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Arrived at Admiralty in 4 hours and 2 minutes! It took six transfers and cost 14.50 CAD (of which $10 was in Hong Kong alone). By comparison, the high speed rail between Dongguan and Hong Kong would have taken 41 minutes and cost around $25.

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 13h

Made it to Hong Kong and got an Octopus card!

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 14h

Last transfer before Hong Kong! Line 2 links Shenzhen North high-speed rail station to the Futian border checkpoint. Rapid transit to an international border is pretty neat. It's also pretty rare: only Shenzhen/HK and San Diego/Tijuana come to mind.

Sign for Shenzhen Metro Line 2 to Futian Checkpoint

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 15h

Unfortunately the open-air elevated stations of the Shenzhen Metro don't have AC for obvious reasons, so the 29 degree weather with 100% humidity is starting to be felt

Guangming Station, Shenzhen Metro Line 6

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 15h

There's still a 4km gap between the Shenzhen and Dongguan metro systems, but it's currently filed by a bus that comes every ten minutes. Eventually, Dongguan Metro Line 1 will be extended to meet its Shenzhen counterpart. 12 minutes later, I am in Shenzhen.

Screenshot of mapping app with bus route 747 between Shenzhen and Dongguan

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 16h

The wayfinding on the Dongguan Metro is characterically excellent

Screen above subway door showing a diagram of the station with escalator, elevator and washroom locations

Screen above door on subway showing a strip map of Dongguan Metro Line 1

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 17h

I'm currently in Dongguan, China, part of the Pearl River Delta megacity (population: 86 million). Because the entire area between Hong Kong and Guangzhou is urbanized, all the transit systems are now linked. So I'm about to try to take local subways all the way to Admiralty in Hong Kong. We begin.

Dongcheng Station entrance, Dongguan, China

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 03/10/2026

I can exclusively reveal that I've come into possession of Daniel Fontaine and NWP's transportation platform

Crude Google Maps screenshot with five hand drawn Queensborough Bridges

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 01/10/2026

Spent most of today biking on rural highways in China and I was struck by how okay it was despite the lack of infrastructure. People actually driving at the 40 km/h speed limit because of ubiquitous photo radar makes a huge difference. Speed enforcement works! (Also check out this cool karst)

A bike-on-shoulder lane on a rural highway in Yangshuo, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 29/09/2026

Just as I'm about to start writing a blog post about how BC Ferries needs to fix this, I discover that—I think for the first time in its history—BC Ferries has uploaded a GTFS feed that correctly lists all of its routes and sailings for the next six months. Mission accomplished I guess?

Screenshot of GTFS Static feed map that shows all BC Ferries routes in the Salish Sea

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 29/09/2026

I'm in China and there's always a funny contrast between the efficiency of the rail system and the inefficiency of the passenger loading. This is just a queue for every single train at once. Whenever a train pulls into the station, it's mayhem as people push their way up to the front to enter.

Hundreds of people milling around a train station atrium

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 26/09/2026

Weirdly, this isn't actually Ken Sim's fault. Scott Jensen and Brennan Bastyovanszky voted to create paid parking at Hillcrest, which makes it all the more baffling that their party leader Kareem Allam has spent the past month railing against community centre parking fees.

Motion moved by Commissioner Bastyovanszky to enact paid parking at Hillcrest Community Centre

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 20/09/2026

This one was only modestly raised. I should have taken a picture of the much more raised one a bit down the road, but I didn't want to turn around to snap a pic of it

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 19/09/2026

Here's a rare sight: a raised crosswalk on a rural road in BC. That's because the province owns most rural roads and has a rule to ban raised speed control everywhere, whether it's UBC or the Kootenays. This road is owned by the District of North Cowichan, which isn't bound by this arbitrary policy

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 16/09/2026

Whatever we'd like to call it, my point is solely that the EU dual presidency's rivalry over diplomatic protocol pretty consistently produces the goofiest handshakes imaginable

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 16/09/2026

Kind of obsessed with the ridiculous three-way handshake that Carney has to do because the EU can't figure out whether the European Commission president or the European Council president is its ceremonial head of state

Picture of Carney shaking hands with Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 11/09/2026

I'm not so sure. Projet won a majority of (non-borough mayor) city council seats in 2013 in the unamalgamated city of Montreal but lost big in the new boroughs to the Gerald Tremblay coalition, allowing Denis Coderre to continue Tremblay's suburb-centric governance for another term.

