Author: Patrick Johnstone

Lions Gate Solution (?) – Part 2

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 7 Comments.

In part one of this post, I talked about how Vancouver and the North Shore managed to come to the conclusion that the Lions Gate Bridge could be refurbished without a significant increase in traffic capacity. This may leave people wondering what the result of this decision was.

If you believe the rhetoric around the Pattullo Bridge project, the increase to 6 lanes is required just to manage the increased population and jobs growth we will be seeing in the upcoming decades. TransLink’s traffic models are clear: increased population equals more cars, you can’t argue with that. If we don’t build the lanes we will be choking off growth, and stifling the economy. The only alternative to more lanes is… uh… traffic chaos, I presume.

The alternative model (which, incidentally, has proven true in every single case in traffic planning history around the world, from SimCity to Los Angeles to lowly ol’ Vancouver) is that traffic will always expand to fill the space, and once the space is full, remain at the same level. There are two sure ways to change the amount of traffic: either reduce road capacity (which removes traffic) or increase road capacity (which increases it).

Lucky we have the Lions Gate as an example for the Pattullo experiment.

First off, it is important to note that the Lions Gate was not a truck route before and it isn’t a truck route now. It had deck strength issues at least as far back as 1974, when trucks were limited to 13Tonnes, and the 2.84-m wide lanes prior to refurbishment were not accommodating to trucks anyway. The new deck was built with the same 13T weight limit, so little changed in that regard. Obviously, it not being a truck route has had significant impact on the livability of downtown Vancouver, but it is pointless to speculate how growth would have proceeded differently if larger trucks were able to rumble through the Park. So in this case, the Pattullo and the Lions Gate are at best an apples and oranges comparison.

Traffic, however, offers much clearer similarities.

The Ministry of Transportation has been keeping traffic counts on the Pattullo bridge since at least 1989. The most important data is the average daily traffic count (“AADT”), as it is the most consistent tabulation of the number of cars on the bridge. Although most colloquial counts say “70,000 cars a day” cross the bridge, that has never been true. Here are the counts from MOT:

1989   65091          2000   64261
1990   64395          2001      n/d
1991   64140          2002      n/d
1992   64220          2003      n/d
1993   64472          2004   63369 
1994   65392          2005   62696
1995   64702          2006   62418
1996   64661          2007   62287
1997   65213          2008   61291
1998      n/d           2009   61480
1999   64295          2010   59880

If you want references, I got the 1989 to 1997 data here, the 1999 and 2000 data here, and the 2004 to 2010 data here. Unfortunately, there is no data for 1998, or for 2001-2003 that I can find.

If you graph this data (projecting through the data gaps) it looks like this:

click to zooooooom in

So, pretty clearly, traffic volumes on the Lions Gate Bridge have not increased since 1989, and has actually shown a slight decline from around 65,000 cars/day just before the bridge refurbishment to around 61,000 cars/day over the last couple of years (we should probably ignore the 2010 data, as that dip is presumably related to the Olympics, when driving downtown was largely restricted for several weeks).

At the same time, here is what happened to population over that time frame on both sides of the bridge:

                                    1991         1996         2001         2006
City of Vancouver     471,844   514,008    545,671    578,041
North Shore               154,204   163,855    169,322    171,236

Again, if you want references, I got the Vancouver data from here, and the North Shore data is a combination of numbers from West Vancouver, City of North Vancouver , and the District of North Vancouver.

So there has been a 22% increase in population on the Vancouver side (and a significant portion of that increase on the Downtown Peninsula), and an 11% increase in population in the North Shore communities.

Yet somehow, as if by magic, during the same period the car traffic on the Lions Gate has remained steady, or even decreased. Wanna bet that the MOT traffic projections from 1993 didn’t predict that?

Oh, and the numbers of jobs also increased, as did real estate values, numbers of businesses, average income, pretty much any economic indicator of a robust economy tells us both Vancouver and the North Shore communities are richer now than they were in 1996. Here are the job numbers just for Vancouver. If you can dig up any actual data that shows the Lions Gate Bridge decisions have hurt economic growth in Vancouver, you pass that on to me here, and I’ll post it.

The point being? In part 1 we see that Translink has given lip-service to the consultation process for the Pattullo. We have not had a chance to ask them about the reasoning for a bigger 6-lane bridge. They have simply dismissed the question saying their models prove we need a bigger bridge, because population is going up.

After looking back at the Lions Gate experience, I say (with all due respect) bullshit.

What makes the Pattullo situation in 2012 any different than the Lions Gate in 1993? Downtown Vancouver didn’t want more traffic then; Downtown New West doesn’t want it now. North Shore commuters wanted more bridge capacity (as long as it didn’t result in more traffic in their neighbourhoods); today, much of Surrey is saying the exact same thing. Impacts on Stanley Park were considered an important consideration; is Queens Park any less historic, or any less important to the people who live near it? The Government then didn’t have the money to expand the bridge; and TransLink doesn’t have the money to do so now.

Perhaps the difference is that in 1993, the government cared what people wanted. We need to make the government of today (or TransLink, whatever they are) understand what it is that we want. We need to stand up for New Westminster, for Bridgeview, and for the livability of our communities.

