Mundy Park

Maintaining my focus on outdoor activities and desiring a good walk, I looked up geocaching opportunities in Mundy Park. Mundy Park is a 178-hectare park in Coquitlam featuring a number of wonderful trails and amenities. The city is not exaggerating when they refer to the park as a treasured asset, despite being in the heart of an urban community it does not take long to feel as if you are in a remote forest.

Because I was not familiar with this park, I attribute my success at navigating the park with relative ease to snapping a photo of the trail map on my way in. I referred to it a lot because I ended up seeking five caches and there were many intersecting trails. I wanted to be efficient in my efforts. I also did not want to give in and have to pay horrendous cellular data rates (U.S. cell companies can be ruthless on cell data when you’re visiting Canada).

Mundy Park Trail Map

The first cache I sought was a letterbox hybrid type, A Walk in the Park. These types can be neat because when they are executed as intended, the coordinates take you close-ish and then you follow written directions to get to the cache itself. Doing that took me on a nice walk, I considered it orientation. The other characteristic of the letterbox hybrid is that they ordinarily have a stamp in them and some individuals collect impressions of these stamps. It combines the hobbies letterboxing and geocaching.

The last cache I sought in the park was a tribute to a former cache, Vancouver Transit. Vancouver Transit was a locationless cache. That is, it moved around. In this case, the intention was to move it to places in the Greater Vancouver area that were transit-friendly. This is awesome to be because 1) I love transit and 2) this amazing park is actually transit friendly. The cache I found in the park was placed to memorialize the 46^th location that Vancouver Transit was placed. 

Silver Streak or Silver Sneakers?

To celebrate the second weekend of its service, Chris and I made the trip out to Northern Virginia and DC to give the new Silver Line a whirl. Given the sheer terror of my time as a commuter on the Red Line (especially in the months after the horrible crash where we all learned what “telescoping” meant and nine individuals perished), my hopes were not high. Yet, what I found reminded me of home, for it seemed almost as smooth as the SkyTrain that offers a similar level of not-quite-light but not-quite-heavy rail transit.

The Silver Line opened on July 26^th after several years of hot debates, delayed construction, and hot debates over delayed construction. For all the headaches involved, it’s a wonder that we can build anything on this type of scale with these types of goals when so many agencies are involved. There was hardly enough pie for everyone to get their slice. But once we got through the throngs of tourists unable to figure out how to use a Smartrip Card and the bathrooms that were locked but didn’t seem locked at the Wiehle-Reston East station, the trip on the train for the four-remaining Silver-only stations was a pleasure.

My greatest concern with the Silver Line is that it only increases the severity of the bottleneck at Rosslyn (and others agree and explain the situation very well!). Unlike other stations in the system that have three lines meeting, at Rosslyn they must do it all on the same track. Because of the spacing between trains and the demand on the peripheries of each respective line, the only word that comes to mind to describe those commuting through Rosslyn is “hell.” For the Blue Line in particular, I imagine the delays have only grown. Likely reminiscent of Red Line commuters who really, really want to get to Forest Glen, Wheaton, or Glenmont  but can’t get any further than Silver Spring if their lives depended on it, but worse.

But as these thoughts get frantic and negative, we were suddenly at one of the Farraguts trying desperately to get to the other Farragut to get onto the Red Line. The Red Line, not wishing to disappoint me, had a train break down at Gallery Place and no trains were running toward Shady Grove. After 30 minutes at the other Farragut with no trains coming, we turned around to go back to the original Farragut and get on the Silver Line back towards the safe arms of suburbia. Thankfully, due to the invisible, magic “transit tunnel” between the Farraguts, there was no financial toll for the 30 minutes in Metro Limbo, but we made the return trip much faster than expected. Returning to the original Farragut, within moments we were headed back out to Wiehle-Reston East and the day began getting substantially better from there.

On this journey, in one of the newest cars in the fleet, I saw my first glimpse of Metro’s tongue-in-cheek advertisements urging commuters to look alive because the love of their life may also be riding the Silver Line. I don’t know if it was my frustration or delirium from being outside of the mountains, but I found it absolutely hilarious.

I took this trip on a Saturday and was really impressed with the balance of traffic I saw heading both into and out of DC. Some things I was expecting. For example, I expected Tyson’s Corner to be the same kind of hit that Metrotown Station is on the Expo Line in Vancouver. You can’t go wrong with frequent rail transit to a major entertainment destination (especially if it’s the wintertime and there’s precipitation).  But I did not expect Wiehle-Reston East to be such a bustling hub of activity. Most of the construction here is not even complete (they’ve got all kinds of transit-oriented-design goodies planned here), yet it was probably the busiest station, rivaling even Tyson’s Corner. This is evidence to me that the line is desired and will see use. I hope that in five or ten years the only question remaining in the minds of those that pushed for this is, “why couldn’t we have this super nice thing sooner?”

Of course, for all of the promise of the Silver Line, it is still part of the overall Metro Rail system. I think my concerns about the bottleneck at Rosslyn are real. But Metro has an opportunity to set their best foot forward with something new and fresh that hasn’t had time to be ruined by neglect, vandalism, and bureaucracy. I hope they take it for all it’s worth and turn over a new leaf!

Transportation Landmarks: Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit

Beginning in 1975, the “PRT” as it is referred to locally has served to shuttle students between the Downtown, Evansdale (Engineering), and Health Sciences campuses of West Virginia University. Since 1975 over 60 million people have ridden the public transportation system (it receives some FTA funding) and on any given school day about 15,000 rides are taken.

The system takes 11.5 minutes to ride from end to end and the vehicles can travel up to 30 mph. Each of the vehicles is entirely electric and built on a 1973 Dodge truck chassis. Each vehicle seats eight passengers, but can hold up to 20 (though the record is 97).

A PRT vehicle

How the system works: There are five total stations. When a customer arrives at a station they either pay ($0.50 per ride for the general public) or swipe their WVU ID (those affiliated with the university ride free) and press a button to indicate the station they wish to ride to. Usually within a few moments a PRT car arrives in the station and a sign above the door indicates the destination of that car, matching the request of someone waiting for a PRT car, it then travels directly to that destination. This is what makes the system “personal” rapid transit and different from other urban bus and rail services.

The system is currently the only one in the United States and was built as an experiment. During the 1960s several government reports examined the feasibility of personal rapid transit (PRT) systems with very promising results. Coupling these results with the mounting traffic congestion in Morgantown it seemed like the perfect test site for the technology.  Construction began in 1970, however the fact the system required not-yet-fully-developed technology and the collaboration of a number of organizations (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Boeing, Vetrol, Bendix, and F.R. Harris Engineering) both cost and time estimates were overrun.

The PRT infrastructure at Towers, which are largely freshman dorms at WVU

Despite the substantial cost overruns in the development and construction of the system, it has been a largely reliable and relatively inexpensive system to operate. It has also helped the university triple in enrollment since the 1960’s by improving mobility for students between campuses. Of course, there are groups that believe the PRT is a complete boondoggle. However, one would be hard pressed to find a transit system that has no enemies. A fundamental drawback to transit is the issue of the last mile, filling in the gap between the nearest station and your final destination. Furthermore, because of the nature of the PRT system, during peak periods, there can be delays in getting PRT vehicles to the stations with highest demand if they are already in use between two other stations.

But traffic congestion is a mounting problem in Morgantown, with the growth of the university has also come the development of other businesses in the area both to support the university and benefit from the human capital developed by the university. The PRT does help and expansion of the system has been discussed, although the costs are likely to be prohibitive due to the fact it is an orphan system.

Take a ride on the PRT! This video shows the PRT traveling around on March 30, 2009.