When the first line of the SkyTrain, Expo Line, opened in Vancouver BC in 1985, its length was 18 miles. When Seattle's University Link finally operates early next year, it will add 3.1 miles to Central Link's length, which is 14.9 miles. Central Link opened in 2009, the same year SkyTrain added nearly 20 miles of track (the Canada Line) to its system. (SkyTrain currently has a total of 42.7 miles.)

Seattle might have better pours than Vancouver, but it has an inferior public transportation system (and, for that matter, strip clubs—like Portland, you can drink and eat in Vancouver's gentlemen's clubs).

The superiority of the SkyTrain is exemplified not only by its complexity, length, and the frequency of its trains but also by the fact that a crow was recently seen using it. The whole thing was caught on video by a rider with a thick Canadian accent. The reason why we can be confident that this incident wasn't exceptional is the ease with which the crow took the trip. It expressed no panic, confusion, or worry during the ride. It seemed to know what it was doing and where it was going. It was even friendly to the friendly Canadian filming it.

No need to waste hard-earned energy flying to this or that neglected dumpster or garbaged alley when you can ride the SkyTrain for free. Maybe the crows of that town have come to this realization. Life is, after all, evolution, and evolution is change, and change, as the local scientist Mark Roth puts it, is time. Many generations of Vancouver's crows have lived with and flown by the SkyTrain. It is an old system, an aging part of the city. Crows are smart animals.