We need to tell TransLink “NO” to a 6-lane Pattullo.

By-election afterthoughts

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The much-anticipated by-election in Chilliwack and Port Moody this week were meant to be a litmus test for the future of BC, with some even suggesting that Premier McSparkles’ job might be on the line based on the results. Looking back, it occurs to me that the Premier might be the biggest winner out of these races.

Yes, the NDP won both races: one the expected trouncing of both parties by Port Moody’s inexplicably popular former Mayor, the other the shocking win by a radical European-style Socialist in the most definitively non-socialist Chilliwack. The first win was expected, and it was with roughly the same percentage of the popular vote that white-bread incumbent Liberal Iain Black took last election. Nothing too shocking here. The win in Chilliwack–Hope was indeed a breakthrough for the party, but not the kind of breakthrough they needed. Early on in the results, it looked like the NDP was going to get 50%, a true majority of the votes. Instead, with only 41% of the vote, a plurality that will be easily written off as a result of vote splitting at the right.

For the Conservatives, finishing third in both ridings is nothing short of a disaster. Third in Port Moody is probably not surprising (it is a rapidly urbanizing community, lots of young families, and Grampa Cummings has little to offer that demographic). Third place in Chilliwack-Hope, which should be a conservative stronghold, is a sign that Gramps is not effectively reaching even his base. Had they won that riding, and finished second in Port Moody, they could be legitimately seen as the natural replacement for the BC Liberals. It might not have been long before three or more BC Liberal MLAs threatened to cross the floor (to get into the Blue Wave at the ground floor), bringing an end to the Liberal majority (they have 46 seats now, and need 43 for a majority) and changing the dynamic of election timing.

Instead, the BC Liberals managed to hold onto second in both ridings. More importantly, they can legitimately claim that vote splitting in Chilliwack cost them the seat, and they are the only party that can really keep the “free enterprise” (ugh) dream alive. read: with all their faults, they are still better than the Conservatives. Expect them to ramp up the “a vote for the Conservatives is a vote for Adrian Dix” narrative even more now, and watch it start to stick.

For the first time since she squeaked out her own by-election win, the Premier has reason to smile.

The Lions Gate Solution (?) – Part 1

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The more I discuss the Pattullo issue with people, the more I find myself referring to the Lions Gate Bridge.

There are significant similarities. Both bridges were built in the mid 30’s; both connected an established (now Historic) part of the Lower Mainland to an expanding suburb, leading to the expansion of suburbs; both are immediately adjacent to historic parks; both are iconic structures that define the skyline of their region; both were supplanted from being the main crossing of their respective waterways in the early 1960s with the completion of the Trans-Canada Highway; and both have suffered from enough short-term thinking and neglect that their immediate replacement became a high priority.

So while we discuss the potential replacement of the Pattullo, it might be useful to look back at the history of the proposed replacement for the Lions Gate.

Just for context, this was back in the heady days of 1993-1994. The NDP formed government after an upstart right-of-centre party split off votes from a scandal-plagued government with a hapless place-keeper Premier, The Canucks lost in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup playoffs and riots ensued, and in the USA, a popular Democrat President was going into the re-election campaign after spending most of his first term cleaning up after the economic havoc the previous Republican administration had wrecked, partially through an unfunded war in Iraq. Times change.

I found an interesting source of info when researching the history of the Lions Gate, it is this Masters Thesis from the SFU Department of Geography, completed in 1998 (notably, more than a year before the actual bridge refurbishment project commenced). Doubly cool for me, as I was a student in Geography at SFU up to 1997, so I probably met this guy (it was pretty small department), although he was clearly on the “Human Geography” side, and I was over hanging with the dirt-and-rocks “Physical Geography” types.

The Thesis provides an excellently-referenced timeline (and time capsule) of the consultation process that went into the decision to refurbish the Lions Gate as opposed to replacing it, twinning it, or building a tunnel under Burrard Inlet. [NOTE: all quotes below are from this thesis].

The one remarkable part is how wide-reaching the consultation was. In contrast to the Pattullo “consultations” where New Westminster and Surrey were asked to comment on which colour of onramp we prefer,the Lion’s Gate discussion started in 1993 with a public call for proposals and ideas.

In 1993, the provincial government began its public consultation process. This involved informing the public about the project and gathering feedback at a number of stakeholder roundtables, open houses, debate sessions and a proponents’ showcase. The meetings began with presentations from technical experts about the possible routes and alternatives under consideration, followed by question periods. Panels made up of representatives from stakeholder groups and technical experts answered questions from the public. Interested people could also submit their opinions on paper at the meetings or by mail to the Lion’s Gate Bridge Public Information Center, which was located in Denman Place Mall until early in 1997. In total more than 1000 submissions were received.

Note, this was all before they had even chosen a shortlist of approaches to the problem posed by an aging bridge. There were no less than 21 alternatives seriously evaluated (including such things as replacing the bridge with a gondola, improving ferry service, and commuter train options). By 1994, these proposals have been whittled down through technical, stakeholder, and public review, to 8 options, ranging from just repairing the existing bridge to refurbishing the bridge, replacing it, twinning it, and no less than 3 different tunnel options. It seems the only thing missing was a serious discourse about the colours of the on-ramps.