Map of the 2013 Montreal city council election

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 08/09/2026

130 seems to be the planning capacity, with a crush capacity more like 220. Since the planning capacity of an artic is ~75, I think it's more like 75% more people?

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 08/09/2026

British Columbia needs an equivalent mandate, if for no reason than to force BC Ferries to publish a GTFS feed that's not inexplicably missing half its routes

Map of the BC Ferries GTFS highlighting the missing Crofton-Vesuvius, Swartz Bay-Fulford and Mill Bay-Brentwood Bay ferries

Map of the BC Ferries GTFS highlighting the missing Quadra Island-Campbell River and Alert Bay-Sointula-Port McNeill ferries

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 06/09/2026

Very late to this, but the new bike and pedestrian bridge over Highway 1 in North Van is super cool! Glad that there's now an alternative to Lynn Valley Road.

Approach to the Crosscut Bridge in the City of North Vancouver

View of the mountains from the Crosscut Bridge

Wayfinding sign on the approach to the Crosscut Bridge

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 05/09/2026

I feel like the British military battles corner of Dunbar can give it a run for its money.

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 05/09/2026

The answer is that this isn't industrial land. Half our industrial land base is designated by Metro Vancouver as employment lands, which limits industry and protects big-box stores and car dealerships. It's why half of Still Creek is industrial and the other half is a Costco and Jim Pattison Toyota.

Map of the Metro Core showing industrial and employment regional land use designations

INDUSTRIAL
• Light and heavy industrial production
• Distribution
• Repair
• Construction materials and equipment
• Infrastructure
• Outdoor storage
• Wholesale

EMPLOYMENT
• Indoor Storage (e.g. self-storage)
• Stand-alone office (e.g. law and financial offices)
• Stand-alone recreation (e.g. karate studios, theatres, crossfit and climbing gyms, badminton/tennis facilities)
• Retail / wholesale (e.g. big box, car dealerships, furniture, automotive parts)
• High tech software development
• Consulting services (e.g. engineering, architecture, environmental)

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 05/09/2026

So I tried MapQuest out of curiosity and wow, these are the worst cycling instructions I've ever seen. I put in my home to my office in New West, and it thinks the best options to get there are along 1st Ave, Kingsway and Lougheed Highway. Clearly zero thought went into the bike route algorithm.

MapQuest screenshot showing three biking route options between Kitsilano, Vancouver and Sapperton, New Westminster

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 28/08/2026

This might be the weirdest fundraising email I've ever received

Screenshot of email from the BC NDP entitled "We can't win a by-election"

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 27/08/2026

Been noticing lately that a lot of BC cities' websites claim that scooters are subject to a 25 km/h speed limit. In Burnaby, the RCMP even plans to do speed enforcement. As far as I'm aware, that's not a real rule. There's a *motor output* limit but what law imposes a speed limit?

Screenshot of page named "Know the rules: How to scoot safely in Vancouver" that advises that exceeding 25 km/h may result in a ticket

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 20/08/2026

My picture of the exact same spot three weeks ago!

Two totem poles in front of a longhouse in Alert Bay, BC

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 14/08/2026

In Kovacs v Maple Ridge and Belusic v Victoria, the HRT required the redesign of cycling facilities because they adjudged that they didn't properly mitigate conflict with blind transit users. Unfortunately in the former case, the MUP and e-feet were just eradicated and replaced with a dismount sign.

