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.