#TL101 Keep calm & stay hydrated! Bring your water bottle (with a lid) and sip your way through your transit journey. Our goal is to make your journey as pleasant as possible, and staying hydrated is a part of that. Happy travels! 🚰💦 #StayHydrated #TransitTips #HappyTravels ^SM pic.twitter.com/a4DKdrnwZz
— TransLink BC (@TransLink) May 18, 2023
Most BCIT students commute to campus, in fact I’d argue that nearly all of them do. There’s not that many of us that actually live on campus. And, I’m fairly certain that a big chunk of BCIT’s commuting population takes transit to get to school, whether that be by bus, train, or a combination of both. Having a car here is EXPENSIVE and pretty inconvenient, so I understand why most people choose transit, especially because the transit system in this city is really, really good. Parking on campus is also very expensive from what I’ve heard, so avoiding those extra fees makes sense. Our SkyTrain system is the longest fully-automated light metro system IN THE WORLD! That’s pretty impressive, in my books.
I rely on transit to get basically everywhere here, and it hasn’t failed me yet. I know so many people who are actually from Vancouver that are full-on adults who DON’T have a driver’s license and have never been behind the wheel of a car before, which is so crazy to me. I remember when all my classmates turned 16 and everyone started getting their driver’s licenses, but I guess that just isn’t really a thing here with the transit system being so accessible and reliable. Both of the cities that I grew up in, Ottawa and San Jose, don’t have the same level of intricate transit. They’ve got buses, sure, but they’re definitely more car-oriented, especially in the suburbs, which is where I lived in both places.
Being from these places, I had never had to rely on transit EVER in my life until moving to Vancouver. The only experience I had with it was taking the train to San Francisco and then taking buses there, but that was pretty infrequent. When I first got to Vancouver, I had no car, obviously, so I needed to learn how to take the bus and train, which may seem embarrassing to all you Vancouver natives, but hey, I have my driver’s license, so. My biggest transit screw up was getting on the 49 going the opposite way and ending up stranded at metrotown at 10 pm when I actually wanted to go to UBC. Not my proudest moment. After that big mistake, I quickly learned to always check to make sure that I was getting on the right bus. Since then, I can proudly say that I haven’t messed up that bad since.Â
I’m really grateful that I don’t have to own a car here, and that I can take the bus everywhere. Commuting places does take a bit longer, but it becomes a lot less stressful, and I love being able to listen to music on the bus.