People attending the 2010 Winter Games are being encouraged to take public transit within Metro Vancouver and to the Olympic bus network departure hubs for events at Cypress Mountain and Whistler, BC. However, because of the distance to travel and the time required to clear security at the venue, some Olympic buses must leave Vancouver-area transportation hubs as early as 5am – before most bus routes have begun their service day.

What’s a Winter Games fan to do? Taking a taxi at that hour is one option, but another, based on an increasingly popular alternate transportation initiative, is to use Ridesharing. Supported by TransLink for many years, Ridesharing works to match people and their commuting needs with people willing to share their cars in exchange for a portion of the costs. As of Thursday morning, January 28, the website www.ride-share.com will list the Olympic bus network departure hubs so that people needing a ride to the hubs before transit service starts can look for a lift – or those on the program can offer one.

“Ridesharing is used by over 15-hundred people a day in Metro Vancouver,” says Frankie Kirby, TransLink’s program manager, Transportation Demand Management. “It’s likely many of them will be a ‘fit’ with those who need to get to the hubs early. In fact, we would encourage our current Ridesharing drivers to consider altering their own commute plans to help people get to their events.”

Because of resource availability, TransLink has focused its Games Time transit plan on increasing service in midday and late-night periods, when the vast majority of people will be leaving events or live-site celebrations. The equivalent of 180 40-foot buses will be available to augment service as and where needed, an additional 48 SkyTrain cars and the newly commissioned SeaBus Burrard Pacific Breeze will further increase capacity and run as much as an hour later than usual, while West Coast Express will run more trains throughout the day.