And after 173 votes, 92% said “Thumbs up” to the Canada Line service! 6% said “Thumbs down,” and 2% hadn’t had a chance to ride it yet.
In the comments, lots of people said they liked the line, but had a few qualms. Here’s Ed:
Overall, it is a winner in my books. Before the Canada Line was even thought of, I could not have imagined going from Richmond to downtown Vancouver in under half an hour. It is extremely convenient, especially for a student like myself. I do agree that the station layouts is a bit questionable, a 3rd car would have been nice. It can be a bit frustrating during peak hours, and 7 min waits in Richmond (14 mins at night!) is kind of irritating. Hopefully that can be solved in the near future.
And many had questions about future expansion, and wanted more investment in projects like these. Here’s Chris:
The trains are great. I like the smooth ride and the extra space for luggage and bikes. It’s amazing how quickly you can get from downtown to the airport.
I wish more money would have went into the planning and construction of the stations – the platforms are way too short and the architecture is very grey, concrete, bland. I know the government wanted to save money, but it was short-sighted.
Fair enough: this is something we do hear, and it’s definitely useful advice for future projects. Check out all the comments here!
For this Friday fun post, let’s pick up a topic we’ve explored a bit over the years: what are some fun summer activities can be reached by transit?
Here’s one—a little while back, Dale McGladdery sent a tweet to the Buzzer pointing out that some North Vancouver walking trails are very easily accessed by transit.
Check out the North Vancouver Guide to Walks and Trails for the walks — walks E1 and E2 in Bridgman Park are close to bus stops 53963 & 54011. And walk E10 starts at Lonsdale Quay, right near the SeaBus terminal.
For example, Cow suggested these trips (make sure to bring your passport for the Point Roberts trip!):
* Point Roberts — visit the US’s geographical mistake by bus: take the 601 to 2nd and 54th in Delta, walk (or bike) through Diefenbaker Park and across the border
* Powell River — catch an early-morning 257 to Horseshoe Bay, board the Nanaimo ferry, and catch the ViaRail train in Nanaimo. (12:50pm Sundays, 10:50am the rest of the week.) The train takes you to Courtenay, and then it’s a short walk or bike ride to the Little River ferry dock. (It also works in the other direction!)
Here’s Reva:
Deer Lake in Burnaby is a happy little spot. Take the #144 SFU from Metrotown Station, get off at Canada Way & Sperling, walk a couple blocks south, and you’re there! You can walk the boardwalks & trails around the lake, rent canoes & rowboats, go fishing, or have a little picnic on the beach. There is all kinds of wildlife to see including herons, eagles, turtles, squirrels, raccoons, ducks, geese, fish, etc. It’s so quiet & pretty it’s hard to believe it’s barely a 10 minute drive from Metrotown. When you’re done at the lake, you can always walk over to the Burnaby Village Museum, Burnaby Art gallery, or the Shadbolt Centre for some arts & culture too.
And here’s Dan B:
Ooh! I’m surprised no one mentioned Bowen Island! You take the 257 to Horseshoe Bay then BC Ferries to Snug Cove on Bowen Island. You can even use your ticket/pass from the bus to get you around the island via the C10 and C11!
This means that folks from Surrey or Coquitlam and the like can take a train (SkyTrain or the WCE) then a catamaran, then a bus, then a big ‘ol ferry, then a baby bus (or Community Shuttle, to use the technical term)! Plus, who wouldn’t want to go to a little island that receives more foot traffic than cars and has romantic, picturesque-sounding places like Eagle Cliff and Snug Cove? What a peaceful, relaxing way to spend a lazy summer day…
I also put together a summer getaway special in a 2008 print Buzzer, plus there’s always the Destinations to Discover section on the website. Are there any more suggestions for summer fun reachable by transit?
Now it’s totally cliche to say “Wow, times have changed,” but I’m going to do it anyway. For example, did you know that riders REALLY hated when children would get seats on transit? Here’s the article from the back:
Click for larger!
About Offspring
We’ve been receiving complaints that a good many small children are occupying seats while the grown-ups stand. Inasmuch as the grownups pay while young Johnny or Mary ride for free, this arrangement seems rather unfair. So please, parents, see to it that your child doesn’t sit while adults stand. Seat him on your knees or have him hang on to a chair-grip near you. Your fellow passengers will appreciate it. Thanks!
(Gads, that cartoon that accompanies it is so risque! I suppose the Buzzer of the 1950s isn’t for the faint of heart.)
And if this sounds familiar, you may recall that I made reference to the same issue in the Back Issues item from August 15, 2008. A Buzzer from 1925 mentioned that kids shouldn’t be sitting on transit either!
Cartoon from the front of the May 9, 1952 Buzzer.
Anyway, the “times have changed” theme doesn’t stop there. The main article in this Buzzer was a tirade against women fumbling for change in their purse when paying the streetcar! I’d bet my life that there were men with change counting problems too, but they’re not mentioned in the article. Honestly!
However, this particular Buzzer also announced the debut of “Story of a Street,” a regular history feature by local reporter Jim Nesbitt. So to wind this post up, here’s the story of Seymour Street!
Seymour Street
Seymour Street, one of the principal thoroughfares of downtown Vancouver, was named for His Excellency Frederick Seymour, early day Royal Governor of British Columbia. An Englishman, Seymour first came to B.C. in 1864 as Governor of the Crown Colony of British Columbia, the capital at New Westminster. There was also then a Crown Colony of Vancouver Island, the capital at Victoria.
In 1866 the two colonies were merged as the Crown Colony of British Columbia, the capital in New Westminster, and so Seymour lived there. In 1868, after a long and bitter battle between New Westminster and Victoria, the Island city won, became the capital, has so remained ever since. In ‘68 Seymour left New Westminster and took up residence in Victoria, at old Cary Castle, B.C.’s first Government House, destroyed by fire in 1898.
In June of 1869 Governor Seymour took a cruise north in H.M.S. Sparrowhawk. A few days after leaving Esquimalt he died suddenly aboard Sparrowhawk at Bella Coola. He was 47. There was a state funeral in Victoria and burial was in the picturesque naval cemetery in the old world, seaside village of Esquimalt.
You can dig up more gems like this in the Buzzer archives online: look at the top right of the page to see historic Buzzers! If you find anything fun, do let me know. Hope everybody has a great weekend!
It’s I Love Transit Week from July 12-16 — because even though there’s things we don’t like about transit, there’s much we do like! All week I’ll be sharing essays, stories, and more to celebrate transit. Come to I Love Transit Night on Thursday July 15 too – full details here!
Transit systems get a rare chance to be musical when they create systemwide audio chimes to get riders’ attention.
The most memorable chime I’ve ever heard is the one from SNCF, the French national railway. Play the video above and you’ll see what I mean! I remember being in Gare du Nord in Paris and hearing that chime go off once every ten minutes—it’s instantly recognizable, totally memorable, and lots of fun to imitate.
Stations in Tokyo also have some fabulous transit chimes: the departing song in Takadanobaba Station is the Astroboy theme! The chimes are different depending on which station you’re in, or so I’m told.
So to that end: do you have a favourite transit chime? Feel free to post links in the comments: and if you’d like to explore, you can find a long list of subway chimes and announcements at Metrobits.org.
Bus stop at Hastings and Cassiar in Vancouver, photographed on September 7, 2008 by Matthew Tichenor.
Last week, I asked about beautiful bus stops around the region, and I wanted to showcase the many lovely pictures you sent in of stops all over Metro Vancouver!
Sungsu shared the stop photographed above by Matthew Tichenor, as well as a few others:
This bus stop has flowers lovingly planted nearby. It's located at 20th Street westbound at 131 Street in South Surrey. Click to see a much larger version of this photo!
John, a colleague from CMBC, sent me this photo of a bus stop blooming with flowers in South Surrey, under the subject line, “The most beautiful bus stop?”
It turns out John’s neighbour Dean takes time to plant the flowers beside the bus stop every year—isn’t that lovely? Last year he planted red and white flowers for Canada Day!
