attending the tours through professional organizations that I am involved with. For example, I attended the unveiling ceremony for the trains – I was there with Cynthia Chen, who was a councillor with the city of Richmond at the time. We met at the OMC [Operation and Maintenance Centre] and I was invited to go in. I also attended the commissioning of the boring machine – Sweet Leilani. [Yes, that’s the actual name of the boring machine.] The building consortium painted it and they had a priest consecrate it with holy water. Being able to attend that event was a bit serendipitous. I was walking by the site at the time the group was coming in and I was invited to come in.

Unfortunately, I missed the recent batch of tours that were held. Because I’m not involved in the project in an official way, I don’t necessarily have notifications when these events are being held. I jump on the opportunities to tour the site as I find out about them, so if there are any upcoming events, I’d love to hear about them.

5. Is it easy to tell which one of you has taken which photos on the site?

A KLM jet passes over as the Launching Truss walks across the South Arm Bridge.

Tafyrn & Seamora
We both take photos, and we both work on posting them. Often, we both take photos of different aspects of the line at the same time as we’re walking along. As we both use the same camera, and we have the same model, it isn’t really easy for us to tell. We both use a Contax SL300R.

It’s not an SLR, the model name just happens to have the same letters. It’s a small camera: you can easily carry it in your pocket. It has a small lens, though and doesn’t do night photography very well. We can’t take macro photos either, which would be useful when you want to focus on specific details of construction.

When we’ve had the opportunity to go into the tunnels, it is difficult to get good photos due to the lighting. For every underground photo we’ve posted, there were quite a few that were unusable because they were blurry or too dark. And we follow a general policy of not posting photos where the main focus is people. Leading up to the SkyTrain Unconference, I commented on a blog post about photography in general, describing my general guidelines.

It’s always a good idea to get permission. When we’ve been on tours outside publicly accessible areas, I always get permission before taking photographs. I’ve also talked with some of the fellows at SNC corporate, and they indicated that they didn’t want any photos used for commercial purposes. But that hasn’t been an issue, since this is just a hobby.

6. Why is there no text or commentary about the photos?

Snow falls as the Launching Truss nears YVR Station.

Tafyrn
We deliberated on whether we should have written descriptive text as well as posting pictures. But seeing how it consumes a fair bit of time just to put them up, we decided that we’d let the photos speak for themselves.

As well, one thing that is very important to me is using the correct terminology. I work as a writer, so having the descriptions correct is very important. I’m reluctant to write without knowing the right technical terms to describe the photographs.

7. What kind of response does the site get?

Tafyrn
We get very little feedback from people posting comments on our site itself. But many write about the photographs on web forums, such as the Skyscraper Page. A lot of the discussions tend to happen there.

With regard to statistics, there’s usually about 500 people who visit our site each month, and about 5,000 pageviews a month. There wasn’t much traffic until early 2007, and after that it’s been growing fairly linearly. In terms of absolutely unique visitors, we’ve had 24,000 visits, 5,300 unique visitors, and 60,000 page views. That’s over the whole lifetime of the blog. So, a lot of people have looked at it, and that validates our thoughts that others are interested in seeing the progress along the Canada Line.

8. Once Canada Line construction is done, will you keep posting?

The Canada Line trains are unveiled in the Great Hall of the Operations and Maintenance Centre.

Tafyrn
Once the official opening happens, we’ll have fun going through the stations and taking photos from the inside. We’ll most likely post a couple thousand photos over the first week after it opens. But over time, we will stop posting. We try to avoid taking of pictures of the same thing, as they are redundant.

If we see something new, and do note that there are a couple potential future stations, if those start being built in some reasonable timeframe, we’ll keep it up. But ultimately this blog has a fixed life span. Perhaps the Evergreen Line will finally get to the construction phase and keep us busy.

9. You don’t really comment about it on your website, but what do you actually think of the Canada Line project?

Tafyrn
We have our own personal opinions, but ultimately the way things are is the way things are. Lots of tradeoffs were made, and only time will tell about the balance between cost and capacity.

I definitely believe that the route was the right one, despite the disruptions. The construction groups did a great job in maintaining access and being as non-disruptive as possible. It’s hard with a project like this, which puts 80-foot deep open pits down the middle of a neighbourhood.

