2010 Olympic tickets will include free transit

[mr.x]

2010 Olympic tickets will include free transit

Tim Lai, Vancouver Sun
Published: Friday, September 26, 2008

Public transit fares will be included in the price of a ticket for an Olympic event, 2010 organizers announced late Friday, but they remained silent on what costs TransLink will incur to provide the additional services that will be needed.

Vanoc, the Olympic organizing committee, will release its Olympic Ticketing Guide today, providing information on the ticketing timeline as well an the venues, sports and special events. Someinformation began to leak out Friday.

Vanoc said the average service fee that includes transportation rolled into Olympic tickets will average less than $10 per ticket, and will range from $4 to $18, depending on the price of the ticket.

Vanoc also revealed prices for transportation to mountain venues, saying they will be about half the price of existing options. Spectators going to Whistler will need a $25 round-trip transportation pass.

Those going to Cypress Mountain on the North Shore will be paying $12 for a pass on the Olympics bus network.

"We want to make public transportation as affordable and enticing as possible, thereby reducing the number of vehicles on the road, saving spectators parking costs and reducing emissions from heavy vehicle traffic," said Caley Denton, Vanoc vice-president of ticketing and consumer marketing, in a release.

TransLink spokesman Ken Hardie could not say how much it would cost to provide extra transit service during the Games.

But he added: "It's safe to say that this is cost-recoverable to TransLink."

Hardie was unable to specify how many extra buses and additional manpower will be required to deal with the large crowds expected at Olympic events. He said discussions between Vanoc and TransLink have been ongoing for "a while" and that they have detailed plans in place for 2010 that factor in location of venues, timing of events and expected attendance.

"A lot of detail work had to go in before we could determine the level of transit that would be needed," said Hardie.

Hardie added that much of TransLink's previously announced transit expansion will be place for the Games.

"It will include Canada Line and 200 more buses available on the system by then," said Hardie. "We'll have an additional 150-200 buses on stand-by. We'll have the third SeaBus and most of the 48 SkyTrain cars that have been ordered."

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts, who chairs the Mayor's Council on Regional Transportation, said she was unaware of the costs associated with extra transit service during the Winter Games.

"It's slim to none that TransLink would have that money available to cover that cost," Watts said, noting that by the time of the Games, TransLink will be starting to incur annual deficits even without additional Games costs.

tlai@vancouversun.com

[zivan56]

How is it "free transit" when you are charged an extra, mandatory, fee?

[deasine]

Rather: it will include the cost of transit... -__-

It would be hilarious if it turns out that transit will be free during the games =P I guess we have to find a way to get our funding from somewhere...

[Distill3d]

Originally Posted by mr.x2

2010 Olympic tickets will include free transit

Those going to Cypress Mountain on the North Shore will be paying $12 for a pass on the Olympics bus network.

"We want to make public transportation as affordable and enticing as possible, thereby reducing the number of vehicles on the road, saving spectators parking costs and reducing emissions from heavy vehicle traffic," said Caley Denton, Vanoc vice-president of ticketing and consumer marketing, in a release.[/email]

rather than the $8 for a daily transit pass, or $7.50 (based on a round trip 2 zone fare) it would cost to go there if translink were to provide bus service to the mountain from Downtown or Lonsdale Quay via Park Royal?

something is rotten in the state of denmark indeed

[SpongeG]

there is talk a lot of normal service will be disrupted during the games though so regular things might not be running

[mr.x]

From a CBC article:



Hardie said by 2010 the Canada Line will be in service, 200 new buses will be added to the transit system and another 200 buses will be put into service especially for the Olympics.

The Canada Line is a $1.9-billion expansion of Vancouver's SkyTrain elevated rapid-transit system that will run completely separated from traffic to and from downtown Vancouver and Vancouver International Airport in Richmond. It's expected to be in operation in 2009.

At this point Olympic organizers said they aren't planning to restrict access on the Sea-to-Sky Highway between Vancouver and Whistler to only Olympic business.

"The highway will essentially be able to operate as open," said Maureen Douglas, director of community relations for the organizing committee.

"We will certainly provide the public with guidelines as to the best time to travel. There will be more efficient times to travel south and more efficient times to travel north," he said.




I would think the Canada Line frequency would be upped to the max., utilizing 18 of the 20 trains for most of the day.