Saturday, March 03, 2007

the shortest distance between two points is three transfers

translink, bless its heart, has a trip planning feature on its website. you enter where you are starting from, where you'd like to end up, what time you'd like to leave (or arrive), and the intarweb provides you with all of your options.

option A: to get to the mall, i take the 110 up the hill. it picks me up about half a block from my house, and deposits me right at the entrance to the mall about 5 minutes later. however, should i so desire, translink's trip plan has also provided me with...option B: take the 110 for 2 minutes and then get off. take the 106 to the new west sky train station, and then skytrain to metrotown. this trip will take a total of 32 minutes, but i will have to walk 0.05 km less than the 0.09 km i am walking in option A. OR, i could take option C, which recommends i take the 110 in the opposite direction from the mall for about 12 minutes, getting off at canada way, and then take the 123 to willingdon, at which point i will get off and catch the 130 up to the mall, which will bring me in almost a complete tetrahedron from where i started, take 36 minutes, AND i will have to walk almost twice as far as in option A.

translink, i salute your efforts to be thorough, but you are ALTOGETHER TOO KEEN!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi! This is Kris with transit information. All my coworkers are with other customers at the moment, but I'M available now! Let's get started....