And I ultimately believe we are building a backbone for the community as a whole. I take SkyTrain every day to and from work. When you have good public transportation, you really don’t need to drive.

10. What do you hope people take away from the site?

Nine two-car train sets sit at the Operations and Maintenance Centre.

Tafyrn
If there’s a couple of things that people take away from the site, I hope they see that there is a history and a legacy behind the Canada Line, and that a large amount of effort went into building it. We take for granted the infrastructure we have. People often don’t think about all the work that went into building SkyTrain.

It’s going to be nice that these historical resources exist for people to look back at. Between our site and the Canada Line site, there’s some degree of archived visual history. In the past these projects haven’t tended to have that degree of public visibility, but we’re lucky that there now are inexpensive digital cameras and the Internet, which facilitate this sort of collective documentation of our world. There are so many people taking photos, and there are also the ones that the Canada Line site has published themselves. And on Flickr, there are thousands of photos tagged with the Canada Line, including some very remarkable ones.

It’s something we’re glad we’re able to share, and we look forward to posting more photos until the Canada Line is complete.

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!

1. Tell me a bit about yourselves, and how you got involved with taking photos of buses.

Chris and George

David Lam
I’m 17, currently attending grade 12 in high school. I was born in Hong Kong, where most people heavily rely on public transportation. Having an interest in public transit is actually quite common in Hong Kong—buses and trains are some of the things that have been built into people’s daily lives.

We moved to Vancouver in 2003. For me, there was no better way to get familiar with my new city than by sightseeing using public transit! I never thought about taking photos of buses until I was given a digital camera as a Christmas gift. I spent my Friday nights taking photos of the older trolleybuses on Granville Mall. I always liked them and expected to see them get pulled off the road soon. That’s how I started to collect photos of buses, and eventually started my first website in 2004. Part of the fun of this hobby is to get out there and talk to people who may share the same hobby, or those who have the curiosity to learn more about our unique interest.

Chris Cassidy
I’m 16, and currently enrolled in grade 11 in a Langley high school. My interest in bus photography actually started out as a random search on the internet. I was going around and found an internet group on transit in Vancouver. I was curious, so I joined and started following what was going on. Then randomly, one day I picked up my camera and thought I’d take pictures of buses.

George Prior
I am 21, and I am in my fourth year of a political science degree at UBC. I work part time for Perimeter Transportation and Tours as a bus dispatcher and ticket agent.

My interest in buses goes back to early high school. I began taking the bus to school on a regular basis in about grade 9. It was an hour and a half each way, a three-hour round trip. Riding transit, the thought kept growing in my head of what kind of a bus I was on. I would always look subconsciously when riding them.

I remember being on the internet and seeing pictures of buses I’d never seen before, on websites belonging to other bus enthusiasts. I didn’t get into taking photos myself until the summer of 2005, after I graduated high school. There was talk then of an event in Stanley Park to unveil the new low floor trolley bus, so I decided to attend. This was where I met David, as well as a number of enthusiasts from other cities.

That fall, TransLink was also starting up its “Testing the Power of Tomorrow” alternate fuel program. That involved eight buses with different fuel types, all decaled in special schemes. For me, the transit hobby initially evolved around riding and photographing these buses on routes in Coquitlam. Many a Friday, after I got off school, I would ride downtown, catch a bus out to Coquitlam and ride out there for the rest of the day.

My first year at university was particularly difficult. Having the bus hobby helped keep me occupied during some tough times, and I found it fun and relaxing. It was simply something to do that I enjoyed.

2. The site is incredibly comprehensive, and it features a lot of very specific info on the types of buses out there and even their bus numbers. So how do you guys know which buses are which?

David
Aside from general observations obtained through our regular trips, we have several contacts in various agencies that provide us with resources like fleet rosters, a list outlining each type and model of buses with their respective fleet numbers (numbering system used by transit agencies to organize their fleet consisted of 1200 buses) and assigned division (eight bus depots serving the entire lower Mainland). We also have contacts providing information and hints of new ad-wraps and delivery of new buses. Finally, we must also take this chance to thank several transit supervisors who made our job much easier by telling us hints of where we would find the buses we were looking for!

