Freebies, and not crowded?
That has been tried when there were time-differntial fares.
And it just meant that the buses were full at 10 am when the free passes came into effect. And the usual kind of cheating by some minutes to get on outside the cheaper/free hours.

I like the new policy by Translink and the CAW union. If passengers don’t have the fare, just let them on and drive. Scheduling time is more important than enforcing fare collection.
Most riders these days have bought a pass. (And weren’t tourists surprised that they couldn’t use paper money on our buses, and there were no chippies giving change when they didn’t have anything less than 2 Twoonies.)

This no-fare is more obvious from the Drive to Downtown, or along Hastings from Main to Davie and Granville. The West Side doesn’t see it, but then they all have individual cars to drive over there. “Walk! Take the bus!! That’s for animals!”

What if we made bikes compulsory? It has been said that every home has at least one bike mouldering in storage. And it’s sad about the 500 Dutch bikes the pavilion brought over.

http://www.bike-eu.com/news/3917/german-conference-calls-for-stronger-national-bicycle-plan.html

@Peter Ladner // Mar 2, 2010 at 12:25 pm Huh? Kiss and ride? How long are anyone going to be stopped at a station?
Marine Drive was an attempt to get more boggy land away from industrial use into more profitable condos, then they might have parking stalls.
But the the Airport-Canada Line has a lot of cross routes, not enough lines (Marine to Oak, Granville, Arbutus; 49th, 41st, 25th 9th) but enough along with the every-5-blocks plaiting that this city was developed for in the days of Point Grey Municipality ruling the west half.(Vancouver stopped at 16th for those of you not with the Bruce MacDonald book “Vancouver, A Visual History). So you need only walk three blocks from a stop. Why do you need to pick someone up at that station?

While people love the view of side walk cafes, they are private space and not public amenties. Pay up every hour or move on.
And of course, rain.
Numerous stories of the death of the sidewalk cafe in Paris, France as people take food back to the office or the Jardins de Luxembourg.

Transit? The Airport line was full just as the first (free) days of the Richmond B-Line, (when it existed). When the word got around that no one was checking fares, and also that a day ticket got a free ride, usage shot up.
Translink was surprised in a survey when my answer to their question on an appropriate fare was 25 cents, the same at that time as the phone, and a single coin that many carry.
Free transit and vast restrictions as to the number of riders in cars and what streets they can drive on would increase the use of transit, but not a lot of respect for it.
The City of Vancouver had all its traffic-o-meters out in the past weeks, what does it show for the weeks before the Worst.Games.Ever and during and after? Have they posted it yet?

Same with VAG. Oh how we miss Tony Emery.
Free admission, people will enter. Paid (donation) and most are reluctant to go in. Time to pull it from the Eloi and let the masses enjoy it every day and not just pushing past the docents on Free-Tuesday-if-you-know.

VAG will get more general support if it is well-attended by the usual street riff-raff.

And in general the street buzz downtown shows that There-is-nothing-to-do-here. So a few cultural events, with limited-time-offer admission and chit-chat bring in the bridge-and-tunnel crowd and others who are waiting for one of the events to happen.

School breaks might have helped, as then parents can’t trust their kids at home alone so take them out to something novel and wait in line. Where’s the washrooms?

But so white! Part of that might be the Lunar New Year when families have to take Auntie Lydia and others out to a Chinese feast. “Aww, do we have to?”
A friend did a poll at the Robson Square and found that most of the Chinese were from back East, mainly Ontario
My travel agent said that many Chinese are waiting and have tickets for the first week in March as otherwise it is too busy: at airports, for flights, and in Asia where it can be 300 million travelling around for the last 2 weeks of February.
But the Winter Games have always been dominated by the Alpine countries (DE, AU, IT, FR, CH) They have inclueded some other non-sports such as the X-sports of boarding, aerials and ice dancing which brings in others.

And all this olympic stuff, do we care that these athletes will be former athletes with multiple medical interventions and rehabilitations, walking around with artifical knees, hips and so on. Good piece in Georgia Straight last week on that issue of damage to young people. http://www.straight.com/article-292925/vancouver/even-best-skiers-bend-knee-injuries

That has got to be the single best idea I’ve ever heard – tack an extra $3 on to every event ticket that takes place at BC Place, GM Place, etc and the ticket becomes your transit pass for the evening. A new revenue source for TransLink, and at the same time a huge boon to Vancouver in terms of reducing traffic in and out of the downtown core post-game. How quickly can we make this happen??!!