2023 orthophoto of Dewdney Trunk Rd and 203 St with elephant's feet crossings for bikes between multi-use paths

2025 orthophoto of Dewdney Trunk Rd and 203 St with elephant's feet removed, as the MUP was converted into a sidewalk

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 13/08/2026

To be honest these are still better borders than the Regional District of Mount Waddington, named for a mountain on the mainland that cannot be seen from the half of the district where 99% of its population lives and that lies half in another regional district

Map of the Regional District of Mount Waddington with Mount Waddington highlighted

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 12/08/2026

What a headline Tomorrow it'll be rainy with a 30% chance of Ebys

Castanet headline that reads "Storms, premier in forecast"

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 11/08/2026

The Summerland fire appears to have created one of the longest transit detours ever. The 70 bus between Kelowna and Penticton is on a 250 km, three hour detour through Princeton.

Crude map showing the Route 70 detour via Hwys 3, 3A, 5A and 97C through Princeton

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 08/08/2026

I'm in Merritt right now and the wildfire smoke makes everything look borderline apocalyptic. It's hard to convey how orange everything is. The AQI is apparently 806. I lived in Beijing for four years during the peak smog years and the one time it got that high there was a city-wide lockdown.

Wildfire smoke-induced smog causes the sky to turn a vibrant orange over a gas station

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 06/08/2026

Obviously I woke up at 5:30am yesterday to ride it

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 06/08/2026

Did you know there's a BC Transit route that drives onto a ferry? You can board the 13 bus in Powell River on Tuesdays and Thursdays and get dropped off on most of Texada Island. Not the most useful times for non-locals but great concept! There's definitely more places that would benefit from this

Photo of a BC Transit bus aboard a ferry

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 30/07/2026

I'm glad this was approved. Staff objected to this project in part because students might have "problematic and unintended impacts on the surrounding neighbourhood" if they're not chaperoned by RAs. That seems completely wrong to me. Students are people, not a nuisance to be abated!

While a partnership with Goh Ballet Academy for a small portion of the units is positive, the proposal for student housing lacks sufficient clarity and commitment from a partnership with a BC Public post-secondary institution and offers no clear pathway to such a partnership at this time. Significant issues with the proposed unit sizes, floor-to-floor heights and general livability of the building would in student housing normally be mitigated by programmatic amenities and services offered by a post-secondary institution.

The lack of clear partnership with such a qualified post-secondary institution at this stage combined with the design issues of the building raises significant concerns about the effective management of the building and potential problematic and unintended impacts on the surrounding neighbourhood.

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 29/07/2026

Reading the latest issue of Vancouver magazine and this line in an article about hospital food took me aback. Surely we can devise better ways to support local farmers that don't lead hospitals to fail to meet their patients' dietary needs.

Picture of Vancouver magazine article: "Through its FeedBC program, the province directs that some ingredients be sourced from local suppliers, and only those that have pledged to comply with the Supplier Code of Conduct and other requirements."

"'We'll have shortages of things, and my patients or their families will ask why we don't just go to the store and buy some,' Tian says."

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 25/07/2026

The same one that erected a gated border fence along its entire border with Pierrefonds?

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 24/07/2026

Putting aside that this is slopulism that will make parking availability worse, it bears noting that the reason there's paid parking in front of beaches and community centres in the first place is that Vancouver Liberal park commissioners Scott Jensen and Brennan Bastyovanszky made it so.

Screenshot of Park Board meeting minutes from May 6, 2024 where Cmm'rs Jensen and Bastyovanszky vote to enact paid parking at Spanish Banks Beach

Screenshot of Park Board meeting minutes from October 20, 2025 where Cmm'rs Jensen and Bastyovanszky vote to enact paid parking at Langara Golf Course, VanDusen Botanical Garden, and Hillcrest, Kerrisdale and Trout Lake Community Centres

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 24/07/2026

Got to try out the new Solaris trolleybus today. It was a smooth ride and the AC is going to be a godsend in the summer. Very excited for it to enter service!

