I have to admit I’m not a big fan of public transport and bit of a critic when it comes to their services but felt the urge to compare my experiences between London Transport and Vancouver’s Translink services.
First, to get things into perspective following are some statistics on both cities which indicates London has a harder job than Vancouver:
Population (Metro): London = 13,945,000; Vancouver = 2,116,581
Square Mile: London = 659 sq mi; Vancouver = 1,111.4 sq mi
Cleanliness
Vancouver wins hands down, the Translink system is quite spotless. You will see the odd piece of rubbish in Vancouver but not much, the City has excellent policies towards recycling, you will see newspaper recycle bins at station and virtually no rubbish left on the trains. London is pretty bad, you can bet that people will dump their free newspapers and rubbish anywhere even if the bin is within reaching distance.
Overcrowding
Both cities have their problems but it really depends what lines you travel on, the time of day, and direction you are going in. Rush hour is not a good time going into cities in the morning and going home in the evenings. For example, when Translink built their new Canada Line it looks as though they didn’t do their research properly because there is 85% capacity already and they envisaging those numbers to grow. London continues to grow but the transport infrastructure cannot seem to keep up with the demand.
Journey Information
I love the handy paper London tube map you can carry with you, and it has become somewhat of an institution, but Translink has no such equivalent. I am not sure I like the ‘interactive’ map on the Translink site, it does have a down-loadable map to print off yourself, however not all browsers/operating systems support their asp download process. The Paris Metro map folds down into a much smaller version which is the best I have seen.
Translink have a service where you can check bus schedule times on your mobile device from the 5 digit numbers on the stop sign and this service is very good but I have found it to be sporadic and unreliable during the weekends.
London Transport are notorious for not delivering travel delays on the tube quick enough, this is different on Translink who are very quick. However, on Translink their loud speaker system is not too good and difficult to understand the messages.
Closures
There are a lot of complaints of closures on the London Underground network, this is part of an ‘investment plan’ to improve the system. Although no one likes the closures the end results have been amazing, I love what they have done to stations like Westminster, Canada Water and Canary Wharf. I don’t see any many closures on Translink, it is quite a new system compared to London, however have seen some work at various stations such as Commercial Broadway.
Cost
Where I paid £99 a month for two zones in London I pay $110 a month on the same for Translink. That makes translink less expensive, taken at today’s exchange rate. In addition to being able to travel with the zones as many times as you want Translink also offers other special deal such as more than one person can travel on your season ticket on Sunday’s. I do protest when any public transport system increases their fare’s above the rate of inflation, this is not fair on passengers.
Delays
I would say these are pretty rare on Translink, I have experienced the odd train getting stalled at a station due to a medical emergency or a train going out of service in front but would say the delay has been cleared up by less than 5 minutes each time, quite an impressive record. Can’t say the same of London Transport, I have lost count the number of times I have been inconvenienced by them! In the snow or freezing conditions London tends to ground to a halt, Vancouver seems to keep on going but…..yes, there is a but, they have on a number of occasions forget about de-icing the cables which in turn causes delays in getting these buses out and about.
Accessibility
When the tube was first built it really wasn’t designed for accessibility issues and would take a huge amount of money to re-design the stations. Not really acceptable but I guess that is the way it is, however, there are many newer stations that have these facilities available. I really would not know how a person in a wheelchair would be able to get on the Northern Line. From what I have seen Vancouver is designed a little bit more considerate of all types of people but I wouldn’t presume to comment further as I don’t have the experience that others have.
Passengers
Public transport can bring out the best and worst in people, the better journey’s I have taken are when there are few passengers around! People are so much more nicer in Vancouver than in London, I felt as though I had targets all over my body in London so that people just had to bump and push into me! Vancouver does have its colourful characters as well but are generally so much nicer than Londoners.
There are quite a few Vancouver people who are similar to Londoners in their habits, for example, pushing past people to get on the train first, putting feet on seats, playing music too loud, shouting on their mobile phones, sitting in the aisle and not letting anyone get by, wanting to be the first off the train, running for a train and hitting people in the process, eating stinky food, not letting senior citizens sit down…well, I could go on. I generally never say anything because I am sure I am not the perfect commuter either unless someone hits me while running – that’s where a line has to be drawn!!
There are random acts of kindness from passengers in both cities which puts my faith back into life!
Design
I find the Translink system without character, the stations are antiseptic looking, sometimes you can’t tell one station from another. The lines and stations that are built on large concrete pillars over the street are ugly, well I am sorry but grey concrete is not nice and will get worse as they age. London Transport is much better, the older stations are interesting as it is like looking back on history and many were artistically built, there also seems to be quite a lot of thought gone into the design of some of the newer stations as well. I like how London has Poetry on the Underground, it gave you something interesting to read on the way to work, it would be nice is Translink did something like this too. At first the TV screens on some Translink were interesting but lost interest when I realised it was just another opportunity to shove advertising in your face!
Communication
London Transport clearly has the best tools with some great gadgets that I use even though I left London 18 months ago!! Translink has the best mobile app for looking up timetables for buses on the iPhone and Blackberry, just key in the number on the bus sign and get the schedule for the buses that stop there, very cool. Translink have a blog and many twitter accounts which they monitor frequently and respond with lightning speed, London Transport don’t have such a thing yet however I can understand why because it would be impossible to manage with potentially many comments from the public, being a larger city that is. Translink PR has a reputation of being very defensive if someone says something bad about their system, aggressively so, colleagues told me about this and didn’t really take it in until I have seen some of their reactions to not so diplomatic tweets and so on. As a company it would be bad practice to get emotional with customers even though they may not be so kind. Not really had any experience of London Transport PR.
Staff
Vancouver staff seem so much happier than in London. Staff go out of their way on a day to day basis on Translink, helping people on and off the bus, saying hello and so on. Not really had any poor experiences with London staff, on the whole everyone is very helpful, but don’t seem as happy, maybe pressures of a large city.
Summary
No system is perfect but I would say Vancouver is better, maybe its just because I get to see the mountains and beach on my journey to and from work, beautiful!
The first one I have been waiting for a little while is Turf #2, the series written by Jonathan Ross and Tommy Lee Edwards. I bought the first issue, reviewed here, on impulse because I never knew that Jonathan was going to write a comic book. I really enjoyed it, a mish-mash of 19th Century New York, Vampires and Aliens and I am looking forward to getting into issue 2. However, the first thing that struck me about the book is that a vampire character looks very similar to Jonathan, as my picture left demonstrates, what do you think?
Every year I buy the “holiday specials” that the two major American comic producers;