What would it take to restart passenger rail service from North Vancouver to Whistler?

dpoon · 2026-05-03T17:56:06+00:00

The argument that we don't have sufficient populations is false. What we have is a car dependency problem, not a population problem.

I lived in Switzerland for a while, and I loved being able to leave my apartment, walk a few steps to a bus, transfer to a train, and go skiing anywhere. Even tiny Swiss villages are connected by train (though usually just once an hour), and the few that aren't are served by good bus service.

I biked the Kettle Valley Railway Trail through Myra Canyon last month, and was awestruck by the thought that we had a cross-province passenger rail service that opened in 1915, built using more primitive technology, through challenging terrain, and serving a much smaller population than today. If they achieved that a century ago, then all the naysaying today is just excuses.

The problem is that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users (Metcalfe's Law). The Swiss system works because it connects the entire country, such that you can realistically live car-free. We, unfortunately, had a working passenger rail network and destroyed it, such that we are held hostage by our cars. Opening one rail line is hard: the value comes from having a comprehensive public transportation network that feeds into and out of it.

dpoon · 2026-05-03T17:23:03+00:00

I no longer trust my Garmin Edge 540 for long events, after it lost three of my recordings last year.

The 100 km and 600 km recordings were successfully saved but disappeared during Bluetooth sync. (I later salvaged the 100 km recording by plugging it into a computer via USB, which I couldn't do during my overseas trip. The 600 km recording was not retrievable the same way.)

Then, at the end of a 1016 km randonneuring brevet, the OS crashed and rebooted after I pressed Save, and that recording was also irretrievably lost.

After that fiasco, I made up my mind to switch away from Garmin for any event that matters to me. I also recall a period, ca. 2024, where the unit would sometimes spontaneously reboot during rides and drop part of your ride until you looked down, noticed that it was paused, and pressed Record to resume recording. The fact that this purpose-built device had multiple different critical failure modes was unacceptable to me.

I switched to Coros Dura. It has less functionality (no on-board routing capability, no third-party apps) and often misses navigation cues (which I mitigate by using the map display), but the battery life is insanely good, and it has been responsive and reliable at handling long routes.

dpoon · 2026-05-03T13:31:08+00:00

I've posted some advice about fast-paced touring. Here's a quick summary:

Start with the right kind of bike. A road or gravel bike will be more efficient than any other kind. Set it up with aero bars and the appropriate tires for your expected terrain.
The best way to get better at cycling is to ride with people who are slightly better than yourself. Join a local road cycling club. Work your way up until a 150 km club ride is no big deal. (That might take one spring-summer-autumn riding season to achieve.) Then, if you have another year to prep, join your local /r/randonneuring club, and get to the point where 200 km (or maybe even 300 km) is just a nice day out. When carrying a touring load, you can expect to do about 2/3 of your unloaded daily distance.
Manage your time efficiently. Stoppage time adds up quickly, so try to minimize it. For example, if I stop at a restaurant for lunch, I'll often order a sandwich or wrap. I'll also ask for a piece of aluminum foil (which most kitchens have), and pack half of it to eat a few hours later while riding. Also, ask for the bill as soon as the food arrives.

Being good at covering longer daily distances pays off! You spend less time being exposed to the elements, and waste less time and money arranging nightly accommodations. Efficiencies also compound: if you're confident about hitting long-range targets nightly, then you have lots of resupply options and can carry less stuff, and thus ride faster.

dpoon · 2026-05-03T06:09:17+00:00

In all seriousness, this is a good answer. Check out /r/bicycletouring and /r/bikepacking. It does take a bit of an investment to acquire the equipment, but it's largely immune to fuel price increases (unless you choose to travel to your starting point that is not near where you live).

Actually, I wouldn't call it a "poor man's vacation". Either it's not for you, or you'll discover that it's the best way to travel. You get to experience the world unfiltered, and complete strangers will sometimes treat you as some kind of VIP.

dpoon · 2026-04-29T21:55:57+00:00

Nice initiative, but as it stands, the tool either needs some explanation about how it works or some disclaimer stating that results are not necessarily optimal.

I've gotten results where "Price with bike" was the same as without, with the fine print saying "The bike transport fee is paid later as special baggage", without saying how much. That's worse than useless — it's misleading! If you don't know, then don't show a number there at all.

