Recently I've noticed that VIVA has come up with a new website and a blog about it's future intentions and VIVA's take on the different issues affecting it and transit in York Region.
From their blog and website there is great hope that the current VIVA system (sometimes maddening as you can see from several of my blog posts) will become even better.
What's great about the blog is VIVA allows comments from transit observers and other community members on each choice. VIVA even responds to the commenter if there is a comment or question requiring a response or clarification. One example is one commenter complained about the poor design of the Richmond Hill Centre Terminal (which I happen to agree with the commenter) and the response from VIVA was that in the next phase of VIVA that leading architects would be designing the new shelters and Rapidway system (read: Transitway=Ottawa, Rapidway=York Region). As an aside, take a look at the picture of this VIVAnext blog post and explain how you would keep warm in a January snowstorm in a VIVA shelter designed like that (read: the architect who designed this shelter obviously doesn't take transit...or...are they still using the services of the same moron architect who designed the Richmond Hill Centre VIVA station???). So at least this is recognition that VIVAnext is, at least appearance wise, listening to the community about criticisms of the current operations and future operations.
Hopefully this time VIVA will listen to the community about different issues, figure out solutions and present them in a timely fashion to the customers to review and analyse.
Please note I've added the VIVAnext blog to my blogroll in the righthand column.
Rico Carty, Dead at 85
8 hours ago
Hi Michael,
ReplyDeleteThank you for reading the vivaNext website and blog. My name is Jordan and I work for vivaNext. Unfortunately, that picture doesn’t do a great job of showing all the amenities the new station will feature.
A middle section, which is hard to see in the picture featured on the blog, will be completely enclosed and heated. I can send you a rendering that better illustrates what I am speaking about.
A great deal of public consultation took place to determine what features were important to riders and keeping warm was one of their biggest concerns.
We are hoping both our website and our blog will provide the public with everything they need to know about our projects and at the same time let people express their thoughts.
To keep up to date in between blog postings you can also follow us on twitter #vivaNext.
I would hope the heated shelters are similar to those as found on Ottawa's Transitway.
ReplyDeleteI also hope the shelters would be cleaned a little more often than the existing shelters on the existing VIVA system. Some of these shelters are useless due to the trash and the smell in some of them. But this should be expected as with the new system more people would hopefully be using it. More people using it should equal out to more frequent maintenance.