Headway

Last week I embarked on a whirlwind tour of Vancouver to help announce the the addition of TransLink routing to Google Maps. It was fun to get a chance to see the town for the first time (on Halloween night no less—the apparent Canadian tradition of setting off small fireworks on that night made things unexpectly lively). It’s a dramatic town, nudged into a healthy density by the surrounding mountains, which no doubt helps explain the towers springing up everywhere like so many glass saplings.

I really enjoyed the chance to meet some of the local transit bloggers like Richard Eriksson, Karen Quinn (ringleader of the upcoming Vancouver Transit Camp), and Paul Hillsdon. (Sadly, esteemed planning guru Gordon Price didn’t stick around to say hi, though he made up for it by providing a good transcript of my “giant crab” demo.)

(Public service announcement: bloggers, please put an email address somewhere on your site! There have been at least a few cases lately where I wanted to invite people to upcoming events but I couldn’t find a way to contact them privately.)

I also had the opportunity to sit down with a bunch of TransLink folks. Thanks to Bob, Brian, Cam, Dan, Gerry, Janet, Kirsten, and Patricia for taking the time to tell me about the things that they’re working on and the ambitious things they’d like to do in the future to encourage more ridership and to improve the rider experience. People seem to fixate on the negatives of their local transit agencies, but from my experience there are plenty of sharp people in every agency who are passionate about making things better, and from what I’ve seen TransLink is no exception. I hope that some of the ideas I heard from them will come to fruition!