It began today. The parking lot closures in Creekside and Whistler village, checkpoints on the highway, and the new bus schedule.
Lets use the bus schedule as our mineshaft canary. A bit of background info. To ease congestion on the Sea to Sky Highway (the road between Vancouver and Whistler), personal vehicle traffic is being regulated through several checkpoints which require a "local vehicle permit". In addition, almost all the public parking in Whistler will be closed for the entire month of February. This means that everyone in town will be taking buses for the next month or so...which has caused a lot of complaining, mostly from permanent-Whistlerites. Most of us "peasantfolk" take the bus anyway (I'm an exception).
Because of the massive influx of people, and the fact that people can't drive, Whistler has increased bus service exponentially. Where one bus usually comes to Emerald every 1/2 hour, there is now a bus every 7 minutes and a new route that runs into Emerald, instead of just along the highway.
The new regime kicked in today. I parked the Passat hound and walked 10 mins down to the bus stop, waited 5 minutes at which point 2 buses showed up simultaneously. Interesting. At least my bus driver knew where to go. It appears that everyone else who took a bus today had to give the driver directions. Where is Spruce Grove? Left? Also, they changed all the routes so I waited at two different bus stops on the way home only to discover that the new route didn't pass by that way.....
so we'll see. Hopefully the bus chaos is an exception to the rule, not the rule.
Whether we like it or not, February is here to stay.
Lets use the bus schedule as our mineshaft canary. A bit of background info. To ease congestion on the Sea to Sky Highway (the road between Vancouver and Whistler), personal vehicle traffic is being regulated through several checkpoints which require a "local vehicle permit". In addition, almost all the public parking in Whistler will be closed for the entire month of February. This means that everyone in town will be taking buses for the next month or so...which has caused a lot of complaining, mostly from permanent-Whistlerites. Most of us "peasantfolk" take the bus anyway (I'm an exception).
Because of the massive influx of people, and the fact that people can't drive, Whistler has increased bus service exponentially. Where one bus usually comes to Emerald every 1/2 hour, there is now a bus every 7 minutes and a new route that runs into Emerald, instead of just along the highway.
The new regime kicked in today. I parked the Passat hound and walked 10 mins down to the bus stop, waited 5 minutes at which point 2 buses showed up simultaneously. Interesting. At least my bus driver knew where to go. It appears that everyone else who took a bus today had to give the driver directions. Where is Spruce Grove? Left? Also, they changed all the routes so I waited at two different bus stops on the way home only to discover that the new route didn't pass by that way.....
so we'll see. Hopefully the bus chaos is an exception to the rule, not the rule.
Whether we like it or not, February is here to stay.
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