Intercity transit is almost non existent. The one private operator doesn't sell tickets from Victoria to the Cowichan Valley (only via Nanaimo). It's incredibly difficult to move across the island without a car, and it's a massive policy failure that the @bcndpcaucus.bsky.social don't care about.

Either way you get to avoid sending a bunch of empty train to Lafarge, and if it's the pretzel it's essentially free once you're at production since you're basically just extended the Expo trips to Arbutus. Only downside is the potential for larger cascading delays.

I've been thinking about this, and the best I've come up with is short turns just east of Commerical, or if a hypothetical short turn is too far east then just return the original pretzel service pattern to Waterfront since if you're getting close enough to Production might as well combine em

Yeah, plus on top of being next to a massive arterial, transfering to a southbound 123/130/222 requires you to walk half a block across a gas station exit, then wait to cross a massive intersection. The road crossing and distance definitely makes it feel more uncertain and stressful of a transfer

But ime working near BCIT the buses going towards Brentwood are dead, and the ones going away from it are packed in the evening peak. Morning peak the buses leaving Brentwood usually aren't too busy either. Totally possible bus transfers at 29th are stronger.

Not sure how this factors in though since the Willingdon buses have better service levels than most stuff going to 29th, but then again all the Willingdon buses also connect to Expo and have other solid anchors so bit hard to parse how that factors in without finding stop level data somewhere

I get the impression that 29th has a more pleasant bus transfer setup too compared to Brentwood. Not that I've actually transfered at 29th but having ran past it along BC Parkway it seems a lot more pleasant than going the M Line to 130/222/123 southbound transfers

Ok to be honest I'm so lost at what you're getting at. Like are you talking about land use or Portland having more highways or something?

It's funny you mention Evergreen since the Evergreen Extension never really lived up to ridership projections thanks to the Tri-Cities not getting enough bus expansion to feed it.

And yet those 6 stations still have over 20,000 boardings a day post COVID significantly surpassing all but MAX Blue

I'll give some caveat to Portland, it's possible the parts of MAX that run on highways instead of an arterial median feel faster. I just remember being annoyed at 15 minute headways when my expectations of rail transit was already set by SkyTrain's 3 minute headways lol

Of the 4 light rail systems I've been on, Toronto, Portland, Lisbon (yes the modern trams), and Porto, Porto was the only one that truly felt faster than a bus could be. And the part I rode was like 95% grade separated and given priority akin to mainline rail, so not an urban tramway

Trams are the most overhyped thing in transit discussions. They're nice and vibey sure, but I want to get places as fast as reasonably possible and ime at grade urban trams have never been noticeably faster than a good bus that's given adequate priority

Lowkey, while the P3 aspect of it has some issues, we should get Québec's pension fund to build a metro lol. Between the Canada Line and REM they seem like the only competent group at managing infrastructure costs in the country right now sooooo (shame TransLink has fallen off with Langley Skytrain)

Welcome to island time in dysfunction by the sea!
Anything regional in the CRD is kneecapped a terminal lack of ambition and leadership. Plans contained in a single municipality (there's 13 btw) sometimes go fast in a couple munis but once 2+ need to plan together things fall apart :/