City Open House on the Pattulo – Part 1

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I am just starting to get back to regular life, after all the excitement of this week.

In New Westminster, there have been no less than two major twitterstorm brous-ha-ha (which I contend is the appropriate plural form of that word).

One is the announcement that the City will charge ahead with the MUCF and office tower, after their developer-partner bailed. I have had a lot of conversations with a lot of people about this in the last week, and will opine soon.

The bigger news story to me was the huge turnout by the people of New Westminster at the Master Transportation Plan open houses. Yes, there was discussion about the MTP, but (and it pains me to say this as a member of the MTP Committee) the real issue of the night was not the MTP, it was the damn Bridge. The MTP was like Larry Holmes vs. Rodney Bobick in Manila in 1975: a nominally interesting lead-in to the real show.

The meeting I attended at the Justice Institute was very well attended. The room has a seating capacity of 250, and there were not many empty seats. Apparently, the daytime meeting at the Century House was also very well attended, with estimates north of 100 people (“crowded enough to be just uncomfortable” was how it was described to me).

More than 300 people from across the City come out on a Thursday to debate transportation policy. This is why I love New Westminster.

Another reason is that this meeting was live-streamed by a group of volunteers: and that video is available for you to watch now. Got to http://www.newwest.tv to see the video, and thank the people who produced it.

Again, New Westminster demonstrated to TransLink what consultation looks like. The consultant engaged by the City outlined the proposal presented by TransLink, and then showed various other options that TransLink had not offered. More importantly, he talked about the myriad of things we need to discuss when talking about the future of the bridge.

First, the options.

Options 1 & 2 are, respectively, the upstream and downstream options of the six-lane bridge, as proposed by TransLink. Enough said about those. The one interesting point raised at this meeting is that this option may cost in the order of $750 Million, which is less than the $1 Billion that TransLink suggested during their initial consultations.

Option 3 is the refurbishment of the existing bridge. This would reduce the lanes to a three-lane counterflow design similar to the Lions Gate, and would cost in the order of $200Million. It was suggested at the meeting that this would result in increased congestion, but that is a debateable point. Most urban transportation experts and the experience of every other city in the history of earth suggests the exact opposite.

Options 4 & 5 are replacing the bridge in approximately the same locations TransLink has proposed, but building a modern 4-lane bridge. Order of magnitude costs for this are $600 Million. This option provides all the safety and structural benefits of the TransLink proposals, at a lower costs, and has the bonus of not causing a major shift in the traffic situation on either side of the bridge.

Option 6 involved simply decommissioning the bridge and replacing it with air. I have to admit, 6 months ago when I started blogging about this, I would have thought that a fanciful option, but a couple of New West City Councillors have mentioned it as an option, and judging by the response of the crowd at the JI (watch the newest.tv coverage at 51:40, that is the loudest reaction at any moment in the presentation), I am coming around to seeing that this might be a viable starting point for negotiations, and an idea worth exploring.

This option was priced at about $40 Million. I heard it said after the meeting by a business leader in the City; “Give me two weeks, I’ll get you the $40 Million”. She might have been being facetious, but there is no doubt that money would be easily returned just by developing the land freed up by the removal of the bridge.

Options 7 & 8 are both about moving the bridge to different locations, each explored at different times in the past, one upstream at Sapperton Bar, one at Tree Island. Both of these are less compelling to me, both because they are more expensive than the Pattullo replacement ($2.5 Billion and $2 Billion respectively), and they both smack somewhat of Nimbyism. If a new bridge and more traffic is bad for New West, it is also bad for Coquitlam and Burnaby, and the resultant increase in traffic from any big bridge on our doorstep will have negative impacts on our City (see the Port Mann experience).

The consultation part of the meeting was further helped by the consultant discussing that there are factors in choosing a bridge other than lane count. He raised some interesting points about how a bridge fits into the community. A strong point is that this bridge is different than the Alex Fraser, the Golden Ears, or even the new Port Mann, in that this bridge is located in the centre of a dense urban area, and is connected to surface streets, not limited-access freeways.

One result of this is that it would be inappropriate to build the cheapest bridge possible, built by the lowest bidder. That will no doubt be TransLink’s intent, but we need to resist that intent.

