Canada Line to expand service starting this Wednesday 2011, starting, service, between, earlier

tiffiant

Canada Line to expand service starting this Wednesday
TransLink says numbers show rapid transit is taking cars off roads
Renee Bernard Aug 07, 2011 15:53:53 PM
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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - There's good news for commuters who use the Canada Line.

More trains are being added, meaning the wait between trains won't be as long during peak hours, starting this Wednesday.

Peak hours are also being extended. On weekdays, peak service levels will start a half-hour earlier at 6:30 a.m., and will run an hour later until 7 p.m.  

On Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, peak service levels will continue to start at their regular times - 9:00 a.m. Saturdays and 10:00 a.m. Sundays and holidays - but will run an hour later each day until 7 p.m.

TransLink's Ken Hardie says they've been impressed with passenger numbers.

"What's interesting is the average weekday is over 116,000. We really hadn't expected to see this level of ridership for another couple of years," he explains.

He says the numbers indicate a lot of cars have been taken off the road.  

"We do surveys on Canada Line, and a large number of people using Canada Line were not using public transit prior to this service coming in," he says.

"Part of that is simpy the capacity. The Canada Line can move many, many more people than the bus service," he points out.

The changes won't be reflected on the online trip planner until the end of August.

Canada Line officially turns two years old on August 17.

peter236

Just don't understand why only 2 carts in Canada Line versus millenium line all have 4 carts...
fibbi 發表於 2011-8-7 23:26

It is just normal, they just played safe with the resources they got. But with better planning, they could have built bigger stations to accommodate future growth.

For the Beijing 2008 Olympic games, they built a new big terminal 3 for the airport and several new lines of subway.
Now the Beijing airport is the second busiest in the world in term of the number of passengers. The Beijing subway is among the top 5 busiest subway in the world in terms of ridership.

Lik

My suspicions are:

1) Cost
More carts = much bigger stations = much higher costs. Besides, construction of the Canada Line coincided with the Olympic construction crunch, so construction was already higher than normal.

2) Extremely poor ridership projection
I don't remember the projection numbers, but essentially Translink never would have thought in their wildest dreams that the Canada Line would attract as many riders as it did. Because they completely dropped the ball on the ridership projection, they didn't think they need that many carts per train.

Naturally, there is some degree of association between #1 and #2.

3) Construction Time Frame
Facing the Olympic construction deadline, it may not be possible for bigger stations to be constructed on time.

fibbi

Just don't understand why only 2 carts in Canada Line versus millenium line all have 4 carts...

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