By Vanessa Knight with Ashley Fehr

It’s the first time the clock hits 1:16 a.m. on November 1, and crowds of people are stumbling around downtown after leaving the clubs for destinations across Metro Vancouver. Two TransLink security guards stand outside Waterfront Station and tell the partiers that they’ve missed the last train. Drunk and footsore, Duffman, Medusa, and I scramble to figure out how to get home to Surrey.

Some might ask why we didn’t do the responsible thing and find out ahead of time when the SkyTrain would be running until, or point out that had there not been a time change we still would have missed the train. But then they should probably say that to the other 200 people who were teetering down the sidewalk on Water Street dressed as vampires, zombies, and slutty versions of everything. The fact of the matter is, of every day in 2009, Halloween night plus daylight saving time was probably the best reason TransLink could have found to keep the SkyTrain open another hour.

Halloween is the night when all of the people 19 to however-old-that-person-in-the-panda-suit-was get to head out to a public place and really display their creativity, sense of humour, or just mighty fantastic cleavage. And the best way to put your best assets on display? Go out and party! Non-government sanctioned holidays are all about getting your drink on, and the best known place for that (with a few exceptions) is always in downtown Vancouver. Don’t like the club? Head next door! Every party animal is partying it up on Halloween, and at about 1 a.m. in the morning, the majority of them try to catch the last ride home.

Now, I am not a business guru, but something tells me that crowds of the inebriated heading out of downtown tend to need some form of transportation other than their shambling boots and six-inch stilettos. It could be the pack of followers we accumulated heading to Pender and Carrall (mistaking it for the nearest N19 stop) that led me to this conclusion, or, at the second 1:30 a.m. that morning, it could have been the four buses that passed by us completely full. Of course, who could have predicted that a holiday landing on a Saturday would result in large amounts of transportation-less ghouls?

At this point, my posse and I had almost completely sobered up. Duffman (a fourth-year business student at Kwantlen Polytechnic University) was ranting to any fiend or fairy that would listen about how TransLink is driving themselves into the ground with stunts like this, and Medusa was miserably huddled under an outfit not really made to cover anything up. We headed to McDonald’s, where on any given weekend night there is a steady line to the door until at least 4 a.m. You see, McDonald’s happily profits off of the drunken people stuck downtown that TransLink seems to think are insignificant.

Unfortunately, TransLink’s lack of response to the community’s late-night transit needs is not limited to Halloween. Every Friday and Saturday night, hundreds of people are trapped downtown. Either the TransLink board of directors is remarkably unaware of these events or they are grossly incompetent and do not see the opportunity that the assistant manager at McDonald’s sees.

Exiting the profitable McDonald’s, we were fortunate to catch bus No. 10, which could hardly contain another body. It should be mentioned that this was the second-last scheduled bus of the night.

It is, of course, useful to know that TransLink has recognized the need for late-night transit service during the 2010 Olympics. It is obvious that TransLink is more responsive to Vanoc than it is to the region’s own citizens.

Now, I’m not saying that TransLink is at fault for the fact that I got home at 4 a.m. (after the time change, making it feel like 5 a.m.)—only that they screwed themselves out of my bleary eyed $2.50 and the change of all my fellow party-goers. In the eternal words of an actor portraying Duffman, “If there was somebody who was supposed to see this coming and didn’t, they should be fired!”

Vanessa Knight is the director of events and student life for the Kwantlen Student Association.

Ashley Fehr is the chair and director of academic affairs for the student association.