3. How much time do you spend working on the site and uploading photos?

David, waiting for a trolley bus to be hoisted into the air

David
The system we use is called Fotopic. It’s very user-friendly. You just upload the photos in the way you attach documents to email, and organize them into the right categories afterwards. The system helps us to lay out the design and makes sure things are working properly. The process takes about 15 minutes.

Generally, we try to update whenever we have new photos available for publishing. Visitors would probably want to see something new during every visit, and we do our best to satisfy our guests.

4. What response do you get to the website?

George
One comment we get quite often is that we have so much material, that our work is very thorough. This is important to me mainly because that is how we captivate the interests of people who may not have seen everything. After all, that was what fuelled my interest in the websites I browsed before I became involved!

In terms of taking pictures in general, people often ask us, “Why buses?” Usually my short response to that query is that people like trucks, trains, and boats, so why not buses?

5. What do your friends and family think of your hobby?

Chris looks on as David sets up a shot

David
Most of my friends see my hobby as an advantage. Whenever they want to go somewhere; they know they don’t need to rely on Google maps because there’s one right beside them! I never try to hide the fact that I have an interest in public transit. Of course, I do get weird and confused looks at times; but most people respect my hobby. Pretty much everyone in school knows about David Lam and his fishy business with buses!

My parents respect my hobby, and they try their best to understand of my fascination with buses. My father probably understands the most – he went through a similar scenario himself when he was young, having a very fond interest in music which eventually became his lifelong career.

Chris
At first my parents thought I was a little crazy. My grandpa, who is a retired Coast Mountain driver, asked “Why are you interested in buses? Why weren’t you interested when I was driving?”

But my parents support me. With most of the events it’s my parents who ask first if I’m attending, and not me asking if I can go. It’s not often that your parents support you in whatever you want to do.

George
Many of my friends initially thought I had a very strange interest. They simply couldn’t understand why I was so interested in buses, and I don’t blame them, because I can’t satisfactorily explain it myself. That being said, I have managed to get a few of them interested.

6. What do people say when they see you out there taking photos of buses?

David
On a good day, I might get a chance to make a new friend, a generous transit operator who does everything he can to create the best photo opportunities. On a bad day, I might be questioned and yelled at. After four years of transit photography, I can vividly recall several extreme cases when I was threatened with arrest by one transit security officer for, and another incident when a community shuttle transit operator threatened to destroy my camera.

It is completely understandable that people may raise suspicions upon seeing someone taking photos of mass public transit, especially in an age that is threatened by terrorism. Photography can be a somewhat controversial hobby; however, it really disgusts me when the community of photographers is stereotyped and prejudiced against.

Personally, I find most transit employees in the Metro Vancouver area are generally very friendly, helpful and respectful. I usually try to talk with the transit operator before having photos of his or her bus taken. Most of the operators I have talked to in the past tend to relax when they see their rights and privacies are acknowledged and respected. I’m taking photos of the buses, and not of the person.

7. So in an average week, how much time do you spend taking bus photos?

Chris and George, photographing the back part of a trolley

David
Whenever we have time to spare after school or work, we try to get out there and try our luck. Generally, I spend approximately six to 10 hours per week travelling around and hunting for buses.

In the beginning the objective was to get photos of all of the buses. After we achieved that – I guess it took about a year and a half—we now go after specific buses that we consider special, such as a brand new bus or a repainted one still in a fresh coat of paint, or buses wrapped in vinyl for advertising, or perhaps older buses that are just about to be phased out from the system.

Spotting buses is similar to fishing. Sometimes you get a huge net of fish and sometimes you go home empty handed.

Chris
I’ve been a lot busier with schoolwork this year. I remember last year, if I knew something is happening in Vancouver, I would be there right after school and not be home till 9 p.m. But with school this year there’s a lot more work meaning less time for buses.

But for right now I’ve been going out most on weekends for six to nine hours at a time. Of course if I have a day off of school I’ll be out there for an easy 12 hours.

George
Much less now than I once did! Three years ago, I would go out two or three afternoons a week, but within the past year or so, I’ve cut down. Often now I only make it out a couple of times a month. In summer it’s more arbitrary, I go out whenever I want to, or whenever there is something that warrants my attention.

