Tough new drunk driving laws are supposed to get people out of their cars after they've been drinking -- but critics say there aren't easy options to get home from the bar.

The night buses are crowded and unpleasant, night cabs are scarce, and the SkyTrain closes before downtown bars do. That situation could push people to drive drunk, said NDP Public Safety Critic Mike Farnworth.

"If transit is not available, people may risk it," said Farnworth. "People may well decide, you know what, there is no taxi, there is no bus, they may do something reckless and stupid and we don't want to see that happen."

When the province introduced its drunk driving legislation earlier this year, the B.C. solicitor-general sent drinkers a message that he would not tolerate drinking and driving.

"This is about people planning their evening and how they're going to get home, and not offering some lame excuse that I drove drunk because I couldn't find a bus," said Solicitor-General Mike De Jong at the time.

So far, over 1400 penalties have been issued -- the vast majority for those blowing above 0.08.

TransLink spends more than $3 million a year on the 12 routes in its NightBus program -- up from $1.6 million 10 years ago, and up from nothing when the service was cut entirely during budget cuts earlier this decade.

TransLink says on average its night buses are about 75 per cent full. But it doesn't track how that ridership changes over the course of the night, so CTV News went out at the early morning peak. At 1:30 a.m. at an N17 stop, we found people heading towards UBC had been left behind.

"We couldn't get on the 17," said one man. "It sucks."

Another man said that "if it's past 1:30, you can't get home."

A third said he's from Ladner -- and the lack of options to get around mean he doesn't have a choice but to drink and drive.

"I drink and drive," he said. "But when my friends are like, 'let's go to this place,' I get in the car and drink."

We watched Callum Thedrahn leave a gastown bar shortly before two. He got to his house near Wall Street on Vancouver's Eastside after 3 a.m. It would have taken him the same amount of time to walk.

"It was crowded," he said before the end of his journey on the N135, adding he was relieved that one drunk chose to throw up off the bus.

"We couldn't pick up everyone on the way. It seems like there should be one more bus if there are too many people to fit," he added.

His journey wasn't perfect -- but it was a lot better than trying to make it to the suburbs. The demand on the N19 bus to Surrey has spiked since the drunk driving crackdown.

"I've taken that bus before. By the time it runs, it takes about two hours to get home," said one partier.

There are vast chunks of Metro Vancouver that receive no public transit at all, such as much of Surrey, much of Richmond and much of Coquitlam.

"I've had people say to me that I have to drive even if I'm going to a nightclub because there's no way to get home at all," said Richard Stewart, mayor of Coquitlam.

Stewart says the solution seems simple to him -- beef up night buses and keep the SkyTrain running longer.

TransLink says its studies show there's still capacity on the night buses -- and the SkyTrain has to stop running after a while to make sure the track is maintained.

With a report from CTV British Columbia's Jon Woodward and Mi-Jung Lee

Watch CTV News at Six for the full report...