When building a new crossing out in the country, this may be the approach to choose, just like if you are building an electrical switching house or a water pump station out in the country, you might put up a bland concrete box. If you are building a pump house or an electrical substation in the middle of a dense urban area, you need to incorporate design and aesthetics.

The same goes for a bridge.

If one is to build a major piece of infrastructure that will dominate an urban skyline for 50-100 years, most Cities would engage in an international design competition. There are architects and bridge designers who would love to apply their skill and talent to an iconic structure. Think of the roof of BC Place, the Vancouver Convention Centre, even the stations on the Millennium SkyTrain Line: like them or hate them, they are designed with aesthetic values, not dull pre-stressed concrete function-only structures, like the three five cable-stayed bridges over the Fraser River (if the throw the Skytrain and Canada Line bridges into the discussion).

A second point is that we need to carefully consider the transportation engineering of the bridge. Again, using the Alex Fraser, the Golden Ears, and the Port Mann 2 as examples, all are built to expressway standards. This makes sense, as they are on expressways. But if we build a new bridge in the middle of an urban area, connecting to surface streets, should it be built more like a surface street?

TransLink is likely assuming that the new bridge will be built with open wide lanes, as you would design for 80km/h or 100km/h traffic. As the roads on either side are 50km/h, the bridge will no doubt have a similar speed limit, and everyone will ignore it. If we were building a surface street, it would have curb bulges, roundabouts, a planted median, etc. to create a dynamic visual landscape, and to slow traffic.

The discussion included many other topics, including costs, traffic impacts, visual and safety impacts, maintenance issues.

Clearly, there are lots of things to discuss about the future of the Pattullo other than how the offramps will attach to the existing streets.

When they got to the point, it was this: Consultation is not TransLink telling us what they are going to build. Much like the Lions Gate process, we need to “debate then decide”, not the other way around.

So let’s get this debate started.

More Advertizing (updated)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.
Do you care about the future of the Pattullo Bridge
…and the impact on traffic in New Westminster?
TransLink has decided to tear down the historic Pattullo Bridge and replace it with a 6-lane bridge.  By their own estimates, this will increase the number of cars crossing the bridge by 50%, and double the number of trucks! Yet TransLink has no plans to accommodate this traffic in New Westminster. So far, the only consultation they have had with New Westminster is to ask us which flavour or offramp we prefer.
Meanwhile, the City is working on a Master Transportation Plan, to better understand the goals and visions of the people of New Westminster. Through this plan it is hoped better-informed decisions can be made about our transportation future.
The City has made it clear to TransLink that it will only support a plan for the Pattullo that fits the City’s goals. The upcoming open houses are your chance to help form those goals…with TransLink moving fast on the bridge planning, this may be your only chance (see below) to have a real say on the project that will define traffic in New Westminster for the decades ahead.
City Staff and Officials will be on hand to answer your questions and address your concerns about the Pattullo or other transportation concerns in New West.
Your voice is needed at one of these important open houses!
Thursday, May 3, 2012.
2:00pm at Century House (620 8th Street, in Moody Park)
or
6:00pm at the Justice Institute (715 McBride Blvd, McBride and 8th Ave ))
For more information check in on the
City’s Master Transportation Plan website: tinyurl.com/NewwestMTP
or the New Westminster Environmental Partners website: NWEP.ca

Edited to add: The City is now also using a new piece of social media called “Place Speak” to collect opinions on the MTP and the Pattullo Bridge. It is just starting up, but you can go there to add to the conversation. Remember, though, to make your voice really stand out, you should still attend one of the May 3rd open houses. Without support of the citizens of New West, the City is going to have a hard time convincing TransLink that a proper consultation needs to take place.

Thinking about Oil Exports

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The Provincial NDP have come out strongly against the Northern Gateway Pipeline.

Before anyone accuse them of just following the crowd to see where it is going, then rushing out front to make it look like they were leading all the time, they have also provided a 6-point argument for why they do not support Enbridge.

Most of the points are ones you have heard before from other radical foreign-funded environmentalists like me (full disclosure: I spent two years receiving paycheques from the Illinois State Department of Natural Resources): risk of tanker spills, risk to inland waterways, GHG impacts, etc. One argument, however has always led to interesting discussions with people I talk to whom I consider “environmentalists”.

