Month: February 2012

This week was mainly a work week, with only two meetings held where our group discussed the organization of the final report and the delegation of who would write each section.  An email from Marty, the representative at BEST, gave us a rough idea of what was expected from the report.  This included:

• A quick outline of our methodology
• Our impression of working with the three agencies
• A summary of information from what we gathered
• The routes we were able to map out (on maps where possible)
• Any observations about the bus services, the routes that were taken, observations from the drivers, and any other things that pertained to the project

With the exception of our methodology, each of these topics will be written for each Capilano, Silver Harbour, and West Vancouver.  As a result, our group split up the work based on the people who visited each respective agency.

• Capilano – Ava and Linus
• Silver Harbour – Calvin and Michael
• West Vancouver – Andre and Lindsay

The plan is to complete the writing of each section by Saturday, where Ava and Andre will edit the report before Michael formats and puts everything together.  Linus will be in contact with Marty in the next few days to organize a final date for us to present the report to BEST; this will likely be during reading week.

At our meeting on Friday, Andre and Lindsay informed the rest of the group about their meeting with the West Vancouver Seniors’ Activity Centre.  It turns out that they ended up obtaining some ridership information and also had an opportunity to ride the bus. As a result, they were able to get a substantial amount of data what we could use in our final report.

On Monday and Tuesday, several of us went to North Vancouver to ride the Silver Harbour Go Bus.  On Monday, Lindsay and Michael went, while Calvin and Linus went Tuesday afternoon.  Each day, we met up with John, the bus driver, and had an opportunity to talk to him about the bus program before actually going for a ride.  During the rides, one person would highlight the route on a roadmap, while the other person would record the number of people who got on and off the bus at each stop.  A couple pictures of the Go Bus are shown below:

Overall, the Silver Harbour bus rides were very helpful.  John was very friendly, and gave us a lot of information about not only the program itself, but also his passengers.  For example, he would tell us if a passenger was a regular rider or a first time user.  However, there was one big challenge that we discovered through these visits.  Getting a concrete map of the Go Bus route was virtually impossible, due mainly to the fact that John changes his path every day to accommodate the specific needs of his clients.  This style of operation is a contrast to the other agencies, which tend to have set routes that their buses follow.  For our report, we will need to discuss this, and present a map that provides a general idea of the area the Go Bus serves.

Over the last few weeks, we have obtained a substantial amount of data from the three seniors’ groups.  With the end of February fast approaching, our goal for the coming week is to begin writing the final report, which will be part of our deliverables to BEST at the conclusion of this project.

Due to a busy schedule for all of us, we decided to visit the Silver Harbour buses next week, on February 5 and 6.  The dates were confirmed with Ms. Loverin, who informed us that we no longer needed to spend the entire day collecting data; this is great news, because there was a concern that some members of our team would be forced to miss an entire day of class for the bus rides.

On Tuesday, Ava and Linus visited the Capilano Community Services Society.  The agency already has a large collection of data, including maps and ridership numbers, and their expectations are just for our group to organize this information into our final report.  The main challenge with this portion of our project will be in the maps.  Unlike a typical bus route, Capilano’s current system has a constantly varying route, due mainly to the fact that their target users are some of the older seniors; every week, they make phone calls to their list of riders, and alter the bus route to accommodate only the seniors in need of the transport service.  For the report, we will need to analyze the data so that the map will be a good representation of the most commonly used routes for the bus.

In addition, we were finally able to arrange a meeting with West Vancouver’s Seniors’ Activity Centre.  Andre and Lindsay visited the group on Thursday afternoon, and the group will discuss the needs and expectations of this agency in a meeting on Friday.

Three weeks into our project, and we remain on the tentative schedule set at the beginning of the term, which aims for a completion at the end of February.  For this week, our main objectives will be:

• Ride the Silver Harbour Buses
• Look over the data given to us by Capilano
• Discuss and begin to address the needs of West Vancouver