Editor:
Re: Little hope 601 goes downtown again, Oct. 19
I read in amusement about TransLink's very weak excuse for not operating the 601 bus and the 602/3/4 buses to downtown and instead insisting bus customers transfer to the Canada Line.
The real reason bus passengers are forced to transfer onto the Canada Line metro is, of course, to increase ridership on the hugely expensive and politically inspired metro, to pretend that such an expense was justified.
Ha, ha, ha! In the real world - that is the world that is out of reach of TransLink - metros are never planned or built unless ridership exceeds 300,000 persons a day, which makes TransLink's claims that "all is well as the Canada Line's ridership exceeds 100,000 passengers a day," laughable.
If the planners who work for TransLink had read a book on the subject, instead of making it up as they go along, they would have found the best way to attract customers to transit is to provide a seamless or no-transfer journey.
Transit authorities that offer new seamless travel over routes that once had a transfer found ridership increased 100 to 400 per cent in a very short time.
I'm sorry to say, TransLink's excuses for not offering a seamless (no-transfer) bus service to downtown Vancouver are worse than lame, they border on willful ignorance.
But what else is new about TransLink, that bloated bureaucracy that spends most of its time inventing new and more devious ways to shake down the taxpayer than operate an efficient transit service.
Malcolm Johnston
