TransLinked

Via Mike Soron, the Galaxy as a transit map. Life is just more...

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 05:01:58 -0800

Via Mike Soron, the Galaxy as a transit map. Life is just more awesome in transit maps.

Vancouver's Canada Line Exceeding Ridership Expectations

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 05:00:51 -0800

downtowncreator:

townsandcities:

The Canada Line has reached ridership goals three years ahead of schedule; the line has seen several days of 100,000+ riders. I’m not surprised by this news — downtown-to-airport rail service has been popular all over the US already. Minnesota’s Hiawatha line (Downtown - Mall of America - Airport) also beat ridership estimates, and Portland’s MAX line to the airport has seen strong ridership numbers. This Canada Line news should encourage transit planners in other cities contemplating airport rail lines.
Photo via Canada para Brasileiros and article via The Globe and Mail.

sillygwailo: “Olympic Line” streetcar on its new rails (via...

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 14:29:18 -0800

sillygwailo:

“Olympic Line” streetcar on its new rails (via karthrynt)

Vancouver residents (and lovers of its transit system), we ask...

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:28:11 -0800

Vancouver residents (and lovers of its transit system), we ask you: what’s wrong with this picture?

SkyTrains — new and old out at the Edmonds depot. (Thanks for...

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:08:00 -0800

SkyTrains — new and old out at the Edmonds depot. (Thanks for sharing, SkyTrainLady).

I haven’t previously had the chance to see the new and old trains side-by-side like this, so it’s interesting to reflect on the little differences between these trains. Not on the level of the whiz-cool awesome new features in the new ones¹, but purely on the level of aesthetics².

Those of you from out of town, here’s a bit of scene setting for you. See the colour of the sky in that picture? That’s pretty much the colour of the sky a good 40% of the time here. The rest of the time, it’s either that blessed 30% of blue sky with sunshine — very rare this time of year — or the dreaded 30% of the time that’s raining, in which the sky is slightly darker.

Now imagine yourself walking down a street, with a stiff wind turning your umbrella inside out and light rain sprinkling on you. The sidewalk is soaked with water, so it’s safe to assume it’s a dark grey. If you’re in view of the SkyTrain (which has an elevated guideway on most parts), then it’s a… mostly grey thing towering over you about 40 ft in the air. Or maybe you are on a platform, chilly in your stylish yet affordable boots, waiting for the train to come in. (And it may or may not be packed to the gills with people, depending on the time of day it is.)

Well? White with blue and yellow streaks, or charcoal with a big blue jaw? Which colour scheme in gloss conveys to you that, “Oh, my moving salvation,” feeling better?

That said, seeing how they do like to shrinkwrap those Canada Line trains with paid promotional messages, it might not matter for very long what colour our marvelous conveyances come in, since they’ll have dyed their hair blue to tell the tales of snowboarding accessories and other wondrous items and services before long.

(I do find it strange that advertisers are flocking to do it on the Canada Line particularly — after all, they’re only really noticeable on the platform, and the trains aren’t above ground except out at Marine Drive and over in Richmond. Must be that international audience at the airport they’re after.)

Anyway, I welcome our new grey and blue overlords.

¹ …which will all be great once they get them all working! Maybe they waited until they all arrived to flip the switch on the backlit maps.

² …and before anyone accuses me of it, yes, I’m aware my feelings on this might be because I’m a little bit racist. But everyone is, the Broadway musicals tell me so.

Adopt-A-Stop — a proposal for the Knight News Challenge

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:04:00 -0800

Adopt-A-Stop — a proposal for the Knight News Challenge:

Your intrepid authors, one counti8 and one sillygwailo, present to you, our comrades in transit love, Adopt-a-Stop — our awesome idea for a web application to nurture community interaction around transit. Beyond just writing this blog, yo.

The basic gist? Here in Vancouver, every bus stop in the system has a 5 digit ID, and now we also have geographic information for each stop thanks to TransLink’s recent release of their data in the GTFS. The long and the short of it is:

We want people to be able to find and create stories with their cellphones that are associated with bus stops.

And by cellphones, we mean iPhones, and those things that can send SMS and little else, and everything in between. Which, most intriguingly for us, means people can send Twitter updates with 5-digit bus stop hashtags. In other words, geo-tag your 135 characters from your dumb phone!

