"Party of Five" Vancouver Airport to YWCA Yaletown

[willsaway]

There seem to be many ways of travel from the Vancouver airport to downtown. Your recommendations for a party of 5 tired, older, and jet-lagged Aussies would be very welcome. It would be nice to get off the plane, about 4 to 5 p.m., so peak hour, and not have to negotiate a taxi rank or the train station. Someone holding a sign, or similar, would be very nice. I've web searched and the availability is a little overwhelming and quite expensive, in that they seemed to be charging per person, rather than per vehicle. Thank you.

[martincath]

UberXL, LyftXL, or local rideshare Kabu Plus should give you a single vehicle big enough without paying Limo rates (although NO legit local limo service has a per-person charge - that's unlawful! Pricing is strictly by vehicle, with standardized rate ranges defined by local bylaws, and enough competition you should easily find a legal-minimum-rate charging company - meeting you with a sign is an extra fee that is not set by law, always used to be $50 at the airport, but could be more now so legit rates for 5pax SUV could be close to $200 without being fake).

 

There's a designated waiting area for rideshares, and you should get free WiFi as soon as you land via YVRs network so even if you don't have a decent roaming rate over here - but unless there's a car close by and the taxi rank has a long queue you may not save any time, although you should save money compared to two cabs at $34ea + tip...

 

Note though that because it's a terminus station, you have literally zero rushhour commuters in any direction at any time of day from YVR SkyTrain - you will always get seats, and since 5pm is peak southbound the trains shouldn't even get that busy for you guys heading north so you might even be able to sit some bags in the aisle without inconveniencing anyone, especially if you snag the front or back seats. Stretching your legs with the very-slightly-downhill 8min walk along W Georgia from City Centre Station might also be nice after umpteen hours on a plane!

 

Inbound it doesn't save as much cash for a group due to the extra $5pp charge, but if you're all >65 you can save ~$7 total buying Concession tickets (2 zone = $3.05 instead of $4.45pp) for barely over CAD$40 total, probably not saving more than a few bucks over a big rideshare but unless one of those is available quickly the train is going to be the fastest way downtown (runs every 7 mins or less that time of day, <25mins to City Centre, 8min walk, no traffic unlike cars).

 

Not familiar with the upgrade cost of the bigger vehicles, but regular size rideshares all cost about 10% less into town than the taxi fixed fare zones so I'm fairly confident that one big rideshare will be cheaper than 2 cabs, possibly even as cheap as SkyTrain if you're paying regular Adult fares.

 

 

[willsaway]

7 hours ago, martincath said:

UberXL, LyftXL, or local rideshare Kabu Plus should give you a single vehicle big enough without paying Limo rates (although NO legit local limo service has a per-person charge - that's unlawful! Pricing is strictly by vehicle, with standardized rate ranges defined by local bylaws, and enough competition you should easily find a legal-minimum-rate charging company - meeting you with a sign is an extra fee that is not set by law, always used to be $50 at the airport, but could be more now so legit rates for 5pax SUV could be close to $200 without being fake).

 

There's a designated waiting area for rideshares, and you should get free WiFi as soon as you land via YVRs network so even if you don't have a decent roaming rate over here - but unless there's a car close by and the taxi rank has a long queue you may not save any time, although you should save money compared to two cabs at $34ea + tip...

 

Note though that because it's a terminus station, you have literally zero rushhour commuters in any direction at any time of day from YVR SkyTrain - you will always get seats, and since 5pm is peak southbound the trains shouldn't even get that busy for you guys heading north so you might even be able to sit some bags in the aisle without inconveniencing anyone, especially if you snag the front or back seats. Stretching your legs with the very-slightly-downhill 8min walk along W Georgia from City Centre Station might also be nice after umpteen hours on a plane!