Red and white flowers planted at the stop last year. Click for a much larger version!
Have you seen any nice bus stops around? Feel free to share in the comments! (Embedding images won’t work, but you can just throw down a raw URL to link to any photos :)
The Buzzer from July 7, 1950 showed the lamppost that controlled traffic lights in Vancouver's business district.
Here’s another classic Buzzer for our first sunny Friday. The July 7, 1950 issue spent most of its time discussing the lamppost that controlled a key part of Vancouver’s traffic light system in 1950!
Here’s the tantalizing introduction :
The city’s most complicated lamp-post stands near the Courthouse on Howe Street. It looks like a thousand others around town as you walk by. Only this lamp-post ticks, quietly and without pause, day in and day out, 365 days a year.
If the ticking ever stops, look out!
Like a heart quitting, it would create almost instant paralysis . . . all over downtown Vancouver traffic would bog down and clot.
For this lamp-post, ladies and gentlemen, houses the devices that control and coordinate traffic lights throughout the city’s chief business area.
The Buzzer goes on to describe the light system’s operation in great detail, and there’s lots of then-new facts about how the city’s traffic flows worked: Seymour and Howe were two-way streets and carried just 800 vehicles a day, and the opening of the Granville Street Bridge was highly anticipated — it would boost Seymour and Howe’s capacity to 1800 vehicles a day!
(Question: does anyone know where this lamppost might have been? Would be neat if a remnant is still there!)
And also, let’s test out the WordPress poll plugin, that is purported to work on the blog now! You should also be able to see it in the right hand sidebar, if you’re on the actual Buzzer site.
What would you like to see in the Friday fun post?
Jewels from the Buzzer archives (48%, 31 Votes)
Polls (42%, 27 Votes)
Other (suggest in the comments?) (9%, 6 Votes)
Total Voters: 64
Consider this a rehash of last week’s small discussion, but now with a quantitative element! Feel free to make suggestions for Friday fun post content in the comments.
Well, after 146 votes, the 3D vinyl stuff on the new SkyTrains won handily, capturing 57% of the total vote! Smooth blue vinyl was a distant second (21%) followed by flocked fabric (12%) and cloth (10%).
Most of the comments stretched past the seat material to discuss the actual seats. Here’s Marc, for example:
I really like the seats on the new SkyTrain cars, and I think a couple of the articulated busses on the 145 route have them too. The only seats I really don’t like are the large bulky plastic-backed ones. They don’t leave me much room to use my netbook on the bus, and transit time is writing time! (:
Sally actually didn’t like any of them:
Now that you ask, I don’t really like any of them. The flocked stuff sometimes pokes me in the legs. As for the vinyl, depending on the texture of my clothes, it tends to shoot me off the seat like a rocket!
This week: a 1945 Buzzer with planning predictions and poetry
Let’s take a break from the polls and just enjoy a Buzzer from 1945!
Grab the Sept 7, 1945 Buzzer: it features “expert predictions” about future transit from Alfred J. Lundberg, president of the Key System of Oakland, the rail and bus provider from Oakland to San Francisco. Some great quotes include:
“Hence, I think I will trust my crystal ball enough to tell you with entire confidence that you will never see American cities without public transit, if they are to remain of the type to which we are accustomed, that is, concentrated business districts and tall buildings.”
There’s also a marvelous, still-relevant poem about moving to the back of the streetcar, contributed by Mr. Johnstone of 3833 Imperial St, New Westminster!
“Move to the front” the conductor calls.
I’m afraid he calls in vain,
For planted hallway in the car
There is an ardent swain.
The aisle is sure well blocked;
No chance to get past there,
For he’s bent over whispering
Sweet nothings in her ear.
Next trip a buxom lady
Stands with one hand on high,
Some parcels scattered at her feet,
Says that look in her eye:
“There’s no chip upon my shoulder,
Nor do I bear a grudge,
But until I get a seat
From here I will not budge.”
Now don’t be selfish or inconsiderate,
Treat your fellow riders right,
‘Cause next time you may the one
Who is jammed in far too tight.