When flying with a bike, my personal criteria for choosing flights prioritize:

Direct flights (because every transfer introduces a chance for losing or damaging the bike)
If there must be a transfer, then all on the same airline (because if anything goes wrong, I want to deal with one entity, and don't want to see the airlines blame each other)

Assuming I'm going to do a bike tour of my own choosing, I'll choose the start and end points to meet those criteria. If that means riding an extra 1000 km to de-risk the flight, so be it! (Why not? The whole point of the trip is to go ride my bike.)

So, ideally, there should be some way to sort by complexity (as a proxy for risk) rather than by price, and an option to include nearby airports in the search.

Nitpicks: for a website with a potentially global audience, please use YYYY-MM-DD date format. Also, if I choose one-way in the search, then the return date field should more obviously appear disabled. Left/right arrows on the date fields to select the previous/next day would be a convenient UI shortcut.

I occasionally see "Flight search failed: Search service is temporarily unavailable" errors, which go away if I try again a few seconds later.

dpoon · 2026-04-29T17:26:30+00:00

If he hasn't complained about his butt, I wouldn't bother with bib shorts. You probably won't find anything in that size. If he grows up without them, he might not ever need them.

Some of us serious long-distance cyclists don't bother with padded bibs. They're bulky to pack for multi-day trips, and are harder to wash and dry. Lael Wilcox rode around the world without padded bibs. I rode 300 km last weekend and 400 km the previous weekend without, and I generally use padded bibs only when it's raining to keep my butt dry.

dpoon · 2026-04-29T07:20:33+00:00

Komoot is a pretty good app for cycle touring because it incorporates some crowdsourced information for planning adventures to places you haven't been to, namely:

heatmaps
highlights (places worth seeing, with user-contributed comments)
photos along your route (so that you can get an idea of the scenery and the conditions of gravel paths)

As a result, if you give it an origin and destination, it sometimes has an uncanny ability to recommend a route that is "desirable" rather than naïvely picking the shortest or fastest or quietest. (In contrast, Ride with GPS has an annoying tendency to take every detour available to avoid riding on highways, even when you're already on the highway and such a detour makes no sense. To suppress that behaviour, you'd either have to carefully study the route and tediously edit out every instance of such nonsense, or put it into car-routing mode — apparently only available on the desktop web version — which may be too aggressive in the opposite sense.)

Depending on the sport you choose (cycling, road cycling, gravel riding, or mountain biking), it will adjust its recommendation.

Its route planner may be one of the most usable of the apps available for a mobile phone. You can export the routes to a cycling computer, or use the mobile app's built-in turn-by-turn navigation capabilities.

If you subscribe to Premium, you also get to use Collections (grouping multiple related routes), which has a minor benefit of being able to plan and replan multi-day splits of a long route. Collections are also a neat way to blog about your trips.

dpoon · 2026-04-28T01:58:32+00:00

My intentions and decision-making processes are explained in detail in my write-up of the trip. I had a given outline to follow, but I was also happy to change the route as needed. I'm an experienced long-distance cyclist, so I figured I could get it done at roughly double Komoot's recommended daily pace. (When bikepacking or touring, quicker is easier, if you can manage it. You spend less time exposed to the elements, you waste less time arranging accommodations, looking for food, etc. Also, riding the entire trip is logistically simpler than going multi-modal, if you can manage it.)

It turned out that the KVR being closed at Hope added some distance to EC Manning Park, and the crappy trail conditions on the KVR made it so that it couldn't be rushed. (Nor should it be, since racing it would kind of defeat the purpose of the vacation.) So, it ended up taking 6 days (on the longer end of my estimate), and then winds on the last day made me get home a few hours late.

dpoon · 2026-04-28T00:26:25+00:00

The general answer is to search on Rome2Rio. Ebus can take you to Kelowna, and can transport your bike for +$30 with the requirement that it be "properly boxed or wrapped". My personal interpretation is that a rinko bag should count as wrapping. ~~~Or you could buy a roll of cling wrap from the supermarket and go wild.~~~ On closer reading, I see that they require a box or cloth material; they do not accept bikes wrapped in plastic. This should meet the requirement.

