Excerptcize

The Canada Line - A beautiful jewel in Vancouver's transportation network

The cauldron in Coal Harbour has been extinguished, the Olympic flag has been lowered and the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games have ended. That means  two things; it’s time for me to start doing some blogging again, and some of those posts will be in reference or reaction to all the articles and editorials now asking the question ‘What will the legacy of these Games be?’ It’s Tuesday already, so I am behind already. As a lowly, pajama clad blogger though I feel that I was more than entitled to some rest; I figure the pros out there will have the necessary bases covered. Derek Moscato is assuredly a pro. He has a regular column in Metro Vancouver that focuses on urban issues, transportation, architecture and economics. I always enjoy his work and generally find myself in agreement with most of his assessments.  His column from Monday is no different, as he gets directly to the point and says that the legacy of these games should be transit.

The points that he makes are clear and concise, but the most important one is the first one he lists:

Rapid transit — in the form of light metro — is pivotal to the growth of this region. Let’s stop arguing about the merits of rapid transit technologies in the Tri-Cities, or out to UBC, and get on with expanding our already successful SkyTrain network. In the end, it was the Canada and SkyTrain lines that did the heavy lifting for the Olympics, with the Canada Line moving millions between competition sites and downtown destinations. Ditto for SkyTrain, especially close to the stadiums

I couldn’t agree more. The Canada Line was a shining workhorse throughout the games and everyone in Vancouver should be extremely proud of this piece of backbone infrastructure. It seems that the Vancouver Games won’t be able to shake the ‘$6 billion’ price tag that the media has afixed to it. If people realize and appreciate that a third of that cost is associated with the Canada Line I won’t be so perturbed by the fuzzy math that generates that $6 billion figure.

What I am really looking forward to is seeing some transit numbers post games. Typically TransLink moves some 750,000 people around on any given day. During the Olympics that number more than doubled to 1.6 million. Myself, Derek and anyone else concerned with transportation policy in the GVRD eagerly hope to see some numbers showing that people who switched to transit during the games are sticking with it afterward. Hopefully TransLink will have some of those numbers for us by the end of the week.

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