By 1995, these options had been reduced to the 4 most favoured, some for technical reasons, some simply due to cost, and on the basis that the Province, the City, and the Park had agreed that any new replacement would be a 4-lane option. No more, no less.

Then things got political.

The four-lane-refurbish option was the clear favourite out of the consultation process. It was determined by the engineering team* that the bridge could be rehabilitated to carry the loads of 3, 4, or 6 lanes of traffic, with increasing cost for reinforcement as proposed loads went up. There was a significant public resistance to the idea of having a large increase in capacity, due to impacts on the park and neighbourhoods (at the time it was felt the traffic on the bridge was so “peaky” around rush hour that 4 lanes did not represent a significant increase in capacity over the existing three-lane-counterflow design).

However, for reasons that became obvious, the decision was not announced prior to the 1996 Election. That was the election that saw the Glen Clark NDP re-elected, at least partially due to what would become known as the “Fudge-it Budget”. Not long after the election, money got very tight, and the government’s appetite for spending was curtailed. The Government released the decision to pursue the 4-lane refurbish option in 1997, but due to financial constraints, floated the idea of using the new-fangled “Public-Private Partnership” model to finance it.

In a news release the Minister of Transportation and Highways, Lois Boone, stated she was seeking bids for a crossing that met the following conditions:

  • The new crossing is to follow the existing First Narrows alignment from Marine Drive in North Vancouver to Georgia Street in Vancouver;
  • Four fanes of traffic, two northbound and two southbound, but with surface traffic through Stanley ark reduced or eliminated;
  • No net detrimental effect on Stanley Park;
  • A plan to reduce traffic impacts on the West End;
  • The province will invest up to $70 million over five years, which is the same amount as would be spent on a three-lane rehabilitation;
  • Additional costs are to be financed from tolling revenues. (BCTFA 1997a)

This clearly shows the government’s commitment to improve the Lion’s Gate Bridge but not to pay for it.

In the end, the tolling option was not acceptable to the North Shore communities, so the PPP model fell apart. The Province finally tendered the work for $66 million in 1999, and with no PPP partner or tolls to pay for the structural upgrades required to build a 4-lane bridge, they instead took the more affordable option of the three wider lanes that could be afforded, and kept the counter-flow. Essentiually, those chose the second place finisher, based on costs alone.

However, this does not take away from the point that the entire evaluation process was transparent and involved extensive input from stakeholders and the public along the way. The communities at each end and stakeholders such as the Vancouver Parks Board and the Friends of Stanley Park had a real say in how the final design was achieved, the last-minute cheap-out by the Provincial Government notwithstanding. This is important: the last minute cheap-out was and acceptable option to the stakeholders, if not the preferred one to many.

How does this compare to the experience that New Westminster and Surrey have had at the TransLink consultation table for the Pattullo Bridge?

*Reference:Lion’s gate crossing : bridge rehabilitation options report  by Bridge Expert Panel. [Victoria] : Province of British Columbia, Ministry of Transportation and Highways, Bridge Engineering Branch, 1994 1 v. (various pagings) : col. ill.  

A study in contrasts

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I’m not even sure what to say about this.

Quote 1, April 3, 2012

Mike Proudfoot, CEO of the province’s Transportation Investment Corp., said modeling shows the Port Mann tolls will not cause any significant net diversion of traffic to untolled bridges, because other drivers now using those routes will switch to Highway 1 and pay tolls to take advantage of travel time savings.

Quote 2, April 18, 2012:

Commercial truck safety crews are confident they can handle the increased traffic along roads in New Westminster once tolls kick in on the Port Mann Bridge.

Why am I not filled with confidence by either of those stories?

Be at one of the May 3rd Master Transportation Plan open houses, unless you are completely confident that there will be no increase in traffic, and that those non-increases are going to be absolutely no problem at all.

Here is the quote you need to remember from that link:

“The City is also seeking community input on the proposed replacement of the Pattullo Bridge.”

The Stormont Solution

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 8 Comments.

I try not to be a hater. When people come to me with interesting ideas, I do my best to hear them out, even do my best to build on their ideas. I poke holes, but I also try to imagine the best patches for those holes.

Example: People have speculated about the future of the existing Pattullo once Pattullo 2.0 is built. Some have suggested an elevated linear park with pedestrian/cycling path, a la the Highline. To me, it seems questionable that TransLink or anyone else is going to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars TransLink says will be required to keep the bridge standing (this is a fundamental part of their argument for its replacement) just to make a small park in the sky. Look at the conniptions that ensued, and still ensue among a few, over a much less expensive park right next door. However, maybe a lot of that money can be saved with the partial removal of the old bridge: knock down the long approach section from Surrey and replace it with a much more modest pedestrian access, and maintenance costs go down. Stick a few revenue-generators on it (restaurant with a great view? zip lines each way? Would the Navigable Waters folks allow a bungee jump?) and maybe we have something to work with…

All this said, I can’t get on side with the idea that building the Stormont Connector is some sort of solution to New Westminster’s through-traffic problems. The gaping holes in that idea are ones I just can’t patch.