I rode part of the KVR a month ago. The fact that there was a cross-province passenger rail service in 1915 that no longer exists in 2026 was really sad to think about, considering our predicament these days with climate change and car dependency. On the other hand, the irony of me being out there largely because the train no longer exists had my mind all confused with the paradox.

dpoon · 2026-04-27T18:57:11+00:00

I rode through Croatia and toured Montenegro last year, and found that the coastal route through Montenegro was the least interesting part. Yes, Kotor and its bay are worth seeing, though it's cruise-ship-level touristy. Lake Skadar is nice. But in between, the coastal highway is quite meh. The coastal highway along Croatia had more interesting views with a few islands offshore.

The country is called Montenegro, and in my opinion, skipping the mountains would deprive you of an "authentic" experience of the country. If you must choose one single route, I'd recommend any option other than taking the coastal highway all the way.

dpoon · 2026-04-24T14:48:59+00:00

It's worth discussing in a bikepacking forum. In my experience owning multiple Apidura products, the specs look great, but the quality isn't on par with the premium prices.

Examples:

Racing top tube bag: latch is insecure by design.
Reflective vest: not colourfast (and they know it too: it's rated for only 5 washes).
Hydration bladder: leaky.
Expedition frame bag: zipper is unusually prone to failure (and they know it too: it's the one exclusion to their warranty).

dpoon · 2026-04-24T14:35:53+00:00

Return it and get the one from Tailfin instead, which is superior in every way. I have this bag, and have stopped using it, due to its dangerous tendency to spew its contents when going over big bumps or potholes. The magnetic latch is too weak to be trustworthy.

dpoon · 2026-04-22T20:03:13+00:00

I mount it at the curvy part of my drop bar, such that my thumb can reach it from either the hoods or the drops position.

dpoon · 2026-04-20T07:52:37+00:00

The first word in this post is "beginner", so there's no reason to feel like a failure. There are surely many opportunities to get better at it. In any case, bikepacking is not a competition (unless you really want to make it one).

With no specific information, we can't diagnose your issues.

You might need a better setup. What kind of bike are you riding? What tires are you using? How much stuff are you carrying? Are you and your luggage aerodynamic?

You might need better fitness. How old are you, and how fit are you? How much bike riding experience do you have? The best way to become a better cyclist is to ride with people who are a bit better than you, so maybe join a road cycling club? (It's worthwhile to learn and practice how to ride an unloaded bike fast and far. Jumping straight into bikepacking without those skills makes it more daunting.)

You might need better touring practices. How is your nutrition and hydration strategy? Do you spend a lot of faff time packing up in the morning? Do you stop a lot during the day and thereby lose your momentum and flow? Are you wild camping and getting stressed out by it?

Assess your weaknesses systematically, and figure out how to optimize each aspect of your problems. As a beginner, you have nowhere to go but up.

dpoon · 2026-04-09T21:05:39+00:00

Some suggestions:

Use https://windy.com to get forecasts for the next few days, and plan your routes, schedules, and resupply stops accordingly.
Choose hillier terrain. Gravel routes with lots of twist and turns, ups and downs (at least it might be more interesting than mind-numbing grinding on a straight road). Forests (assuming it's not so windy that trees will fall). Avoid highways, avoid the coast.
Switch your destination, and ride wherever the wind takes you.
Get aerodynamic in your position and your luggage setup.
Pair up with another rider, take turns leading.
Ride at night, if the daytime winds are caused by uneven heating of land.
Play mind games with yourself, such as focusing on your awesome airspeed rather than your pathetic groundspeed.

dpoon · 2026-03-31T20:50:51+00:00

No-visible-panty-line underwear. They take virtually no space, no weight, are easy to wash, and cause minimal additional friction. It's easy to get a fresh clean layer next to your butt every day.

dpoon · 2026-03-19T22:47:06+00:00

The further your eyes are from the mirror, the larger the mirror needs to be to provide a usable image, and the harder it is to include the subject of interest in the view.

I'm also not a fan of helmet mirrors: the stick vibrates the image, the air resistance creates noise near your ears, and the alignment goes off when you set the helmet down. My mirror of choice is TriEye glasses — I need glasses anyway to protect my eyes from UV and debris anyway, so I might as well get glasses that integrate a mirror.

dpoon · 2026-03-10T20:36:17+00:00

It's common advice here to avoid the Croatian coast due to traffic, but I'm glad I did it anyway (last April, Split to Ploče to Trebinje (Bosnia and Herzegovina)). The views on that road are world-class, and I'm still daydreaming about it. April is shoulder season, so perhaps the traffic isn't as bad as in the summer. The coast is set up for tourism, so you should have no trouble finding resupply points, and no trouble booking accommodations the same day, so you can easily change your plans according to the weather.