There used to be lots of poetry in the Buzzer actually: I’ll have to dig up some examples in a future post.
And tell me too: are you sick of polls? Is it OK to do a historical Buzzer or such from time to time? Friday fun posts are yours to imagine… :)
We had 135 votes, and possibly unsurprisingly, the most popular answer was “watch the street/track like a hawk to see if your ride is coming” with 45%.
Second most popular was “people watch” (21%) and third was using a phone or smartphone (18%). Just 7% said they read, and 7% chose “other.”
There was a diversity of answers in the comments: most people felt impatient waiting, but had different ways of handling it. Here’s Ed:
Playing games on my iPod touch is the easiest way to kill time, or else I’d be reading those free newspapers that are handed out at Canada Line stations during peak hours. Sometimes, I purposely miss the train if I have time, just to catch a breeze or soak in the good weather, a pro of Richmond stations!
Peter and Andrew thought there should have been a category for pacing (Reva did suggest one originally — sorry for pulling it out!) Here’s Peter:
I’m with Andrew on this one — you needed another category for the impatient pacers among us — it might seem like impatience on the surface, but inside, my mind is usually racing around a rich terrain of brilliant fantasy: next time I get restless — a shiny black limo with shaded windows is going to pull up to the bus stop and offer me a ride to exactly where I’m going… and there will be tray with champagne and caviar sitting there for me to enjoy — and everybody at the bus stop will be wondering “who was that.?”
And ericmk was very zen about the whole experience.
When I’m waiting for the bus/train, I usually am pretty calm, especially after work when I’m not in a rush. I don’t have to worry about driving, and worrying about the timeliness of transit is kinda useless because it won’t get you to your destination any sooner! Or at least that’s my mindset! So, I pass the time with my BlackBerry because I’m addicted to it. I’ll check my email or look at whatever else suits my fancy- like the Buzzer blog! And I’m still waiting for an app for Blackberry- developers get to work! I’m not getting an iphone anytime soon!
Also, Tsushima Masaki had a helpful hint for those with smartphones.
Actually (a side note), a little something I noticed a couple months ago is you can actually get a schedule of train times on the Translink website. For example to get actual train arrival times go to http://tripplanning.translink.bc.ca/hiwire?.a=iScheduleLookup and type in 980 as the bus route.
999 is Expo Line
998 is Seabus
997 is West Coast Express Trainbus
996 is Millennium Line
This week: what type of seat material do you like best?
Alisha suggested this poll, saying “I have a definite opinion on this one and am definitely disappointed when I get a vehicle with a certain type of seat.”
But before we begin, I asked my colleague in fleet management to help me out with enumerating the seat types, and he offered the following caveat:
I hope that the survey respondents would understand if we buy unpopular seats.
There are a lot of factors that go into the decision to buy a particular seat type, including appearance, comfort, purchase price, weight, ability to be cleaned, and maintenance costs. “Comfort” is usually determined by a dozen employees who’ll be asked their opinions after sitting on different demo seats.
I should also mention that my colleague had a HUGE list of seat types (there are a ton of combinations if you throw in thick/thin cushioning, metal/plastic backs etc), so I am just listing materials here.
With 111 people weighing in, most people said they HAD read something someone else was reading on transit (77%) — just 23% said they hadn’t.
Donna saw some choice reading material once:
The 7 or the 4 coming downtown, I was sitting with my partner in the back row, and a somewhat geeky looking young man in his early 20s was sitting in the sideways seat in front of us. He was reading a rather nice looking large book, black leather & gold leaf, so I took a peek at the title…
…and it was “The Game” by Neil Strauss. Ew, ew, ew! Sleaaaazy!
And here’s what Hilary saw once:
I think the most interesting, or at least out-of-the-ordinary, thing I’ve read over somebody’s shoulder was a sheaf of papers this one woman had that turned out to be detailing how to prepare for a hysterectomy and what would indicate that something had gone wrong.
Wait, no, it was a tubal ligation. Much less drastic than a hysterectomy.
But Dave 2 pointed out that hardly anyone was reading these days.