 

Inbound it doesn't save as much cash for a group due to the extra $5pp charge, but if you're all >65 you can save ~$7 total buying Concession tickets (2 zone = $3.05 instead of $4.45pp) for barely over CAD$40 total, probably not saving more than a few bucks over a big rideshare but unless one of those is available quickly the train is going to be the fastest way downtown (runs every 7 mins or less that time of day, <25mins to City Centre, 8min walk, no traffic unlike cars).

 

Not familiar with the upgrade cost of the bigger vehicles, but regular size rideshares all cost about 10% less into town than the taxi fixed fare zones so I'm fairly confident that one big rideshare will be cheaper than 2 cabs, possibly even as cheap as SkyTrain if you're paying regular Adult fares.

 

 

What a terrific answer, knew I could depend on you. Thank you so much, and added map is just sheer class. Love the idea of train. Sailing from Sydney we always use the train, so convenient. I have noted one of your previous posts that Vancouver has touch-tap for credit cards so I'm assuming we can buy tickets easily from some sort of fare machine. Should we do decide on a cab, what is an appropriate tip? It's an area fraught with difficulties for us Aussies. And I see the Medina is still there, you put us onto that in 2018. Perfect price point for budget travellers. 

[scottbee]

35 minutes ago, willsaway said:

What a terrific answer, knew I could depend on you. Thank you so much, and added map is just sheer class. Love the idea of train. Sailing from Sydney we always use the train, so convenient. I have noted one of your previous posts that Vancouver has touch-tap for credit cards so I'm assuming we can buy tickets easily from some sort of fare machine. Should we do decide on a cab, what is an appropriate tip? It's an area fraught with difficulties for us Aussies. And I see the Medina is still there, you put us onto that in 2018. Perfect price point for budget travellers. 

 

You don't even have to buy tickets, just tap your credit card on the fare gate.  (although if you want concession tickets for 65+ you do need to get them from the machine)

 

 

 

[martincath]

8 hours ago, willsaway said:

...Love the idea of train. Sailing from Sydney we always use the train, so convenient. I have noted one of your previous posts that Vancouver has touch-tap for credit cards so I'm assuming we can buy tickets easily from some sort of fare machine. Should we do decide on a cab, what is an appropriate tip? ...

+1 to what Scott said - NB: tap an individual card, not your wallet, to ensure that the same card is picked up by the system when entering and leaving... you are billed the maximum possible fare if you don't tap back out, so random wallet waving can mean two separate 3 Zone charges to two different cards!

 

For Concession fares, the ticket vending machines (CVMs - the C stands for Compass, the name of our reloadable card system) are easy to use, just always slower even if there's nobody in front of you as you need to tap the screen at least a couple of times plus then make payment compared to a single tap of the gate - the only additional difficulty is now you need to know about Zoned fares on weekdays instead of letting the system figure it out for you. I think I already mentioned above that Airport into town means you need to pay for 2 Zones; all discounted tickets whether for fogeys (65+), kiddies (<14), disabled etc. are all just categorized as Concession Fares - no need to prove to the machine how old you are, only in the very rare manual fare inspections would you need to show some ID as well.

 

Cabbies - and in general in Canada - expect basically the same tips as in the US in case you're familiar with there. Any less than 15% and you're definitely seen as being cheap these days - and while resto staff, and especially bar staff, actually gained a massive hike in hourly pay pre-Pandemic when minimum wage differentials were eliminated (although any hope of this causing a rational nationwide reassessment of tipping fell apart in the pandemic, so continue to expect to pay 18-20% extra on even a single drink unless you modify the default amount at payment!) cabbies rates are set by law and have not increased recently. Personally, any cabbie who doesn't try to stiff me (still having a Scottish accent, now and again a driver 'forgets' about fixed fare zones and fires up the meter because he thinks I'm a tourist) and doesn't make me scared I'm going to die in a fiery crash I round up to $40 in the $34 Downtown Zone. As soon as they 'forget' the zone fare though, that tip drops to zero along with a succinct but sweary reminder not to screw over folks with funny accents...