On the move!
Agh! You’re still here? My new site and weblog, ianking.ca is now up and running; new posts are building up over there, never to be mirrored here. Go! What are you waiting for? All the stuff worth keeping has been migrated over to the new server, and I don’t anticipate making any more posts here.
Bloggers and webmasters: Update your links! Simply replace vancouverscrum.blogspot.com with www.ianking.ca in your blogrolls or bookmarks to point to the new site. Old posts will remain on this server for as long as the people at Blogger/Google allow them to remain; unfortunately, I’m not going to bother to come up with any way of converting permalinks on this blog to their corresponding posts on the new site. Yes, I plead laziness. I also realize the irony of switching away from Blogger just it starts to add features that the demanding blog nerds insist upon.
Thanks for reading and linking, and see you over at ianking.ca!
—Ian King, December 13, 2004
Thursday, August 15, 2002
Unlike many cities, Ottawa uses dedicated bus-only roadways to allow transit vehicles to cary many people, very frequently. Generally, urban transit uses buses to feed the high-capacity subway or light rail lines. In Ottawa, articulated buses do the same work -- almost 10,000 passengers per hour in some cases. For comparison, that's about what Vancouver's SkyTrain system carries in rush hour, or slightly less than does Toronto's Spadina subway line.
This has been part of the transit debate in Greater Vancouver. While official policy prefers using SkyTrain as the rapid-trasit option of choice, with buses as feeder routes, advocates such as the Bus Riders' Union (BRU) want more money to be spent on buses and bus-route improvements. The BRU argues that SkyTrain's capital costs ($1.2 billion for a soon-to-be-opened 21 km extension) and that it starves transit budgets of the money needed to provide frequent, conventient bus services.
The knock on the BRU has been that they're advocating for a system that would move people too slowly to be popular (and SkyTrain is very popular with its users for its speed.) The BRU is also said to be largely funded by the bus drivers' union, whose jobs would be threatened by automated rapid transit such as SkyTrain.
More to come on this...
Reports, opinions, columns, and anything else on this site, are © 2002-2003 Ian King unless otherwise noted. Permission granted to use material on this site for non-commercial purposes provided that the work is attributed to the original author. All other uses require specific permission of the original author. Contact weblog owner with any inquiries.
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