As expected, Vancouver has decided to smack car drivers on the side of the head and say it's a good thing. One of my favourite streets, Main st, is getting a renovation. According to the Vancouver sun Main St. makeover article, they are going to install "bus bulges", which means the bus doesn't have to pull over to get to a bus stop.
Main st. has 3 lanes each way, with parking during off peak hours on the curbside lane. During rush hour, the bus has clear access up the curb lane, so it's not during rush hour that the bus is being slowed down. It's the off rush hour that's the problem. There are cars parked in the curb lane, so the bus has to pull out. Even though they have the right off way currently, that's not enough. What they will do is push the bus stop into the curb lane, so the bus can sit in the 2nd lane.
That basically guts the curb lane as a lane during rush hour. Every 2 blocks there will be a bus stop in the lane, so all the cars will have to merge to the 2nd lane. Effectively this means that the rush hour lane is removed, so rush hour traffic is cut from 3 to 2 lanes with no bus in the curb lane, and cut from 2 lanes to 1 when there's a bus in the curb lane. Somewhere between a 33% and 50% reduction in car traffic lanes.
Main street already has been traffic jams during all times of the day, especially the 9th ave to 29th ave. All the other adjacent main streets, like Cambie, Oak, Fraser, Knight are pretty packed too.
This means there are going to be even more cars sitting and idling, even more gridlock. The gall of them to totally lie and say that it's going to save thousands of tons of greenhouse gas emissions by making a parking lot out main street.
Yet another lie foisted on us by somebody with their own motivations and no transparency for us the voter to actually have a say. I once attended a translink hearing, and what a joke. Total manufacturing of consent and ignoring the hundreds of thousands of peoples needs.
Comments (2)
Random alternative transit evangelism: are you familiar with Personal Rapid Transit?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit
Posted by Ken MacLeod | June 23, 2004 8:04 AM
Posted on June 23, 2004 08:04
The BC Lower Mainland is held hostage by the autocracy called TRANS LINK.
They use PR to give the illusion that they give a damn about pollution, or the environment, but in reality they do what's best and most profitable for TRANS LINK and its "suits" while shafting the BC taxpayers and users of the public transit system.
Consider:
- They never consult with public opinion
- They use dubious statistics to back up their projects.
- They build whatever they want, whenever they want, at any cost, without considering consequences or its effects on the public, then they stick the bill to the taxpayers
- They hike fare increases without any sympathy for the fact that many transit users are "low-income"
- Bus bulges? More like lazy assed union bus drivers who are too spoiled to have to turn their steering wheels to the right.
I wonder how many of the "suits" at Trans Link actually take the bus? Probably none because they know it sucks! Instead, they come to work in their Lexus, and Beemers to their private parking spaces.
Every "suit" at Trans Link should be forced to take that abomination they created called "public transit" so they can suffer in Hell like everyone else.
Posted by B | July 6, 2005 5:26 PM
Posted on July 6, 2005 17:26