In the past decade, Vancouver has been increasingly transit friendly with the mayor promoting cycling combined with public transportation as an environmentally friendly alternative to driving. The West Coast Express (WCE) is a commuter rail link serving eight stations between Waterfront in downtown Vancouver all the way to Mission City out east. With 75 minute end-to-end travel times it is very competitive with driving especially considering the fact that commuters can get some extra shuteye on their way to and from work.
But here’s the catch – there are only five trains in the morning going downtown and five trains in the evening heading back east. I’ve recently bought a book titled Human Transit by Jarrett Walker and I found that some of the principles of transit design could be applied as a criticism of WCE’s operation. Walker writes that transit is only useful in encouraging urban development if services run all day, every day.
With Vancouver’s skyrocketing housing prices, this could not be more true. A lot of employees working in Vancouver in entry-level positions are not able to afford residences near the city and have to drive to commute. Driving is very expensive in Vancouver when it has the nation’s highest gas prices, but the public transportation system is not nearly half as efficient as those of European or Asian urban centers. Imagine if the Canada Line ran just once an hour five times in the morning and five times in the evening…the swanky condos on Marine Drive Station would hardly sell without parking spots available.
Most of us need to get to work, but we also need to pop out to visit friends or buy groceries at the shops. With just five trains a day in each direction and headways of one hour, it’s hardly useful for anyone for anything other than commuting. Walker also reminds us that we often forget waiting times should also be factored into travel time because any time we are not where we want to be is time wasted.
If we take a look at commuter rail networks around the world such as the London Overground or the Mitteldeutschland S-Bahn, they are all running on frequencies of 20 minutes or better with service 18-20 hours a day criss-crossing the suburban landscape. Maybe housing prices would fall if the WCE was electrified and branched out to more areas with a 20 minute headway. Accessibility to more housing markets and increased labor mobility is crucial to making urban agglomerates more liveable and Vancouver still has a lot to learn about transit. It’s high time we reversed our path dependency on the motor car.