“The NGP provides few long-term, sustainable economic benefits for B.C., and forgoes value-added economic activity involving upgrading and refining in Canada”

As a reflex, I support this argument. Selling off as much of a finite resource as quickly as possible without first squeezing out as much value from that resource as possible seems like a really bad idea. Perhaps the only worse idea is to sell off a sustainable resource at a rate that makes it unsustainable and at the same time not first squeezing out as much value from that resource. But this argument hides another deeper argument that is harder for many on both sides of the political spectrum to get around.

First, it is interesting to look at the oil numbers. Canada (according to the CIA factbook) produces about 3.3 Million barrels of oil per day (Mbbl/d), but consumes the equivalent of 2.2 Mbbl/d in oil products. Although we export about 2.0 Mbbl/d, we import about 1.2 Mbbl/d.

The numbers look like this (Mbbl/d, all 2011 numbers):
Production:      3.289
Import:              1.192
Export:               2.001
Consumption:  2.151

Canada currently has 15 operating oil refineries, which combined total 1.879 Mbbl/d in daily refining capacity. This does not include “upgrade” refineries in Alberta and Saskatchewan; those turn bitumen into synthetic crude oil (syncrude), which must then go to another refinery to be made into useable product. Exporting syncrude is indistinguishable from exporting crude oil, carbon- and ecological-footprint aside. Three of those refineries are in the Maritimes, 2 in Quebec, 4 in Ontario, 1 in Saskatchewan, 3 in Alberta, and 2 in BC (including the Chevron refinery in Vancouver).

The point is that, even if all the refineries were to run at maximum capacity, we could not begin to refine all of the oil we produce here in Canada, we could not even refine enough to satiate our consumption needs. Hence, we need to import refined product, some of that potentially refined from the 60% of the oil we produce that goes offshore. With all the recent talk of China, most of the oil currently going out of Burrard Inlet is bound for California refineries, and most of those tank farms you see around Burrard Inlet (Shellburn in Burnaby, Ioco in Port Moody, Suncor on the northeast slope of Burnaby Mountain) are just storing oil products imported for the States to supply local demand.

Ideally, based on the NDP argument above, Canada would refine our own oil. We would at the very least build refineries to meet our domestic refined product demand, and potentially build enough that we could export the refined product to gain all the added value instead of the raw syncrude. We don’t do this, because the refineries belong, for the most part, to publicly traded multinational corporations. They will build and operate refineries where it is easiest and cheapest to do so, with lower labour costs, lower tax regimes, and softer environmental laws. What may be (agruably) in our national interest is most defintiely not in their best financial interest.

Canadian Refineries and capacity by ownership:
Imperial Oil (Exxon): 4 refineries totalling 503,000 bbl/d;
Suncor (formerly PetroCanada): 3 refineries totalling 360,000 bbl/d
Irving (a Canadian business): 1 refinery at 300,000 bbl/d;
Valero (Texaco): 1 refinery at 265,000 bbl/d;
Shell (Royal Dutch Shell): 2 refineries totalling 172,000 bbl/d;
Korea National Oil Company: 1 refinery at 115,000 bbl/d;
CCRL (a Sask. co-operative!): 1 refinery at 100,000 bbl/d;
Chevron Corporation: 1 refinery at 52,000 bbl/d;
Husky Energy: 1 refinery at 12,000 bbl/d.

So here is when my environmentalist friends start to get itchy collars: I suggest this scenario (recognizing it is highly unlikely). Let’s assume that the NDP win the next federal election, and just to piss off Alberta after all the efforts their guys have done to piss off the NDP over the previous 5+ years, they bring about Canada National Energy Program 2.0. Part of that program includes an end to raw crude exports, and an end to refined product imports.

The question for envrionmentalists concerned about all this export of raw crude: Would you support increasing refining capacity in Canada? Even if that meant doubling capacity in order to meet the demand from back in 2011? So, my sensible environmentalist friends, I ask you: would you support the building of oil refineries if it meant the end of oil imports for Canada, and the end of raw crude exports?

This might be a good question to ask the NDP.

Law of the Instrument

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 4 Comments.

