Metro Vancouver Transit Discussion II

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by NewfBC

The bus is clearly turning on a light that's red or just about red.. tsk tsk.

Ron.

How will the bus driver learn if he doesn't have to face any repercussions?

[Migrant_Coconut]

Serious answer: maybe just don't try and beat the bus, and/or figure out which one's the gas and which one's the brake?

[officedweller]

As with all left turns, once the (bus) has entered the intersection (crossed the signal stop line so as to block the crosswalk), once the light turns red, it must complete its turn to clear the intersection and cross traffic must wait for that movement to be completed.

[GenWhy?]

Originally Posted by NewfBC

The bus is clearly turning on a light that's red or just about red.. tsk tsk.

Ron.

Yellow?

[jollyburger]

The cars turning right as a courtesy at least should have yielded for the bus to clear the intersection.

[griswold]

I like the new paint scheme on these trains. Is Translink phasing out the grey on new vehicles?

[madog222]

Originally Posted by griswold

I like the new paint scheme on these trains. Is Translink phasing out the grey on new vehicles?

Yes, this has been TransLink's standard livery since 2019.

[Tvisforme]

Originally Posted by officedweller

As with all left turns, once the (bus) has entered the intersection (crossed the signal stop line so as to block the crosswalk), once the light turns red, it must complete its turn to clear the intersection and cross traffic must wait for that movement to be completed.

Originally Posted by GenWhy?

Yellow?

Plus, it appears the bus had to wait for a pedestrian still crossing while the light was yellow.

[madog222]

It's sort of irrelevant to look at why the bus had to wait so long to complete it's turn, there are a-holes such as the silver Toyota driving like this every day.
None of that gives the taxi driver any right let alone reason to attempt at overtaking and changing lanes within an intersection as was their presumed intention, not to mention doing so without a clear lane ahead.

[jollyburger]

Heightened patrolling has already begun across the system. For example, Transit Security conducted record-level fare enforcement checks in July following the addition of eight new officers. Over 100,000 riders were checked by Transit Security last month, a 60 per cent increase compared to last year.

https://www.nsnews.com/highlights/tr...vaders-9374492

[Migrant_Coconut]

Question: when does the cost of fare enforcement make it prohibitive to increase it? Pretty sure the existing Security is already in the red.

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Question: when does the cost of fare enforcement make it prohibitive to increase it? Pretty sure the existing Security is already in the red.

A fare evasion fine is apparently $173. According to the Transit Police website, Transit Police make on average somewhere around $110k a year. That's about $50 an hour give or take.

So to justify a transit officer doing fare enforcement fulltime, they'd need to be giving out a little under one ticket every three hours (assuming we calculate the value based on fines and not on the implicit idea that more people will pay.)

Frankly, all the times I've been on transit recently I've seen fare evaders, so if they just upped the transit police presence right now they might be paying for themselves.

Translink aims to reduce the amount of fare evasion by $5,000,000 a year (that's not the total evasion, that's the amount they want to capture) so they could have 50 officers working fare evasion and it would come out on top (assuming it changed transit behaviours.)

[teriyaki]

Originally Posted by chowhou

A fare evasion fine is apparently $173. According to the Transit Police website, Transit Police make on average somewhere around $110k a year. That's about $50 an hour give or take.

So to justify a transit officer doing fare enforcement fulltime, they'd need to be giving out a little under one ticket every three hours (assuming we calculate the value based on fines and not on the implicit idea that more people will pay.)

Frankly, all the times I've been on transit recently I've seen fare evaders, so if they just upped the transit police presence right now they might be paying for themselves.

Translink aims to reduce the amount of fare evasion by $5,000,000 a year (that's not the total evasion, that's the amount they want to capture) so they could have 50 officers working fare evasion and it would come out on top (assuming it changed transit behaviours.)

Tickets is one thing, but collecting on the tickets is another. I recall that a very low amount actually gets collected, which is whole other problem in itself.

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by teriyaki

Tickets is one thing, but collecting on the tickets is another. I recall that a very low amount actually gets collected, which is whole other problem in itself.

On the Vancouver subreddit I saw some comments about treating fare evasion as the same crime as shoplifting. That makes sense to me, I'm not sure why it isn't already.

[VancouverOfTheFuture]

Originally Posted by teriyaki

Tickets is one thing, but collecting on the tickets is another. I recall that a very low amount actually gets collected, which is whole other problem in itself.

"Excessive debts" can be collected by ICBC; whatever $$$ amount that is.

ICBC doesn't collect parking tickets or municipal tickets. Excessive debts to Translink, however, could prevent you from getting your driver's licence renewed.

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by chowhou

A fare evasion fine is apparently $173. According to the Transit Police website, Transit Police make on average somewhere around $110k a year. That's about $50 an hour give or take.

So to justify a transit officer doing fare enforcement fulltime, they'd need to be giving out a little under one ticket every three hours (assuming we calculate the value based on fines and not on the implicit idea that more people will pay.)

Frankly, all the times I've been on transit recently I've seen fare evaders, so if they just upped the transit police presence right now they might be paying for themselves.

Translink aims to reduce the amount of fare evasion by $5,000,000 a year (that's not the total evasion, that's the amount they want to capture) so they could have 50 officers working fare evasion and it would come out on top (assuming it changed transit behaviours.)

That changed I believe. They hired glorified Translink security guards (Transit Police Community Safety Officer) who I think would take a few CSO with one Transit Police officer to hand out fare evasion tickets. So it might be more reasonable cost/resource wise.

https://transitpolice.ca/news-posts/...aunch-in-2023/

They make $36.56 and scales up to $38.05

https://transitpolice.ca/careers/cso/

[Lexus]

2024, Sep 1

OMC 4

Untitled by Lexus LX, on Flickr

Bus deport near Marine and Cambie

Untitled by Lexus LX, on Flickr

Untitled by Lexus LX, on Flickr

[aberdeen5698]

This isn't a Vancouver story, but it caught my eye:

The Failing School Bus
Zerin Dube was on his way home from work the other day when he saw something so ridiculous he had to pull out his phone and start recording.

The line of cars to pick up kids from the local middle school, in Cypress, Texas, northwest of Houston, was more than a mile long. “It has never been that bad in all the years living by that school,” Dube told me.”Not even remotely close.”

There’s a reason he hasn’t seen this before. This past June, in an attempt to respond to a massive budget gap, the Cypress-Fairbanks school district voted to tighten its rules on which of its more than 115,000 students are eligible for the school bus. They cut 79 bus routes, saved $4 million, and created a traffic nightmare every single day at pickup and drop-off.

And they wonder why young kids are obese nowadays.

I walked to elementary and high school every day of my life, and rode my bicycle to BCIT from near 1st Avenue and Nanaimo. That seems to be a forgotten way of life now...

[BaddieB]

Weirdly enough, at least in Burnaby, there are no school buses at all (I think they might only exist for special needs students?). In High School it seemed like most kids took regular transit.

There is of course this video on the topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqvQ-5784po

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

This isn't a Vancouver story, but it caught my eye:

And they wonder why young kids are obese nowadays.

I walked to elementary and high school every day of my life, and rode my bicycle to BCIT from near 1st Avenue and Nanaimo. That seems to be a forgotten way of life now...

They'll call social services on you for making them walk.

But the area is Houston suburb so I mean what do you expect. There's a housing suburb right next to the high school but you have to walk under a 20 lane overpass and across a bunch of roads with no sidewalks. And I assume the public transit system is non-existant.

Article about the situation for school buses in the Fraser Valley

https://fvcurrent.com/p/abbotsford-l...chool-bus-fees