Your Olympic event tickets have your transit fare covered (all day!)
February 16, 2010
Your Olympic event tickets have your transit fare covered (all day!)
February 16, 2010
In case you don’t know already — your Olympic event ticket also gives you free access to transit on the date of the event, all day!
Your ticket is valid on the entire TransLink network, which includes West Coast Express and HandyDART. You can use it until 4 a.m. the following morning, which is the end of our service for the day.
For more on fares, check out my fares post, or the Fares and Passes section on the main TransLink website.
This message really isn’t getting through, is it? Yall keep tweeting this repeatedly via various Translink twitter accounts and it’s starting to get tedious! :p
(Nice stack o’ tickets there…)
b
Lots of people seem to not know, or are just hesitant to believe it — when I was out visiting with transit hosts, lots of people would come by and confirm with, “So I can use this on transit, right?”
From this morning though, I also saw signage next to ticket machines in Broadway City Hall and Yaletown stations, saying things like “Today’s event ticket holders ride free!”
I did not know where to write this, so I will write here.
The message will probably be deleted anyways, but even if one person reads it, it is still worth it.
I wish to talk about the “excellent” work of our Vancouver transit system.
Every morning (on the weekdays) I travel from Burnaby to West Vancouver and back in the evening. Everyday when I get to the bus stop I have to wait a long time for the bus. They do not follow shedules at all. I will not be surprised, if some people are constantly late for work. The line-ups are huge. When the bus finally comes, it usually takes long time for the people to board it. Someone always tries to search for tickets, some are complaining that it is too expensive, others just do not have enough money so the bus driver prints out a concession ticket. Why do I have to pay full fare, while someone same age as me, pays almost twice less???
The benches at the bus stops are simply terrible. There is garbage on it, people sleeping / spitting, and dirt that was not cleaned up for years.
Granville Station. Sometimes I exit there to save time. There are policemen checking every single ticket, so I have to get it out. The policemen is not in a hurry: they do everything in extremely slow motion. The only thing that helps, is hobos who sell their tickets for $1, however sometimes they increase the price to $2 and then it turns out more expensive than the faresaver ticket! At the end, I do not save that much time…
Burrard station. The situation is identical. There are huge amounts of people, so it is really difficult to pass. There is no air condition and sometimes people simply faint! However, it is not as bad as the evening rush. The cops who check tickets often hide, so people do not see them. When rumours pass that cops are there, people start going back up the escalator! Half of the machines are brocken, so the line-ups increase, and I sometimes have to wait 10-15 minutes in order to actually buy the ticket! I remember one time the machine broke at the middle of the line, so people ad to line up again.
The buses from West Vancouver (Royal Mall) departure with no rules… The schedule at the stop says one thing, the printed timetable has a different time, while the buses come late 30-40 minutes anyway. Sometimes there is no bus for 40 minutes, and then in 2-3 come at the time! Why couldn’t they put one bus every 15 minutes instead?
The buses… Those who take them will agree with me. There is no air condition, like in all civilized countries of Europe, we still use the old fashioned windows to get the dirty air from the road!!!In the SkyTrain Car, it says not to open the windows due to the air conditioner. However, the air conditioner is broken!!! There is always garbege inside. At night, homeless sleep in these cars. Nobody ever washes them, they stink and are simply anti-sanitary.
We are always told to pay the full fare but why??? The service is simply not worth the $3.75 they are asking for. At times the trip from Burnaby to Royal MAll (West Vancouver) takes more then 1hr30min so I have to buy a new ticket… Is this type of service even worth the money they are asking???
Sometimes I get driven to the SkyTrain station, so I can avoid paying for two zones (they do not check that well) or do not pay at all (sometimes bus drivers let us enter at the back door, AND policemen do not check SkyTrain tickets).
I think the fares should be affordable while the service at least acceptable. And then everyone will pay and there will be no fare evasion!
FedUpTransLinkUser:
Well, sorry to hear you’ve been having a poor experience! Would you mind submitting your complaint in our Customer Relations form so that it is logged in our formal system?
