Antony’s Personal Opinion

Reading a Vancouver transportation map is quite challenging. What I mean transportation here is public transportation, like bus and subway. When I first looked at Vancouver transportation map, I need several minutes to figure out how it works. The picture below is an example of how the map looks like. It is a map of Chinatown area in Vancouver downtown.

So, now let’s try to play a little game. Suppose that I want to take bus #3 at Main Street. Where should I wait for the bust? Where is the bus stop? Well…. there is no information about bus stop at the map. You have to walk along Main Street and look for the bus stop. Hopefully you don’t need to walk that far. Why doesn’t the map contain bus stops? I don’t know either…. Hope the Vancouver authority realizes what’s wrong with the map.

Assume that I know where the bus stop is. I take bus #3 at Main Street. The bus is going to the north and then we are arriving at the Main - Pender intersection. Look at the intersection that I mark with black circle. Will the bus #3 turn left or go straight? Again, you have to guess or ask the bus driver. Hope that you will meet a nice bus driver because I have met many rude bus drivers in Vancouver.

Why don’t they use different color for different bus route? Once again, I don’t know. They draw everything in red color and hope that everybody can understand and read it.

Now, let’s look at the bus stop. The picture below shows one of bus stops in Greater Vancouver area. In fact, I took the picture on my first day in Vancouver. At that time, I wanted to go to my office and I had to change bus in this area. Now, tell me which buses stop here. Also try to find out, what time they will arrive at this bus stop. You won’t have any idea because no information at all.

You can see “Peak hours only”, but you don’t know what time the bus will come. What do you need to do if you arrive in this bus stop at 8.45? Will you wait for 15 minutes hoping that you haven’t missed the last bus?

Why doesn’t Vancouver transportation authority provide more useful information? Most probably is because everybody is driving in Vancouver and only a few people will take buses.

Today I saw a very interesting advertisement in a local newspaper. The ad is about a new car model from one of the largest car manufacturers. It is published in one full page. There is a picture of a very nice car in the middle of the page. Just below the picture, there is price information; it is written “from $13.000*” (I forget the exact price).

I said to myself, wow… it is a very good price for such a nice car. But wait a second… there is * sign next to the price. There must be something wrong (just like many advertisement from American). Ok, I look at the bottom of the page. There is a paragraph written in a very small font so that we can hardly read it. It is written that the price of $13.000 is for different model. The model shown on the picture is about $18.000.

What the h*** is that? They put a picture of a product and then write the price below it, but the price is for different model. Am I too stupid or are they too smart? Yeah… I hate this kind of marketing. Unfortunately, this kind of ad is very often in North America. Another thing that I don’t like here is the fact that they exclude tax from the price list. If we see price list on American shops, we can expect that we will pay more. Not to mention, there might some other hidden costs.

When I live in Germany, if we buy something, the price we have to pay is what we see on the price list. An interesting fact, they have a law that requires every restaurants to put their food price near the entrance door. The purpose is, of course, to allow the customers checking the food price before they eat in that particular restaurant. The written price must already include tax. This is actually very good practice, especially from customers point of view.

Well… every country has different way of selling something. My advice, if you see an advertisement in North America: read carefully the small text at the bottom of the page. You will find the “truth” there. If you buy an expensive products, like car, make sure you know the final $$$ you have to pay. Don’t get surprise at the end….