Markus’ Blog

I started out in Canada by taking the bus to work, while I lived on West 12^th Avenue, near Granville Street and worked downtown.

After I moved to North Vancouver — I was working in Burnaby by that time — I drove. Then, for an eight to ten month period, I was able to car-pool with our landlord and friend Mark. After that, I drove alone again for a little while.

I am taking the bus to work again. I chose to do this a few months ago, because my employer allows its employees to expense their transit passes if they return (or don’t even request) their parking pass. Very neat, I have to say. Even though I like driving, I quite enjoy just sitting on the bus / skytrain, not having to deal with rush-hour traffic: I like driving not stitting, if you know what I mean. On top of that, I save on gas and, now, on car insurance as well, since this arrangement allowed me to finally sell my car.

When I started taking the bus, we were still living in North Vancouver, and I took the #232 and #28 busses to get to and from work in Burnaby. Now, in Vancouver, it takes two transfers instead of one, but the frequency is much better. A 15 minute interval during morning and evening rush hour was the best North Van had to offer (during the day and at night it’s a 30 minute interval). Also, now we have a bus stop right outside of our building, not a seven minute walk away. I am taking #8, #9 and the Millenium Line now. After two weeks of doing so, I have to say it’s working out quite nicely. Although this morning’s problems with some trolley wires in Vancouver had me spend an additional half an hour waiting for busses, which wasn’t too much fun. That’s the downside of going electric, I guess: you need wires. I hope this doesn’t happen too often, because with the exception of this morning, it’s been really good. Also, I really like knowing that there are no fossil fuels burnt to get me to work. (British Columbia generates most of its electricity via hydroelectric power plants.)

I wish more companies in the Lower Mainland offered their employees incentives to take public transportation. It would go a long ways towards solving the current grid-lock problem we are facing in the Greater Vancouver Area and it’d be quite a bit cheaper than some of the road work that’s planned in the course of the Gateway Project, while at the same time keeping the air cleaner.