I must however mention a few things in relation to your comment:
– Drivers printing out concession fares for people who complain is certainly not common procedure!
– We do try to stick as closely as possible to bus schedules, and most drivers are very conscientious about being on time.
– Burrard Station is indeed busy, but it certainly isn’t common to find people fainting there because of the air.
– SkyTrain cars go into the operations and maintenance centre in Edmonds at night, and all trains are cleared of people before they enter. So there are no homeless people sleeping in them overnight. SkyTrain also employs cleaners to clean the trains regularly. If you ride to Waterfront, you can often see SkyTrain staff darting in to pull newspapers and other detritus off the trains before they depart again.
– You can also purchase prepaid fares like FareSaver transit tickets and FareCard monthly passes, so you don’t have to line up at ticket machines every day. These fares are cheaper than buying a ticket every single time you ride on transit. See the Fares and Passes section of the TransLink website for more info.
After the comment above, I thought that I should vouch for our transit system. I take the skytrain everyday from Lougheed Town Center to either VCC-Clark or Commercial-Broadway, depending on timing. If I’m at Commercial-Broadway, I’ll take the 99B-line to Broadway-City Hall, where I transfer to the Canada Line to King Edward. If I’m at VCC-Clark, I’ll take the 84 UBC to Olympic Village on the Canada Line. When I arrive at either Millenium Line station, the bus is always there already. When I reach the Canada Line, a train arrives within 3 minutes of my arrival. All stations, trains, and buses are very, very clean, aside from the occasional newspaper on the floor (no biggie compared to the banana peel I almost died tripping over on the DC metro!). Staff never hold me up and, like Jhen suggests, I buy monthly passes. My total commute time is 1 hour. If I were to drive, who knows how long it would take (I imagine the timing would differ day by day). Plus, I hate driving and have always hated it since I was 16 and got my learner’s permit. Anyways, what I’m trying to say is that my transit experience has been a very positive one. I think we have a wonderful system here, so much so that the only time I drive is when I go grocery shopping. A good transit system is essential to making a metropolitan area livable, and Vancouver is always highly rated for its livability. While I’m not trying to criticize FedUpTranslinkUser, I just think we should all be thankful for the least bit of transit we do have. I’m not originally from Vancouver, I’m a Washintonian (both Washington State and Washington DC). Both cities have public transportation, but neither are as good as Vancouver’s. Washington State’s issue, specifically Seattle’s issue, is its lack of transportation. The whole Bellevue and Redmond area(east of Seattle on the other side of Lake Washington) relies on buses that just get stuck in the same traffic as all the other cars getting into downtown Seattle. In DC, the metro is hardly as extensive as it needs to be. It is also plagued with a lot of safety issues. You may of heard of the big Red Line crash in June, the deadliest crash in its history. This past week, a train was derailed by the automatic train control because the driver ignored a red light signal. All in all, we should be thankful for the safe, reliable, fast, efficient, and enviromentaly-friendly transportation we have, even if some occasional experiences are less than ideal. Sorry for the super long post! :)
Oh, I also wanted to say its impossible to live without a car in Redmond/Bellevue and DC (in my case, Northern Virginia), but it is very possible here in Vancouver. Thought that was kinda important to my whole glorious thesis thing!:)
—– Drivers printing out concession fares for people who complain is certainly not common procedure!—-
No, they do not print it out to me, I pay my fare. They print out to others, who not to have enough money (however, they can afford to buy beer and cigarets)
I agree, it depends what you compare it too. I have been in lots of places around the world, and I would say the transit is better than in Asia, but it is far behind from Europe (including the eastern countries). The big problem – monopoly and no competition. There are no alternatives to Translink. For example in Moscow, you can travel the same route using 7 different ways (metro, train, streetcar, bus (from many different companies), trolleybus, cheap taxi, and elite taxi). Here there is the expensive taxi and the bus/Train. No overlap. I do not complain about Canada Line (unfortunately I do not take it very often), or the Millenium Line, however everything else… Just a nightmare…
Hi there!
Thanks for using my picture! :)
cara:
I should really thank you for taking a great picture, and for kindly using a creative commons license :)