Read? Who reads? The kids these days are texting, Facebooking, or playing Tetris on their smartphones :-) True, people do read the free papers, just this morning I saw someone reading an article on page x… so I went to page x in my copy… Last month a woman sat down beside me and started to read an eBook on a Kindle…these days the new opening line would be “So, downloaded any good books lately?”
141 people weighed in, and this time the winner was clear: the back, with 45% of the vote! (Middle came second with 37% and the front received 25%.)
It did seem like everybody had a different preference based on which bus/train they were sitting in, however! Lots of people gave detailed lists, and here’s a short sample from Tsushima Masaki
Orion V (Highway coaches)
3rd forward-facing seat row, right side, window.
New Flyer D40LF (Most Richmond buses)
I used to prefer the window seat on the right side of the bus 1 row behind the back door, but now I find the right window seat just in front of the back door to be more to my liking.
B-Lines
Any right window seat that has a glass partition behind it.
Community shuttles
Not too much of a preference, I tend to sit in the front seats, left or right.
Hilary had a nice long list too, and this particular excerpt from her comment was seconded by Bevis Parker:
I like the SkyTrain driver’s seat position, but I rarely sit in it because I prefer the view from the side windows and, in Mark II trains, I can’t comfortably lean my elbows on the… ledge-thing… without putting myself at an angle where I have to crane my neck to see much beyond the tracks (vertically). Although it can’t be beat for getting a good view of the subway tunnels. The exception to this ambivalent position is on the Canada Line, where my favourite seat, no contest, is the aisle seat by the front window (either side), again for the subway-tunnels reason. Although, since those trains have a wider front window than the Expo/Millennium Line trains, it’s a good seat for the rest of the stations too.
Sally, however, said her seat choice was all about efficiency.
It’s all strategy – at the front of the highway coaches so I can be first (or almost first) off because if you are at ground level and you hear the Canada Line train rumbling in, it gives you chance to sprint up the 2 escalators and leap onto the train. Heaven forbid I’ve have to wait 4 minutes for the next train!
I then stand in the first carriage by the door so I can get off easily at Oakridge. (Although Oakridge is really bad for passengers getting on the train without letting anyone off first………..)
Coming home I don’t care where I sit so long as it is on the right-hand side!!
And a couple of people had specific favourites. Here’s …:
For Novabus, I’ll take the private seat behind the driver.
Check the original comment thread for more: there is in fact a neat side discussion about how long SkyTrains sit at a station for, and of course many more suggestions on the best places to sit on transit :D
This week: ever read what someone else is reading on transit?
This is inspired by the free newspaper poll: I realize a bunch of you said you read over someone else’s shoulder, so let’s see just how many people are reading others’ stuff in transit!
If you’re a yes, can you think of any particularly notable reading material you’ve seen? I remember glancing sideways at someone’s psychology notes about the Stanford Prison Experiment and learning some rather insightful things on my trip home :)
And the answer’s clear above: 1944! Which means that the winners of the contest are Sewing, Sean Turvey, Donald, Rob, and Reva.
Winners, e-mail me your addresses, and I’ll put the buttons, map, and two radios in the mail. (The radios will go to Sean & Donald since they were first to get it, and Sewing mentioned that he didn’t want a prize. Sewing, I can still send buttons and maps though!)
Also, I must say it was awesome to see everyone using their Nancy Drew skillz to get the answer. Check out Sewing’s comment: it’s richly detailed with a lot of fun history links to follow. And really, good effort all around, everyone!
By the way, this ticket actually came to us by way of a gentleman named J.A. Hugh. Mr. Hugh worked for the B.C. Electric Company long back when it started, and when he passed away, his memorabilia came through his friends to one of our staff members. There is much more to share from his collection :)
This week: where do you like to sit on transit?
OK, I wanted to revisit this classic poll, which was the very first one I ever ran here on the Buzzer. Since I think our readership has likely expanded and changed, let’s see what the winning answer is now!
