British Columbia is the self-styled ‘Best Place on Earth’. This propaganda is beamed into Lower Mainland homes almost every day – apparently visitors ‘from around the world’ who come here in February 2010 to visit the Winter Olympics will find this out for themselves. My experiences in Vancouver, starting on December 22nd, indicate why this claim is arrogant nonsense. Vancouver is no better, and no worse, than many other cities around the world – not that most Vancouverites would know this because few of them travel.
Around 10 inches of snow fell in the three days before Christmas. Entrances to some Skytrain(mass rapid transit) stations resembled small swimming pools and escalators were clogged with slush. The trains had dirty, wet floors and were full to brimming with irritated and irritating people. Once outside the Skytrain station the streets in the downtown hadn’t been snow ploughed properly, the pavements were slushy, and at most of the crosswalk corners you had to leap across six-inch deep puddles of water. The drains couldn’t cope. Drivers speeding in their trucks and SUVs gleefully sprayed people with dirty water if the pedestrians got too close to the road. Some of the buses were running late and had trouble making it up some of the hills, though they got there eventually.
Many flights were cancelled at Vancouver International Airport because there weren’t enough snow ploughs and people to keep the runway open all the time. On my way to the UK on Boxing Day, my flight was delayed by 2.75 hours because the airport took 2 hours to load the bags for my flight and then didn’t de-ice the Jumbo Jet properly, having a further go at getting it right, just before the plane reached the runway. On January 4th, flights, including mine from Heathrow, were diverted to Seattle/Tacoma in the Land of the Free. Thanks to YVR’s incompetence, my fingerprints and retina scan are now on a US Homeland Department database. Thanks Vancouver International Airport! No-one from the airport was there to apologise to the passengers when we arrived almost 1 day late.
I hope that it doesn’t snow in Vancouver during the 2010 Olympics as throwing another 100,000 extra people into Vancouver, the Lower Mainland, and the airport on a day like this would have caused chaotic conditions on the roads, on the pavements, and on The Skytrain.
And then on Sunday, January 18th, someone burned down part of the Pattullo Bridge over the Fraser River in New Westminster, British Columbia. No-one has been arrested in connection with the arson. There are no cameras on the bridge because it’s an infringement of people’s civil liberties.
Predictably, the two other road bridges over the river became a lot busier during the daily commute, as did The Skytrain. What was less predictable was the decision of the transportation authority, Translink, to ban bikes from The Skytrain at all times while the Pattullo Bridge is closed.