My wife and I are staying in the suburbs of Vancouver. We wanted to spend the day visiting Granville Island, Chinatown and Robson Street. Those locations are not very close to each other and quite a few miles from where we are staying. A cab to Granville Island and back would have cost us close to eighty dollars. Instead, we opted to use translink to get around. We purchased an all day pass for ten dollars each. We definitely got our money's worth.
Translink has a great website with information to help visitors get around. They have a mapping tool that allows you to put in your start and end points to calculate the quickest route to where you want to go. The all day pass allows you to use unlimited bus, skytrain and seabus for the day.
The trains were fairly clean but often crowded. I noticed that people don't wait for passengers to exit the train before they start boarding. That was a little bit odd, but not difficult to navigate.
The buses were also pretty clean although one of the buses we took had a lot of homeless people on it. Not that homeless people are bad. But they all had quite a bit of gear which made riding uncomfortable. We didn't have an opportunity to use the seabus.
I'm not sure how much money it would have cost to pay for our transportation today without a day pass, but I'm sure it would have been at least twenty dollars each. Taxi fare would have been forty dollars each way just to get to downtown. The extra trips would have easily been over 100 dollars. Uber isn't an option in Vancouver right now. I have tried a few times. Officially I think they are "here." But I haven't found one the few times I have tried.
Translink is a great value for visitors to Vancouver. Check it out.