For those who don’t know, the Stormont is a mythical road connection through Burnaby, originally designed to connect the north end of McBride, and extend northwards through residential Burnaby neighborhoods, swooping east through forested parks, and connect to Highway 1 at the Gaglardi Way interchange (which was originally designed in the 60’s to accommodate this connection).

Background stolen without compensation from Google Maps. Lines and words all mine.

My first concern here is that we are purporting to solve New Westminster’s traffic problems by ploughing through 2.5km of Burnaby neighbourhoods and parks. Not very neighbourly. The City of Burnaby owns a significant number of the houses that would be removed or have their front yards severely impacted by the project (for example, they own most of the houses on the East side of Newcombe, but none of the ones on the west side, according the BC Online Cadastre). However, this does nothing for the hundreds of people who live in the adjacent houses, or on the small residential streets that will be bisected by a throughfare. Nor does it do anything for the green space which is valuable ecological habitat between Highway 1 and Burnaby neighbourhoods. Really, the Stormont is a NIMBY solution.

Back in our own backyard, do we really want to bring more cars onto McBride, next to Queens Park? For the current situation on McBride to be “improved” by the Stormont, we will need to get rid of the intersections, build elevated overpasses, and/or expand the number of lanes. What is already a congested, dangerous barrier through the middle of our City would get worse, not better. Or are we somehow imagining that connecting it directly to the newly-expanded 8-lane Highway 1 will reduce the number of cars and trucks on it?

When these issues are raised in a discussion of the Stormont, the usual response is to build it as a cut-and-cover tunnelled highway. Look at that drawing up above. We are talking at least 4 km of dug trench through urbanized areas. The trench will need to be at least three times the width of the Canada Line tunnel on Cambie, as instead of two narrow railway lines with a foot or two of clearance, it will be 4 or 6 wide road lanes, with appropriate safety buffer space on both sides. Costs and comlications of cut-and-cover increase dramatically with width. Because it is gas-burning cars and trucks (not electric transit trains) there will need to be significant air management issues, and with drivers, significant emergency and escape infrastructure. We will need to build underground interchanges at significant intersections (choose any three, engineering challenges abound). There are also, like Cambie Street, 100 years of municipal infrastructure under and on the ground along that 4-km route. Digging a hole in a City is really, really complicated process, for any of a hundred reasons. This would represent, by a very long margin, the longest road tunnel ever built in Canada, and likely the most complicated road-building project ever attemped in Canada.

I’m not saying these things cannot be done. Engineers do amazing things, I am confident is can be done. For a cost. I have talked to transportation engineers about this idea, and they are generally completely unfazed by the challenges listed above. One said to me “Sure, we can build it, got $4 Billion? The rest we will get with the tolls.” Who is lining up to spend Billions of dollars to connect 5km of road through New West and Burnaby?

Then there is also the significant issue of not allowing placarded trucks in tunnels. Dangerous Goods cannot be carried in the Massey Tunnel, or even the Cassiar (which seems less like a tunnel, but is actually longer than the Massey!) If the Pattullo is going to be a primary Goods Movement Route, tunnels of any size of shape are not likely to be part of any solution.

Back to the problem at hand, which is the proposed replacement of the Pattullo Bridge and the impact on New Westminster traffic. During the TransLink Open Houses, they made it very clear that the Pattullo is predominantly a “locals bridge”. According to the presentation on February 21st, the vast majority of traffic using the bridge starts or stops in Surrey on the South, and New Westminster or Burnaby on the North. The Pattullo is not as much of a regional through-route as we think (although the project with expansion, it will become more of one). The Stormont, however, is a regional through-route solution. By facilitating the use of the bridge as a through-route, are we not just attracting more traffic that is not coming today? So how much bigger will we need to make this tunnel to accommodate them?

However, most of all, this scheme is a product of the idea that we can build our way out of traffic congestion. If we just build two more lanes, that will solve our traffic problems. A few less traffic lights will finally get things moving. More roads equals the end of traffic. The only problem being that this has never worked in the history of roadbuilding. If anyone can provide an example of how road expansion has been anything other than a short-term patch on traffic issues, I would love to read the case study. I’m always open to revolutionary ideas like that.

Fixing traffic by building roads is like fixing obesity by buying bigger pants, and the Stormont is a really expensive pair of pants.

So when we are talking Pattullo in the coming months, with the Open Houses coming up at the Century House and the Justice Institute on May 3rd, and someone suggests to you that we need to build Stormont to solve our problems, start asking questions: How? By Whom? At What Cost? How does that help?

Where did all the money go?

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 3 Comments.

This is, of course, a rhetorical question, but one that comes honestly from from the large amount of rhetoric I hear.

This week we have heard the fallout from the Transit Commissioner audit of TransLink funding, used as support for refusing a fare increase to TransLink (wow, Stephen Rees cuts through that one like a laser here). TransLink says this is going to put the stops to any hope of improving or expanding service (not specifically true, as the modest fare increase would have only served to maintain service at current levels), while the tawlk radio pundits (including several members of the Mayor’s Council) are saying it is time for a re-think of the entire TransLink structure and system. All of them agree on one thing: There is no more money.

