Transit measurement

I’m now two weeks into a contract with TransLink, the Vancouver transit agency. It’s a big shift – last month, I was still doing cloth simulation and telecommuting for a Toronto firm.

The job itself involves measuring the performance of the transit system – what fraction of the population lives near frequent-service bus/SkyTrain, how full the buses are, etc. It’s mostly straightforward GIS and database work, both of which are fairly novel to me. I’ve been playing with Safe Software’s FME, a sort of graphical programming language; it’s surprisingly similar in philosophy to Houdini and the cloth simulation I was working on before.

It’s nice to be in the transportation industry. I’ve been mulling a switch for some time now, and I’m glad I took the plunge. It’s great to be around other people who are really excited by this stuff. The contract itself is mostly a chance for me to get a feel for the industry, before I return to Toronto for a degree in transportation planning.

After two and a half years of telecommuting, working in an office is also refreshing. I was never a “working in my underwear” telecommuter (to the great relief of my housemates), but it’s still a bit of a shock to work in an office with a dress code. I’m treating it as a novelty for now, and enjoying it. I’m biking two days a week, getting through some fiction on the bus+SkyTrain the other days, and taking in a lot from the iPod every day. There’s not much free time left in the day when I have a 50 minute commute each way to Metrotown, but I can deal with that for a few months.