Could you take public transit all the way to Mexico? This TransLink employee did

When you think of doing a big West Coast trip all the way to Mexico, you might think of packing up the car first or saddling up your bags on the motorcycle.

But one Vancouver man decided to take it bus stop, by bus stop — and that doesn’t mean charter buses.

William Hui, TransLink’s director of systems engineering, travelled thousands of kilometres from Vancouver to Tijuana entirely by public transit.

“The fact that I wanted to take a journey on public transit? Not surprised in the least, for the people who know me well,” he told CityNews.

“For me, it’s amazing. But at the same time, I can imagine it’s probably not so amazing for a large portion of the population because being on a bus, being on a plane, for an extended period of time is not for everyone. I recognize that.

“[But] being a transit enthusiast, for someone who is passionate about transit, this is something that was definitely up my alley, and I’ve been waiting a long time to take this kind of trip!”

Hui travelled a total of 2,945 km, taking almost 145 hours. The total of his bus fares came to about $200 USD or $277 CAD.

“I was really looking forward to seeing, who got on the bus. Where did the bus actually go? Why did they pick these stops, why did the bus end at a certain place? I really had a good chance to see the spectrum of the different people living in the different parts of western North America,” he said.

Hui got back into B.C. in July and says he passed through a lot of places that he would’ve missed if he had been driving a car.

“It was really neat that I got there! I was kind of surprised because everything went off without a hitch. The buses didn’t break down, buses generally showed up on time. So the way it went down and all went according to plan.

“I knew I could do this, it happened, it’s so amazing that it happened!”

While the trip could have been made more comfortable if he had gone by car, Hui explains his trip helped him see how transit is built into the fabric of West Coast communities.

In Metro Vancouver, it’s well-known that TransLink is facing an enormous budget shortfall, and if it can’t find a new funding model, it may be forced to slash transit service by up to 50 per cent.

“If we can keep on investing in transit in Vancouver, that’s where I’d really like to see things moving,” Hui said.