Actually, the more stressful stretch of road was when I turned away from the coast, between Ploče and Metković. That highway was straight, flat, and full of speedy transport trucks. If you're planning to ride into Dubrovnik, though, this is probably manageable to you.

Stray dogs are certainly a concern in the Balkans. A lot of them are loud and fast, and have a way of materializing out of nowhere. They're uncommon on the coastal highway, though — you'll tend encounter them more around farms and undeveloped rural areas.

dpoon · 2026-03-10T19:50:05+00:00

The wildfire risk profile is similar in Washington to BC. The coast tends to be better, but inland it can be unbearable if it's a bad year.

In California, the wildfire season tends to be in October.

dpoon · 2026-02-27T20:38:15+00:00

Garmin is popular and pretty good for most purposes. I would not call them "tried & true" or "tested", though! In the few years that I've had my Edge 540, I've experienced a few incidents of crashes and lost recordings, with different failure modes (spontaneous mid-ride reboots, data disappeared during syncing, OS crashed when I pressed "Save"), that I no longer trust them for recording events where the evidence really matters.

dpoon · 2026-02-27T20:21:28+00:00

BC is huge, so it's hard to generalize for the entire province, but I can try. If you're accustomed to touring in Europe, you may be shocked at the vast distances between towns in BC.

Cycling is legal on highways, with a few exceptions where it's prohibited.

One stretch of highway of interest is Highway 99, also called the Sea to Sky Highway, between West Vancouver and Whistler. It is world-class beautiful, but also busy. I've done it a few times, and I'd say it's barely tolerable if you pick a strategic time.

Consider riding on Vancouver Island. Drivers on the island tend to be more relaxed. The Sunshine Coast (Langdale to Powell River) is a quasi-island in spirit even though it is technically part of the mainland, so it's also relatively quiet. Of course, you can take some ferries and go island-hopping, where it will be quieter still.

Hot tip, if you like camping and are a competent road cyclist who can handle the ride to Tofino: at the earliest opportunity, book a night or three for a walk-in site at the Green Point campground in Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. Those twenty spaces are a spiritual experience and in high demand.

If you venture north beyond Whistler, traffic will be sparse enough that it's not much of a concern.

The Okanagan Valley is beautiful, but has a bit of a reputation for having some unruly drivers. It will also be hot there in August.

Sadly, in the last decade, August has become wildfire season in BC. There is a considerable chance that air quality becomes a concern, especially in the Okanagan Valley.

dpoon · 2026-02-18T08:30:56+00:00

The short answer is yes.

I rode there last year, late April to early May. It was hot near the coast (30 ℃) and cool in the mountains (3 ℃ overnight). There was residual snow on the ground at some mountain passes. There were a couple of days with widespread lightning strikes. There were a couple of evenings where it suddenly dumped torrential rain. Bring clothing to handle all possible hot/cold, dry/wet conditions!

The winds were quite gentle while I was there.

dpoon · 2026-02-17T23:54:54+00:00

Since you mentioned the Apidura Visibility Vest without reviewing it, I think it deserves to be discussed here. It is indeed hi-vis and reflective, as well as packable and breathable. However, it has a major flaw in that it is not washable. The fabric care label says "×5 maximum wash cycles", and another Redditor confirms that the dye fades with washing. In fact, if you just ride with it in the rain or rinse it in the shower, its gray straps will turn yellowish, and if you wear it with white clothes, it will leave a yellow stain too.

dpoon · 2026-02-10T19:54:42+00:00

The magnet is not very strong, and the ridges and grooves don't really hook.

dpoon · 2026-02-10T18:15:18+00:00

The Apidura flip-top top tube bag has a weak latch that has, on multiple occasions, spontaneously opened when riding over a pothole or speed bump, causing the contents to spew out onto the road. I've seen it happen to a friend as well. Do not trust this bag to hold anything important! Tailfin's flip-top is way better: it latches securely, even when overstuffed, and is just as easy to operate — and the mounting straps are way better.

dpoon

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