Category: Uncategorized

Compromise

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 5 Comments.

The existing Skate Park at Mercer Stadium is now closed, as the school district is busy building a high school on that spot. Recognizing this was coming, the City put some money in to the capital budget to build a replacement. The replacement will be bigger and more modern than the old skool bowl at Mercer, and it took more than year to work with the skate community and other stakeholders to figure out the best compromise between various potential locations. The best solution found was the old Arenex location at Queens Park, in an area of the park designated for “active recreation” in the Queens Park Master Plan.

As there was some community concern related to this location during the community and stakeholder consultation, staff did extra outreach, design and engineering work to specifically address the concerns raised by some existing park users. With this work done, they came to Council in Monday last to ask for the go-ahead to procure the works, in the hopes we can get the new facility in the ground this summer.

I received a lot of correspondence on this proposal. At least 60 e-mails, some in favour; most opposed. An online petition was circulated and apparently collected hundreds of signatures in opposition to the proposal though I have to note that I haven’t seen or been provided any such list. Frankly, I was dismayed by much of what I read in that correspondence. I’m not going to call anyone out by name here, but the quotes speak for themselves:

“I am concerned about cadet safety and potential conflict that could arise between the cadets and skateboard park users”

“It will just lead to conflict between young people and theatre goers.”

“The theatre building will be a prime target for graffiti.”

“With the legalization of marijuana, the theatre faces the possible smell of skunk to the west”

“I believe having a skate park within Queens Park anywhere would be a detriment to the Park. It is a beautiful quiet family park and not suited to a skate park at all.”

“There are many (most) residents in new Westminster who would have it (the skateboard park) done away with if they could, so please do not create more ill will between your mature, working, VOTING citizens and youth.”

To quote the staff report on the last round of Public Consultation “In summary the stakeholder’s concerns include personal safety for other park users, risk of vandalism, potential for bullying of youth aged members of some organizations, perceptions of noise generated at the site, potential for vandalism/ graffiti”

I’ll talk about the noise concern further down, but before I get there, I have to admit that just reading this correspondence completely took me aback, and made it hard for me to remain objective. The narrative presented offers an archaic and uninformed attitude about roller sports. Skating (along with bmx/trials, scooting, blading) is a healthy, creative athletic activity enjoyed by youth and adults. Characterizing an entire group of recreation users as troublemakers not deserving of sharing in our parks use because they are vaguely threatening is, in short, offensive to my definition of community. So, to be really honest here, I probably went into Monday’s meeting with a frame of mind shaped by this, and that no  doubt influenced my decision making. But let’s step back a bit.

When planning for a facility like this, or any facility in a City Park, there is a lot of work done before we get to a meeting like last Monday. Staff, user groups, stakeholders, consultants, and Council have been working on this for more than a year. I appreciate people wanting to get engaged in a decision like this, but people joining at the 11th hour need to recognize that your new idea has most likely already been evaluated. The City evaluated every piece of available City-owned land between Grimston and Hume Parks, between (to borrow a phrase) 10th and the Fraser, for this facility, and none were perfect. However, I can confidently say, having been involved in this discussion for more than year, that all other options had more net negatives than the final proposed location. The proposed place was not the perfect place, it was the least non-perfect place. That is the reality of how a consultative City works – every decision is a compromise of least-perfect solutions.

That said, the proposed location was a good one, worthy of support.

In speaking to the Skate community, it was clear that by putting a roller sport facility (like any other facility primarily directed at youth) at front and centre in a public place, you not only show you are inviting that activity into your community, but you generate interest, curiosity, and engagement, and build the sport. We hear too much these days that youth have limited opportunity or interest in unstructured outdoor activity (or “getting off their screens”, in the parlance of the day). Roller sport are exactly the kind of creative, athletic, unstructured, knee-scabbing and dexterity-building activity we lament youth not doing enough of, yet we have adults here trying to marginalize the activity by wanting it put “somewhere else” where they don’t have to see, walk or even park near it. Sorry, that argument doesn’t work for me.

Knowing this issue was emerging, I have spent some time in the last little while dropping by the old Mercer skate bowl and the All-Wheel Park at the Queensborough Community Centre. Every time I went by there, there were users of a variety of ages, from 4 year olds on scooters to adults teaching their kids how to board. There were parents watching their kids be active and creative in the outdoors. None of them felt this was an unsafe place. I think all of them would be offended to hear they (and their kids) were being dismissed as threatening to other parks users. The New West Police and the staff at the Queensborough Community Centre were both consulted on conflict issues that we may need to mitigate if we move the facility to Queens Park, and both said, plain and simple, there are none. The City’s skate parks are not havens of hooliganism and trouble.

There is a reason for that. Rolling sports are not a fringe activity like it may have been 25 years ago. This is a mainstream sport. Its culture has evolved to one of creativity, community support, and partnership. When I found out that roller sports are going to be in the Olympics in 2020, and tried to square this with the non-competitive/cooperative nature of the community, it reminded me of something I noticed at the Winter Olympics this year. In the new Snowboard/Slopestyle/Cross type sports, there was a noticeably strong comradery in these sports. The person finishing fourth in the Skicross ran up to hug the gold medalist from another country; every slick run was rewarded by high-fives from competitors, every sick crash with a pat on the back or a hug. The kids today are different than us; dare I say better.

This was manifest in the correspondence I received in favour of putting the park in Queens Park. Again, no names:

“Placing the new skate park in the centre of Queens Park would profoundly and positively impact the New West community and increase acceptance and diversity for youth in New West. I believe it is the responsibility of our Mayor and Council to practice inclusivity towards more unique recreational activities that are popular among our youth.”

“I believe that placing the skate park in Queens Park would demonstrate the city’s celebration of diversity as well as honouring positive activities. It would set an example for all of our youth to see adults value the well-being, health, and enjoyment of young people. Skate Parks are a beautiful place that may invite people across many different socioeconomic backgrounds in New West to enjoy being outside, and foster belonging within our community”

“Given the wide range of existing facilities and user groups within Queens’ Park, our community has demonstrated it’s belief in the importance of public spaces being fully inclusive of different expressions of arts, culture, leisure and recreation. This is an opportunity to welcome a new user group and demographic to Queen’s Park and enrich its uniqueness, while contributing to its cultural legacy”

Now that I have disclosed by biases (and how they were developed as we went through this process), we can talk about the decision made on Monday.

There were some legitimate concerns raised about this site: most notably the potential for noise impacts on the Bernie Legge Theatre. Recognizing these concerns when raised by stakeholders, the City paused the process and hired an acoustical engineer to evaluate the impacts. The report acknowledged that the skate park would create noise, measured it, and evaluated two ways to mitigate it. If the skate bowl was oriented towards the north, and a berm were built on the south side, the noise of the park (and other significant ambient sounds such as whistles on the soccer pitch and traffic on McBride) would be abated, making the theatre actually quieter than it is now. Alternately, the City could invest a little money in providing some improvements to the theatre including weather stripping and solid-core doors, which would effectively reduce ambient noises and the skate park form impacting theatre operations. The report from staff recommended the City do both of these, to double the sound baffling effect to give the theatre patrons an extra measure of confidence. This proposal would have resulted in a quieter Bernie Legge Theatre experience than there is now.

There were also some concerns about parking and pedestrian circulation around the Theatre. Again, the report proposed designating parking spots adjacent to the skate park, and improving pedestrian flow and surfaces between the parking lot, the theatre and the Cadets building. The proposal would have actually improved the very things the stakeholders were concerned about.

So the location was good for the user group, the legitimate concerns raised by the stakeholders could be and would be mitigated at the cost of the City, actually resulting in a quieter theatre with better parking access and pedestrian amenities. I don’t know why I would vote against this proposal.

After hearing a dozen delegations at Council, however, a “compromise” location was proposed. I could not support it. Here is why.

After more than a year of work, and a concerted effort to evaluate all positive and negative impacts of different locations, finding a design that fits the space and takes advantage of a current unused and unprogrammed part of the park, and after delaying to hire professional engineers to develop scientifically-defensible mitigation measures to address legitimate concerns, Council came up with a knee-jerk “compromise location” 30-40m to the west where there is a grove of trees and old tennis courts (the actual location is a little vague), which we have asked Staff to move ahead with “if technically feasible”. To be clear – no-one in that meeting knew exactly what footprint we are talking about, and no-one has any idea what “technically feasible” means, or what compromises will need to be made to accommodate this plan.

This “compromise location” is clearly an ill-informed compromise. It is not (as it was touted at the meeting) a “win-win”. It was, in my opinion, a result of treating the wants and needs of one user group with lesser regard than the wants and needs of another group, even after significant efforts to address the concerns of that second group resulted in a well-developed strategy to address their valid concerns and then some. Make no mistake, there is a lot potential loss in this “win-win”.

We don’t know what the skate community lost yet. Best case scenario, only a couple more months of being without a facility to practice their recreation. Potentially, this may be a much longer time if engineering or other concerns pop up. The “if technically feasible” caveat is a vague and compromising one in the world of engineering, and a terrible piece of guidance for professional staff (technically feasible at any cost? Regardless of other impacts?). After more than a year of work, the vision developed will be unnecessarily delayed and potentially compromised because of a last-minute knee jerk reaction that received far, far less technical scrutiny or input from stakeholders and user groups. That is a terrible way to make decisions.

Even worse: The potential impact on non-skaters has now not been fairly assessed. What of the users of the tennis courts and picnic area that will now be removed? Honestly, we don’t even know if moving the Skate Park to this “compromise location” will make the noise impacts on the theatre better or worse. It is entirely possible (and quite likely) that an earthen berm would have deadened sound much better than an extra 30m in distance. We do not have any evaluation of the opportunity cost of the “compromise location”. Basically, we cannot demonstrate any actual benefit of this location to anyone, other than salving a vague feeling that “they” need to be kept further away from “us”.

Best case scenario, staff will not run into any problems shoehorning a well-developed plan into a “compromise location”, and after only a couple of months delay, we will get a fully functional park up and running. Best case scenario, the new location will not create unanticipated impacts on other users of the park that require further mitigation. I am an optimist, and I sincerely hope this best case is realized. But in the decision we made on Monday, and the way we made it, Council did nothing to assure this happens.

This is fine

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

This shouldn’t fill me with rage. I think the intent was to do the opposite; to provide me a guide to supplant anger and frustration with quiet acceptance. A serenity prayer to bring calm to the unrelenting intensity of our times. Instead, I found myself yelling at the radio on a Sunday Morning:

“You entitled asshole! How dare you tell everyone calm down!”

No surprise, the essayist in question is a white septuagenarian upper middle class Canadian male idling away his dotage by providing accumulated wisdom via the established media. Perhaps the messenger was the message.

For his regular Sunday morning essay, Canada’s kind leather-elbow-patched uncle Michael Enright decided to remark on a sense of despair or foreboding expressed by his fellow white-coiffed legacy journalist Gary Mason. In it, Mason remarked on the many aspects of our current troubled times, and invoked an interest in just getting away from it all. To which Enright prescribed a healthy dose of calming baroque music.

Which brought this to mind for me:
As Mason pointed out, this is a terrible time for many parts of the industrial world, and Canada is surrounded by storm clouds. This appears to be the decade where all the bad cheques written by 30 years of NeoLiberalism get cashed. Climate tipping pints are passing like telephone poles on a desert highway, stagnation of wages and erosion of social supports are run up against a cost of living inflated by speculative money trading and wealth measured by the ability to avoid taxation. For the first time we can be sure this generation will have less than the previous, and the next will be left to pick the scraps. Instead of lifting leaders willing to address the causes of inequity and despair, the exploited and disenfranchised are turning to despotic strongmen driving wedges to split apart the fibres of our society. To quote Mason’s article “We are living in times as dangerous and unpredictable as there’s been in 80 years.”

This is no more apparent than in media, the industry these two men inhabit. Hedge fund managers own every newspaper of note in Canada, a small collection of very rich and politically-connected individuals own every other traditional media channel, and use them to shamelessly shape political opinion. The President of the United States openly calls for the destruction of media organizations that counter the narrative presented by his defacto propaganda channel. In Canada, the second party in the House is increasingly being managed by alt-right propagandists and white nationalists who were apparently too radical for Rebel Media. Meanwhile, the emergent new media streams are being dominated by algorithms designed by the security apparata of hostile nations to bend our minds into false narratives and shape our political views at a scale that would have terrified Orwell.

That is the landscape that one of our dead-tree media stalwarts caught a momentary glimpse of, and suggested he felt the need to escape. To which Enright, in all of the comfort and security of resources drawn from the savings account of future generations, replied: just listen to Beethoven. It’ll all be fine. “The best medicine for what ails Mr. Mason and the rest of us is music”.

In an effort to avoid the long stream of profanity I feel, and to speak in the generational parlance of Mr Enright: Bollocks!

The only Sabbath Mason needs now is a Black one. If music is to be applied to this malaise, let it be loud, aggressive, and filled with calls to action. The Clash, Rage Against the Machine, Anti-Flag, anyone who has taken seriously the hard work of yelling at fascists. Now is not the time for journalists to chill to a Bach cantata, it I time for the Fourth Estate to stand the hell up and start shouting about the chaos they are seeing.

If the likes of Enright and Mason are as seriously concerned about the fate of their children and egalitarian society as they claim, I don’t understand how solemnly lamenting their fate while enjoying a little Puccini is seen as a valid response. These gentlemen have been granted (earned?) three hours of national radio every week / ample column inches in an ever-shrinking media landscape. I humbly suggest they get past their woe-is-me head-under the pillow bullshit and start doing their job.

The media already has enough old men yelling at clouds for being a lesser shade of white than in their halcyon youth, dispatching their “I got mine” wisdom nuggets from their comfortable porches on the Sunshine Coast or “cattle ranches called the Schively” (dear Christ, did Enright actually say that!?). These are not the realities of young people in Vancouver or Toronto struggling with stagnant wages and housing crises and collapsing hopes, of First Nations across the country still waiting for the promise of some sort of reconciliation for their inter-generational sabotage, of a globe of youth facing terrifying implications of global climate shifts and concomitant migrations spawning a new rise of wall-builders (metaphorical and literal) and sabre-rattlers and possessors of ICBMs that can deliver hypersonic glide vehicles to any point on the planet as easily as their software that can deliver hundreds of thousands of duped votes to ballot boxes in the same far-off places.

Far from the luxury of seeking Bechet as an escape from the bedlam of a society stacked against them, there is a generation in this country, and across the industrialized world, who are feeling right now the doom of this bedlam, and cannot even dream of a dotage of relaxed musical contemplation. And it is you, Mr. Enright, and your industry that is, right now, the first up against the wall, being torn apart by a new wave of fascist demagogues from Moscow to Manila to Beijing to Washington, as dictators have always taken apart the free press at the beginning of their destructive rule. If you need contemplation in this time of chaos, be it in contemplating whether you are willing to take up the fight now to protect the things that made your life so comfortable?

Escaping from it all is a luxury that serves to demonstrate the privilege too many in your generation (and in your industry!) don’t even recognize as existing. Taking that luxury at this time may be the final (but not greatest) insult you generation imposes on your children.

Damn, I need a coffee.

Trucks in the City

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Douglas College has been running an interesting talk series this year under the banner of “Urban Challenges Forum”. The final episode of this semester occurred on Wednesday night, and deserved a better turnout than it received, considering the amount of social media bits and watercooler shatter we have in New Westminster around the topic: the livability impacts of truck routes and goods movement in our community.

Fortunately, they recorded video of the event, and will (hopefully?) be posting it on line. It is worth the time to see how the four panelists speak about trucks from different viewpoints: an urban systems geographer, a representative of the trucking industry, a representative of the Port Authority, and the CAO of New Westminster, a City that is (arguably) impacted most by the negative externalities of “goods movement” in the region.

I want to give a quick summary of my take-away points before raising the question I never got to raise at the event, partly because of the time constraints, partly because no-on needs to hear from a Politician when actual thinking people are speaking, and partially because I wasn’t sure how to phrase my question in the form of a question*.

Peter Hall (the geographer) reminded us that transportation, by its very nature, makes us selfish, and makes us act in shamefully selfish ways (speeding, tailgating, yelling at others). This is at least partly because it isn’t an ends, but a means, and its hassles are preventing us from meeting these ends. Add to this our general ignorance about freight, and we get a selfish ignorance about goods movement – we all want the benefits, none of us understand why we need to tolerate the costs. Trucking also has many benefits and externalities, and they are not evenly distributed. Altogether, this makes it a vicious political problem, not made easier by jurisdictional overlap.

Matthew May from BST Transport and Peter Xotta from the Port of Vancouver gave similar messages about their respective industries: they need to keep the goods moving in the National Interest. You ask for tomatoes in the store, you need to deal with trucks. You want a vibrant economy, you need trucks and ports. You live in a Gateway, and we will accommodate your community as best we can (even want to make you happy!), but the mandate is to drive the economy.

Lisa Spitale gave a concise summary of some of the interface issues New Westminster has dealt with over the last few decades. With rail and roads encircling the community and a Regional Growth Strategy mandate to be a dense Urban Centre supported by (and supporting) transit, we are a hot spot for the externalities of goods movement, by rail and truck.

If I had a point to make at this event (again, I could not put this in the form of a question), it is that we have *chosen* to accept the level of negative externalities that come with a large number of diesel trucks in our neighbourhoods.

To frame this point, we need to put aside the local-goods-delivery for a moment and talk about the larger getting-stuff-from-Port-to-hinterland-through-logistics-hubs part of this equation. This is what separates us as a “Gateway” city from most other regions, and is the foundation of both the Port’s arguments on this issue and the emphasis of the Gateway Council model that has commonly dominated our regional transportation conversation. But what kind of Gateway have we built?

Here in New Westminster, we host one end of a 114-year-old single-track swing bridge that is the only rail link crossing the Fraser River west of Mission. The City of New Westminster has something like 14km of river shoreline under Port of Vancouver jurisdiction, with about a third of that backed by industrial land, much of it under the Port’s direct control. Much of this land is used for logistics, cross-shipping, container storage, and other aspects of that all-important gateway-to-the-hinterland business. Yet over all of that space there are (2) conveyors moving aggregates and chips on/off barges, and one (1) pier occasionally used to move breakbulk lumber. These are the only location in New Westminster’s extensive port lands where anything is taken on or off of a boat.

The only contribution our Port lands make to the Gateway is providing space to move and store trucks, and facilitate the movement of goods in and out of trucks. Unfortunately, New Westminster is not alone in this.

How we move goods through the region is a choice we make, not a foregone conclusion. For these hinterland goods in containers, we have chosen to use trucks to move a large portion of them intra-regionally. A cynic would suggest that is because building waterfront infrastructure to make better use of short sea shipping and barges is expensive. Upgrading rail infrastructure so a single swing bridge isn’t the only vital link across a river that has seen 30 lanes of highway built across since that single track was installed, is expensive. Relying on roads and bridges is comparatively cheap from the view of the person who has to pay for the initial capital, because taxpayers will often pony up for “congestion reduction” investment, and the other costs (noise, pollution, public safety) are completely externalized, at least partially in the form of decreased livability of our communities.

I’ve made this rant before.

Since 1808 when Simon Fraser first tasted salt in the Sto:lo, there have been strains resulting from the needs of the Gateway to the Hinterland and the needs of the people living on the river’s shores. We can, however, find a better balance between these forces. It must include acknowledging that externalized costs of fueling the Gateway need to be accounted. Trucks are part of a functioning modern society, but their true role cannot be understood as long as we subsidize them over other options.

*I was once at a forum-type event where the request for “question from the floor” was prefaced by this proviso: Your first sentence must be in the form of a question; there should not be a second sentence. I thought that was brilliant.

That New Premier Smell

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

You may have seen this graphic across the #CDNPoli Social Media this week:

It reinforces whatever political biases you bring into it: Horgan is doing OK; Wynne is a wreck; PEI doesn’t matter. But I took something else out of it, and had to draw my own graph to demonstrate it:

Politics is a hell of a business.

For the rest of us who slept through Statistics 101, an R of .92 is a pretty high correlation, so I can definitively say popularity as a Premier in Canada correlates negatively with time in office. Any Premier above that trend line is doing better than average, any premier below the line is doing worse than average. Arguably, Pallister is doing worse than McNeil on average, but you know which I would rather be going into re-election.

Because in politics, it doesn’t seem to matter if you are above or below the line here. The only lesson to be learned from this graph is that the best you can hope for in Provincial Politics in Canada is to get things done before that New Premier Smell wears off. As years in office accumulate, any successes or victories are quickly weighed down by a legacy of being to blame for everything that may have gone wrong. Inevitably some of that is your fault (no one is perfect) and some is beyond your control, but in politics at the highest level, it simply doesn’t matter.

The only good way out of politics is to recognize when the door has been opened for you, and get out. Problem is, that kind of self-recognition is the first thing to be eroded by electoral success and access to power. Entering politics in the first place requires hubris, time in politics increases hubris, getting out requires absence of hubris. You can see the problem here.

I’m not sure how this plays out at the Municipal level, but I am just going to leave this post here, and hopefully someone will point it out to me when I am considering my 6th term for Council.

PAL by another name.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Monday’s Council meeting included a Public Hearing on a notable project on Carnarvon Street. Although it didn’t get much media (social or otherwise) before the Public Hearing, it seems to be getting some now, and there was enough going on at the Public Hearing that I think it is worth some discussion here.

The proposal will bring a new 32-story tower to the downtown tower district with 204 market strata units. The residential building meets the City’s Family Friendly Housing policy by exceeding the minimum number of 2- and 3-bedroom units. The tower will have a 3-story pedestal which will house commercial storefront space and some amenity space, and a little bit of above-ground parking around the back (more on that later). The tower will share the pedestal with a second 8-story tower that will have 66 non-market rental units run by the Performing Arts Lodges Society (“PALS”), a charity that helps provide affordable housing for veterans of the performing arts industries.

Council received two pieces of correspondence in regards to this project, both expressing support. We had 6 people present at the Public Hearing, one expressing concerns that the affordable housing component was not broad-reaching enough, and one local business concerned about the name of the development (see below), and the rest speaking in support (including the proponent, and the president of the New West Arts Council), mostly emphasizing support for the affordable housing component.

The project meets the goals of the Downtown Community Plan, was approved by the Advisory Planning Commission and Design Panel, and appears to be well supported by the community. The project puts density adjacent to frequent transit service and within walking distance of most services. The location also means we can bring new density and affordable housing on line without displacing other low-cost housing.

As one delegate at the Public Hearing mentioned, this is clearly not the entire answer for affordable housing. Far from it. Our regional housing affordability crisis exists at every level: professionals not able to afford family-sized homes; working poor facing demo-viction and rising rents; people with barriers to traditional housing lacking adequate supports, it’s a mess. No single project can fix all of these. What this project does, though, is address one identified gap, and engage a not-for-Profit in helping with that. This project is similar in that sense to the two small affordable housing projects the City is supporting on City lands, each identifying a specific group in need of housing and a service agency taking on the charge to help operate that housing.

The PALS project helps people who have worked on building the cultural quality of our community, and recognizes that people working in the performing arts rarely have pension plans or stable retirement income. By providing space in our community for dozens of experienced actors, writers, dancers, singers, production designers, directors, choreographers (etc., etc.), we promise to enrich our community’s culture. They will be the story tellers, the teachers, the artists that support a vibrant cultural future in New West. I don’t think we can measure the positive impact that could have in our community.

I have expressed concern in the past about Carnarvon Street and its urban expression. I think the Plaza88 development does not address the street well, and is out of scale with the pedestrian space we want to have downtown. I am more enthused by the urban design of this project, as it is well articulated, includes an open public plaza area, and appears to provide lots of eyes on the street, as opposed to a large wall of parked cars behind screens.

At initial readings and again at Third Reading, some concern was raised by some of Council about the parking situation. Between resident and visitors parking, this project will have 275 parking spaces, most of them underground. That is more than one parking spot per unit in a building that is across the street from a SkyTrain Station and walking distance to all amenities. The cost of building these parking spots (which could be more than $60,000 a spot!) must shift the cost of the units in the building – both affordable and not. We need to question why we are spending so much finding warm dry spots for cars when we are struggling to afford warm dry spots for people.

The project was designed to meet the City’s parking minimums, and shifting the goalposts for the developer at this stage in the process would be pretty onerous, and potentially threaten the project. However, this has raised the conversation at Council that our downtown parking standards need an update if we hope to make housing more affordable and meet the goals of our Master Transportation Plan. This conversation will be ongoing, and I’d love to bend your ears for a few hours about it.

Finally, the marketing department of the developer has some work to do, as they had found a great name for the development that was, unfortunately, almost indistinguishable from the name of a young but established business on the same side of the street about a block away. The business owner came to delegate to Council and expressed support for the project (the Arts community supports their own!) but was worried about potential impact on her business. The City has no regulatory role on the naming of developments, and having a legal fight over Trademarks and registered business names will only enrich lawyers and take time. Both parties have had an initial and positive conversation, and felt confident that a compromise could be found, so Council asked that they find a mutually acceptable solution prior to the project coming back to Council for Adoption.

Overall, this project is a net positive. In my opinion there are significant benefits to the community: affordable housing that adds to the City’s cultural diversity, improved public spaces, DCCs, density bonus and VAC money that contributes to community amenities, family-friendly housing diversity, density near SkyTrain, and a refreshed area of downtown bringing supporting customers to our business district.

I just hope those lens flares don’t keep the neighbours up at night.

Innovation! Transportation!

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Next week is Innovation Week in New West. It actually starts with an Opening Reception at City Hall this Friday night which should be off-the-hook (with free music and video presentations and a special Steel & Oak release!) If you are in the #NewWest #Twitterati, you probably know this already, but some of you may wonder: “What is Innovation Week? And what can it do for Me?”

Let. Me. Tell. You.

As part of New West’s Intelligent City initiatives, Innovation week is a showcase of how technology, innovation, and sharing information can make our City work better, can make us a stronger community, can make businesses more prosperous and residents happier. It is about strategically leveraging innovative ideas like the City’s award-winning Open Data portal with hardware like the BridgeNet fibre network to build a better and more equitable future.

Now I read that last paragraph, and it is all true, but it doesn’t really tell you what Innovation Week is, does it? Let me try again.

Innovation Week is a series of panel discussions, hands-on workshops, networking sessions, tours and activities all open to the public, and inclusive of all ages, experiences, and interests. There will be classes to teach kids about coding, a Hack-a-Thon for teams of coders to develop new tech, forum discussions about new ideas, chances for Tech start-ups and businesses of all sizes to connect with Private and Public funding sources to bring ideas to reality. All wrapped up in fun enough with arts and music to keep your mind fresh. Through the week, you will be given reasons to dream, and information and resources to make that dream work.

I will probably write again about more events (if I get time, or else I will live tweet from there!), but I want to call attention to two events in particular, as they are interesting (I think) to the entire region:

Metro Conversations is a talk series I have been helping to organize with council colleagues from other municipalities. Out Fifth Conversation will be on Tuesday the 27th in the evening on the topic of The Promise of Innovations in Transportation. But instead of just dreaming of autonomous vehicles and hyperloops and Tunnels, we are going to ask whether the technological promises addresses what we actually want from our Cities – safe streets, livable neighbourhoods, sustainable communities, social connections and equity. This will be a fast-paced hour-long conversation, free to attend, but you might want to register as we don’t have the biggest room.

As a bit of a primer: watch this video form 1958, and ask yourself, is this the community we want? And how does this differ from Elon Musk’s vision of tunnels and hyperloops “connecting” our community.

The second event I with broad regional appeal for people like me who care about Sustainable Transportation and how it interacts with City Planning will be the Transportation Forums on March 1st. I’d suggest you book the time off work and enjoy the entire day, but you really don’t want to miss the evening event, as Mobility Pricing is sure to be the hottest political topic in the Lower Mainland through the fall elections and into 2019.

The evening forum will feature the Chair of the Mobility Pricing Independent Commission, one of the most respected and outspoken Urban Planners in Canada, and an Economist who can unpack the idea of what “fairness” is when it comes to paying for our regional transportation infrastructure. The Mayor of New Westminster will moderate the discussion, and it is free to attend.

If you are like me, you may be interested but apprehensive about Mobility Pricing. I have engaged in TransLink’s “Its Time” consultations, and understand how Mobility Pricing works in Singpore and London and Helsinki, but am cognizant of the challenge we have in Vancouver setting up a system that fits our region, and can be politically supported by the broad interests of the region. I’m hoping this forum will answer some of the questions I have, and allow me to better engage with the proponents and critics of road pricing.

There is a tonne of other great stuff happening between February 23 and March 3. Please come out and support these events, and thanks the many sponsors who help lead these conversations in New West. That link again.

on HCA effects

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Another council meeting, and another delegation from residents concerned that the Heritage Conservation Area in Queens Park has unleashed economic disaster on Queens Park. I have not written up my notes from yesterday’s meeting yet, but I first want to talk about a subject that came up in the Open Delegations, and a meeting tomorrow about it.

I feel the need to explain that I am a champion for people delegating to keep Council informed about their concerns. I want Open Delegations to be an inviting and comfortable place, and am cognizant that there is a power dynamic here. My directly challenging delegates could be seen as – can genuinely feel like – I am “punching down” from a position of authority. For that reason, I am very sensitive in that setting not to engage in a debate about the facts delegates present. Too often that comes across as challenging their right to be heard. If I counter their facts in that setting, it can be construed as dismissing or doubting their opinions, and ultimately, not being respectful.

So I often takes notes and thank them, and save my questions or comments to delegates for points of clarity, to reinforce things I agree with, or to initiate discussions about how Council or Staff can operationalize around their concerns (see other delegations that day).

Regular readers (Hi Mom!) would also note I have an itch to correct the record, so I am writing this to correct one common theme I heard, with all due respect to the strongly felt convictions of the delegates: There is simply no evidence that the Heritage Conservation Area has impacted the values of homes in Queens Park. At least, not yet.

When the annual BC Assessments came out recently, many people noted that housing values have not increased as much as condo values this year. This is a trend across New West and the region, and may be attributed to condos starting to “catch up” to the last few years of significant increases in the single family home sector. It also appears that many single family homes remained stagnant or even decreased slightly in value this year. This is the case for most homes in Queens Park.

This (horribly scanned, apologies) image shows every residential property in New West based on how their assessment changed in 2018. GREEN went up more than 15%; YELLOW was an average increase between 5 and 15%; ORANGE had an increase under 5%; RED a decrease.

A careful analysis of individual homes throughout Queens Park, however, show that there is no bulk difference between homes that fell under higher levels of protection (those built before 1940) and those with limited or no protection. With only a few exceptions, the variations within the neighbourhood seems more related to the block the house is on than anything else.

Same crappy scan, same colour codes. Note single-family parts of upper Glenbrook and Upper Sapperton areas had similar declines as Queens Park.

Perhaps more tellingly, homes in the Glenbrook and Upper Sapperton neighboruhoods had similar stagnant or slight reductions in value. These houses are not (for the most part) older homes, have no Heritage Conservation Area, and only resemble Queens Park in that they are fairly high-value homes on relatively large lots. If the HCA caused the stagnation in Queens Park, we will need another, yet completely separate, explanation for this remarkably similar stagnation on the other side of McBride. Declines were generally 1-5% in both areas.

Note, the 2018 assessment were completed only a month or so after the rules around the new HCA were developed. Although there was a 6-month temporary conservation measure and significant community conversation about the potential HCA, it is fair to say that the implementation of the HCA may not have had an impact on the Assessors work, but the market by that time definitely had a strong wind that something was going to happen, what with the Lawn Sign war and all.

What I m saying here is that we don’t yet know the short- or long-term impact on housing values related to the HCA. We have evidence from other jurisdictions that there may be a small short-term decline, followed by accelerated increases, and that the long-term trend is towards higher values. However, give me a trend you want to see, and I can probably find a Heritage Area somewhere that matches it. There are hundreds of districts like this around North America, and there are too many confounding variables to say with certainty what the impact will be. The best bet, based on an accumulation of data, is that the impact (positive or negative) will be small.

I do want to emphasize that increasing property values was not a goal of the HCA; protecting the heritage of a unique neighbourhood was. That said, Council recognized that the heritage goals will not be met simply by banning demolitions of heritage homes, but we need a suite of measures to encourage residents to preserve the neighbourhood. Preventing demolitions was priority #1 simply because of the timelines imposed by the Local Government Act, setting up regulations around renovations, repairs, and upkeep was also a high priority.

The City recognizes the need to provide more “carrots” to give people reason to invest in their heritage properties. So we are working through a process of determining what an appropriate set of incentives are that will make it more attractive for people to take advanced protection measures (like Designation), potentially help with specific cases where the broad brush of the HCA may make it difficult to fulfill their zoning entitlements, or where we can find opportunities to increase housing choice, affordability, or flexibility while protecting heritage assets.

Having started this post speaking of the group of delegates from yesterday, I do want to note that the final delegate on the topic did provide a pretty well-organized list of potential incentives that should be part of the conversation. Coincidentally, there is an Open house at Anvil Centre on Wednesday Night where staff, residents, and subject matter experts can talk about this. It may be worth while attending if you live in Queens Park:

Whither a plan?

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

It appears the Mayor’s Council are once again on the hot seat.

For the best part of a decade, the Council has demonstrated apparent amity, likely due to recognition that they were going to need to work together to get a disinterested Provincial Government to support any kind of transit funding stability as the region’s growth exploded. Alas, they recently seem ready to take a step back into parochial foot-shooting. With a federal government hot to spend money on urban infrastructure renewal and low-carbon transportation and a provincial government equally willing to prioritize sustainable transportation investments, the 10 year plan developed by a consensus of Mayors is suddenly being questioned by the very Mayors that put the plan together.

The first shot in this apparent internal battle was the vote to make Mayor Corrigan of Burnaby (the one Mayor who questioned the 10-year vision all along, leading random bloggers to suggest he was “transit regressive”) the new Chair of the Mayors Council, giving him more power to set the agenda and negotiate with the province over the terms of transit investment. He did this (presumably, because the voting was secret ballot), only through a one-mayor one-vote system that provides the Mayors of Anmore and Lions Bay equal voices to those of Vancouver and Surrey. However, most votes at the Mayor’s Council have a weighted vote system in an effort to closer approximate the population differences across the region and the relative sources of the budgets that TransLink spends.

The Agenda for Thursday’s Mayors Council meeting is out, and it suggests this tenuous situation will be tested right away. The only substantive agenda item is a motion put forward by Mayor Greg Moore of Port Coquitlam:

…that the Mayors Council supports the implementation of the Phase Two Plan in early-2018 as planned, including construction of the Surrey-Newton-Guildford LRT, Millennium Line Broadway Extension, the SkyTrain Upgrade Strategy and the replacement of the Pattullo Bridge, along with increases to bus and HandyDART service and funding for walking, cycling and Major Road Network infrastructure across the region;

There is more there (you can read the Agenda and resolution, with all its whereases and nuanced language, here), but the message is clear. At least one member of the Mayors Council (the one who happens to be the Chair of Metro Vancouver) wants the plan forward to be made clear to Translink planning staff, the Provincial and Federal Governments, and to all of the regional partners involved in planning our transportation system. It is clear that at least some of the mayors on the Council still believe in the vision, see its urgency, and are willing to speak up to the pall of suspicion that has resulted from Mayor Corrigan’s election (not the least by semi-informed bloggers, like me)

This is the vote to watch to see who is on-side with well-developed and integrated sustainable transportation investments, and who is willing to delay solutions to our regional transportation challenges for yet another decade.

Us & Them

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

This is a terrible story.

Over a period of four days, two pedestrians and a cyclist were struck by drivers of vehicles on the same section of Cariboo Road. The first pedestrian, a 15 year old, died at the scene. It’s heartbreaking.

This is a piece of road I am familiar with. It used to be on my daily commute when I worked in Burnaby, and is still part of my regular cycling routine. So am quick to add my “anecdata” along with the list of people commenting that the crosswalk in question is a terrible design. It is a crosswalk that provides access to a well-used bus stop across the street from a residential area, but it is around a corner at the base of a big hill where the speed limit is ostensibly 50km/h, but every piece of the road’s design (separated centre, wide shoulder, 5m lane widths, sidewalk buffer) tells the driver to go much faster. And drivers do go much faster.

So there will be wringing of hands, and pressure for the City to fix this situation. Likely, some sort of pedestrian-activated light will be installed at the cost of a couple of hundred thousand dollars that will marginally increase pedestrian safety, but will add one more step a pedestrian must take (hit a button, wait for a light cycle) to beg for the right to safety while moving through public space. Meanwhile, a little bit of targeted enforcement by the police will increase the perception of something being done until their attention is drawn elsewhere and driver’s behaviors revert to what the road design is telling them to do. The 85th percentile will again sneak up to its design point.

I would be hopeful for, but not expecting, a more sustainable long-term solution, one that would meaningfully increase safety for all users. Reduce the lane width to something like 3.5m (which would provide opportunity for a separated protected cycling path on this well-used route). Complement the pedestrian light with a raised crosswalk, paint and texture treatment to send appropriate speed signals to the drivers. Increase the number of protected crosswalks along Cariboo Hill so people can access the Cariboo Heights residential Co-op and Briar Road, and to again signal drivers that this is a residential area where they should be driving 50km/h and expect pedestrians, not an 80km/h freeway on-ramp. This would, of course, be expensive, but the Google Earth air photo still shows the millions of dollars recently spent here to allow drivers on Cariboo Road to drive faster through here as part of a regional motordom expansion project…

Uncharacteristically, I am not going to hate on Burnaby here. That would be too easy and unfair. This situation is not unique to Cariboo Road, and it is not unique to Burnaby. It in no way undermines the seriousness of this situation to say these three incidents in such close proximity are an unfortunate coincidence. Realistically, I can name a dozen other areas where similarly hazardous conditions exist, and municipalities like Burnaby, Richmond, and (yes) New Westminster are slow to react to them.

That these safety issues are so common is part of the reason we are so slow to react; there’s a lot of infrastructure to fix and a limited infrastructure improvement budget. Still, too much of it is spent on “getting traffic moving” in places like this, were public safety would suggest the opposite. I could go off on a long tangent about “warrant analysis” here, but instead I’ll just reiterate that even if the best intentions exist, priorities need to be set. There simply isn’t enough money to make every pedestrian crossing as safe as we would like, because there are too many unsafe intersections and crossings. 70-odd pedestrians are killed every year in BC, the vast majority at a marked crossing or intersection, demonstrating that we have a lot of work to do when it comes it engineering the protection of pedestrians.

However, engineering can only get us closer to the safety we desire (and please spare me the long digression into autonomous vehicles, the fantastical promises of which seem to commonly fail when pressed against some simple inquiries into their remaining challenges). I’ve recently-enough ranted about how the vehicles pedestrians are forced to share space with are increasingly dangerous to those pedestrians, but haven’t really called out another trend supported mostly by personal anecdote: an increasingly callous disregard for the safety of other demonstrated by people driving cars in British Columbia, and the apparent reluctance of Police and Crown Counsel to meaningfully address this public health emergency.

We have work to do as municipalities (working with and supported by TransLink and the Ministry of Transportation, I hope), and I am proud that New Westminster’s draft 2018 capital budget is showing a serious commitment to meeting the goals set out in our Master Transportation Plan – we are now spending as much on pedestrian and cycling improvements as we do on road repair and asphalt to “keep traffic flowing”. But at some point, we are going to need to convince drivers to meet us half way. We need to change people’s minds about their cars, their entitlement, and how that threatens the safety of our communities.

Pipeline Project

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

There is a lot to grab your attention right now when it comes to local government. Budget deliberations, mobility pricing, the ongoing housing crisis, election 2018; it is hard to pick your battles sometimes.

However, the pending start of construction activity along the proposed Kinder Morgan TransMountain Pipeline Expansion is likely to spend some time in the news this spring and summer. Although directly-impacted local governments such as Coquitlam and Burnaby have taken very different approaches to the project, there have been people in New Westminster raising alarm about the potential impacts on the Brunette River watershed, along our eastern border.

What has not been discussed as much in our local government context, is what this project means to the First Nations along the route and to the indigenous people upon whose traditional lands this project will impose itself. As our own City approaches reconciliation, we need to start thinking more broadly about how we engage the indigenous community when we are evaluating our support or opposition to resource projects – even ones we have little jurisdiction over.

Next week, the Massey Theatre Society is partnering with Savage Society and Itsazoo Productions to present “The Pipeline Project”, a multi-media theatre event and conversation that explores these themes. As part of the Massey’s ongoing “Skookum Indigenous Arts Program”

By all reviews, it is a serious, but at times humourous and disarming discussion of pipeline politics, and the sometimes unrecognized push-pull between “environmentalism” and the ongoing fight for indigenous rights. There are even a couple of matinee performances/discussions for those who can’t get out at night.

Here is a (slightly NSFW, but funny when it is) preview:

I think it is pretty timely with where New West, the province, and the nation are on this discussion. It’s gut check time when it comes to defining what kind of place we want Canada to be. This is a good chance to start listening. Get tickets here.