8. Do you have any favourite photos on the site, or favourite buses to photograph?

David

David
I am a big fan of night-photography, and I also make sure I am out there when it snows in the winter! My favourite photos on the site are probably those taken in harsh weather conditions and nighttime, and photos that have became “historical documentation” that I would tell myself “wow, I’m glad I got this photo because I can’t get anything similar to this anymore!”

As for favourite buses to photograph, I am most interested in buses that we commonly refer to as “full-wraps” or “ad-wraps.” Those are the buses covered in vinyl to maximize the efficiency of advertising. I like to photograph these “ad-wrap” buses because they help to add a bit of color, artistry and design to the entire fleet of 1200 buses – instead of seeing the identical-looking buses everywhere in the city, we get something different.

Chris
I like the older buses which have a bit more character. The stuff that’s all parked inside of Oakridge Transit Centre is my favourite. From the modern fleet it’s the new highway coaches, the yellow ones with a silver background. Those are quite nice.

George
I am preferential to older buses, specifically the MCI Classic and GMC Fishbowl series.

The fleet that’s currently retiring, the New Flyer D40 buses, have special significance: those were my first transit rides. I moved here in 1993 and when I was attending daycamps, we would often take public transit to get to our destinations. I remember riding those D40s when they were a year or two years old. They are not really favoured by that many transit fans.

9. Are some buses easier to catch than others? Are there any buses that like holy grails, that are very hard to track down?

David
The easiest buses to track are definitely the trolleybuses; since they are all based out of Vancouver Transit Centre and operate only on 12 routes due to the network of trolley wires that power them.

It has always been a challenge to track down the buses based out of Burnaby garage, because of the vast service area covered by that particular division. Burnaby depot serves too many routes and trippers covering a large variety of areas. The bus I want to find can be running on a route that goes to UBC, downtown, North Vancouver, SFU, Burnaby North, Vancouver east, New Westminster. It is very difficult to predict, and my game of “hit or miss” for tracking buses usually ends with a miss when I’m out on the hunt for a specific bus!

Chris
There’s actually one particular bus that’s very hard to find. It’s a highway coach, a silver one. They were first running in service earlier this year. I managed to go out to Burrard Station one time, and I shot every single one except one of them. The whole summer I tried to find it, with no success. After having those buses in service for eight months I still haven’t caught that one.

George
About 2.5 years ago there was a bus in Victoria that was in fact the oldest running transit bus in North America. It was 40 years old, built in 1966. David and I and another fellow from Edmonton visited Victoria on St. Patrick’s Day 2006, and we were lucky enough to get a nice ride on that old bus all the way to Brentwood Bay.

Sometimes we look for buses that have just been repainted; these tend to be very photogenic. Sometimes, locating them is like looking for a needle in a haystack!

10. So, you’ve come to ride public transit in several cities. How does Vancouver’s system rate against all the others you’ve seen?

David

David
I have been on transit systems in Toronto, Edmonton, Hong Kong, Beijing and Bangkok. Those in North America are more comparable to Vancouver’s system due to geographical similarities, and the rate of ridership is probably not as high as Asian cities, where public transportation is the one and only mode of travelling for the majority of the population.

Toronto’s transit system is quite easy to navigate because of the way the system is designed. Bus routes serve the major arteries of the city in a grid pattern, and most routes connect with the subway system. You can easily navigate by locating yourself with respect to the closest subway station! However, transit systems serving the outskirt areas bordering with the actual city of Toronto are totally different stories, nowhere comparable to what we see in our suburbs such as the Tri-Cities, Surrey and Langley.

Transit systems in Asia are tremendously different from what we have in North America. As I mentioned, the majority of people rely on public transit. Therefore, a much larger amount of buses and human resources are needed to meet the demand from the public.

For instance, the total metropolitan area of Hong Kong is half of that of Greater Vancouver; yet, there are over 8000 transit buses running on the streets, compared to the 1200 buses we have. Moreover, due to the British influence in Hong Kong, the majority of these buses are double-deckers imported from European manufacturers such as MAN and Mercedes-Benz of Germany, Alexander-Dennis of Great Britain, Scania and Volvo of Sweden and many more – the buses are a lot more varied than what we see in Vancouver, which are mainly from North American bus manufacturers such as New Flyer, Orion, and recently Novabus.

