Links & Tidbits is our semi-regular roundup of interesting fodder about transportation and TransLink from the last few weeks or so. If you have links to contribute, put them in the comments with a few sentences about what it’s about! 

• In April, we had the privilege of celebrating our editor Robert Willis’s 10-year anniversary at TransLink! Here’s the article where he was first introduced on the Buzzer Blog. Robert’s now the Manager for all things Social Media and Digital Content, but he still contributes here when he has time. Oh and he still loves robots and Japanese food.

• In other news around TransLink, you may have noticed our new spokesperson Tina Lovgreen has put out her first video with us as a part of Vaccine Shuttle Program alongside Fraser Health. You probably know Tina from her time with CBC Vancouver where she was a video journalist for seven years.

• Some of our favourite content from the last month was our celebration of Expo 86. If you’re interested in seeing more photos from the Expo check out our friend Jason Vanderhill’s Flickr album here. Or, if you’re interested in really reminiscing or want a chance to see what entertainment was like in 1986, you can watch the opening Gala event that featured a young (and haired) Howie Mandel, Loverboy, and Bryan Adams among others.

• Public transportation infrastructure is entering a new phase as The Boring Company — Elon Musk’s tunneling startup — has now officially completed its first project at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Check out the video below to find out what $52.5 million gets you in futuristic underground transportation.

• Meanwhile, in Montreal the federal government and the province of Quebec reached a deal to provide $600 million in funding to extend their light rail system to the Trudeau International Airport. Montreal’s LRT is currently under construction but upon completion will have 26 stations and 67 kilometers of track across Greater Montreal.

• Further up the St. Lawrence on the shores of Lake Ontario, Toronto city council will tackle a very different issue the city is facing this month, electric scooters. In April a committee voted unanimously to uphold Toronto’s current ban on e-scooters with advocates against the scooters saying the pose a danger to the elderly and disabled. While supporters of the scooters say they would help reduce road congestion.

• New York City is reporting a new high number of riders on their subway system in a post pandemic world. Ridership numbers in the Big Apple are still only at about a third of what they were pre-pandemic, but the trend is encouraging internationally ahead of the city’s return to 24-hour subway operations next week.

• If you’re looking for some cool transit-related content, you should take a look at our friends over at reddit.com/r/transit — they’re always posting cool things relating to public transportation from around the world. For instance, check out this map of the public transport systems from the Pearl River Delta in southeast China, a much higher resolution version is available here. The delta is one of the most densely populated (63 million+) metro areas in the world and includes the cities of Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macau. Thee metro map demonstrates that.

• Don’t forget this is the last week of engagement for Transport 2050! We’ve been working hard to help iron out the details by doing podcasts with Eve Hou and UBC’s Yuval Fogelson, and we did a Reddit AMA with Andrew McCurran. If you still haven’t filled out the short survey, you can do so at transport2050.ca.