trip planner

I'm having a shitty time finding a decent fare back to Vancouver so I can sort out my future housing in Seattle. The cheapest fare on Harmony gets me there in the mid-afternoon when my parents can't pick me up. I'm going to be pressed for time and don't want my friends to pick me up at Vancouver International and drive me all the ass lickin' stupid way to Coquitlam especially if I need to work immediately after and can't return the favour by spending the time to buy them a meal.

So I figure that since our highways suck and I typically have to drive downtown on narrow city streets, BC Translink would make a special effort to get people around especially from the airport. Airport, main starting point for many travelers right? So I went to the web site and clicked on the trip planner. Here it is in all its glory.

BC Translink Trip Planning piece of shit

I searched both under "popular locations" and "all" for YVR, Vancouver International, Vancouver Airport, Vancouver International Airport. Nothing. It gave me suggestions like York House School and the Vancouver Cancer Clinic. I even looked up the street address of the airport - 3211 Grant McConachie Way, Richmond BC - and put that in, and it came back with Granview Highway and Grant Street in Vancouver. What the stinkin' hell is this crap? I am no stranger to finding things out on the web. I can stalk you all the way to Timbuktu and even find out the name of your grandma's dog, I swear. It took me about 20 min to look at all the categories and finally found Airport Station under "TRANSIT SERVICES/EXCHANGES" (but it's not under "ALL LOCATIONS" or "POPULAR LOCATIONS"). Does it tell me where exactly Airport Station is? Nope. That's a research project for tomorrow evening.

As a point of comparison, I've been using the Seattle metro trip planner to figure out how far apartments are from UW and it gives me 3 alternate routes depending on how far I want to walk among other options. The thing is simply awesome. I don't understand how people new to Vancouver ever learn to get around.

Arg, so many things frustrate me about Vancouver and it pains me so little has changed since I left 5.5 years ago. I mean, there are some impressive builders putting up new business towers and condos left and right but that's about it.