Reminder: Paralympic Games opening ceremonies, Friday March 12
Reminder: Paralympic Games opening ceremonies, Friday March 12
Just a reminder that the Paralympic Games opening ceremonies are at B.C. Place today, Friday March 12!
That means some road closures downtown, transit reroutes, and crowds heading to the event at B.C. Place. Full details are below.
Please do remember: as with the Olympic Games, tickets to Paralympic events (including the opening ceremonies) are also good for unlimited travel on the TransLink system on the date of the event!
Opening Ceremony at B.C. Place on Friday March 12
During the Opening Ceremony on March 12:
- SkyTrain will operate “event level” service, with 55 trains running on the Expo/Millennium Lines before and after the ceremony and additional trains available for the Canada Line if needed.
- SeaBus will run two vessels following the ceremonies to help deal with crowds, and Coast Mountain Bus Company will have additional buses available if needed.
- Cambie Street Bridge and the Georgia Viaduct will be closed, 10am-Midnight on March 12. The #15 will only serve the south-of-False Creek portion of its route during that time; customers coming into downtown Vancouver will need to use Canada Line.
- Buses to and from North Vancouver will travel via Georgia/Pender to Richards, then to Georgia for the return trip
- Due to the closure of Cambie and Quebec Streets, the C21 and C23 Community Shuttles will be re-routed via Seymour, Pender and Main, returning via Main, Pender and Richards.
- An accessible shuttle bus will provide service for those with mobility issues between Yaletown-Roundhouse Station and BC Place Stadium from 3-10pm.
For more information….
If you have any questions on these services or need help with tripplanning, feel free to contact Customer Information at 604-953-3333.
If you’d like more information about the Vancouver road closures, please see the City of Vancouver’s Paralympic Transportation Plan page.
Remember, you can follow the TransLink Twitter account for real-time service updates during the Paralympics! You can also sign up for alerts to be delivered to you via e-mail or text message. See this post for even more ways to get transit info during the Paralympic period.
Originally the opening ceremonies were to be taped delayed to Saturday 2pm. CTV has changed their minds and will be showing the opening ceremonies live at 6pm!
Heads up…. CTV just announced the rebroadcast will occur at 1:30pm and not 2pm.
I just wrapped up watching the opening ceremonies and I find it to be truly inspirational. The perfomances were very colorful and I especially liked the part when all the children sang “Body! Mind! Spirit!” with a truly inspirational message that whoever you are whatever your challenges, never give up on achieving your dreams.
Last night we entered BC Place at Gate E from Pacific Blvd, the nearest gate to our section, but afterward came out Gate F. Everyone from there was being directed west along Pacific so we had no choice but to keep going to Yaletown – twice the distance to Stadium, our intended target.
Once we got on a Waterfront-bound train at Yaletown, someone said they’d were directing people away from Stadium since they’d closed it due to crowding. Does anyone know if that was the case?
The trains we did get on, Yaletown-Waterfront and then Waterfront east, weren’t bad though there was a big crowd getting on at Stadium, about an hour after we left BC Place. I’ve seen much worse in regular rush hours. It took us 70 minutes from leaving the stadium to get to Joyce, which I was pleased with.
But my wife has some mobility issues,and that was a long walk. Yes, I heard about a shuttle between the stadium and Yaletown, but all we saw was someone driving a golfcart. A big thank you to the helpful attendant outside Yaletown who directed us to the elevator, without which it would have been a longer trip. But some better direction would have been appreciated.
Bill Kinkaid:
I’ve sent your comment over to our customer service system, so SkyTrain will have the info when designing their B.C. Place exit strategies in the future. Would you like a reply from SkyTrain, or is just submitting the info enough?
Thanks Jhenifer. Getting the message to them is (I hope) enough. For all we know, if we’d exited through Gate E the way we came in instead of F we might have been directed back toward Stadium but we had no way of knowing since there were no signs or anyone giving direction, just a tide of people.
Only from looking at the unclear directions on the website beforehand did we discern that to get IN we had to go the long way around from Stadium. My wife said there were people directing traffic at Stadium, otherwise how many people would have tried to go up Beatty to Robson the way most of us usually do?
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