New Vancouver Transit Line Makes Me Happy

I was in a cranky, cranky mood yesterday when we went downtown to meet some friends to ride the new RAV (aka Canada) Line* for free on its opening day. I had PMS, I’d forgotten to eat lunch while writing my last blog post which resulted in the scarfing-down of a peanut butter sandwich that left me wholly unsatisfied, and I was tired.

There was a blocks-long lineup to enter the station at Granville and Georgia. Translink did a stupendous job of managing the hordes** of people who turned out. They let a limited number of people through at each station to ensure that the platforms didn’t get crowded. I heard the waits at either end of the line (at Waterfront Station downtown and at the airport) were pushing three-hours long.

Annoying people kept trying to give us ads and coupons. Thankfully our friend brought her baby. He’s very cute, and distracted me from the annoying people. Also, a bird crapped on my arm. The spatter hit several people surrounding us. I was extremely grossed out. But of course that same friend had a massive pile of baby wipes, for the win! And then my other friend, in answer to my being grossed out, said I’d grow a prawn arm. I love her.

The good thing about PMS is mood swings. From that point on, I was just giddy.

I love trains. And this train is a good one. What kind of major city doesn’t have rapid transit connecting its airport and downtown? (Actually, I’d love it if you’d list some in the comments. I’m sure they exist. New York City comes to mind. And apparently this is the first such line in all of Canada.) I mean, Vancouver isn’t actually a major city. Anyway. Yay, rapid transit.

The stations are pretty drab. It’s clear they sacrificed on atmosphere in the interest of budget and timing. I don’t really mind about that, but I’ve heard about other more significantly short-sighted decisions that could potentially really suck in a few years.

At least for now, though, the new line is awesome.  Apparently, 80,000 people rode it between 1PM and 9PM yesterday. We took lots of photos of the baby so twenty years from now we can show him how wee he was on this momentous occasion.

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* RAV = Richmond, Airport, Vancouver. It was the original, appropriately descriptive name of the line. Calling the line “Canada” is appropriately descriptive of nothing. It’s a dumb, useless name for something that would benefit from a good name. So I call it the RAV Line. Screw ’em.

** It’s inappropriate to describe queuing Canadians as “hordes.” I like the word, but queuing Canadians might more accurately be described as, “lots of people patiently waiting in a fairly organized line.”