Weijun's Blog

As someone who has lived in Vancouver for 3 years now (since 2021), I absolutely loved the way the city is designed! It has sparked up my interest as well in city developments represented in a map. Vancouver, being the transit-friendly city it is, certainly has some amazing, and also areas it can work on!

Photo from Lonely Planet

My family uses public transit very often, especially the SkyTrain system. The SkyTrain system in my opinion is a fast and reliable transit network, allowing you to get almost anywhere within a long distance. Although I do take this system often, I like to explore new areas of transit that I’ve never taken before. For example, the buses in Surrey and Langley, the SeaBus (Lonsdale Quay – Waterfront), as well as the West Coast Express! Here is a picture I took the first time I’ve ever went on the West Coast Express to Coquitlam Central with my friend Ewan!

I also enjoy drawing maps of transit systems. Either if they’re add-ons to the current system, or a completely different system (such as streetcars), or heck, even a completely made up city! These maps usually start as randomly squiggly lines, and then as time pass, whenever I’m bored, I start adding “streets” (really just lines in really odd angles), then later on expand rivers, and then I would start adding transit systems. These random maps I draw wouldn’t make sense in a real setting anyways, as real transit systems would need to think on the sides of cost and use. But oh well, it’s really just for fun!

“Highbury City. Located on Highway 49 (a made up Highway) near multiple rivers. With a giant freshwater area and designed very differently and vibrantly between each island formed by the rivers.”

Prior to living in Vancouver, I’ve lived in a suburb about 50km west of Sydney, Australia. Sydney has an amazing transit system of Trains (literally called that), which streches all over greater Sydney, even intercity trains which can bring you to the vast deserts in the state or New South Wales, like Dubbo or Broken Hill, located on the other side of the Blue Mountains. I believe that since I first got in touch with Sydney’s trains system, I had enjoyed thinking of the ways public transit could shape our lives so significantly and so differently. Which I’ve emphasized that idea deeper when I came to Vancouver.

Photo from TransportNSW

Thanks for reading!

P.S. Hey! I am a new blogger on wordpress, and for some reasons, my wordpress blog pages seems to be in Mandarin. Does anyone know how to change it? If so please email me at nick.ma1221@gmail.com, thanks!