TransLink is celebrating 125 years of transit in the Metro Vancouver region this year. Tomorrow, Sunday June 28th, 2015 between 11am-3pm, there will be an opportunity for the public to ride on one of the first-generation Brill trolley buses which operated in Vancouver between 1948 and 1984. This particular bus entered service in 1954 and was retired in 1984 when the second-generation Flyer trolleys entered into service. It has been restored and preserved by the Transit Museum Society (TRAMS). The bus will be making a loop around Downtown Vancouver via: Southbound Cambie (stopping at Hastings – Victory Square) Westbound on Pender Continue Reading
Transportation
Thoughts about public transportation and the like.
Finally tapping in using the Compass Card
Almost two years after the Beta Test, the Compass Card is finally starting to become within reach of the general public. The Compass Card was first rolled out for BC Bus Pass, TransLink employees and CNIB passengers in January 2014. The U-Pass BC started transitioning to Compass early this year. This past week, the Compass Card was made available for West Coast Express customers. TransLink staff were handing out Compass Cards at the Waterfront West Coast Express station this week, so I went to get one on my lunch break. For the past week, I’ve been tapping in and out. For Continue Reading
Fun ways to get from Richmond to Downtown Vancouver on transit
I commute from Richmond to Downtown Vancouver every day for work. Normally I take the Canada Line, which is a quick and reliable way to and from work. As much as I like trains, some days it just seems boring; after all, the majority of the ride is underground. So I tasked myself to find five different ways to get to work (potentially one for each day of the week), if I wanted to take a break from the Canada Line. Let’s assume we’re commuting from Richmond Centre to Waterfront. Obviously we’re not optimizing for travel time. Option 1: 403, Continue Reading
Happy April Fool’s Day
Today I pranked people who surf my T-Comm site every day looking for “special sightings” of buses that are assigned to routes which they normally aren’t assigned. I swapped buses around such as putting articulated (long) buses on regular routes, changing the types of buses on particular routes, etc. It turns out that what caught more attention was the fact that my ‘backup’ buses in the D40LF and LFS range were being randomly assigned as cover for buses that were already swapped, rather than the actual swaps that I had intended. Here are some screenshots of some of the swapped Continue Reading
The end is near for Whistler’s hydrogen fuel cell buses
In one week, Whistler’s fleet of hydrogen fuel cell buses will be parked as their five-year pilot project ends. Nova Bus diesel buses will be replacing them as of April 1st, 2014. The fleet of twenty buses is currently the largest fleet of hydrogen fuel cell buses operating in the world. The fuelling station for the fleet is also the world’s largest hydrogen filling station. The hydrogen fuel cell buses were brought to Whistler by a five-year demonstration project sponsored by the federal, provincial and municipal governments, and the Canadian Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association. The buses arrived in late Continue Reading