While walking back from grocery shopping at Granville Island today, we saw the new Olympic Streetcar, which they are testing on the tracks nearby. I did get a fuzzy picture of it a couple of weeks ago. It’s simply beautiful. We went a little closer and thanks to a friendly Bombardier employee, we got a look inside. I wish I had my camera in hand, and I inadvertently left my iPhone in its cradle back at home. That also wouldn’t capture the fact that the train smells new inside. It’s a 5‑car model with 2 articulations, which are the ‘hinges’ between cars (if you ride the B‑Line Bus, you know well what I’m talking about), according to the engineer. It’s operated manually, and to open the doors, you press a button on either the inside or outside while stopped (the door stays open for about 20 seconds after that). There are info screens at various points on the ceiling, and the engineer said that they are linked back to the communications system back in Bruges, Belgium, where this train was built.
The streetcar, which is really much more like a train, will begin operation on January 21, and will then run back and forth between Granville Island and the Olympic Village at Cambie street for 60 days, where it will be free. We were surprised to find out that it won’t continue past the Olympic Village and connect up with Main Street/Science World, which would have created a perfect circle around 1/2 of the downtown area plus False Creek (See map below. Annotation and dashed line for the continuation of the route are mine. Click to see a larger version):
While I was a big fan of this new addition to our transit system, if it only goes from Granville Island to Cambie, it’s not as big a deal as if it had gone to Science World. If it had gone that far (as we had always assumed — since the original tracks that are originally there go that far) it would have provided a really easy way to get to Chinatown and other parts of downtown from our neighborhood. Transit lines always open up new neighborhoods to explore, but getting to Cambie and 6th from our area is already reachable by a pretty fast bus. Still, I’m looking forward to riding this new tram. What is perplexing, is that in addition to the abbreviated route, is why it isn’t a permanent addition to downtown Mass transit.
Hopefully, with enough positive input from the public, this may be an option for the future. Expanding the line would be even better!
Thanks for the info and pic, David .…
I expect if the planning and implementation of the Olympic Village had been a bit more clear, the line would’ve followed the complete Vancouver Downtown Historic Railway route, but as it is, they’re driving dumptrucks and things all over the eastern half of the line.
It would also have required Bombardier supply at least another streetcar trainset and–I’m guessing–some right-of-way work. The current modernized line required a junction track be installed to allow the operation of more than one car at a time as it is.
I think the Downtown Streetcar project would be nice to have, but it’s not that useful to me personally. Certainly, the Broadway skytrain extension and the Evergreen Line should remain a priority. That said, I’d be far more likely to support the thing if it went from Gastown or Yaletown to Granville Island and then down the existing Arbutus right-of-way to Marine Drive. And hey, they’d have to knock down the Starbucks in front of Granville Island to boot!
Agreed, David. The #84, or the Broadway #9/#99 will get you to either station on the Olympic line. Switching at Main is indeed a pain, better to hoof it.
Past Cambie, the tracks run just north of 1st — presumably this would be require it to pass through/around a security zone … would be a challenge being so close to the athlete’s residences. You could fence both sides but that would be costly and not exactly aesthetically pleasing.
Possible that there’s other contributing logistic issues and associated costs that made the extension a no go.
Notwithstanding, I wonder how much effort was put to the question. Would City Hall have debated this with VANOC? Would be interesting to ask the question.
The whole thing seems a bit like a hand-wave, doesn’t it? It’s an incredibly short distance (walking time is roughly 35 minutes, if you take a leisurely pace. Regardless of logistics, aesthetics and politics, I think they lost a major opportunity by not putting it in while they were building the Olympic Village. Heck, they could have built some fancy pedestrian overpasses in some places, dipped it down lower, and made the whole thing another reason to buy in the village (“Moving here from Yaletown? Get on the tram and be back in your favourite haunts in a few minutes.”) As it is, the current stretch only goes by a bunch of property that is owned by the city (the houses next to False Creek are leaseholds, which makes them bad investments, hence they tend to be bought by older folks who are not as concerned about reselling them, or they rent them to others for the income.) It was not much of a shock to simply improve some of the tracks, especially since that cute, Disney-ish antique car was running on weekends in the summer.
I guess there are tons of projects and little money, but we need this transit. It’s the only way we’ll really be able to densify the city without introducing more and more cars. As I was looking at the map of the medievally- laid out Bruges, where the streetcar was built, I wondered how much of that town was traversable by these same vehicles. Europe is so much farther along. Some of these medieval villages will be so much more sustainable when the oil begins to run out.
In the US, I remember their deep-seated hatred of mass transit (at least everyone except some of the left). It really does fall right down party lines. The Center (what little there is of it) and Right think it’s a symptom of the dreaded ‘Socialism’. For many, they believe that having an affordable car is a more basic right than affordable healthcare. I’m not kidding. It’s the base assumption for nearly all urban (and suburban) planning in the US, to this day.
Then when I moved here, I felt as if I’d moved a little farther along the continuüm. In Vancouver, we say we want mass transit, but we keep coming up with excuses why we don’t put it in here or there. For example, when we were first looking for a place to live here, the realtor we were working with actually advised us against being near a Skytrain stop because they were seen as magnets for crime, because someone from outside the area could break-in, take something, run to the Skytrain, and be away before they could be caught. I don’t know how widespread that belief is, but it’s a slightly less negative objection than the ‘You’re turning us all into commies if you ride one of those things’ argument from the States.