TL;DR for Cancelling #480: Simplistic Solution for Underlying Problems

This is a summary to a more elaborate write-up to this issue, which can be found here.

A few weeks ago, TransLink releases the Southwest Area Transit Plan, which includes the cancellation of #480. This has been quite a controversial among UBC commuters. TransLink claims that the #480 “duplicates with other service, [has] declining ridership, the lowest on-time performance in 2015, and [faster alternatives].” In the past few weeks, I spent some time to probe into TransLink’s claim and solutions for impacted commuters, and here are some results and my personal conclusions.

- TransLink’s claims about the #480 are right. It is slower and less unreliable than its competitors (#43, #49) during peak hours, and ridership has dropped over the past few years.

- The root cause of #480’s “illness” is congested and unpredictable traffic through Kerrisdale, Marpole and Oak Street Bridge, causing lengthy delays and fluctuating travel times. Ridership on the #49, on the other hand, skyrocketed in the past few years because it’s faster and more reliable.

- However, 975000 commuters still use the #480 in 2015, indicating the value of a one-seat ride.

     > Many commuters coming from Surrey, Delta and White Rock take buses to Bridgeport Station everyday. Forcing them to transfer onto SkyTrain at Bridgeport and adding a transfer to the journey will put undesired burden to their commute. TransLink also proposes to redirect more Richmond bus routes to Bridgeport, further challenging capacity at the station.

     > Right now, transit connection between South Vancouver (Marpole, Marine Drive) and UBC is quite limited and unappealing, but more and more people are moving to areas like Marpole and Fraserlands. There needs to be a route that connect South Vancouver and the #100 Marine Drive bus directly to UBC.

If TransLink decides to keep the route, then action must be taken to make it more efficient, for instance:

1) Eliminate off-peak service on the #480, since other buses and the Canada Line are frequent and has available capacity

2) Transfer the route to Vancouver Transit Centre, improve scheduling efficiency by grouping the #480 with other UBC buses (#25, #33, #41, #49, #84) the reduce the need and distance of buses running as “Not in Service” (also known as deadheading)

3) Modify the route to be faster and more reliable. In the write-up this routing is recommended because it is faster, more reliable than most options, and it covers more people and maintains connectivity to the #10, #100 bus routes.

In case that TransLink insists to cancel the route, more should be done other than simply bumping up frequency on the #43 and #49:

1) Improve transit efficiency, speed and reliability through Kerrisdale (regardless of whether or not the #480 is cancelled)

2) Consider introducing a peak-hour express on 49^th Avenue

3) Keep a peak-hour express between Marine Drive, Marpole and UBC, via Granville Street and 49^th Avenue

The write-up ends up with a rant of how many commuters rely on buses so much and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future, and yet our bus network attracts so little attention and receives so little infrastructure to keep them running on-time in a city that is getting more congested everyday.

For the much more elaborate write-up to this issue, see here.

Those who are interested in submitting your opinion can do it through an on-line survey until Jun 19^th (Monday) or physically attend one of TransLink’s open house. Details here: http://www.translink.ca/en/Plans-and-Projects/Area-Planning/Southwest-Area-Transport-Plan/Get-Involved.aspx

If you also support the new routing and all the other suggestions proposed by the author, pleased do not hesitate to submit a copy of the suggested route map or a link of this article to TransLink’s survey, while also mentioning that you want the #480 to be kept and modified, rather than cancelled.