And after 265 votes, it was no contest: the web and mobile solutions won hands down, with the TransLink website taking 42% of the vote, followed by the SMS service (22%) and the iPhone app or mobile site (15%). Hardly anyone said they called the transit phone line, either to speak to a rep (5%) or to use the interactive voice system (5%).
Now this is obviously a fun poll and is more than likely skewed toward web users, considering you had to be reasonably web savvy to even find the Buzzer blog and take the poll in the first place. But it still gave some illuminating insights. For instance, I was remiss in forgetting to put the Buzzer or the blog on the poll. And there were a few other crucial items I missed that people still depend on. Here’s Deano:
I thought I was going to be all alone here, but I’m with Jacob; the printed timetable is the best when I need to quickly check transfers.
Same with Reva:
I mainly use the Translink website and the trip planner for route & schedule info. But if I’m out and about I’ll refer to a schedule capsule on a bus stop pole, or even — A PAPER SCHEDULE (yeah, I went there!) that I carry around in my purse! :)
Gregory Marler mentioned a few more resources:
I got a folded map with my UPass when I arrived at UBC. It’s served me well when checking how many stops to go or what spontaneous route I should take. It’s battered and worn now, perhaps I should have got one of the slightly larger (not so pocket size) Olympic ones. But I didn’t want to seem like a tourist!
http://www.transitdb.ca is great for so many reasons and you should do a blog post about it. It’s not an official Translink website but it’s good that it can use the data.
And Rvie and a few others said it really depended on context, too.
It depends on where I am, honestly. When I’m planning to go somewhere in the next day or so and need to know what time the bus comes, I go to the TransLink website. But when I’m at the bus stop and I don’t know what time the bus comes I use the SMS service instead. =)
As always, check out the rest of the comments for more on how people get their transit information!
This week: guess the year of this transit ticket
A while back, a treasure trove of old tickets came to reside in our office. Here’s one of them: can you guess what year it’s from?
The front side
The back of the pass.
If you get closest to the pin, I’ll mail you a set of Buzzer buttons, plus a terrible pocket-sized TransLink radio! I have two of these left, discovered after a cleanup in the office. I can also throw in an Olympic transit map because I found another of those too!
And after 215 votes, the most popular answer was Canada Line (46%), followed by Expo Line (30%) and Millennium Line (24%)!
However, only a few comments professed their love for the Canada Line: many more expressed improvements they wanted to see on the Line! Here’s Cliff, for example.
It really needs to be branded as two lines like the Expo and Millennium lines. Doing so would keep it consistent with the rest of the system. A “Sea Island line” and a “Richmond line” (Not enough people know what Lulu Island is).
Also, I have a similar disdain for the destination announcements on the Canada Line.
There was lots of love for the Expo Line though! Here’s Robert:
Nods to Canada Line for attention to service details, and to the Millennium Line for station architecture. Expo Line still gets my vote. On the practical level it’s well tuned for speed (Canada Line still feels tentative quite often). Combined with the short head ways and longer platforms, it’s tops for moving many people quickly. Esthetically, there are great long distance views, especially in central Burnaby and on the Skybridge.
Paul Hillsdon was in favour of the Millennium Line:
Expo is an oldie, but a goodie. Canada Line is my least favourite – the trains are incredibly sterile, and most of the route is underground. Millennium wins this round, with the most beautiful stations, scenic route, and least amount of traffic!
And zack liked all three.
Heck! all of the lines are my favourites! :)
Expo Line – Winner, because I live just blocks from the line, and easy access to Downtown.
Millennium Line – Winner for best station designs. Once you’re on the line you feel like you are in a futuristic urban wonderland!
Canada Line – Despite being mostly underground, what I like about this line compare to rest are the train rides are smooth, and there is 3g coverage! Plus, it also gives me nostalgic memories of when I was on the Yonge line in Toronto!
As always, check out the rest of the comments for more on favourite SkyTrain lines!
This week: where do you get your transit information?
Did you know that that calls volumes to our Transit Information line are down from last year? So I thought I’d run a poll to see how you might be getting your information these days. (CJ Stebbing also suggested a poll of this type before too!)
Feel free to discuss further in the comments, as always!