Then look at the headlines around the ongoing Teachers labour dispute. The Provincial Government has told teachers that the single largest component of their working conditions (class size) cannot be negotiated, because they have to control costs. Then they insist there will also be no negotiation on their wages. “Net Zero” they call it, the mandate for all public services. They went into “negotiations” with the teachers with a single message: There is no more money.

Our hospitals are overcrowded, Tim Horton’s being used for stockpiling emergency room patients, inadequate numbers of anaesthesiologists, and I can’t find a damn GP to take me on as a patient. We are contracting our our fundamental record keeping to foreign multi-nationals, and we can’t keep killer infections out of our aging hospital fleet. Whenever concerns about the fate of our healthcare system are raised to the senior governments, the answer is really simple: there is no more money

Apparently I will not be entitled to the same retirement income as my parents, or even my big brother, even though I have been employed and have paid into the system since I was neigh 16 years old. The Prime Minster made it perfectly clear, his Calgary School chums and the Fraser Institute projected out demographically to 2035, and guess what? There is no more Money.

The public broadcaster is cutting programs that tell us about the rest of the world, and about our own neighbourhoods. People who provide vital weather and other information in our vast North are being cut back, rationalized, shut down. People who protect our fisheries habitat, who inspect the safety of our food, and test our drinking water for dangerous substances are being laid off. Veterans who have fought in an ill-informed foreign war, only because we asked them to, are losing access to veterans services. People are living on the street and all three levels of government are pointing at each other and saying the same thing in unison: There is no more money.

Here I sit in Greater Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in 2012. Apartments are selling out before they are built, at north of $1000 per square foot. The Canucks are entering their second decade of sold-out shows at $200 a seat. Ferraris and Lamborghinis are being driven by 16-year old street racers, and new BMWs are so thick on the streets they almost block the views from the $70,000 Deluxe Pick-up Trucks that burn a transit pass worth of gas travelling 15km. my office overlooks a mall parking lot, always full. People line up to purchase obscenely expensive speak-and-say toys every time Apple decides to change screen colours. The shelves at Safeway are packed with $9/pound organic guavas from antipodal farms, and we have to truck in boatloads of Guatemalans to serve us shitty coffee, because it just isn’t worth any Canadian’s time to do that work anymore. We spend a half Billion dollars to keep rain off of a couple of dozen football players, and now want to spend another $20+ Billion (no one apparently really knows how much) to destroy the air defenses of countries we haven’t even chosen yet… Everywhere I look, I see money. Embarrassing amounts of Money.

It seems we have more money for everything than we had 30 years ago, when my parents were raising me and my three siblings. My dad had a solid career job as a civil engineer, and could pay the mortgage and feed the family, and even took us on a couple of vacations. He didn’t have a BMW, but did drive a funky Dodge. We listened to CBC radio news and original broadcasting, watched Hockey and the Beachcombers and Sesame Street on CBC TV. My best friend’s dad was a teacher and his mom a nurse, and they had a decent home, three kids, and the mother of all station wagons. I don’t remember us accusing them of sucking off the public purse. My schools were decent, the hospital we lived next to had 24-hour emergency (it is closed now, and Castlegarians who have an accident have at least a 30-minute ambulance ride to the nearest emergency room). Was that an imaginary, nostalgic world I am remembering through rose-colored glasses?

Since then, the population has grown, the number of jobs has increased, the GDP has gone up. We sell more, do more and buy more now. We make more money every year than ever before: inflation adjusted, per capita, no matter how you measure it. We are a rich country, one of the richest in the world, and richer than we have ever been in history. Yet the essential services we rely on, the roads, the schools, the police, the hospitals, the low-income housing, the public broadcaster, are continually under threat from reduced funding.

The reason is always the same: There is no more money.

So where is all the money? Where the hell did it go?

Long winded weekend.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

It was a long, long weekend. Mostly because people at the curling rink, the River Market and the pub were badgering me about this profile in the Record.

It is hard to talk about yourself and not sound like a narcissistic blowhard, especially when you are a self-aggrandizing blowhard like me, but I think it turned out pretty well. I figured if people wanted to hear me complain, they would come to this blog, so I tried to emphasise the positive in that interview. And as cheesy as it may seem, I really do like this City, for a lot of good reasons.

For example, a few people complain about missing crosswalks at a busy intersection, and guess what happens. A few days later, someone was out there with some white spraybombs putting some white lines down. It wasn’t fancy, but it worked! I’m not even sure if it was someone from the City or just some random community rabble, I kind of hope it was the latter, even though it makes me feel bad for whining about the problem on the internet and not going out there and doing it myself…

Then, on Monday, the City was out there in earnest, putting real reflective crosswalk paint down. They didn’t do a fancy job, but a temporary fix was all we needed, just to keep the crossing outside of a popular pub safe during the Canucks Playoffs, and until the final pavement cap can be put down on 6th. Thanks Guys!

True to the profile in the Record, I spent the weekend doing three things: Curling at the DonSpiel, Rabble-rousing, and working on my garden.

The DonSpiel is the season-wrapping fun tournament at the Royal City Curling Club. This is a bonspiel devilishly designed by long-suffering Royal City club member (and 2012 Mens League Champion Skip!) Don Smith, to squeeze the last bit of fun out of the season. The format brings novice and experienced curlers together and emphasises the off-ice-capades as much as the curling. It is a legendary good time… Oh did I laugh.