New Solaris trolleybus at Nanaimo Station

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 23/07/2026

I think there's at least one good reason not to do this: it makes the sidewalk harder to navigate if you have a visual impairment. Best practice is to keep the clear zone of the sidewalk as straight as possible and parallel to the road. Per the BC Active Transportation Design Guide:

The Pedestrian Through Zone should have a straight and consistent alignment, with continuity maintained across driveways, intersections, and other conflict
zones. Generally, the Pedestrian Through Zone should be aligned parallel to the road centreline or the property line. This continuity helps to improve

navigation and wayfinding for people who are visually impaired. In constrained contexts, the Pedestrian Through Zone may need to occasionally meander
around obstacles, but this should be avoided wherever possible. However, meandering or curvilinear sidewalks
may be used to mitigate long sustained steep grades. Driveways across the Pedestrian Through Zone should
be limited to minimize disruptions. Design guidance for driveway crossings is provided later in this chapter.

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 15/07/2026

You know, sitting in the antechamber listening to the opponents' colour commentary, I'm starting to agree with Michael Geller about the benefits of watching public hearings at home.

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 15/07/2026

So this isn't good. ABC (+Fry and Bligh) introduced an amendment to the Vancouver General Hospital campus report to order staff to study demolishing the 10th Avenue bike lane in front of VGH and rebuilding it on the north side. They say it's to reduce conflict, but the data says otherwise.

FURTHER THAT Council direct staff to continue discussions with VGH regarding options to mitigate pedestrian/cyclist/emergency vehicle conflicts within the VGH campus, including consideration for a bi-directional bike lane on the north side of West 10th Avenue and one way vehicle traffic.

Voting screen with ABC, Fry and Bligh in favour, Maloney against, Orr abstaining

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 04/07/2026

The RCMP would like to remind you that the highway shoulder is a very dangerous place to be full of debris and garbage. Good thing we keep putting our bike lanes there rcmp.ca/en/bc/bchp/n...

“Passing on the right enrages other motorists, but that’s not the main reason that it’s illegal,” says Corporal Michael McLaughlin with BC Highway Patrol. “The side of the road has rocks, sand, garbage, shredded truck tires and other hazards, and if someone pulls off the road suddenly, you could end up badly hurt or worse.”

Screenshot of bike lane on WB South Fraser Perimeter Road, between Tannery Rd and the Alex Fraser Bridge, with a tractor-trailer driving over the line

Screenshot of bike lane on WB Upper Levels Hwy at Exit 10 in West Vancouver crossing an off-ramp

Screenshot of bike lane on WB Barnet Hwy near Barnet Marine Park, obstructed by a portable LED message board

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 01/07/2026

Didn't know until today how beautifully Alder frames Vancouver House at sunset. This is way more interesting than a view cone!

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 29/06/2026

Most companies sponsoring FIFA probably aren't getting their money's worth, since I doubt anyone sees a Visa FIFA ad and goes "I should get a credit card". But I have to say Michelob Ultra is really getting incredible value for its money. I've never seen it in Canada before and now it's everywhere.

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 15/06/2026

Is there any sewage pipe in the world with a more beautiful sunset view than the Iona jetty?

View of the sunset over the Sunshine Coast from Iona jetty

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 13/06/2026

Granville is really lively and popular, and people keep stopping just to take pictures. Let's keep it this way! A 24h bar street is a perfect candidate for a permanent pedestrian space, and the Seymour/Howe bus lanes are working well other than some kinks with the stop in front of the Art Gallery.

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 08/06/2026

Today I took one of the weirdest bike routes in Metro Vancouver. It's so circuitous that it makes 45th Avenue look like an airport runway, has a stop sign every block, and doesn't have a safe crossing of a single arterial it crosses. Not sure why anyone would take it over Railway or the West Dyke...

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 03/06/2026

The new bike lane on the stal̕əw̓asəm Bridge is really cool, it's nicely wide and flat. The connections on the Surrey side still need some work, but hopefully they'll get to it after the bridge is complete

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Ruofan 🚎 王若凡 @ruofan.ca · 02/06/2026

high speed rail terminus should be at the cheesecake factory, says cheesecake factory ceo

High-speed rail terminus station should be at Vancouver International Airport, says YVR CEO

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