Plus, since we have the lat-long for all the bus stops, we can also pull in geo-tagged pictures, videos, Tumblr posts, check-ins from Bright Kite, etc. And, most importantly, the view from Google Street View — so you can, say, see what the stop looks like before you get there.

Our initial brainstorm at the Vancouver Data Hackathon.

Bottom line:

Register and vote for it!
Leave a comment if you have something to say about it!
Tell urs friends.

P.S. Karen writes more about some of the thinking behind Adopt-A-Stop on her blog here too.

sillygwailo: Video of @jmv’s Super Express SkyTrain Papercraft...

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:57:08 -0800

sillygwailo:

Video of @jmv’s Super Express SkyTrain Papercraft Remixed. For the blueprints, see his Flickr set.

Our man Jason Vanderhill, whom we refer to lovingly as JMV...

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 05:04:47 -0800

Our man Jason Vanderhill, whom we refer to lovingly as JMV (after his Flickr ID), has mashed up the TransLink public transit system with the Super Express train set. Click the photo for the entire set on Flickr.

unconsumption: Aaron Scales, a student at UK College of Design,...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:42:44 -0800

unconsumption:

Aaron Scales, a student at UK College of Design, built a bus shelter out of recycled glass bottles with non-profit volunteer organization Art in Motion.

(via psfk)

SkyTrain buskers face billing by TransLink for song royalties

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 10:00:00 -0800

SkyTrain buskers face billing by TransLink for song royalties:

buskeridol:

Musicians and singers who are approved to perform inside the region’s SkyTrain stations were sent a letter in October from the region’s transit authority, informing them they could soon be asked to pay as much as $1,500 annually for a performance licence.
The letter states that Socan — the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada — is demanding royalties for songs being performed in stations.

According to TransLink, those costs could add up to $40,000 a year and will be passed on to the artists.

[…]

A transit busking program in Toronto underwent a similar review with Socan about five years ago, said Danny Nicholson of the Toronto Transit Commission.

Friend Matthew Laird caught the Bombardier streetcars being...

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:36:47 -0800

Friend Matthew Laird caught the Bombardier streetcars being unboxed at Olympic Village Station after their journey from Brussels.

I can see it now: we’ll bike down to the station from our house (do these streetcars have hooks for bikes?), take them to Granville Island, then grab a water taxi to Bowen Island. Bike around a bit, then take the ferry, the bus and the Canada Line home. The only mode of transport we will have missed is the SeaBus (which we could still conceivably take) and the West Coast Express. Excellent.

Bombardier Streetcar at Olympic Village Station

Would be loads of fun to compare this trip to the film on the...

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:58:12 -0800

Would be loads of fun to compare this trip to the film on the DVD City Reflections, which is a ride similar to this through downtown Vancouver in 1907.

smartercities:

San Fransisco, 1905

Shot from the front of a tram, a pleasant seven minute trip into downtown San Fransisco just before the earthquake and fire.

Putting cameras on the front of moving vehicles (particularly trains and streetcars) was big entertainment in the first days of cinema, see the similar The Haverstraw Tunnel (1897), or Tram Ride Into Halifax (1902) and Ride On A Tram Car Through Belfast (1901) from the superlative Mitchell and Kenyon collection held by the BFI. The idea of moving whilst sat in a cinema seat, drawn through the scenery as if by some sort of phantom force, particularly engaged turn-of-the-century cinema-goers: creating moving shots using the rudimentary camera equipment was otherwise near impossible.

A hundred years later, this type of film gives a great idea of contemporary attitudes towards movement and mobility in urban areas. Of particular interest in this example, for instance, is the prevalent attitude towards shared street space, a concept which is beginning to come back into vogue. Note as well the absence of any street furniture, signage or clutter.

(via ), originally posted at undercreative.tumblr.com

Bicycle Commuting and Facilities in Major U.S. Cities

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 05:02:53 -0800

Bicycle Commuting and Facilities in Major U.S. Cities:

Literature review time! “Higher levels of bicycle infrastructure are positively and significantly correlated with higher rates of bicycle commuting.”

smartercities: tiago: 29 Incredible Black and White...