The Rabble-rousing part of my weekend was the glorious sunny Saturday I spent at the Royal City Farmers Market outside of the River Market at the Quay, catching the first tender sunburn of the season while talking to people about the Master Transportation Plan and the Pattullo Bridge consultations with some of the New Westminster Environmental Partners.

We were mostly handing out these:

Because that is our message right now: Show Up and Be Heard.

Based on some conversations we have had with people in the know, the Pattullo Bridge thing is coming on fast. The City is looking to the MTP process to get the voice of the people of New Westminster to take to TransLink, but TransLink has made their intent clear: They want to build a 6-lane bridge, increasing the daily traffic load entering New Westminster from Surrey be 50%, and doubling the truck traffic, with little regard for how that will impact Royal Avenue, McBride, or your neighbourhood.

The consultation has not presented the business case for or against the myriad of other options, nor has it even taken a cursory interest in the transportation plans, policies, or vision of New Westminster. Anything other that the single plan they have presented is not being considered. There are many in the City who suggest this is not true to the nature of “consultation”. Some of these groups are getting organized.

The Meetings on May 3rd will give the people of New Westminster a real opportunity to be heard on this issue, and the City needs as many people as possible to show up. Even if you think all of my opinions on the bridge are those of a crackpot, or the opinions of the NWEP are complete bunk, you still need to come to one of the City’s Open Houses. This is, most likely, your one and only chance to be heard before TransLink charges ahead.

Save the date. More to come.

Blogger

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.
More meta-blogging.
Since the shift to NWimby, I have noticed that the old comments from the old blog (Greennewwest) have disappeared. I managed to successfully “migrate” all of the content from Greennewwest to this one, but it appears the hundreds of comments did not make the trip over. Funny, I can search them in the blogger editing interface, and read them, but they do not appear linked to the correct pages…. rather frustrating.  
I only point this out, because a few of those comments were pretty critical of my opinions, my intelligence, or my hairstyle: mostly valid points. I just don’t want my detractors to think I am editing out opposing views (note the complimentary opinions have also disappeared; I feel bad, as it took my Mom hours). So if your comment/s seem to have disappeared, don’t take it personally. I might figure out a way to make them come back, but clearly my computerizing skills are suspect at best. And frankly, I would rather be outside on a day like this…

When is a plan not a plan?

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

…and when is an announcement not an announcement?

It is pretty clear the BC Liberal brand is in a bit of trouble, and the new packaging is not working out as well as planned. Premier McSparkles’ telegenic smile has not been enough cover for the general lack of direction displayed by a Government that is looking a little past its due date.

I am not a member of any political party, and usually vote based on the value of the local candidate (although, I have to admit, the Federal Conservatives could run the resurrection of Mahatma Ghandi locally, and that wouldn’t be enough to win my vote at this point). I have met both Judy Darcy and Hector Bremner, the presumed local NDP and Liberal candidates in the next Provincial election, and they both seem like good people with their hearts in the right place; I have no reason to believe either wouldn’t serve our community well.

The new Premier was an unknown coming in. In contrast to Kevin “strip it down, pave it over, sell it off” Falcon and Rich “Darth” Coleman (both who give ample reason to vote the other way), there was not enough substance to Clark to make me want to vote for or against her, despite her merging skills. In the end, it appears that apparent lack of substance was masking a much deeper and more profound lack of substance.

Yet like most people in an abusive relationship with an authority figure, I keep waiting and hoping for the BC Liberals to come up with just one Really Big Good Idea (RGBI) that will put them back in this race. And I keep waiting.

Regular reads here (Hi Mom!) will know that I am way more interested in transportation issues that is, frankly, healthy. So this week when the Premier rolled out her “Pacific Gateway Transportation Strategy” this week, with the by-line “Moving Goods and People”, I thought OK, maybe this is the RGBI. By the announcements, it sounded like they are committing a bunch of money, working with major partners, and are going to deal with the major transportation issues in our Province!

Surely (thinks I) this includes improvements to short-sea shipping, like suggested back in 2005 in a report prepared for Port Metro Vancouver, to finally remove some of the container traffic from our roads and reduce the unsustainable use of trucks to connect major trans-shipment locations. Maybe they will finally include a strategy for high-speed rail, to integrate with the west-coast high speed rail network our Southern Neighbours are planning? Maybe they will finally outline plans for rails to the valley, and upgrades to the Westminster Rail Bridge? Surely, it will include a review of TransLink governance, and a sustainable funding model for TransLink to meet its mandate outlined in Transport 2040. Maybe even (pinch me) an integrated Transportation Demand Management Strategy? A reasoned regional approach to tolls? Where is the Big Plan that shows leadership in Transportation?

Alas, like a Who on Christmas morning, I found nothing under the Christmas Tree that looked anything like Leadership. Even the lump of coal in all our stockings has already be been reduced to atmospheric greenhouse gas.

First off, there is the money committed. Transportation requires infrastructure, infrastructure costs. The plan offers “$25 Billion in total investment… by 2020, beyond the $22 Billion previously committed”. If you go the back pages of the plan document, where the numbers are, you can total up the money committed to $34.7 billion. That sounds like a lot of government investment in getting people and goods moving.

