One of the things I witnessed last week was a situation where someone in a local online queer space took exception to rules put in place to make moderation easy for everyone. They didn’t take kindly to our decision to not relax the rules and a desire for us to not expose ourselves to content we voluntarily would have to handle were an issue to arise. As a consequence, they opted to have the last word and left said space.

How did I feel? I didn’t feel any remorse over the matter.

When I was younger, I was bullied quite a lot. The bullying was horrifying because I went to a small private school with no alternate classes for each grade. If you were in Grade 6, you were in the Grade 6 classroom and there were no alternatives. This led to me having a massive breakdown during my time in said grade and my school and parents required me to see a psychologist despite the fact that the bullying came from elsewhere. The 1990s were so great weren’t they?

As I entered adulthood and was able to leave that time of my life behind, I had a lot of trouble getting on in some online spaces. I hadn’t learnt how to find my space online and a lot of it was due to my having not reconciled with aspects of my queer identity. Trying to fit in was difficult and I didn’t know how to be myself there.

Coming out, I was able to figure out the spaces I belonged in with some trial and error. I listened to myself and didn’t attempt to try and fit in where I didn’t belong or I found hostile.

Does my experience line up with this person in the opening example 1:1? Absolutely not, but at least for me, I know where I belong and don’t fight these communities where I may not fit.

A space that doesn’t cater to me and my interests, desires, needs, et cetera is not a space for me. I think that this a healthy approach and one that takes a lot to learn how to grasp. Yearning to return to a community after being removed either voluntarily or forcibly is unlikely to be a healthy behaviour to continue with.

Creating your own community is healthier.

I must make it clear that this does not of course excuse anything rotten such as bigotry, classism, and the like, but the above thinking applies to how I want to socialise. Awful communities must be called out, but not all communities where I don’t feel like I fit in are necessarily awful in themselves.

Pender Island in British Columbia

September 2023 marks ten years since Compass card readers were beginning to implemented. While the system itself wasn’t fully activated until 2016 and the necessity of it was more political than practical, I felt it was worth acknowledging the anniversary by looking at the ways fare validation on BC Transit and then TransLink services have evolved.

The first use of automated fare collection was in 1977 when the SeaBus link between Vancouver and North Vancouver first began regular service. The ticket machine was simple in its design: you’d place the appropriate fare into the machine and it would photocopy every single coin inserted and print them on to a piece of receipt paper to be used as proof of fare.

This of course was back in the day when coinage included pennies but excluded loonies, meaning that if you had inserted a lot of pennies, you’d have a rather lengthy proof of payment.

When SkyTrain service began, a new ticket machine was needed and this meant the end of tokens as they would not be effective for the new railway. Automated ticket machines were placed at every station and they took paper notes in addition to coins.

Tickets issued on SkyTrain were valid on buses and SeaBus as well as the entire system had complete fare integration.

These ticket machines were in place for over a decade and a half and survived substantial changes to Canadian currency including the introduction of the two dollar coin–also known as the toonie. However, a brand new line was being opened and this required a whole slew of new machines and the new transit agency, TransLink opted to purchase brand new, high-tech machines to take their place.

The big difference with these new machines was that the tickets had a magnetic stripe and could be issued and validated on buses.

There were no gates on the system however so proof of payment had to be manually verified by staff should a ticket inspection be conducted.

With the opening of the Canada Line, new ticket machines were ordered and they provided a hint of things to come: RFID passes were coming. The machines were designed with RFID readers in mind, but no system had been entirely established. This was all going to change when provincial politicians wanted to do away with the gate-less honour system SkyTrain employed and thus began a long ordeal to rid ourselves of the existing fare system.

Starting in 2013, TransLink began to implement the Compass service and invited thousands of users (including this author) to be part of the program. Implementation was controversial as it required construction at many stations to accommodate fare gates. Many of these stations had to be completely remodelled as while the Canada Line stations were designed with such things in mind, Expo and Millennium Lines were not.

Implementation was fraught with problems with one big problem in particular: Metro Vancouver has a zone system for determining zones. It would be straightforward to enforce this with fare gates, but how do you deal with buses? How do you remind users to tap off of a bus? Nobody could come up with anything practical and this plus other issues caused years of delays, causing the Compass service to not officially launch until 2016.

The cost to implement the whole system likely exceeded the cost of fare enforcement, but it’s the system we have received.

Since then, we have had limited-edition Compass card in the form of wrist bands, miniature versions, celebrations of holidays and expansions, and scale models of buses and trains. You can also purchase cards at pharmacies, including at many which are nowhere near a SkyTrain station.

The future of payment with transit in Metro Vancouver is going to change once again. TransLink has been exploring moving to a new scheme where you can use a transit pass using your mobile phone, akin to cities such as Hong Kong and San Francisco. This has been delayed so far by the pandemic, but we’re due to see these changes in the next few years.

However, payment can be made by simply tapping your debit or credit card so the need for an actual transit pass to ride the services provided by TransLink is kind of no longer necessary.