In terms of the operation and structure of transit systems in Asia, I personally find them more confusing than the way ours are designed. Instead of running bus routes along particular streets between east and west, or north to south, the majority of the routes twist and wind all over the city, serving several streets and/or neighborhoods.

Frequency of transit service is a lot better in Asia; buses usually come ever 3-5 minutes during peak hours and 8-12 minutes during mid-day and nights! Assaults of transit operators and fare evasions are two problematic issues in Vancouver; yet, such concerns are almost unheard of in Hong Kong, and probably not in Beijing where police officers are visible everywhere on the streets and even on subway station platforms.

Transit agencies often design measures to prevent bus drivers from chatting with passengers when driving unless it is absolutely necessary or important. It is very difficult to compare a North American transit system with an Asian transit system; essentially they are completely different as it is also true for the planning of cities and demand from the people.

Although, I like the fare system in Vancouver. It’s a lot more straightforward and easy to use and understand. With one ticket, you can go anywhere in 90 minutes. In Toronto, you can only get a transfer if you go in one direction.

Chris
I haven’t experienced a lot of other systems, but I think there are two big benefits about our system. First of all, there’s the large area we cover. A lot of other systems have just one small area, but here you can go all the way from Aldergrove to Lion’s Bay. How many systems can you cover that much distance?

The other one is the SkyTrain line. It’s one of the biggest benefits we have. It’s so frequent, and connects a lot of various areas. If you just think about not having SkyTrain our entire system would be vastly different.

George
I have pursued the transit hobby in six major North American cities: Vancouver, Victoria, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, Seattle. Aspects of those transit systems vary quite a bit depending on what you focus on.

In Edmonton, the system is laid out very differently from Vancouver. The routes meander a lot more. In Vancouver, there’s a lot of east-west-north-south, other than in the outlying suburbs, so the bus routes have adapted more to the city. In cities like Edmonton and Calgary, there are buses that follow winding routes through communities, and don’t feel like they’re going anywhere. The other thing I found in Edmonton is that the politics of transit are much more intense and much more polarized.

To expand on what David says about Toronto, Toronto has a much more expensive system than what we do – it seems like they have better service but more finicky customers. Labour relations in that system are a lot more incendiary than they are here. The last time we had a transit strike was in 2001, and there they seem to have a strike every six months.

Comparatively speaking, Vancouver is actually pretty good, not even just in the densest part of the city. It is in the suburbs where there is the most room for improvement.

Generally, we do well for the service area that we have to cover. In regions like Toronto, there are different transit agencies in outlying suburbs which in Vancouver would all be covered by the same system. When I went to Toronto in 2006, I stayed with relatives in Mississauga, a suburb with its own transit system. I recall a couple of horror stories involving Sunday service not starting until 9 a.m.! In Vancouver, there are no such overlap problems. From that perspective, the system here is also easier to use.

11. What are your plans for the future? Will the site keep going as you all graduate school?

Chris, George, and David

David
I look forward to attending university after graduation from high school, and hopefully end up with an administrative position related to the field of transit after graduation from university. Although I would also like to fulfill my dream since childhood of driving an articulated bus at some point in my life. I guess I will somehow manage to attain both as life goes on!

As for the website, we will definitely keep it running whenever we have time to maintain and update. In fact, we are still in the process of expanding! Hopefully all three of us will get to experience more foreign transit systems in the future and bring back goodies to share with everyone.

Chris
After high school, I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it. But I do know I want to keep the site up and running as long as possible, even if it’s not updated as often as it currently is it would still serve as a great historical reference for transit in Vancouver.

Now as for future careers, I think all three of us in the site will end up working for transit one day. Even if I have to start sweeping out the buses at the end of the night, I still will work in transit.

George
At this point my goal in school is to finish and to finish respectably. I don’t intend to carry on with any more schooling immediately after I graduate. My intention is to stay at my current job until then, then travel for a while rather than rush into a full-time career job.

I would like to work for transit at some point, though there’s no rush about that. Even if I am initially just a driver, there are opportunities beyond that.

I intend to carry on with the site for however long I’m dealing with buses. It’s a passion that I want to make a career out of. We’re expanding the site, it doesn’t just cover Vancouver anymore. I recently published photos from Edmonton and Calgary, and David has posted photos from Beijing, Bangkok, and Shanghai. We’ll go globetrotting to take photos—the sky’s the limit!