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Old Posted Feb 16, 2012, 8:24 AM
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Pac NW Plannergeek Honeymoon | Vancouver 3 of 3: Transportation

Pac NW Plannergeek Honeymoon
Seattle: Observation Deck Aerials | Downtown | Neighborhoods | Transportation
Portland: Downtown & Skyline | Neighborhoods | Transportation
Vancouver: Downtown | Neighborhoods | Transportation
Bonus Thread: Loose pictures of the Cascades, Tacoma, and elsewhere

Vancouver Transportation

Vancouver has by far the most mature transit system of the three big northwest cities. Probably because it doesn't have any downtown highways. There are some extremely cool things about what they have going on, but there are also some weaknesses. I'll discuss both.

One general statement before getting into details of each mode: I really wish there was a better transit line going up the peninsula lengthwise. Ideally a SkyTrain subway, but a streetcar, BRT, or even a specially-branded bus circulator would do. I understand there are some bus lines that do it, but it's too important a movement to leave to only users sophisticated enough to know ahead of time what bus route number to use. There needs to be something much easier. The good news is they are planning a network of inner city streetcars that will address this problem, so that's nice. I don't know the status, but perhaps a Vancouver person can update us.


Intercity Rail

We traveled to Vancouver from Portland via Amtrak. Since it's an international crossing the Amtrak platform at Vancouver's Pacific Central Station is fenced off. It's very dramatic, in the middle of the night.






Through customs and into the station. It's a nice waiting room, in good shape. All three cities' train stations are basically comparable in size and grandeur - or at least will be once the various renovations under way at each of them are finished.




Did I mention renovation? We used Amtrak stations in all three cities, and every single one of them was undergoing some manner of renovation. Train stations are my favorite type of building, and while I'm glad that all three cities are investing in good ones, I was a little bummed that everywhere I went I saw rafters instead of finished products.




From there we took SkyTrain to the other main train station in Vancouver, Waterfront Station, where we transferred between SkyTrain lines. More on SkyTrain later, but here's Waterfront Station.

Similar scale to Pacific Central.




Nice details.




At the time it was very late and we just wanted to find the hotel, so we transferred straight onto SkyTrain. But we went back a day or two later to see the building from the outside.






The back:





West Coast Express commuter rail

Waterfront Station is the downtown receiving point for West Coast Express. We didn't get a chance to ride.









SkyTrain

So, my first impression of SkyTrain was not good. In fact it was terrible. This is because my first impression came from the website, which did not provide the fairly basic information I was looking for while trying to plan my trip.

Its most serious crime was not having a usable map of the SkyTrain system. The only map I could find on the website was this one:



Do you see the problem with this map? I'll help you out: Most of the stations aren't labeled. In order to get a label you have to hover your mouse over an individual station. That's great if you have already memorized the SkyTrain system and know exactly where your station is, but it's incredibly unfriendly if you don't know where your stations are and need the map to find out. And it was the only map on the webpage.

If you've been reading all these threads, you may remember that in the Portland transportation thread I said I was impressed by how they did all the small things well. This would be an example of doing a small thing really really badly.

To SkyTrain's credit, I complained about this issue to them via email. They sent me a very nice response, and if you go to the SkyTrain website today you will find a much improved map. It's not quite as pretty, but it's much much more useful.

So, y'know, you're welcome for that. ;-)




Once you know where you're going, SkyTrain is *awesome*.

The main reason it's so awesome is that even at off-peak hours trains are super frequent. They're all automated, which means they don't have to pay a unionized operator to drive each one, which means they're cheaper to operate, which means they can run more trains for not much more cost. Even in the middle of the day trains were like 3 minutes apart. It was i-m-p-r-e-s-s-i-v-e.



The weird thing about it is how short the trains are. Usually if you're going to go to the trouble of building a fully grade-separated metro line, you give your stations nice long platforms so you can run nice long trains with very high capacities. Vancouver's platforms are all short. They can't handle very long trains.

I'd much rather have a short train come every 3 minutes than have to wait 10 minutes for a long train, so if short trains on high frequencies provide enough capacity for you, I think it's a fantastic way to go. But it does put an upper limit on capacity.








Now here's a little thing done well. Quadruple the number of places available for standing riders to hold on, without taking up any more floor space.




Automated trains mean passenger seats go right up to the front.




Here's another weird but smart money-saving feature. Fare payment is on the honor system, like most light rail lines, as opposed to the controlled fare gate system used by most subways. This is unusual for a system like SkyTrain, because it is fully grade separated so there's no reason they couldn't put up fare gates if they wanted to. But most studies show that the honor system saves money, because pretty much everyone pays the fare and it's so much cheaper to operate. So how do you manage an honor system on a subway? With a fare-paid zone. You're only supposed to go inside the yellow line if you have a ticket.




Why wouldn't you just say "exit"? Canadians are weird.