One thing to mention is that buses have rolled back on automated fare payment in favour of paper tickets given out by bus drivers. If there is interest in how bus fare has been handled historically, let me know and I’ll consider it in the future.

Maybe one day payments won’t be needed at all, but for now this is what we have.

This was an ongoing post series I had going on cohost.org starting on July 6, 2023 that eventually led to my friend, Tam and I going on a little train ride

I decided to look this up on Wikipedia:

The station is served by Via Rail’s The Canadian as a flag stop (48 hours advance notice required). The station is only served by westbound trains towards Vancouver. Eastbound trains call at Agassiz railway station along the CPR tracks, on the other side of the Fraser River. This split in service between Vancouver and Ashcroft is due to CN and CPR utilizing directional running through the Thompson- and Fraser Canyon.

Okay. So 48 hours notice is required to catch a train from Chilliwack to Vancouver. Let’s see how much it costs to book:

So it’s CA$32 to take a train, but they’re quoting me it’s five hours to do the entire trip? Here’s why it’s absurd:

I am guessing Via has zero expectations for being on time when arriving so they pad it out by 5 hours. Freight rail surprise surprise often causes delays.

I was curious, what does Chilliwack’s counterpart in Aggasiz look like?

So it looks slightly better but it is still a dreadful platform situation. Just like Chilliwack, it has zero accessibility. However, we have another station we can look at:

This is Abbotsford station. It’s literally in a farm field located 80 KM from Pacific Central. It’s the counterpart to this station:

Yes. This is a station and it’s gated off. Just like Aggasiz, this is the split service station to Abbotsford. It’s so dreadful. The irony is that this station is 1 KM away from this station which is used for the commuter rail into Vancouver’s Waterfront station:

It is entirely possible for Via Rail to have a platform at this station considering it passes by it, but for whatever reason they do not want to build a platform on the other side.

All of the trains that go to these Via Rail stations terminates or departs from this beautiful building:

Part of me wants to book a trip from one of these stations to Vancouver to just experience it, but the idea of dealing with an up-to five-hour delay seems like a really, really bad time.

If the employees at BC Transit in the Fraser Valley were not still on strike, I’d consider trying to do a loop between Downtown Vancouver, Mission City, and then back to where I started.

I sure as hell would not dare try this with Via Rail simply because the train -probably- arrives at 2 AM.

Look at these weird and awful trips I can do on Via Rail.

I visited two of the stations (Aug 12)

Mission Harbour (first) was gated but had a sign whereas Abbotsford (second) required me to trespass on a pothole-laden private road to get to it.

Yeah. This is abysmal.

I got some numbers today (Aug 21)

With Mission Harbour in 2019, it had 151 passengers board at the stop and 36 get off. Assuming 2 trains per week, at least one per was made to board and every 3-4 trains that pass through had someone get off at the stop.

Going to Abbotsford in the same year, it had 3 board and 193 leave. Over 50% of the time a train will have passengers get off at the stop and maybe every few months someone gets on there.

Planning some nonsense with a friend earlier this evening… (Aug 29)

Imagine booking a sleeper train for two for a mere 80 KM trip which should take 1.5h and leaves at 3 PM and yet spending this much.

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When you think about TransLink, you think about how it goes as far north as Lions Bay, as far south as White Rock, and as far west as Bowen Island. However, it does offer services outside of what is traditionally thought of as Metro Vancouver and that is where the curious case of Mission City station comes in.

Opened in 1995, Mission City station is the easternmost TransLink-operated service and yet Mission itself is not under the jurisdiction of TransLink; instead it’s BC Transit. Its West Coast Express service only operates on weekdays minus holidays with five trains in the morning towards Vancouver with them all returning in the evening to then be serviced.

Outside of these times, bus service to Coquitlam Central is provided but only on the days the West Coast Express operates. With one bus late in the morning, one mid-afternoon, and two in the evening, its existence is solely to be supportive to commuters and nothing more.

Prior to the pandemic, the station handled under 550 passengers per day.

BC Transit service is available all day and has connections all over Mission and to parts of Abbotsford. It’s one of two train stations operated by TransLink which another agency provide service to; the other being Lougheed Town Centre.

It’s also the only point where the West Coast Express and Via Rail, Canada’s national passenger railway service, meet even though the stop for Via is located at another station located 300 metres away down track at Mission Harbour Road. However, this sort of wasn’t always the case.

Prior to the dissolution of passenger rail service by the Canadian Pacific Railway, Mission Junction was the city’s railway station. Named for the junction which Mission City sits just east of, the station was located on the west side and became a heritage building in the early-1980s. Service to the station ceased in 1990 and for five years the street known as Railway Street which it sat on lacked a station until the West Coast Express came into being.

Sadly, a fire in 1999 burnt down the original CPR station and it is suspected that arson played responsibility. Prior to the fire, plans were made to turn it into some sort of community hall but a lack of funds led to it being disused.

This was originally posted to cohost.org/VancouverTransit.