TransLink increases 99 B-Line service by a whole two trips a day
As I was checking out the recent changes to TransLink's services, which I am often wont to do, I saw a small seasonal change coming to my arch-nemesis, the 99 B-Line.
Oh joy! More buses running in the morning since school will be in session? I thought as I clicked on the alert.
Of course not. It turns out that TransLink has thoughtfully increased the number of daily 99 B-Line trips. By a whopping two.
Technically, the two extra trips from UBC (at 2:59 and 7:04 p.m.) are being reinstated; TransLink pulls them in the summer when the university is less frequented.
And that's all well and good but maybe the next time the TransLink brain trust looks to improve service, it could think about the crowds at Commercial-Broadway Station in the mornings.
Considering the line-ups for the B-Line are so long that they usually wrap through the station from September to April, methinks the situation will get even worse now that the faregates are installed. If you haven't notice, they kind of take up all of the room in the station, leaving not a lot of space to queue in an orderly fashion.
I'm getting a stress headache just thinking about it.
Comments
4 Comments
Naturalmystic
Aug 22, 2013 at 11:05pm
Buy a car or bicycle.
Andrew
Aug 23, 2013 at 1:46pm
TransLink should also look at increasing the frequency of the #19 bus on Kingsway. Truly pitiful for the number of people who rely on it.
Diane Watts
Aug 23, 2013 at 2:29pm
Vancouver must suffer so that Translink can bleed its operating budget on the expanded service of recent years in Surrey that I demanded, but that we won't use because nobody can walk anywhere out here anyways and buses will never go door to door.
Frank
Aug 23, 2013 at 3:52pm
The 99 B-Line is pretty much at maximum capacity for a bus line.
As you might know, Broadway is the busiest bus corridor in North America at over 100,000 riders per day. For comparision, the Evergreen Line hopes to have around 70,000 riders per day by 2021.
If we could snap our fingers and build the millenium line extension from VCC Clark to UBC overnight, the line would immediately have a larger ridership than the Canada Line.
To make things worse, Translink predicts a 25% increase in riders going through Commercial-Broadway station when the evergreen line is complete.
Unfortunately, even if funding for the line were secured today, the line still wouldn't be completed until past the year 2020. And Surrey will likely secure funding for their LRT before Vancouver gets another transit line.
Moral of the story: get used to long lines at commercial station for the next decade or two.