Homeless in Vancouver: A transitory transit moment

This morning at about 9:20 a.m. I looked up from my breakfast to see what it was that some customers and staff in the McDonald’s restaurant were suddenly oohing and ahing about.

For the next 10 minutes at least, the westbound curb lane of both the 1500 and 1400 blocks of West Broadway Avenue were (without obstructing the alley exit in the 1400 block) solidly backed up with transit buses: five, seven, nine of them—regular length 9s and double-length articulated 99 B-Lines—all lined up end-to-end, seemingly parked; but for what reason?

“Accident”, one of the bus drivers explained succinctly, not taking his eyes off the butt end of the bus ahead of him but elaborating with a vague waving gesture of his arm toward some point further west along West Broadway Avenue.

Patrons and pedestrians alike all paused in their stride or at what they were doing and gawked at the long line of public transit inexplicably clotted in that one spot on the major east-west arterial that is Broadway Avenue.

And then, at a stroke, the buses began moving and there was nothing more to see. Whatever blockage had occurred down the road had been pushed aside and cleared enough to allow the all-important traffic of vehicles and things and people to flow freely again.