Yesterday, Monday February 11th, it snowed it Vancouver. Not much, compared to other places in the…read moreworld that get snow, but it brought our entire transit system to a halt. All day there was one problem or another with one of the skytrain lines, including the Canada Line, and most, if not all, of the buses were completely fucked, including the #25, but that's hardly a surprise.
On a normal day, the #25 is unreliable, late, doesn't show up, over crowded, and passes people up, even when not full. Well, according to the Translink alerts (which are always put up well after Translink is aware of the problem, so even if you check before you leave, there could have been a major problem for the past half hour that Translink hasn't bothered updating on their website, so you get caught up in the problem -- yeah, I speak from personal experience), yesterday many of the morning buses had been cancelled and the rest delayed, which is really no different than a typical day, although this time Translink could blame it on the snow.
Luckily I didn't have to work yesterday, so I stayed in, missing all the transit chaos. However, today I had to go into work, and I was worried about how fucked up transit would be, so I left super early, hoping to get to work BEFORE any major problems occurred, and to allow extra time in case there were major problems. I got to the #25 bus stop, not even expecting any buses to be running that morning, but to my surprise, just as I was approaching the bus stop, where two other people were waiting for who knows how long, I saw a bus coming. Perfect timing! But of course it was too good to be true, and as usual, the bus, which was NOT full, passed us up!
Not only was I enraged because the bus passed me up (it had nothing to do with the snow and was just typical #25 bullshit), but I was worried because that could have been the only bus running that morning, and the next bus (if there were one), could have been an hour away, if it was anything like yesterday. Luckily another bus DID come, 7.5 minutes later, BUT, I should not have had to wait, as the first bus was NOT full. The driver of the second bus that came made an effort to let everyone on, even though the bus was getting pretty full (because the first driver was passing everyone up).
If the bus is legitimately full, I understand that a bus may have to pass people up, although passing people up in the first place is a Translink fail, as it indicates that they don't have enough capacity on the route in the first place, and that something needs to be done (increased service, longer buses, modify the route or times, etc). So yeah, this morning's commute was not good, but it had nothing to do with the snow - it was 100% Translink's fault. (Luckily the Canada Line was running, so I didn't have trouble on that end, except for a woman who blocked the door after she got on the train, which was not crowded, causing me to nearly miss the train as I was trying to get past her.)
In summary: the snow was no problem on my commute today, and the #25 bus did its usual pass up, even though it wasn't full.
[Yelp collections: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles]