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Declaration for Resilience (Part 3)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

This is Part 3 of my reporting out the City’s response to the Declaration for Sustainability in Canadian Cities that Council approved earlier in the month. Part 1 on land use planning is here, Part 2 on transportation is here. Part 3 covers the Built and Natural Environments. As in the earlier parts, I provide the original Declaration Text, followed by the adaptation for NW/MV context provided to Council by staff, all followed by my comments (not necessarily speaking for the City or Council, but my own take on it) for each clause of the declaration.

Embracing Sustainability in our Built and Natural Environment
15. Require that all new government‐owned buildings (federal, provincial, and municipal) be carbon neutral.
Require all new buildings that are government‐owned (federal, provincial, and municipal) or built using public dollars to be energy efficient and carbon neutral over their lifetime.
The City has previously set a LEED standard for new buildings, but we have started to move beyond LEED and reviewed other rating/evaluation systems for new buildings. We are currently on pause with the Canada Games Pool replacement due to COVID uncertainty, but the plans as developed included upgrading to a zero-carbon building and energy generation on site. It makes sense when we own our own near-zero-carbon electrical utility, and when lifecycle costs of higher efficiency buildings are usually lower in the long run.

16. End the dumping of untreated sewage outflows into lakes, streams, and waterways.
End the dumping of untreated sewage outflows into lakes, streams, and waterways.
Some may think this sounds like a simple or even archaic goal in 2020, what with our modern sewers and big sewer treatment plants, and we should spend our time in debates about the value of secondary vs. tertiary sewer treatment and resource recovery at sewer plants. However, New West is one of several cities in the Lower Mainland that still has “combined flow sewers” in some areas. As a result, we sometimes still discharge untreated (but highly diluted) sewage to fisheries habitat in the Fraser River. There are complex historic reasons for this, and the City is continually working on (and investing in) sewer separation, but at the current pace, it will be 2050 or later before we achieve this goal. Much of this is a cost issue, as doing this work is very expensive – we have about $25M in the current 5-year financial plan to do this work at that done-by-2050-or-so pace.

Whether we beat or meet that timing is contingent on a few things alongside our tolerance for high utility rates or debt financing. Much of the separation will be funded by and timed on growth, as it is generally older single-family-detached neighborhoods that still rely on combined flow sewers. There is also a direct cost to land owners for this work, as property drainage must be separated to match the upgraded municipal system, which we require homeowners to do (at their cost, usually in the tens of thousands of dollars) when replacing their house or doing major renovations.

So we are working on it, but it is not going to happen soon, though recent support from senior governments has helped the City accelerate their program, which is good. Arguably, the environment would benefit more from federal government funding aggressive sewer separation programs in Vancouver, Burnaby, and New West than it does from the feds funding tertiary treatment upgrades in the sewer treatment plants the diverted sewage goes to, but that isn’t how politics works.

17. Enact a funded, detailed plan to achieve a 40% urban tree canopy.
Enact a funded, detailed plan to achieve a 40% urban tree canopy, within the context of competition for new development, recognize trees as city assets with parity to other city assets and incentivize tree retention and large tree species planting with development.
A 40% tree canopy is ambitious for any urban area. To put that in perspective, New West’s current canopy city-wide is about 18%, and our “greenest” neighbourhoods are on the order of 33% (Queens Park and Glenbrooke). Our Urban Forest Management Strategy calls for aggressive tree planting and preservation of existing trees (including the new Tree Protection Bylaw), and we have a goal to get to 27% tree canopy by 2030 as Bold Step #6. I am OK with 40% as an aspirational goal, and indeed there is some research suggesting this is a best practice level to aim for (Halifax is one of the few significant Canadian cities that has this level of canopy), but for now we are enacting a funded, detailed plan to get to 27% City-wide, which will put us among the greenest communities in the Lower Mainland.

18. Ensure 100% of municipal operations are powered by clean energy sources.
Ensure 100% of all government operations are powered by clean, renewable energy sources.
We are fortunate to be in British Columbia where most of our electricity is zero-carbon, or at least very low carbon. That means the easiest way to move to clean energy sources is to plug everything in. It is easy for buildings, a little tougher for pools and ice rinks (the type of heating and energy needed lends itself more easily to gas), and really problematic for a lot of equipment. Even as electric cars are becoming ubiquitous, you simply cannot buy an electric pickup truck in Canada in 2020, never mind an electric dump truck or backhoe. Back-up electrical generators (important to many of our critical systems), firetrucks, street sweepers, cement mixers, vac trucks, etc., etc., are all seemingly decades from being available in fully electric forms. And then we need to talk about the infrastructure needs for our electrical utility to be able to provide power for all of these needs.

We have already made a commitment to get there in our Bold Step #1, and are picking the low fruit right now, while making bold choices about new buildings by no relying on fossil gas, but we are quickly approaching the bleeding edge. We need every community, and more businesses, to demand that the market provide electrical alternatives for many of the equipment choices above. Though I would love to blog some time about the City of Oslo is taking this a next step – forcing all construction sites to be electric-driven, but that is a big digression.

19. Require every new building in Canada built using public dollars achieves LEED status.
See #15 above
As mentioned above, we can go beyond LEED, but it is not currently within the City’s jurisdiction to (for example) force a brand new hospital being built in 2020 to go zero carbon, despite the fact it will be the largest point source emitter of Greenhouse Gasses for decades ahead in our community. But we can ask.

20. Require all new large office buildings to be emissions‐free.
Require all new large commercial, institutional and residential buildings to be energy efficient and carbon neutral, resilient to local climate change impacts, and located in Urban Centres or in appropriate locations along the Frequent Transit Network.
This is a similar thing, there is only so far we can go as a Municipality in adopting aggressive energy efficiency under the Step Code, and we are one of the more aggressive communities in the Lower Mainland. Vancouver is mandating an end to fossil fuels in buildings, but have their own Building Code that allows them to take that extra step. This item specifically says “large office buildings”, and it is a good idea to expand to all larger buildings that would likely go through a rezoning process, which gives the City an extra lever to pull, as we have lots of flexibility to make demands during rezoning.

I’m curious about adding energy efficiency as a shared priority with carbon neutrality, and I’m not sure I agree. If we have a relatively inefficient building that uses 100% renewable carbon-free energy, that is a clear win over a carbon-intensive by highly efficient building – burning no carbon is better than burning a little carbon. Every step towards efficiency increases up-front cost, and carbon neutrality may increase lifecycle costs (a gas is really cheap right now), so of the choices of which to require or incentivize, I’d err towards carbon neutral. The efficiency addition muddies this water a bit, I think.

Finally, the addition of Urban Centres and Frequent Transit Network leans back on the sustainable city planning aspects already covered in Part 1, but it is worth noting, if you have the most energy efficient office building in the world, but if it is out in an exburb and everyone has to drive a car to get there every day, you are kinda missing the point. This is getting me to think I need to write a critique about some of the decisions around the RCH expansion.

OK, this covers the entirety of the Declaration in its original form, but Metro Vancouver and City of New Westminster staff identified some gaps that would make this Declaration more meaningful to our specific context, and i will write about those in Part 4. But it is August and the sun is out, so I gotta get out there. You should too!

Declaration for Resilience (Part 2)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Further sunny-days blogging on New Westminster’s response to the 2020 Declaration for Resilience in Canadian Cities that was endorsed by Council on August 10. I wrote previously about the Land Use items; this section is on transportation. Once again, each item will start with the original Declaration Text, followed by the staff-recommended adaptation for NW/MV context, followed by my comments:

Decarbonization of our Transportation Systems

7. Prioritize the immediate transformation of existing streets and roadways for active transportation – both for the immediate, post-pandemic recovery period and as permanent measures – by adding additional space for pedestrians and protected bike lanes in a contiguous ‘everywhere‐to everywhere’ network that makes cycling a safe mobility choice for every resident, in every neighbourhood.
Prioritize the immediate transformation of existing streets and roadways for active transportation and high quality public realm – both for the immediate, post‐pandemic recovery period and as permanent measures – by adding additional space for pedestrians and protected bike lanes in contiguous ‘everywhere‐to everywhere’ network that makes cycling, rolling (i.e. mobility devices) and walking a safe mobility choice for every resident, in every neighbourhood and without impeding transit operations or goods movement. Capitalize on opportunities to improve public life on streets (i.e. seating/social areas, event spaces, public art, outdoor retail and street trees).

This action links directly to the City’s Master Transportation Plan, the Bold Steps for Climate Action, and the Streets for People motion, and we are on our way towards making it happen. This year there are a lot of “pilots” going on around town, much like in Vancouver and other communities on the Lower Mainland, and we are receiving both positive and negative feedback on them. But nothing can be clearer than the goal: less public space for cars, more public space for other uses.

We are not close yet to having the “everywhere-to-everywhere” bike network that we need, and this will require some significant shift in how we invest in roads infrastructure in the City. We have already made significant shifts towards walking and accessibility investments, cycling has lagged behind. With the advent of so many “new mobility” technologies (scooters, electric mobility aids, e-bike, and who knows what is coming next week), we need to be thinking about how they impact pedestrian spaces, and how we prioritize transit operations along the curb space. We need to fundamentally re-think the infrastructure we are building if we agree that driving a private automobile (which is only used for half of trips in the City) is not the centre of it.

My main push-back here against the revised wording is the way “goods movement” was lumped in as something we need to not impede. We all agree goods movement is an important part of our transportation realm, but this reads like we are not going to expect goods movement providers to aggressively adapt their practices, but will instead work around their status quo. If we are relying on larger and larger diesel semis to provide basic supplies to our City centre, if we are going to allow our surface streets to remain through-fares for moving containers from port to terminal, accept diesel trains idling and having ultimate right-of-way through our communities, then we are not going to meet our other goals around livability and safety on our streets. We need to bring the Goods Movement sector along and help them adapt to the new reality of decarbonized cities, not build these new cities with an asterisk around one sector of the economy.

8. Enhance bus service levels, recognizing that interim social distancing requirements will demand high levels of public transit service on existing routes, since passenger limits on buses will be required.
Enhance bus service levels, recognizing that interim social distancing requirements will demand high levels of public transit service on existing routes, since passenger limits on buses will be required.

This is not 100% on the City in our TransLink region, as we do not directly allocate funds or service levels for Transit, however, there is one thing we can do to improve service levels: give buses more priority on our streets. Queue-jumping lanes, transit-only lanes, and adapting our signals and other systems to assure buses are not stuck in traffic created by people who in cars. Alas, the bigger question about funding and building a more sustainable transit funding mechanism is bigger debate, and though we are (arguably) better in the TransLink region than any other transit region in North America, this is hardly a certainty going forward. We still have a lot of work to do towards truly sustainable long-term operational and capital funding models for the system.

9. On major arterial roadways, transform curbside lanes to dedicated Bus Rapid Transit Priority Lanes, to offer a higher level of service and to incentivize public transit usage as economies transition to normal.
On major arterial roadways, transform curbside lanes to dedicated Bus Rapid Transit Priority Lanes, to offer a higher level of service and to incentivize public transit usage as economies transition to normal.

As mentioned in the item above, dedication of priority lanes is something local government can do to make transit more reliable and efficient. There are not many opportunities for this in New Westminster, but even a few subtle planned changes around New Westminster Station may significantly impact reliability, and are being worked on now. I could go on a long rant about Queensborough transit service and bus queues at the freeway off-ramp, but maybe I’ll save that for a future blog post.

10. Enact an immediate and permanent moratorium on the construction and reconstruction of urban expressways, including those in process.
To avoid inducing new single‐occupancy vehicle demand, enact a moratorium on urban highway expansion, including those in process, and instead focus on Transportation Demand Management strategies including growth management.

This is really a provincial issue, as only the Ministry of Transportation has the financing to build new “urban expressways”/”urban highways”. However, I think this declaration should be used ot inform how we continue to engage on the Pattullo Bridge Replacement (where MOTI has essentially designed an urban expressway interchange smack in the middle of an Urban Area), and the ongoing- but not-seemingly-going-anywhere discussions of a Brunette Interchange replacement. What can we imagine these pieces of infrastructure looking like if they are to put into an urban context?

11. Enact congestion pricing policies, and dedicate 100% of the revenues to public transportation expansion.
Enact congestion pricing policies, and dedicate 100% of the revenues to public transportation expansion. Include consideration and mitigation of equity concerns.

This is long overdue, and a complete political non-starter. Road Pricing does everything that people across the political spectrum want done about traffic – it measurably reduces congestion (it may be the only thing that actually does), it funds alternatives, it internalizes the abhorrently externalized costs of driving. However, it doesn’t matter that it is clearly the best public policy solution, especially at this time, because no provincial government in British Columbia will have the guts to make that case and make it happen, because Bruce Allen and the AM radio angertainment industry will hate it.

12. Mandate a conversion timetable stipulating that 100% of taxi and ride‐sharing vehicles will be electric.
Mandate a conversion timetable stipulating that 100% of taxi and Transportation Network Service (TNS) vehicles will be zero‐emission.
This is again a provincial jurisdiction thing, and as I have lamented in the past, we have not even been successful at asking for more a more accessible Taxi and TNS fleet (yes, the change from “ride sharing” to “TNS” is important, there is nothing “sharing” about the TNS industry). The Passenger Transportation Board just doesn’t want to go there, and I am willing to bet that the Taxi and TNS industries will push back hard, as it may limit the number of hours in a day that a vehicle can be utilized, and that pushed back against their business model.

13. Commit to fully electrify public bus fleets.
14. Require the full electrification of public sector vehicular fleets
Commit to zero‐emission public sector vehicular fleets (including buses)

We don’t really buy public transit fleet vehicles as a local government, but we do have some influence over the operations of TransLink through the Mayor’s Council, and TransLink is working on increased electrification of their fleet.

That said, municipal governments have significant vehicle fleets – engineering and parks vehicles, police cars, firetrucks, and a variety of run-around cars. New West has set dome aggressive goals as part of our Bold Step towards a carbon-free corporation.

Following this will be Part 3: Sustainability in the Built and Natural Environment, when I get to it.

Declaration for Resilience (Part 1)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

At the August 10 Council meeting, we endorsed actions addressing the 2020 Declaration for Resilience in Canadian Cities.

This is a pan-Canadian (but admittedly very “urban”) movement that calls for a post-COVID recovery that doesn’t repeat the mistakes of the last century of city planning, but instead imagines a greener, cleaner, decarbonized economy, built on the foundation of how we build and operate our Cities. It is signed by people across the political spectrum and from local government politics, city planning, business, academia and environmental activism.

The report New West Council received also included some re-framing of the original 20 proposed policy changes to fit better into the Metro Vancouver / New Westminster context, and included some additional policy directions coming out of staff discussions at Metro Vancouver and within the City of New Westminster.

I thought I would take a bit of sunny summer time to go through this declaration and pick out some of the sometimes-subtle changes that local staff suggested, along with my own comments (speaking, as always, for myself, not for all of Council). This might get a little long, because there is a lot here, so maybe make a cup of tea and I’ll break it up to several blog posts (divided up by the major themes of the Declaration). Each section will start with the original Declaration Text, followed by the staff-recommended adaptation for NW/MV context, followed by my comments. I’d love to hear feedback about this.

Ensuring Responsible Use of Land

1. Update zoning policies to allow more households to access existing neighbourhoods by permitting appropriately scaled multi-tenanted housing, co‐housing, laneway housing, and other forms of “gentle density” to be built, as‐of‐right, alongside houses in lowrise residential neighbourhoods.
Update zoning policies to allow more households to access existing neighbourhoods by permitting appropriately scaled multi‐tenanted housing, co-housing, laneway housing, and other forms of “gentle density” to be built, as‐of‐right, alongside houses in low‐rise residential neighbourhoods, especially along the Frequent Transit Network and in Urban Centres.
Apply the principle of equity to land use decisions so that the appropriateness of land use is determined on the basis of its impact on society as a whole rather than only the applicant or immediate neigbhours.

I think it is appropriate that this is first in the list of actions, because zoning impacts how we allocate use of land across our Cities, and the way we do it now is failing to address equity, is failing to address climate impacts or housing form, and is 100% within the power of Local Government to change.

I want to start be addressing the phrase in scare quotes – “gentle density”. This is a code word, and one I have used myself in the past. It means “slightly more housing, only to the extent that it doesn’t cause too much opposition from the people already comfortable housed in our community”. I think inserting that phrase alone calls into question the commitment to applying the principle of equity to land use decisions. I’ll just leave it with that social justice trick of questioning the implied agency and ask “gentle to whom?”

That said, I had another problem with the local context re-framing of this point. It is clear from the original text that we are talking about single family detached housing here, and large neighbourhoods in urban areas where this is currently the only permitted form of housing. The Declaration says we need to challenge that assumption if we are to meet our sustainability goals, and I agree with that. To change this by inserting “Frequent Transit Network” and “Urban Centres” as the only places appropriate for this change, undercuts the actual intent. In its original form, this is challenging the paradigm that high-traffic corridors are not the only place for multi-family housing, and the change softens that call. We need to break the mindset that the only appropriate use of density is to buffer as-right single family detached houses from the noise and pollution of traffic corridors.

Recent discussions around development of 12th Street in New Westminster are a good example of this thinking. Some folks feel that commercial-at-grade with a few floors of housing above is appropriate to support a secondary commercial district like this. Others feel that there is simply too much commercial as is to be supported by the relatively low residential density of the neighbourhood, and more commercial will simply mean more vacant commercial space where housing would be more appropriate. I would argue that the problem is not the density on 12th Street, but the lack of business-sustaining density within that all-important 5-minute walk shed. Walk three blocks back from a health pedestrian-sustained shopping street in Montreal (for example), and you find moderate-density housing, not SFD suburbs in the middle of a City.

Walkable, functional, equitable neighbourhoods cannot be car-reliant neighbourhoods. And Frequent Transit Networks rely on a density to be supportable just as commercial districts do. So let’s expand our thinking to beyond “along Frequent Transit Networks” to “every neighbourhood within walking distance of a Frequent Transit Network”, and we are onto something, which brings us to the next item:

2. Commit to the creation of 15‐minute neighbourhoods in which it is possible to live, work, and shop, by among other things permitting corner stores, local retail, and live‐work housing, and by adding more local parks in all areas of cities
Commit to the creation of 15‐minute neighbourhoods (ie: complete communities) in which it is possible to live, work, play and shop, by among other things permitting child care, corner stores, local retail, and live‐work housing, and by adding more local parks equitably throughout cities.

This idea behind 15-minute neighbourhoods is that residents should be able to access most of their daily needs within a 15-minute walk, or within about 1,200m of their home. This could mean a 5-minute bike ride, a 10-minue roll in a mobility scooter, or a 15-minute walk, but the idea is that it reduces automobile reliance for most trips. Yes, people can and will own cars, yes, not everyone can live within 1,200m of their job so there need to be commuting options, but if shopping, schools, libraries, rec centres, parks and “third places” are close enough by, stronger communities are built. Of course, this also means there need to be enough people within that 15-minute walkshed to support the things we want to see there, which brings us back to density.

3. Restrict short‐term rentals to ensure that rental homes are not once again removed from the rental market post‐COVID‐19.
Regulate short‐term rentals to ensure that rental homes are not once again removed from the rental market post‐COVID‐19.

The shift from “restrict” to “regulate” is a subtle one, perhaps. I have been banging the drum about the need for us to address AirBnB/VRBO/etc. in the City for several years, but it has just never been seen as a priority for New West staff or Council. It is a bit challenging to enforce, and we do not receive a lot of complaints about it, so perhaps the urgency is not there, and the COVID situation has probably delayed any eventual STR crisis, but the impact on the affordable rental market is pretty clear. Add this to the pile of better rental regulation we need in the province, but this one is 100% within the power of local governments to enact – we can’t pass the buck on this one.

4. Remove all mandatory minimum parking requirements for any new building, to both signal a shift in mobility priorities, and to remove the costly burden of parking, on housing.
Remove parking minimums, enhance visitor parking and bicycle parking supply and include vehicle sharing option for any new multi‐family and mixed‐use building particularly along the Frequent Transit Network, to both signal a shift in mobility priorities, and to remove the costly burden of parking on housing. Consider the introduction of parking maximums in transit‐oriented locations.

I think the changes here are again subtle (removing “all”, then adding other qualifiers that may soften it a bit), but reducing the requirement to build off-street parking for new multifamily developments has been an ongoing process in the City, and one Council has asked staff to advance recently. There is no doubt about the data: we are building way more parking than we need in transit-oriented developments, and there are real costs related to this overbuilding – cost to the housing, and costs to society. I think the one part missing from this is the acknowledgement that off-street parking policy needs to be coupled with properly allocating and pricing on-street storage of cars, and one again, planning policy and transportation policy overlap.

5. Prioritize the use of existing municipally‐owned land for the creation of affordable housing that remains affordable in perpetuity, and for strategic public green space that supports increased density.
Prioritize the use of existing municipally‐owned land for the creation of affordable housing and non‐profit childcare that remains affordable in perpetuity, and for strategic public green space that supports increased density.

This is another area New Westminster is already moving on. We do not have a great legacy of City-owned land compared to some jurisdictions, but we have been successful at getting two small-lot affordable housing developments built in the last couple of years, a TMH supportive housing project just opened in Queensborough on City land, and we are looking at two other sites for upcoming projects. We have also been successful at leveraging childcare space with new development. The greenspace issue is a bit of a harder nut to crack in some of our neighbourhoods, but I hope the Streets for People motion and our Bold Step #7  on re-allocated road space will provide some unexpected opportunities here.

6. Enact stronger restrictions on urban sprawl, including moratoria limiting additional, auto‐dependent, suburban sprawl developments
Enact stronger restrictions on low density, auto‐dependent residential, commercial, and employment developments.
This doesn’t speak directly to New Westminster, as we are already a built-out community, and growth will generally be through density increases and towards less sprawl. However, it does induce us to move towards less car-dependent and sprawly communities as we look at new master-planned communities like Sapperton Green and the future of the 22nd Street area in Connaught Heights.

The next section will be on “Decarbonization of our Transportation Systems”, whenever I get to writing about it.

Break

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Hey folks,

It is a strange time, and the energy in the air is strange. There seems to be a cumulative pile of stressors hitting people. Many are directly related to COVID, like concern for the health of loved ones, economic uncertainty, anxiety around public spaces, around work places and planning the return to school. Some are more abstractly connected, like the shift in work-life balance, a lack of festivals and events to pull us out of routine, the re-adjusting of social norms. People have been home to much, isolated too much, concerned too much. Fretting as our neighbor to the south appears to be burning itself down in strange and frightening ways, the reality of climate change hitting hard as the turning point in Arctic climate can no longer be ignored, we seem frustratingly unable, or unwilling, to address a growing pile of local crises: housing, poisoned drug supply, systemic racism…

In many ways, it feels like we are in a time when the status quo is shifting, and no-one is immune from the fear around that. Some like the status quo, or at least prefer it to the uncertainty that change brings. Others are doing the hard emotional and intellectual labour to try to assure that change goes in a good direction, to serve others, to serve themselves, to build a stronger community. Others just spend their time shit posting. We all adapt in the way we know how.

I have felt it. I recognize I am extremely fortunate through this. My family (knock on wood) is safe and healthy, I’m still (knock on wood) able to work, have healthy relationships that provide me support, can enjoy the long bike rides that keep my emotional chemistry in check. But with all that, I am more acutely aware these days of my mental health, of behaviours and thought patterns that are probably not productive, not making me happy or adding to my quality of life. I miss my friends, even if I am still kinda connected to them through social media and occasional walk-bys. I miss community events, group bike rides, chatting with folks at a pub, random social stuff that makes my community buzz for me. But aside from missing things, there is something else. Decisions are hard to get to. Concentration on a task is hard. Sleeping is weird. It is low-level anxiety creeping in on the edges. Not debilitating, but bothersome, so I guess even there I am luckier than some.

All this to say, I’m going to take a bit of a breather in August, and try to do some things a bit different. Mostly, that means I’m going to turn off my Social Media for the month. I haven’t done this since long before I was elected, so it will be a little strange. FOMO is a real part of my mental matrix, and I need to work on that.

We have a couple of Council meetings in August, and I will endeavor to blog those out soon after they happen, as I have for more than 5 years. But other than that, I won’t be responding to Twitter or Facebook, because I won’t be looking at Twitter or Facebook. You can always e-mail me at pjohnstoneATnewwestcityDOTca for City stuff, or at infoATpatrickdjohnstoneDOTca for regular-life stuff. I read them all, respond when I can. Have a good summer.

Be Safe, Be Calm, Be Kind. See you in September.

Calmer streets

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 4 Comments.

Earlier in the year, I brought this motion to Council, asking that the City be bolder in finding ways to re-level the balance between car use and other users for public space in the City. We had already made commitments in our Climate Action goals that we are going to change how road space is allocated in the City over the next decade. Then along came COVID to shine a brighter light on some of the inequities in our communities, and cities around the world started acting more aggressively on road space reallocation as a pandemic response. The time was right for New West to accelerate the ideas in our Master Transportation Plan.

Early on, there was some rapid work to address pedestrian and active transportation “pinch points”, especially in the Uptown and on a few Greenways. The city was able to quickly create more safe public space downtown by re-applying the weekend vehicle closure plan of Front Street that we already had experience with. Uptown, the BIA asked the City to allow temporary weekend-only opening of some street space for lightly-programmed public space. Response has been pretty positive:

There is a bit of push-back on these interventions, as there always is when status quo is challenged in the transportation realm. Predictably, the traffic chaos, accidents, parking hassles and general mayhem that was predicted by more vocal opposition just didn’t occur. Staff is tracking actual data, but I have made a point to visit these areas often (COVID and working from home has made me into one of those walking-for-recreation types) and have been collecting admittedly anecdotal views of how these sites are working.

There are two more ideas that are being launched for the second half of the summer, and I want to talk about them because they came from different directions, but ended up in the same place, and are also eliciting some public comments right now (as was the intent!)

The City is piloting a “Cool Streets” program that identifies key pedestrian routes in the City for light interventions to reduce the through-traffic load and give pedestrians more space to stretch out. The way these streets were identified for the pilot is what makes this interesting, and speaks to one of my previous lives when I was briefly a GIS geek.

The goal to identify areas of the City where more vulnerable people have less access to green space, shade, and safe waling/rolling routes to parks and services. The approach very much aligns with the City’s Intelligent City initiative by using data-driven analysis to help make decisions. The City used its Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data set to identify areas that met the following criteria: higher population density, lower household incomes, larger proportion of seniors, and lower parks space per capita. Using GIS to “overlay” these layers, they identified area where many of these criteria overlap:

Once the “dense” areas of this map were identified, staff went through looking at the routes that combine connectivity to key destinations (parks and services), where grades were lower and where the most tree canopy cover was available:

They then identified priority routes for “green street” interventions (1, 2, and the west part of 3 in the map below), and extended these along streets that get to key destinations (the east part of 3 and 4):

The interventions here are very light. The roads are not “closed” to cars, but are calmed using ideas drawn from experiences in other cities from New York to Oakland to Toronto to Vancouver. The hope is to create truly traffic-calmed streets where local access by car is still available, but the space is open for people to share and program as they wish. Local streets acting like streets for locals, not as through-fares.

A second initiative was led by a community group in Sapperton. Concerned about some recent close calls on the part of the Central Valley Greenway that runs through lower Sapperton, they surveyed their neighbours and brought a proposal to staff asking if a pinching down of one block of the greenway could be trialed in light of the Streets for People motion. Again, the road is not closed, but signage was installed to discourage through-traffic and removable soft barriers installed.

Both of these interventions are temporary pilots. They cost very little to put in action, and provide valuable data to our transportation planners, while also giving the public a chance to see what changes would look like before we invest in more permanent or expanded road re-allocation.

In her great book Street Fight, Jeannette Sadik-Khan talks about successes in urban residential areas where more local and lower-key interventions like this have occurred. A major part of this is trying some things (lightly, quickly, and cheaply) as a form of consultation and data collection. This allows us to get past the baked-in institutional resistance to change that says everyone has to agree on paper before we even try the most minor change, and before we can test whether a change is a net good. The Summer Streets program in New York was her model of this – feared by many, embraced by almost everyone once implemented, with the fears proving unfounded in the long term.

All that to say, these light interventions are designed to elicit not just public participation, but public feedback. And I have received feedback already. I’ve received e-mail form people very upset that they were not consulted; e-mail form people predicting traffic chaos; and e-mail from people asking if they can do this on their street. My short answer to those questions are, respectively: this is the consultation; the sites selected were local streets, not traffic-challenged throughfares, but staff will be collecting data to assess the impacts on traffic; and not likely this year just because of timing, but if things go well, I hope these kinds of pilots can be expanded in 2021.

So, if you like this kind of intervention, let us know. If you don’t, tell us why. Staff have included in the analysis above other priority areas for Cool Streets that may be implemented in the future, including Downtown and the McBride commercial area in Glenbrooke North. As for the community-driven version, if you would like to see this type of intervention as a temporary or permanent feature of your street, start reaching out to your neighbors (maybe hold a social distance block party?) and talk about it. If you can gather enough interest, maybe the City can make something happen in 2021.  To me, local communities reclaiming space is a major part of making Streets for People again.

Council – July 13 2020 (pt1)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The last Council meeting before the summer break (pending emergency meetings, because, hey, it’s 2020, and we may need to address a local response to the meteor impact) had a lot on the Agenda and a lengthy Zoom meeting ensued. I think what I will do is split this report into two, because it is simply too much to write up in one sitting. I will also talk more in a follow up post about the special resolutions, but our business started with moving the following items On Consent:

Amendments to the 2020 Schedule of Regular Council Meetings
Staff are suggesting some adjustments of the Council schedule after the summer breaks, and as we anticipate we will still be meeting virtually in September, so the regular September meeting in Q’boro will be delayed until we can meet again. All this subject to change based on meteor forecast.

Terms of Reference – Grants Committees
We have been working on making our Grant process more streamlined and community-centered. This step will disband the 5 existing community volunteer committees that review the applications, and replace them with three committees that are aligned with the goals of the grants: have more directed focus: Community Livability and Social Equity; Social and Cultural Vibrancy; and Community Economic Activators. We are also re-assigning members of the “old” committees to the “new” ones, and dong a call out to the public to fill the vacant roles in the new ones. If you want to help the City decide how to spend $1M next year in making your community a more inclusive, livable, and vibrant place, watch this site for an opportunity to sign up.

Non-Profit Pandemic Recovery Response
New West has a lot of non-profit (or, I prefer “social profit”) organizations doing a bunch of important work that keeps our community livable. Arts, culture, social support, education, health, housing, so much of the important village-building work relies on these organizations, and they are stressed by COVID at the same time that the need for their work is made more pronounced by the pandemic.

The City has followed up on some province-wide work to connect with our social profit sector and find out what supports they most need, and what role the City has in facilitating that support. Through this, a number of tactics are discussed, and ones that don’t involve a lot of new direct expense for the City (as we are also in uncertain financial times) are moving forward, including facilitating a peer-network approach, and reviewing how we charge for City services like room rentals. There is more to do here, but this is a start. And the appendix of this report gives us a good “lay of the land” look at the City’s non-profit sector.

COVID-19 Pandemic Response – Update and Progress from the Five Task Forces
Here are the every-meeting updates on the action of the 5 internal city task forces. There is some interesting discussion here about how prepared we are for the “second wave”, but mostly these updates show a measured reduction in response activities.

Artist Selection – Queen’s Park Sportsplex Public Art Project
All new City buildings have a Public Art provision to make the space around them better. Generally, a budget is created (proportional to the cost of the building), a Call for Artists is done, and applications (in this case – 10 of them) are reviewed for a short list. Three short-listed artists/teams provide more design ideas and vision, and the Public Art Advisory Committee (a volunteer committee made up of subject matter experts from the community) makes a recommendation to Council. We then have the option to approve or reject the application, after which a contract is drawn up and the artist gets to work. We are now at the “Council approves” stage, which Council did.

631 Second Street: Heritage Revitalization Agreement – For Preliminary Review
This is a preliminary report on an application to subdivide a single family lot in Glenbrook North and build two single family homes on “compact lots”. This one is a bit complicated, because the house is older, but has been modified such that it doesn’t really qualify for Heritage Protection, so it would have to be restored by replacing with replica materials. (Enter the “form and character” debate). There is a lot going on here, with the lot somewhat restricted by access and grade. The eventual proposal would see one house replaced with two houses, each potentially with a basement suite, for up to 4 units where there is currently one (or two?). As a preliminary application, this will now go to public consultation and other reviews. If you have opinions, let us know what you think.

404 Second Street: Heritage Revitalization Agreement – Preliminary Report
This is a preliminary application to put an addition on the unusual butcher/deli business in Queens Park, formalize it current use, and allow some change of signage and awning to reflect its original character. Again, going to community consultation and review. Let us know if you have opinions.

Interdepartmental Working Group on the Overdose Epidemic: Update
There has been an ongoing Public Health Emergency since 2016, related to a poisoned illicit drug supply. It has killed many more people in British Columbia than COVID, and New Westminster is no less impacted than any other community in the province. This is another one of those areas that is, by strict definition, the responsibility of the Provincial Government, but costs related to managing emergency response still fall on Local Governments (Our Fire Service has administered Naloxone to more than 250 people since starting with the program a few years ago, more than 100 times in 2019 alone). The City cannot turn away from our residents being impacted by the emergency, and instead have been a participant in an action team coordinating efforts between Fraser Health and non-profit organizations. This report provides an update on the actions we are supporting, and next steps.

I am not going to bury the lede here: we can save lives with safe consumption sites and with a safe supply. These are both challenging ideas for some members of the community, but the data supporting both of these measures as public health interventions is unequivocal. This public emergency is killing people here in New Westminster, it is time for us to move on the things we know will help, we know will save lives. The direction Council is endorsing here is to work with Fraser Health and community partners to make these happen.

New Westminster Rent Bank Program Funding Renewal Request
The City has participated in the Rent Bank program for a couple of years now. This is a program where people facing temporary financial crisis can borrow money at low cost to cover rent or utility costs to prevent them becoming homeless. Credit Unions provide backing for the loans, and the City provides funding to support the administration of the program, after an initial seed funding contribution. The Province is also providing annual administrative support. The request here is for the City to continue to support administrative support for $35,000/year, which is already in our capital budget, so not new spending. Done.

618 Carnarvon (Urban One Project): Request for Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption
This project under construction on Downtown New West needs to remove and replace a street lamp which is so close to the SkyTrain line that they are not permitted to do it while the SkyTrian is running, meaning they need a permit to do the work between midnight and 5am. They will do this work on the night of July 17.

2019 Statement of Financial Information
Every year we do the SOFI, which reports all of our audited financial information in a standard form. It also reports those juicy details like how much we pay everyone (over $75,000/year – here comes that news story again), how much we paid every contractor in the City (over $25,000) and the expenses of City Councilors. In 2019 I attended the Lower Mainland LGA Conference in Harrison (part of my costs were covered by the LMLGA because I am on the executive), the one-day CivX conference in Vancouver, the UBCM Conference in Vancouver, and the FCM conference in Quebec City. It was a busy year for me conference-wise, which will be a very different story in 2020. I generally report out on my Blog about these events, so you know what I was up to. That was virtually all of my expenses for 2019. Happy to answer any questions you have.

2020 Deferral of Tax Sale Bylaw No. 8210, 2020
Taxes get paid. If a property owner defaults on property taxes, the City is able to required by law to sell the property for recovery of the delinquent taxes. There is a timeliness point to this, no doubt developed to keep the process fair and transparent. However, recognizing that we are giving some room to delay tax payment in 2020 because of the Pandemic, we are also delaying the Tax Sale aspect of the process, to give people more time to address any financial burden the property tax may cause.

Proposed Queensborough Community Learning Garden in Ryall Park
The Changes at Ryall Park around the Temporary Modular Housing project are coming along as the housing itself is ready to open. The opportunity here to bring urban agriculture public lands in Ryall Park is really exciting. The City is partnering with GROWcery Food Network to provide the community garden aspects, and the design will also include an urban orchard to bring food trees. There are a bunch of overlapping community benefits here, from locally sourced food to community-based gardening training and education, and will hopefully be a centre for cooperation between the community and the housing operators and residents. There are lots of partners here, but City staff have really done a great job creating and fostering a vision for this space. This is good work.

Correspondence: New Westminster Police Board letter dated July 7, 2020 regarding a motion regarding reforms to the New Westminster Police Department
I have written a couple of posts about the role of City Council and the role of the Police Board in how the Police are run and funded in the City. Obviously, both bodies have heard the calls from Black Lives Matter and people concerned about the culture of Policing in Canada, especially as it relates to the impacts on Indigenous and Black persons in our community. The Police Board have put together a plan of action and are asking the City Council to take part in the conversation, and Council has responded positively to the invite with the following motion:

THAT City Council work with the Police Board;
THAT the CAO be directed to work with the Police Chief and the Director of Human Resources to develop a comprehensive workplan and budget to implement the motion;
and THAT a Special joint meeting of City Council and the Police Board be held in September to discuss and deliberate on the comprehensive workplan and budget.

More to come.

We then had a Financial Plan Amendment report:

Five Year Financial Plan (2019-2023) Amendment Bylaw No. 8207, 2020
By now, diligent readers will know the City operates under a 5-year financial plan that is approved by Council as a Bylaw, and updated every year. As any plan that projects financial information forward into the next year is likely to need adjustment as estimates are improved or unanticipated financial changes occur, the 5-year plan is also updated within the year as needed to track as close as possible to reality. There is also a big adjustment at the end of the year to rectify our estimates with what actually came to pass. So here is the last adjustment of the 2019 budget, to reflect what actually happened vs. what we estimated. How much changed? That sounds like a fun follow-up blog post…

We reported this out in an earlier meeting and posted it on the website asking for comment. We received none. Council moved to give the Five-Year Financial Plan (2019-2023) Amendment Bylaw three readings and adoption.

…and I think that is all I will report now, more to come tomorrow (or the next day? As I find some time to write it up. In the meantime, go out, get some sun.

Taxes 2020 part 2

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The conversation about property taxes is always loudest not at tax time, but when the annual tax rates are announced. Early in the new year, every City Council in BC gets to the part of the annual budgeting process where tax increases enter the conversation.

Most of the rest of the year, Council talks about things they want to do. People come to Council and ask the City to do things. Any reduction in the base level of service is treated as an affront to all that is good. Reluctance to take on new tasks is seen as not supporting the incredible community benefits those tasks will support. Ten months of the year Council is asked to do more; two months of the year, we are told to spend less. That is not a complaint, it is an observation of how democratic government works. It’s the job I applied for.

As a result, discussion of taxes is rarely separated from discussion of ever increasing taxes. It does little to tell people that federal and provincial taxes have been steadily going down in Canada and BC for several decades as more tasks are downloaded to local governments. Property taxes are going up faster than inflation, and some people don’t like it.

Following on my last post, and in my continued quest to compare us to our cohort, I got to digging into the data again. We can again compare the New Westminster experience to the rest of Greater Vancouver through the BC Government stats on property taxes that are available as far back as 2005 here in “Schedule 707”. I will continue to argue (until someone gives me a good reason to think otherwise) that taxes collected per capita is the best comparator of taxes paid across the region. So how does New West compare to the other 20 Greater Vancouver Municipalities in tax per capita of the last 15 years? It’s a bit messy, but here we are:

There are two outliers: West Van has always been highest, Surrey has been lowest. New West is somewhere in the middle, increasing slightly less (by my eye) than average over the decade and a half. The big tends if I try to parse them: Delta and Port Moody rising faster than most (likely related to higher industrial land use and resultant industrial tax “windfalls”); the small communities (Anmore, Bowen, Lions Bay, Belcarra) all seeing recent significant rises since ~2013 (I would suggest they are coming to grips with infrastructure renewal costs they cannot offset with growth); Vancouver bucking the trend a bit, and the rest of us pretty tightly clustered together. If there are reasons for municipal tax increases, they don’t seem to track with politically left or right councils, rich or poor cities, or any imagined east-west or north-south divide.

Using the same BC Government Schedule 707 tables, you can look at how each city has changed in the 15 years between 2005 and 2019. There are three related growth numbers I think are fun to compare: population, value of residential land per capita, and the residential taxes collected per capita:

For the fun of it, I sorted this data by the rate of population growth. Despite what I said just two paragraphs ago, you can see Anmore was the surprisingly-fastest growing municipality over that 15 years increasing by 57%, even faster than Surrey. New West population rose 29% over that time (from just under 60,000 to just under 77,000), which makes us one of the faster growing communities. Lions Bay and Belcarra both lost population over this time. This chart, however, doesn’t show any clear trend relating the rate of growth to the rate of property value increases or tax increases.

This second view is the same data, but sorted by the increase in residential property taxes per capita. New Westminster is slightly below average in increase, as the per capita tax rate has gone up 76% over 15 years, compared to 78% for the average municipality (a tie between Langley Township and Port Coquitlam). New West residential land values have gone up quite a bit more than the average, though. In 2005, there was $84,000 worth of residential property per person, in 2019 that number is $276,000 – more than a tripling in value.

Just for the fun of it, I did the math to create a totally meaningless idea. If there was a (statistically-unlikely) person in New Westminster who owned a proportionate value of land for those 15 years, they would have paid about $7,700 in property taxes over that time, and earned about $192,000 in increased land value. Of course this is only property taxes to the municipality, not to the province (School taxes) to regional government (GVRD taxes), and doesn’t include the fee-for service money the City collects for utilities. Still, I think it argues against the sometimes-proffered idea that municipal taxes have been a significant driver of housing affordability challenges in the region over the last decade and a half.

Taxes 2020

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 4 Comments.

I am returning to a common theme here in the blog, because I like to look at data, and have recently had a resurgence of folks suggesting to me that New Westminster is the highest taxed city in Christendom. Well, maybe only in British Columbia. Recently, I noticed a Councilor in another municipality puffing his own tires about how prudent the tax regime in his City was by calling out New Westminster as specifically worse tax- & spend-thrifts. Which allotted me the excuse for the following subtweet:

That the City that Councillor represented was well to the left of New West in the graph above was left unsaid, as were his name and that of his community, because I really don’t think it is a competition. Moreover, the problem with graphs like above is that they are one simplified analysis, and as I have tried to demonstrate in many blog posts like this over the years (Here with 2019 numbers, Here from 2015, Here where I compared taxes and utility rates, etc, etc. ) there are various ways to compare property taxes between Cities, and any comparison is useless without context. Some more useless than others.

Cities primarily provide services to people. This is why we generally rank the “size” of a City by population, not by square kilometers. The cost of providing services also most closely tracks with population. So when we talk about tax burden, certainly in the sense that our nameless Councillor was talking about it, we are talking about how much you pay for taxes as a resident of the City, which is easily measured by the taxes collected per capita:

The BC Government collects these stats every year, and report out on “tax burden” on a spreadsheet they call Schedule 707. You can read it here. The table above was generated by dividing the 2019 “Total Municipal Taxes” from each City by the population (2018 estimate, because that is what is on the Schedule). New West collected just under $84M in taxes a population of just over 76,000 people, for a per capita tax of $1093. This puts us right in the middle of Lower Mainland municipalities. The average of these per capita numbers is $1123 (New West is a little lower), but the average tax burden is actually $1042 (New West is a little higher).  This makes sense based on the different ways you can calculate the average, but fair to say New West is pretty firmly in the middle of the region.

This first chart compares all municipal taxes, though, and residential property tax – that collected from homeowners and landlords of rental properties – is only a portion of this. We also collect taxes from businesses and industries and utilities and such. Fortunately, Schedule 707 also break taxes down by property class. New Westminster collected just under $52M in residential taxes from those 76,000 residents, which works out to $675 per capita:

As you can see, that puts New Westminster just below average across the region. You will also note the municipalities that leap to the left side of the graph tend to be residential communities with limited commercial and industrial properties. Without those businesses to prop up the expense of the running the City, residential property owners have to pay more. Here is the commercial and industrial taxes collected per capita in 2019:

In this red is “Major Industry” like the Kruger paper plant or big industrial areas like Annacis and Mitchell Islands. Purple is “light industry” like the type of warehouses you drive by on the Mary Hill Bypass or in Port Kells. Green is “commercial”, which means retail, restaurants, malls and office buildings.

As you can see the distribution of this type of development is unequal across the region. Vancouver is the commercial centre of the region, and has oodles of office and retail space downtown and along the Broadway corridor. Delta has Annacis Island and the River Road corridor, that huge industrial reservoir allows them to keep their residential taxes low. As a proportion of property tax collected, New Westminster gets about 38% of its tax revenue from commercial and industrial properties and 62% from residential, which again puts it somewhere in the middle:

Unfortunately, commercial and industrial taxes are much harder to compare across the region. “Per Capita”, as I have used here, feels wrong. Raw numbers or rates are hard to compare because the value of commercial real estate in Downtown Vancouver is very different then the same office space in Langley, with New West somewhere in the middle. The pressures, costs, and relative utility of industrial land varies even more widely across the region. I will try to dig more into that in a follow-up post, because there are a few ways to look at business taxes in New West that make it look like we may be a little out of the ordinary.

But when ti comes to residential taxes, it is clear that New West is neither high or low taxed relative to the rest of the region. And there is a good case to be made that the Lower Mainland of BC has among the lowest residential property taxes in North America. But I’ll let someone else make that case.

June 22 Public Hearing

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

This week we had our first adventure with an on-line Public Hearing and Opportunity to be Heard. It was not without its challenges. Though it appeared that staff had made the systems necessary work, and our “trial run” last week fairly uneventful, we are relying on members of the general public to manage their own interface and web technology during what is probably an unusual situation for many, so there were a few glitches. People were afforded the ability to write or e-mail Council with input prior to the meeting, or to use web videoconferencing through a web browser, or phone in during the meeting. Some did more than one of these.

First off, the Public Hearing:

Zoning Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bylaw No. 8172, 2020
This first Public Hearing is to review multiple relatively minor changes to the language of our Zoning Bylaws. It updated some language and made numerous textural changes to make things more consistent internally and with City policies. Not surprisingly, we had no written submissions and no speakers to this item.

Council moved to give this Bylaw Third Reading and Adoption.

Zoning Amendment Bylaw (909 First Street) No. 8188, 2020
This project will have four townhouse style homes replace a single family home on a largish lot in Glenbrooke North. This represents the type of moderate infill density that was envisioned in our OCP. Though it is not the transit-densest neighbourhood in town, there are a lot of walkable services nearby and will provide more housing options in a very family-friendly neighbourhood.

This went through a public open house and Residents Association meeting, and generally received favourable comments. There were a few concerns raised about traffic and parking. However, it was noted that this will be a 4-unit development replacing a duplex with basement suites, so the actual increase in density (and car space needed) is marginal.

We received 8 written submissions (mostly in favour) and a few people took part in the public hearing, raising concerns about parking and traffic for the most part.

Council moved to support giving the Rezoning Bylaw Third Reading.

Zoning Amendment Bylaw (45 East Eighth Avenue) No. 8189, 2020
This is another project that will replace a single family home with townhouses to provide more “missing middle” housing with relatively gentle infill, this time in the Massey Victory Heights neigbourhood. It went to a public open house and residents’ association meeting and appeared to generate favourable comments. We had a few speakers, mostly related ot the development (the owner and Architect) and one neighbor concerned about parking and traffic.

Council moved to approve Third reading of the rezoning.

We then went into an Opportunity to be Heard:

Inter-Municipal TNS (Ride Hailing) Business Licence Scheme Bylaw No.
8186, 2020
This Bylaw would sign New Westminster onto the larger inter-municipal business licensing scheme for ride hailing in the Lower Mainland. This doesn’t really equal “approving” ride hailing, as the provincial government hasn’t really given us that option, but instead it allows us to take part in a regional regulatory regime that will give us some control over how it operates, and provide us some access to the valuable data collected by the industry to help us manage the transportation regime in our community more effectively.

We had two people contact us, one a small operator in the industry, and one raising some concerns about what ride hailing means for equity in our community.

I have already expressed my concerns about the model of ride hailing as being offered by large venture-capital supported multinational corporations that exploit their employees, increase GHG emissions in our communities, make our neighbourhood streets less safe and undermine sustainable transportation modes that are the foundation of our regional planning principles. I also have concerns about climate impacts and accessibility impacts, but recognize that we as local governments have limited regulatory authority to address those concerns.

My support for this Inter-Municipal business license is in recognition that if we are to have any regulatory control over this potentially damaging technology, it will be through business licensing. It is important that we collect and interpret this data, and having business licensing is a way to get that data. This is not the end of the story, but the beginning, and it is upon us to work with our neighboring communities to stay aware of the impacts or ride hailing – positive and negative – and work to the limit of our licensing authority to address the negative impacts, as the provincial government seems to be taking a hands-off approach.

Council voted to approve this Bylaw.

We had a few more Bylaws to adopt this meeting:

Zoning Amendment (Stage 1 – Sustainable Transportation) Bylaw No. 8184, 2020
Bylaw Notice Enforcement Amendment Bylaw No. 8168, 2020 and
Municipal Ticket Information Amendment Bylaw No. 8169, 2020
As discussed in the June 1 meeting, we updated some of our zoning requirements that support sustainable transportation. These bylaw changes are now adopted by Council.

Zoning Amendment (Sidewalk/Street Patios and Parklets) Bylaw No. 8206, 2020
As discussed last meeting, we are doing more to support patios in the City, and we have now adopted the bylaw.

Zoning Amendment Bylaw (2223 Ninth Avenue) No. 8180, 2020
This single family house with a laneway house development was given a Public Hearing back in February, and now that all the details have been hammered out, we can adopt the Bylaw.

Feedback

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I like to complain as much as the next guy. However, I do try to keep it constructive and useful. I recently send a complaint to TransLink via a short Twitter thread, photos and all. The very pleasant person on the other side of the anonymous @TransLink twitter account replied that they noted the concern, and asked that I follow up with the on-line TransLink feedback form. I was admittedly slow to do this, in part because the feedback form is limited to 2,000 characters (I can’t sing Happy Birthday in less than 2,000 characters) and I thought the issue really needed the photos I took to highlight my concern. So, I sent them a TL;dnr complaint to the suggestion box and added a link to this post, where I expand on my Twitter thread and add the photos that I think tell the story.

Hello.

I had a pleasant conversation through Twitter (yes, that is possible) with your social media staff last month, and they recommended I send this concern directly to this e-mail, so here we are, I finally got my rant together.

There is a bus stop on Westminster Highway right across the street from the Hamilton Transit Centre. Stop #59555 I think. The bus stop is on a (painted) bike lane. Not a perfect design, but sometimes you need to make due as there are lot of challenges for road space and curb space in the City. A bus stopping for a few seconds to pick up or drop off customers is a minor hassle for someone using the bike lane, and I think supporting transit users is really important for all cyclists – we active transportation users are all in this together!

Though it is not optimal in design, this is kind of an important bike lane. That area of Queensborough/Hamilton is a bit of a pinch point with the freeway jammed through it, and the route along Westminster Highway is really the only accessible, low-gradient and family-friendly route between the residential areas of Hamilton and the residential areas of Queensborough. It serves as an important connection for parks, shopping, the child care centre, and other travel. There really isn’t another way around here (except a ridiculous, really high, steep, and narrow pedestrian overpass a little way to the South, which no cycle should ever be on, and which doesn’t connect to anything, and is a prime example of why MOTI should not be trusted to build anything in an urban area, but I digress).

Now, the problem with Stop #59555 is that it has increasingly been used as place to store buses. It seems there is always one or two buses staged there, sometimes shut off with no drivers. I realize the 410 route often has delay/deadheading issues, but I also assume this is a spot for shift changes or other reasons bus are stored here. I have cycle commuted on this route for years, and I do not recall buses staging here prior to the opening of the Transit Centre. So now, instead of people on bikes waiting a few seconds for the bus to pick up or drop off, we need to travel around the bus.

A >2m-wide bus parked in a <2m painted bike lane means cyclists wishing to pass by must enter the driving lane of a road with the name “Highway”, and one with a significant portion of truck traffic. For experienced cyclists like myself, that is merely a bothersome decrease in my safety as I signal and take the lane and hope drivers respect my space (no doubt irritating a small number of them, pushing them towards writing their own long impotent screeds on the Vancouver Sun Facebook page about scofflaw cyclists not staying in their lane). But for other users it creates a serious barrier. Here is what I happened upon while riding along that route a few weeks ago, which launched this specific impotent screed:

As someone who cares about active transportation, as someone who proudly extols the virtues of TransLink as one of the greatest urban transit systems in North America, as someone elected to advocate for the safety and comfort of active transportation users in my community, all I want is for this mother to feel comfortable taking her daughter for a bike ride. I want the daughter to grow up confident and free and empowered by her bicycle. I want mom and daughter to be safe. The bikeway here is not optimal, but Translink’s operational choice here is making it markedly less safe every day. I mean, what is she supposed to do here? What message are we sending?

So please, see if you can change this operational practice, hopefully this summer, until a proper engineered work-around (a pull-out for the bus, or a bike lane routed behind the bus stop) can be implemented. If you need help from the City to make that happen, or if there is someone else I need to call, please let me know. Don’t do it for me, the “experienced rider” who doesn’t mind irritating the occasional driver if road engineering forces me into that choice. Do it for this family, for this mom trying to teach her daughter how to navigate her community safely, for this youth discovering one of the greatest tools for empowerment and freedom ever invented – riding a bicycle.

Thanks.