This is similar in tone to an earlier post I wrote regarding the misapplication of technology. In that post, I questioned how “on-line voting” was going to fix the low turn-out rates in elections. The problem of low voter turn-out was not caused by the lack of options or access to polling booths, so increasing that access through the wonder of the Internet was not really a sensible solution. It was the wrong tool addressing the problem from the wrong direction.

This time, I hope to convince you that increasing the volume of traffic is not the solution to the problem of an aging bridge.

In earlier stages of my career, I had plenty of opportunities to work with drillers. Guys (and yes, they were all guys) who operate drilling equipment are a special breed. It is hard work, intensely physical, dirty, noisy, and you are doing it in the rain, the sleet, the snow, and any other unpleasant environment you are asked. Days are usually 12 hours, and you spend much of your off time living in flea-bag hotels on the outskirts of towns you wouldn’t otherwise visit.

I have drilled (actually, stood there watching other guys drill while I sketched on a clipboard and put samples into jars) in pounding down rain in February in Port Alice, in frozen sleet in September in Wells; In heavy snow in Anahim Lake, and on bright sunny warm days while standing on bulk sulphur storage piles. I have even stood on a small barge in Burrard Inlet in the middle of winter with drillers running a Pionjar off the side. With all of these conditions, they are operating a piece of equipment that can kill or maim them instantly if they lose attention. As a result, drillers are tough, skilled, determined, crude and practical: Every edge they have is rough. They all smoke every cigarette like it is their last; I have never seen a group of people so enthusiastic about smoking, and I grew up in a Pulp Mill town.

L to R: me, a notable bridge, a Sonic drill rig.

All that aside, one of the charming things about drillers is their tool kit. It contains two types of tools: hammers, and unused. There is nothing a driller cannot fix with a hammer. If there is, it needed replacing anyway. Every process in the instruction book “Drilling for Dummies” starts with these two steps: 1) Get a hammer; 2) No, a bigger hammer.

As a result, drillers generally have a lot of broken and bent equipment around. When something goes wrong on the drill rig there are two ways it can go: lots of banging and then back to work; or lots of banging then back to the shop. The only shocking past is how often it is the former.

There is a truism called the Law of the Instrument, which is colloquially “when all you have is hammers, every problem looks like a nail”.

When applied to how our province has been operating its roads, and overseeing Translink’s management of the Major Road Network (including the Pattullo Bridge), it could be said that there is no problem that cannot be fixed by building more roads. Never mind what the problem is, or whether this solution has worked in the past, building more roads seems to be the one thing upon which this government has no problem spending taxpayers money.

If the connection isn’t obvious, let me put it this way: At a time when they are cutting back on bus routes and are putting all transit expansion on hold, TransLink is fast-tracking the “consultation” on the Pattullo, saying they need a new 6-lane bridge PDQ. This seems to be the solution to some problem, but there problem isn’t “traffic” or “truck movement” or “growing communities” (the talking points used to justify a 6-lane bridge). Their problem is an aging bridge.

Look at the “Replacement Factors” listed on their website for the project, what do we find? An alliterative list: Safety, Structure, Seismic, and Scour.

“Safety” issues are related to traffic operations on the bridge: lanes too narrow, inadequate railings, too many accidents. If TransLink or the Government was really concerned about driver safety on the bridge, they would put four photo radar cameras on the bridge and enforce the 50km/h speed limit. A revenue-generating end of the problem.

“Structure” arguments are all about corrosion of steel components on the bridge and degradation of the bridge deck, so exactly the same factors that led to the extensive refurbishment of the Lions Gate Bridge. There, things were repaired at a much lower cost than replacing the bridge.

“Seismic” seems pretty straight forward: a 1938 bridge does not meet 2012 earthquake standards. The Sandwell Report done for TransLink in 2007 was pretty clear: “…the bridge is vulnerable to collapse even under moderate earthquakes and is in urgent need of retrofitting.” So what are we waiting for? Let’s get on with that retrofitting and make a safe bridge, at a fraction of the cost of building a new bridge.

“Scour” is the argument that after 75 years, the River is now starting to scour away the sand and silt around the foundations of the bridge. Give me a couple of barges of 1-tonne rip-rap, and we can take care of the scour issue. No need for two lanes of extra traffic to fix this one.

Notably, not one of these “Replacement Factors” justify increasing the number of lanes on the bridge, and most can actually be facilitated at much lower cost by reducing the lanes to three (with counter-flow) like the Lions Gate. As compelling an argument TransLink makes for extensive refurbishment of the Pattullo Bridge, nothing that says we need to accept the negative impacts on the City and the region of increasing road capacity, or the loss of the iconic steel arch span that is part of our City’s heritage and skyline for 75 years. Nor do they justify ramping up a $200 Million refurbishment project into a $1Billion bridge expansion project.

However, bridge replacement and expansion is the hammer that TransLink has. Collecting tolls on the bridge is the force behind that hammer. So no surprise when the problem is an aging bridge, the solution is not fixing it. The solution is to imagine other problems that may be solved by expanding it and slapping on tolls.

Simply put: the Province will not pay $200 Million to upkeep the infrastructure it has, but will throw a bunch of money building other infrastructure with no plan for long-term maintenance costs.

Hardly a model of fiscal prudence in my book.

We interrupt this Public Affairs program… to bring you a Football Game!

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

With all due respect to Homer, this week’s televised coverage of the Council Working Session was pretty compelling. You can watch it here, by choosing the date (April 23) and selecting  “Regular Working Session of Council”

Most of it was spent talking about the upcoming Open Houses (May 3rd, have I mentioned those before?) on the Pattullo Bridge. It is interesting to hear Council work their way through the material, some of them clearly very up-to-date on the issues at hand, some not so much.

The Consultant does raise some interesting issues about the bridge itself (starting at around 23:00). He seems to spend a lot of time suggesting that the form of any replacement bridge is as important as the other aspects: as this is an iconic structure in the middle of a major urban Centre, do we want the simplest, cheapest, IKEA “Billy” bridge that is likely to result from a PPP? If the bridge is to be replaced, this is an opportunity to add to the value of our Community with a spectacular feature, perhaps one resulting from an international design competition. This is indeed an interesting idea, and one I have not heard used for major infrastructure projects sponsored by the Province. Unless people can play football under it.

But the Councillor’s differing ideas around the project are also interesting.

Starting at 30:00 Councillor Cote rightly suggests the one approach that few have discussed yet is the refurbishing of the existing bridge. This is the direction I am leaning right now ( he even mentions the similarities to the Lions Gate consultation process).

Starting at about 31:30, Councillor Puchmayr seems to be suggesting we are putting the cart ahead of the horse: why are we talking about the shape and form of the bridge, when we should be talking about the alleged need for a bridge? You don’t bring a puppy home to ask the family if they think the family should get a puppy – you make the choice before you go to the puppy mill to pick one up.

I am a little thick, but I think I finally get where Councillor Puchmayr has been going with his on-going diatribes about the lack of a connection between the new Port Mann and the SFPR. Up to now, I thought he was just pointing out an example of bad planning on the Provincial Government’s part (or shooting fish in barrels just for sport). I have now realized he seems to be suggesting that building that connection now might be a more cost-effective way to get trucks across the Fraser than re-furbishing the Pattullo. It couldn’t possibly be as expensive, and the truckers seem to think it’s a viable solution. I am liking this approach…

Starting at 34:30, Councillor McEvoy spares no love on TransLink and their “consultation” process. He is also clear that the City of New Westminster has not taken a strong position on Transportation Planning up to now, and with other communities making clear what their position is, the City needs to have their clear, sensible, and logical position prepared. (hopefully this is what comes out the MTP if we havea good turnout on May 3rd). 

Councillor Harper (@43:00) is also right to raise the central question about all of these options: the one question we are going to have to have a clear answer on before we make difficult choices around the bridge is the impact on our City of the different plans. I am especially glad to hear him suggesting the City may need to spend some money to do the traffic surveys and studies to get the hard numbers, and not rely on TransLink’s obviously-loaded numbers.

I think the block we needto watch out for here is that many people think the “Problem” that TransLink is trying to solve is traffic, and therefore the solution all involve moving lanes or bridges or onramps. However, TransLink’s Pattullo Bridge Consultation page is pretty clear: their “Problem” is an aging bridge, not traffic.

But that is the topic of another post.

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?