Except that more than $28 Billion (more than 80%) is private money, the lion’s share being a projected $18 Billion to be spent by mystery funders to build mythical LNG plants in Kitimat. The rest? $2.8 Billion in rail line growth by CN and CP, more than $4 Billion in Port Expansion in Vancouver and Prince Rupert, and $1.8Billion in Airport Improvements. All three of these, one should note, are federally-regulated lands and industries, so the Province has less than nothing to do with them. It couldn’t stop them if they tried. After that, private money will be used to build a smattering of privately-funded road works to improve access to mines and oil and gas fields.

OK , so what of the $6.7 Billion that is Government spending? Most of it is wrapped up in the Port Mann 2 and Hwy 1 Widening project ($3.3 Billion) and the South Fraser Perimeter Road project ($1.3 billion). Really, you are re-announcing, yet again, the PMH1 and the SFPR!? Again? This is meant to excite us? Throw in another $1-2 Billion on various ongoing already-announced and well underway highway projects (Kicking Horse Pass, etc.), and we are looking at a grand announcement of…no new investment in transportation.

Then we can look at the various uncosted parts of the announcement/plan. Things like “cap the property tax on designated ports”, and “eliminate jet-fuel tax for intern ational flights”. No indication what these moves are going to cost us, probably because cost accounting on tax cuts is really not this government’s strong suit.

Oh, and that other part of Transportation policy? The less feel-good parts about zooming trucks and vrooming planes? Strangely absent. This strategy is outlined in an 11,000-word document, but there are some words missing. Like “carbon”. In their defense, “climate” appears 7 times in the document. The only problem being that 6 of those times, it is used in the context of “building a climate for investment”. The time it is mentioned in the context of “change” is in the little sidebar about “the environment”, notable as it is also the only time the words “green house gas” and “emissions” are named. Here, they demonstrate their commitment by re-announcing, two years later, the Canada Line (a rapid transit system that was overcapacity the day it was built), and, yes, the Evergreen Line. No mention of a $30Million gap though. The word “Translink” is not raised.

But rest assured, the Environment is important. If you listen really carefully, you can hear the birds chirping over the mid-tempo rock with vrooming-and-zooming soundtrack of the splashy announcement video, right when the word environment appears. You can’t make this shit up:

Just like this big-images, low-content video, this government has once again displayed they are all about show, with no substance at all. Premier McSparkles appears to think re-announcing Kevin Falcon bad ideas and doubling down on the hating teachers is the path to success.

What should be telling is that neither John Cummins nor Adrian Dix are making too much of splash of opposing her ideas or announcements. When a government is sinking this fast and the Premier is busy bailing water onto the boat, you don’t want to risk distracting her from the task at hand

Plaza 88 – The Good, the Bad, and the Industrial.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 9 Comments.

There is no more prominent symbol of the renaissance on New Westminster than the Plaza 88 Residential / Commercial / Entertainment / Transit complex. This cornerstone project is not only the largest single residential development in New West, it is also a new gateway to the City at our namesake SkyTrain station, and regionally significant in the way it integrates retail space with a transit node.

As the residential buildings are completed, the anchor retail tenants are open, and the rest of the space is starting to fill up, I took the opportunity to wander around the Site this weekend, to see how it is filling in. The much-anticipated theatre complex and the retail at the Skytrain level is still a few weeks (months?) off. Clearly, some re-jigging will be necessary with the wedging of FalconGates into the otherwise open plaza, but we have enough of the project completed that I thought it was worth taking a closer look around, and getting a sense of what the project offers as an open space. It helps that the CIBC was holing their little Grand Opening Shindig so I could get a free hotdog and a brush with greatness:

First off, I can’t really declare myself a fan of the residential towers. They are big, out of scale with the surrounding high rises, they are close together, and they are a unique mix of standard-issue-glass-wall-small-balcony-vancouver-condo-tower and bare-concrete-slab-sided-soviet-design-bureau designs that add up to pretty unappealing.

Pretty much the entire building complex, from the outside is unattractive and oversized. The imposing 8-story parkade looms over and shades out Carnarvon Street, although this may eventually be softened by the green wall design and opening of the live-work spaces at ground level. The view from the south is also a rather imposing 8-story concrete wall, with the notable exception of the Art-Deco Façade from the old Sally Ann (which I like), and the brash pattered red and green wall covering (which I am still unsure about). I did manage to decode the message hidden in the pattern on the red/grey part of the wall, but the pattern on the green/grey side is either nonsense, or I am missing something… CSFAO?

While looking at the wall from the Quayside Drive overpass, I was reminded about yet another “missing link” for pedestrians in New West. From the west exit of Plaza 88, you are only a few hundred metres from the River Market, but the overpass curves west, making it a much longer trip. A staircase on the southeast corner of the overpass would create a much shorter link between Plaza 88 and the River Market, but I digress…

No, wait, I don’t digress. One of my biggest pet peeves with the Plaza 88 project is that it is, on the outside, a pedestrian disaster. The pedestrian mall around a SkyTrain station is a great idea, but anyone trying to get to or from or around the complex is met with horrible pedestrian space. I have already wailed and whined about the east exit, where the primary link between Plaza 88 and the rest of the commercial enterprises on Columbia Street was designed to accommodate trucks and cars, at the cost of being completely unappealing and likely unsafe for pedestrians. The south side has a wide sidewalk, and 100m of concrete wall and parkade cages…, with intermittent awnings of questionable value. The Carnarvon Street environment is crowded, with a bus loop and multiple garage entrances, inadequate cross walks, and will be loaded with busses, as the new bus loop under Plaza88 is already too small for projected bus needs. At every corner, it is clear that pedestrian access and safety was an afterthought in designing the street level of this complex.

