Every so often I have to make a trip to Victoria for work. When in Victoria, I’m always impressed with the amount of cycling infrastructure and the number of cyclists. You can read more on a previous blog post. Anyway when I go to Victoria, I take a company vehicle home with me from downtown Vancouver to Langley the night before (as I go directly to the Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal) and return to work with it the next day.
When people make the decision between taking transit and taking their car they should factor in speed, the cost of parking, tolls, and fuel. Living in downtown Langley, it takes me 1 hour and 24 minutes to get to my work in downtown Vancouver by transit. It takes me 1 hour and 15 minutes to drive. People always tell me that driving is much faster than transit. I guess I ALWAYS get the freeway on freaky busy days. Yea. When you factor in the cost of driving to Vancouver, transit comes out ahead. With the toll coming to the new Port Mann bridge, the cost benefit will be overwhelmingly on transit’s side.
I think one of the reasons that people still commute in their car to downtown Vancouver is the stigma attached with taking a bus. I have a friend that used to take the bus with me from Langley to downtown Vancouver. He now drives to Scott Road SkyTrain station. I’m sure you know where this is all going: choice riders want rail.
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