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 05:03:15 -0800

smartercities:

tiago:

29 Incredible Black and White Photographs of Cityscapes >

Vancouver's Olympic transit passes now on sale

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:45:00 -0800

Vancouver's Olympic transit passes now on sale

Poetry in Transit won't be going anywhere anytime soon

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:04:24 -0800

Many cities promote local artists and writers inside vehicles, and the Greater Vancouver area is no different. This city names the campaign Poetry in Transit, and while this correspondent won’t try to analyze any poetry, anywhere, he does enjoy the breaks from the commercial reality that pervades the rest of vehicles in the form of advertising. There are even vehicles, usually newly-minted buses, that have only Poetry in Transit. What an oasis!

Karen, another author on this blog, noticed the other day that she hadn’t seen Poetry in Transit posters on buses or SkyTrain lately. We looked at The Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia and found that their Poetry in Transit page contained no information on 2009. (On another page, they say they are “currently obtaining the rights to place poems that have been included in this project on [their] website”!) We got this very nice response from ABPBC:

The Poetry in Transit cards are up for 6 months on TransLink (lower mainland) buses and SkyTrains and then they go to BC Transit (rest of BC) buses for the other 6 months of the year. This year’s Poetry in Transit, which usually launches at Word On The Street at the end of September, will launch at the end of May during the Main Street Literary Tour. The reason for this year’s delay is because TransLink has a blackout on all buses/SkyTrains for the Olympics.
Although the ABPBC has recently lost operating grants from the BC Arts Council, Poetry in Transit does get funding, in part, from the Canada Council and this is one of their most favourite projects (and ours!) so it won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

MTA to introduce more countdown clocks in subway stations

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:38:58 -0800

Great example of the need for Talking to People.

talesfromthemta:

The MTA recently announced that they would be installing countdown clocks in subway stations to inform passengers as to the ETA for the next train.

I thought this was a pretty good idea until I read someone’s submission to the NY Daily News’ “Voice of the People” section and it went a little something like this…

“The MTA’s plan to put countdown clocks in the subways just shows that the agency is still run by people who never ride the rails. At a cost of a million dollars, you will now be able to know your train is running later - or not at all - AFTER you have paid your fare and descended two, three, or four flights underground. What is needed is a STREET LEVL clock so riders can determine whether they want to take the train or use some other method of transportation, before paying their fare of $2.25.”

I totally agree with this person — if I got to the station and saw that my train was going to take 10 minutes to arrive but another line in another part of the station was going to arrive sooner, I would be more inclined to take that one. Or if I was informed that the train wasnt coming at all, I’d probably just take a cab.

How to improve Portland's public transit system

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:54:09 -0800

How to improve Portland's public transit system:

Mistitled “Why Portland’s Mass Transit Rocks” when Zach Rosenberg spends the bulk of the article suggesting tweaks. (via fuckyeahpublictransit)

It’s so cute! smartercities: auciello: Taxis of the...

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:01:07 -0800

It’s so cute!

smartercities:

auciello:

Taxis of the Future

minimodal by hybrid product design

“the minimodal is a taxi design concept designed specifically for the city of new york. the vehicle features a very unusual design that is small and light and uses a hybrid-power system. the two-person passenger cab is low to the ground and features side windows and a fully open skylight. the driver sits in front of an all glass front end and on top of the hybrid engine. the car would also have a signaling system that would let other drivers know when a passenger was coming out to avoid collisions. the designers at hybrid product design also envisioned two larger versions of the taxi to accommodate more passengers. the maximodal would seat 3 and a wheelchair and the mogulmodal would seat four plus a wheelchair.”

http://hybridny.com

blech: From synecdoche on Flickr, an art project in...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:53:14 -0800

blech:

From synecdoche on Flickr, an art project in Houston:

Using 13 billboards along the city´s downtown freeways, Olivier will replace the usual advertisements with images of the urban landscape that would be visible if the billboard did not exist - the sky, trees, and buildings obstructed by the ads will now be “revealed.”

Having been to the southern US, I can certainly recognise the pattern synecdoche describes in the description of another photo of a billboard from the project:

Houston is a city of billboards and big signs, sprouting everywhere above the highways in gleaming, glaring, blinking, clashing profusion. A billboardless vista is rare; in traffic-dense commuter areas there are so many that they cancel each other out, becoming visual background noise. Even on a relatively deserted stretch of highway there will be at least one or two every half-mile or so.

That makes this project, time-limited though it is, even more wonderful.