Vancouver's Pacific Central Station is an impressive century-old building that has long-served the city, and was designated a heritage railway terminal in 1991.
A new ranking, however, puts Pacific Central on a list of "World’s Most Stressful Train Stations," leaving the terminal to represent Canada on the global roster.
FleetLogging used TensiStrength (an academic tool that measures the stress levels of text) to assess which train stations and metro lines have the biggest percentage of stressed reviews on Google Maps.
There are 185 Google reviews of Pacific Central Station for an average score of 3.8 out of 5 stars on the search engine review tool. According to FleetLogging, though, nearly half of those have stressed language; at 47.9 per cent the station is the "most stressful" in Canada.
What's making passengers stressed at Vancouver's rail hub? The pay parking ticks people off, as does the lack of food options, and the fact that things don't seem to open early enough.
Reviewers complain it's a "poor facility" or their "least favourite train station to-date" in their travels.
But it's not all moaning and groaning. Plenty of reviews point to the 1919 Pratt and Ross-designed train station as being beautiful, clean, and well-maintained - not to mention just across the street from the Main Street-Science World SkyTrain station.
The station offers rail service on Via and Amtrak, and bus lines like Ebus.
Google reviews were used to determine how stressful train stations in North America are. By FleetLoggingPacific Central is middle of the pack when it comes to the five ranked "stressful" train stations in North American, landing below Juarez in Mexico City (58 per cent) and Elgin in Chicago (50 per cent) but above Amin Abel in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (37.9 per cent) and Santo Tomas in Panama City, Panama (31.8 per cent).
The world’s most stressful train stations are Uručča (Minsk, Belarus) and Praha-Čakovice (Prague, Czechia), with 100 per cent stress rates, according to the rankings.