The bright side is the new Tim Hortons plaza exit heading north, although the compelling view of the back of the Spaghetti Factory and the front of a Pawn Shop won’t do much to improve the first impressions of people arriving in New West….

Back to the McInnes overpass, where you get to enter the Pedestrian mall right under the SkyTrain tracks, I have to admit the effect is very City of the Future when you watch the SkyTrain enter the building.

The first thing you notice is what appears to be some sort of stage or platform, right under the tracks. I imagine it is just there for architectural reasons, but I wonder what the intended use is. The roof clearance is less than two metres, so any musician would need to avoid Pete Townshend windmills or loose the skin off their knuckles. Restaurant seating would be interesting, although dinner conversation would be challenging with the roar of trains over head…

Once you enter the pedestrian mall, the space itself is pretty cool. The smooth concrete, pale tile and blue LED lighting effects have that retro-future industrial look. The roof is low and the bottom of the SkyTrain rails could use a power-washing, though.

In some spots, it is pretty clear that no-one at SkyTrain ever intended for people to be wandering around just under their rails. Anyone over 6 feet could easily reach into the cable trays hanging off the railbeds. The lack of “electricity can kill you!” signs suggests those are low-voltage or communications cables, but they add to a pretty gritty industrial feel, more so with the pigeon shit factor.

There are businesses slowly filling in. Some look pretty promising:

Others not so much.

It all seems pretty oriented towards service to local residents, as opposed to destination shopping. This is not MetroTown with rails through, it is a service centre at a Transit node. Banks, travel agents, dentists, and small restaurants and cafés: clearly targeting local residents and SkyTrain riders. I’m not sure of that will shift slightly when the upstairs level (with their multi-screen theatre) opens. Time will tell.

So far, the only space to sit in the pedestrian mall is outside the Starbucks attached to the Safeway. Here we see one of the strangest design choices:

I’m not sure what compelled Safeway to defend their little café sitting spot with 6-foot steel pillars and plexiglass. The unfortunate effect is to separate people at the café from the pedestrians, making both spaces less friendly, and making it way less likely I would sit in that glassed-in closet like area and have a coffee, watching the world walk by…

It is vaguely reminiscent of this caged-off area next to another City Square, both unfortunately less friendly becasue of their disconnectedness.

Not that many people will be sitting outside for too long in the lower level at Plaza 88. I hate to admit it, but the SkyTrain is freaking loud. There are places to the west of Safeway where the sound clearly echoes off the apron suspended over the rails, down through the gap between the upper concourse an the rails. I’m not sure of the vertical glass baffles in that gap help, or make the echo situation worse.

The gap also allows rain to sprinkle down over one enigmatically exposed 5-foot-wide strip adjacent to Safeway, when the rest of the mall is covered. I thought the original design was for it to be all covered. There was also suggestion that the SkyTrain rail bottoms would be more integrated into the design. Like or hate the look, it sure doesn’t look like what we were sold a few years ago:

One more aside. There was a bit of a local Twitterstorm this week around smoking in the Plaza 88 public mall spaces. A few local rabble-rousers (I may have been one of them) asked if the mall was going to be smoke-free, and to the credit of both TransLink and the City, there was some quick response to the Tweets: everyone is, apparently, looking into it. There is a system-wide ban on Smoking in Translink stations, but most of the pedestrian spaces are outside of that. Of course you can’t smoke indoors anywhere, but most of the pedestrian space is really outdoors, in an indoors kind of way. Its not like any outdoor plants would survive on the Safeway Level. You would be hard pressed to find any spot in the plaza that isn’t within 6 Metres of a door, so I guess that Provincial Law could be enforced, but by whom? (TransLink Cops? Mall Security? New West PD? Bylaw Officers?).

As this is a unique project and setting, I guess we can expect little teething problems like this to come along. I know from conversations I have had outside of New Westminster that this project was a difficult one to push along. There was a lot of work by the Mayor, Council, and City staff to make this project happen, between integration with a reluctant TransLink to various design components. At every step, it was pushing the limits of Urban Design in Greater Vancouver.

Am I fan? I don’t know. I hope I will be. Many of the design elements, from the tower facades, to the pedestrian challenges, to the head-scraping pigeon nests are kind of disappointing, but overall, I dig the Blade-Runneresque blue light retro-future look. I also think the risk will pay off if we manage to use the Kyoto block and integrate this project more effectively with the MUCF, Hyack Square, and the River Market. The commercial plaza wrapped around a SkyTrain Station is a brilliant idea, and there are lots of reasons to think it will be a model for development elsewhere along the SkyTrain system.

Now bring on the Theatres