NightBus isn't really all night long

[robbat2]

The province is saying that there is sufficient Nightbus service, so they aren't going to extend the SkyTrain hours:

TransLink's Ken Hardie says they can't run SkyTrain later because the tracks need maintenance. "We have night bus routes that basically follow Canada Line, the Expo Line and the Millennium Line, so they duplicate those routes and they run all night."

I don't disagree that the maintenance is needed, but my objection in your claim that the NightBus routes "run all night".

Almost all of the NightBus routes have a final bus leaving the downtown core at 03h09. The first buses in the morning then start leaving the downtown area between 05h00 and 06h30. The exceptions: the N10, with downtown departures up to 04h39 (1 hour gap to the start of normal service). The N16, which stops at 03h28.

This means that if you are downtown and want to leave AFTER that, perhaps because your job had you working downtown, or you were chatting with friends, then you're stuck.

I would like to ask Translink to add the few more trips that it would take to continue to run 30-minute service intervals until the resumption of regular morning service. The N10 is almost there, it just needs one more set of Downtown departures. Make our transit system really 24-hours!

Comments

[PATCH] it's expensive

[francesco riosa (from livejournal.com)]

Possibly at those hours the bus travel with only one or two persons onboard.
Then it could be cheaper to signo some agreement with taxi service where the customer pay as much as a bus ticket. This way you could have coverage even in night hours, no empty and consuming bus travelling and happy taxi drivers.

Re: [PATCH] it's expensive

[robbat2.livejournal.com]

No, the existing NightBuses are very busy.

I've had the N8 Fraser not stop to pick me up, at 03h20 on a Friday morning, because it was full (of people that had gone up on Thursday).