Another small thing done right. Compass embedded in the sidewalk right outside a subway station, to help you get your bearings. Very useful.



Here are a couple of subway entrances.







Buses

The bus fleet is very handsome, especially the trolleybuses. I love me a trolleybus.










3-door boarding is great. Waiting for a long line of people to get on a bus through the front door is miserable, and can add a lot of time to bus trips. Putting three doors on long buses (most only have 2) and letting people board at all of them can speed things up a lot.




Ferries

The major ferry is the one that goes between downtown Vancouver and North Vancouver, called the SeaBus. It's a very heavily-used operation.




This is the downtown Vancouver terminal. Pretty basic.




Inside a ferry.




They also have these, which plow across False Creek.




Bike Infrastructure

Vancouver has better bike infrastructure than any American city except maybe New York. Even Portland is behind. It's all very impressive.

Here are some cycle tracks. They are all over town. Notice the traffic counting device in this first picture. Not too many cities count bikes.












Integrating bike parking with the cycle track barrier is a nice touch.




This one is interesting because of how the bus stop is integrated.




More heavily landscaped.






OK. So "cycle tracks" are on-street bikeways separated from traffic with a physical barrier. They vary from "sidepaths", which are off-street. Here are some sidepaths.










Use of painted lanes at locations where there are likely to be conflicts with cars (such as intersections) increases the visibility of the bike lane and therefore makes it safer. Most cities in North America that do this (which isn't many) use green paint.




Vancouver oddly uses a mix of green and red. They seem to be experimenting with different options. But as far as I know, there is no difference as far as what red means versus what green means. They both simply mean "pay attention because there's a bike lane here".




This is a bike box. I described them in the Portland thread. They are special areas at intersections for bikes to wait. Generally you put them at intersections where a lot of bike riders want to turn left, and where doing so without a dedicated place to wait would force them to mix with cars in an unsafe way. The deal is that cars are not supposed to stop inside the box.




Another type of bikeway that Vancouver uses extensively is what's called a "bike boulevard". Bike boulevards are normal city streets where bikes and cars mix without any special lanes for bikes, but where the street has been optimized for bikes instead of cars. They're sort of the opposite of a "normal" street, where bikes are allowed but cars are really the main users.

Basically, bike boulevards are streets that have a lot of things on them to slow car traffic, but make biking easy.

Things like this, which prevents cars from making certain turning movements, but leaves everything open for bikes.




Another common feature of bike boulevards is cut-throughs for bikes where cars have dead ends.






Bike boulevards get special street signs, so you know what you're getting into.




The crowning jewel of Vancouver's bike system has to be the Seawall, a scenic walking/biking trail around the outer edge of the peninsula, including Stanley Park. It's beautiful, is very heavily used, and includes a lot of interesting traffic markings. Its major downside is that it is one-way only, which severely limits its practicality as a transportation artery.














We used bikes provided by the hotel:




But lest you think everything is rosy:




Other odds and ends

Sidewalk parking? Apparently legal sometimes.




Yup.




Car2Go, the latest thing in carsharing. Unlike Zipcar, these have no dedicated pick-up or drop-off locations. You just drive it wherever you want to go, then leave it there.




Finally, I'll end the thread with a mystery. This rail platform is on Lamey's Mill Road under the Granville Island Bridge. As far as I can tell there are no rail lines that go here, but it is clearly a new platform. What's it for? Maybe someone else can enlighten us.




That's it for Vancouver, but there will be one more Pacific Northwest bonus thread.
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Last edited by Cirrus; Feb 20, 2012 at 4:46 AM.
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  #2  
Old Posted Feb 16, 2012, 9:01 AM
excel excel is offline
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^That was a temporary light rail line used during the Olympics called the Olympic Line. We borrowed trains from Belgium to help promote it during the games. It is part of the Downtown Streetcar Project.

Really enjoyed your thread. Thanks for sharing.
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Old Posted Feb 16, 2012, 9:18 AM
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Awesome. I'm jealous of the bike infrastructure.
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Old Posted Feb 16, 2012, 10:39 AM
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Nouvellecosse Nouvellecosse is offline
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Wow, that whole thread is exceptionally fascinating! The community is now 10x more appealing after learning about all the cool infrastructure - especially the bike stuff.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirrus View Post
Why wouldn't you just say "exit"? Canadians are weird.


I think it's more that British are weird. I've lived in Canada my whole 29 years and I've never seen that before. But I always have to laugh when I see it in pictures and videos from rail stations in Britain.

I guess the Canada Line decided to put the "British" back in British Columbia.
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Old Posted Feb 16, 2012, 11:11 AM
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Another great thread, cirrus.

I'm assuming you only rode on the Canada Line while in Vancouver. It does have very short platforms (40m), but its the exception. Both the Expo Line (80m platforms) and the Millennium Line (120m platforms) have longer station platforms.
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Old Posted Feb 16, 2012, 1:53 PM
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I might be mistaken here, but I seem to recall reading during the construction of Canada Line that the stations were being built in a way to make it somewhat easier for expansion in the future if needed.

