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Originally Posted by MelBridgeman
Vancouver is around 600,000 - the entire lower mainland is over 2 million - if you combined Vancouver, Burnaby, West/North Vancouver, Richmond - you would get equal population to Calgary, but diff not equal sq/km.
As far as traffic goes - that truly is in the eye of the beholder - If i stayed at my parents place in Calgary and had to work downtown, they live in the SE part of the city and i could make it downtown in 15 minutes in the morning. Traffic in most of Calgary still is distinct - morning rush hour, afternoon rushhour that lasts maybe an hour to hour and half.
In Vancouver the traffic is bad 12 hrs a day. And if Vancouver had anywhere near the freeway system that Calgary has, it would make a world of difference.
Translink when its working is ok, but trying to travel for example from UBC to BCIT or Simon Fraser requires any combination of 3 bus rides and a sky train + a good hour of your time and they are only less than 20 km apart.
I can go from Lake Bonivista to the UofC on one bus and a ctrain and its prob the same distance and it may take me 30 minutes.
The C-train and the routes it takes make transit in Calgary much better...
Translink does a good job of getting people to and from downtown Vancouver - but anywhere else is a nightmare - i think thats the difference between transit in both cities.
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Fair enough Mel. I lived right in Vancouver (not to far from Broadway & Cambie). I guess it is in the eye of the beholder. I drove and took transit.
I think part of it pertains on where you are going. E.g. I used to work in New West....took me less time on transit, esp. with the sky-train. Driving wasn't horrid, but I drove that one big highway (forgot the name) so maybe that gave me a lot of extra time. I also worked in North Van. Taking transit there was much faster than driving. Straight through downtown, across the water and boom. To drive I had to go way left or right and get on one of the bridges...yah.
Transit in Calgary I find is fine if you are on or near the C-Train (such as your example). But after that I find it really pails in comparison to Vancouver (I am talking Van, Burnaby, Port Co., etc etc...all those places). We could get anywhere on transit, virtually door to door service. I haven't had the same luck in Calgary trying to get to way heck and gone new subdivisions. If the C-Train doesn't serve your area, it can make things a bg big challenge (similar to your van transit stories, I can tell stories about calgary transit).
Quote:
Originally Posted by fotze
Is it me or does Vancouver have next to no playground or school zones?
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Hmm. Can't really say I noticed that to be honest. Playground/school zones seemed to be all over the place when I was there (and this was only a couple of years ago). In fact, there were a lot of curb things in intersections to make people slow down, as well as big "speed bumps" in areas to make you slow down.
Vancouver also had a lot of pedestrian controlled intersections, which I quite enjoyed (both as a driver and pedestrian).