I'd like to take a ride on SkyTrain. It looks like a great system! I was in Vancouver in the spring of 2001, but never used it. It'll be especially fantastic if/when they finally get a line built to service the Broadway corridor. Certainly there's plenty to be excited about in Vancouver over the coming years.

Cirrus, thanks for the great look at transit in Vancouver! This was the thread I was most looking forward to out of your entire collection of Pac NW photos.
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Old Posted Feb 16, 2012, 3:25 PM
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Great thread, enjoyed the pics and an outsiders point of view on things. Just to clarify the seawall is cyclable in both directions (the exception is part of the original seawall within Stanley Park which wouldn't be part of the transportation system but the recreation system) Even that section is being examined right now to see what changes could be made.
Thanks for helping improve our Skytrain maps, as you touched on we probably didn't even notice it wasn't friendly as we're so used to it.
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Old Posted Feb 16, 2012, 3:49 PM
OhioGuy OhioGuy is offline
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One thing I forgot to mention...

Quote:
Here's another weird but smart money-saving feature. Fare payment is on the honor system, like most light rail lines, as opposed to the controlled fare gate system used by most subways. This is unusual for a system like SkyTrain, because it is fully grade separated so there's no reason they couldn't put up fare gates if they wanted to. But most studies show that the honor system saves money, because pretty much everyone pays the fare and it's so much cheaper to operate.
Apparently faregates are actually coming to SkyTrain in the future.

Skytrain faregates are coming

Quote:
Time is running short for many Skytrain fare cheats on the Lower Mainland. Work is now progressing on a series of faregates at all the stations.
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Old Posted Feb 16, 2012, 4:19 PM
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Vancouver does so many things right. Thanks for the photos!
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Old Posted Feb 16, 2012, 5:11 PM
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The Way Out thing always threw me. I thought it meant "Siberia."

Vancouver is the only city where even some bus routes tell you to SFU.

Big Canadian advantage: Street signs and bollards can be right next to the curb. The dumbshitty US has a two-foot standard that often becomes three feet (is this accurate?), meaning poles in the middle of the fu**ing sidewalk. All due to liability laws.
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Old Posted Feb 17, 2012, 3:24 AM
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Great post!

Just so you know, the Seawall is only one-way in Stanley Park. I see bikers using it in both directions in False Creek all the time.

edit: oops, jlousa beat me to it.
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Old Posted Feb 17, 2012, 4:02 AM
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Nice that the hotel provided complimentary bikes for guest use.
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Old Posted Feb 17, 2012, 4:13 AM
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Way Out is actually standard English signage in Continental Europe and Asia. Internationally, it's more common.
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Old Posted Feb 17, 2012, 4:29 AM
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In Vancouver the skytrains come one after the other in extreme conditions as little as 12 seconds apart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq3f7...eature=related
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Old Posted Feb 17, 2012, 5:41 AM
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Nice pictures and great commentary.
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Old Posted Feb 17, 2012, 7:10 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirrus View Post
One general statement before getting into details of each mode: I really wish there was a better transit line going up the peninsula lengthwise. Ideally a SkyTrain subway, but a streetcar, BRT, or even a specially-branded bus circulator would do. I understand there are some bus lines that do it, but it's too important a movement to leave to only users sophisticated enough to know ahead of time what bus route number to use. There needs to be something much easier. The good news is they are planning a network of inner city streetcars that will address this problem, so that's nice. I don't know the status, but perhaps a Vancouver person can update us.
As it stands now the streetcar plan is on the shelf due to a change in municipal government and a lack of interest from Translink (The transit authority). That being said it's more of a branding issue on Translinks part as there are frequent (Less than 10 minutes during the day) bus routes that traverse the peninsula west of Granville street on both Robson and Davie street.
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Old Posted Feb 17, 2012, 8:31 AM
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Skytrain looks cool...thanks for thr pics.
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Old Posted Feb 17, 2012, 3:30 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bardak View Post
As it stands now the streetcar plan is on the shelf due to a change in municipal government and a lack of interest from Translink (The transit authority). That being said it's more of a branding issue on Translinks part as there are frequent (Less than 10 minutes during the day) bus routes that traverse the peninsula west of Granville street on both Robson and Davie street.
I agree a well-branded bus route on a high frequency could do the job, at least in the short term. It would need very strong unique branding.
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Old Posted Feb 17, 2012, 3:44 PM
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I still prefer my city's trolleybuses but I'm diggin' that SkyTrain.
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Old Posted Feb 17, 2012, 4:35 PM
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Cirrus I hope you had the chance to ride the Millenium line while in Vancouver.
It has by far the nicest stations out of the three lines, and some impressive TODs as well.


Brentwood Town Centre Station by DennisTsang, on Flickr


VCC Clark Station by phaliss, on Flickr
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