Category: Uncategorized

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.

Listening

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

I have already written a slightly-too-long blog post on the City’s burgeoning reconciliation process. If I could summarize the thesis, it is that the community needs to take intentional and careful steps in creating a space for communication. We need to hear each other’s stories.

I was both excited and apprehensive to see the Record name reconciliation as their News Item of the Year. It is great that our sole remaining local paper sees this as an important topic, as their participation in nurturing those conversations will be important. The problem being that their story once again focused attention on a statue – a potentially important issue point, but a relatively minor part of a much larger discussion that has to happen.

The story in the Record has, for good or bad, already started discussion in the letters section of the paper, and associated Social Media.

I disagree with some of what I read in those letters. However, I more strongly disagree with people jumping on Social Media to (with the best of intentions) correct things in that letter they deem as inaccurate or (with less clear intentions) accuse the letter writers of ignorance or ill intent.

One thing I have learned in my first forays into learning about the Truth and Reconciliation process is that we need people to tell their stories, to share their thoughts and experiences. This cannot happen if our default is to immediately question a person’s ideas or impressions. Conversation is different than debate, and on this topic we need much more of the former, much less of the latter. Even when what we hear is uncomfortable. We need to find a way to talk about how our understanding, our experience, may be different or come from a different place without engaging in debate or placing the letter writer in an “others” group.

I wrote last time about trying to understand how we can create spaces where people who lived the Indigenous experience can talk about their truths. I think this is an important early emphasis, if only because we have to get over the hurdles related to 150+ years of systematic efforts to silence those voices. However, we don’t get there by shouting down the voices of the members of our community for whom the entire idea of there being an “Indigenous Experience” is a challenge to their deeply held beliefs.

We all, all of us, have to learn how to listen. It’s only the first step, but it’s an important one. We can use this process to build a stronger, more just and compassionate community. And that is a way better goal than just having a well-debated statue.

Council – Jan 8, 2018

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

The first meeting of 2018 had that back-to-school feel, with presentations, some interesting public delegations, and some actual work done. We started with a presentation from staff on Innovation Week, which I will probably have to write a whole separate blog post about, because there is a lot of cool stuff happening at the end of February, and you probably want to take part.

2018-2022 Draft Financial Plan – General Fund
This is the first public reporting of the work that has been done up to now on the 2018 budget and Financial Plan through to 2022.

Our General Fund (the money we use for the day-to-day running of the City) is currently budgeting revenue to increase by 3%, mostly from tax increases, with expenses increasing by 2%. We can achieve this with a 2.95% tax increase, and still include the transfer of $4.7 Million into capital reserves to support our long-term Capital Plan.

The Capital Plan for 2018 includes $64 Million spent on buildings and other capital improvements – $50 Million from the reserves we have in the bank, $7 Million from borrowing, and $7 Million from other sources (Grants, DCCs, etc.). This is completely manageable in 2018, but we need to look forward to our entire 5-year Capital Plan, which is (at first blush) pushing the envelope a bit.

We have a great number of capital projects, including some new facilities and ongoing capital maintenance. Over a 5-year plan, it totals more than $240 Million, which will challenge our reserves and our debt tolerance. A big part of this is the proposed replacement of the Canada Games Pool and Centennial Community Centre, but also includes implementation of our MTP, necessary maintenance and upgrades on the Library, City Hall, and other buildings, and meeting community expectations for everything from accessibility to pavement management (there is a great table in the report that outlines all of the items in the draft 2018 Capital budget attached to this report).

The need to invest in closing our infrastructure gap is not unique to New Westminster, and we are in pretty good shape compared to many similarly-sized Cities across Canada, but the gap is real and needs a proactive approach. We have already done some pretty serious prioritization of capital projects, and our staff have done the financial analysis to determine the right balance between drawing down reserves and increasing debt – both options have long-term financial consequences.

Staff are proposing a Capital Levy to be added to our property taxes to help us get over this capital investment bump. A 1% levy for 5 years would help our reserves be maintained at a level that provides financial security long-term. Essentially, that would mean our tax increase in 2018 would be 3.95% (assuming the general budget is approved as it is), but that the extra 1% would be earmarked for tangible capital improvements like the Canada Games Pool.

This is an interesting discussion, and I look forward to hearing from the public about how we should best address the needs identified in our Capital Plan.

The following items were moved on Consent:

Infrastructure Canada Smart Cities Challenge
This Federal Grant program is a pretty exciting opportunity – though it will be a highly competitive grant process. The City has a pretty ambitious Intelligent City program, and has already been recognized as a Smart21 City. Events like the Innovation Forum, our Hackathon and our Open Data, BridgeNet, and other initiatives put us in a good position to put together a bid, either alone or working with regional partners. We need some community help here, though, so look forward to some upcoming community engagement asking you to help us frame a “Challenge Statement”.

Changes to the 2018 Schedule of Regular Council Meetings
Oops, they moved Spring Break on us! Please update your 2018 social calendars so you won’t be disappointed!

Queen City (Bonnie’s) Taxi Ltd: Commercial Vehicle Amendment Bylaw No. 7976, 2018 to Add Vehicles – Bylaw for Three Readings
Once again, taxi operators in the City are asking for an increase in their fleets to meet frequency and timeliness standards their customers expect. This somewhat convoluted process includes the City approving a Bylaw to increase the number of licenses. This is the draft version of the Bylaw, which will go to an Opportunity to be Heard, so I’ll hold off my comments until after that.

Heritage Properties Maintenance Standards Bylaw No. 7971, 2018 and Bylaw Notice Enforcement Bylaw Amendment No. 7973, 2018: Bylaws for Three Readings
The Heritage Conservation Area (HCA) protections for Queens Park are designed to prevent the active destruction of important historical assets in the community. However, these assets can be damaged in a more passive way – through intentional or unintentional neglect or maintenance failures that erode the structural stability or heritage elements of the building. For this reason, HCAs usually include a Bylaw that regulates minimum standards of maintenance for otherwise protected buildings.

This draft Bylaw replaces an existing older Bylaw that protected heritage assets in the City, in order to align with the new HCA. Essentially, it requires owners take reasonable steps to prevent water ingress and rot, infestation, and damage caused by penetration of vegetation into the building. It doesn’t regulate things like fading paint or cosmetic appearances.

Passive Design Incentives for Single Detached Zones – First and Second Readings for Zoning Bylaw No. 7953, 2018
The City has looked at providing some development incentives to homeowners interested in building much more efficient houses. This would help us meet our long-term community energy and emissions reduction targets. Passive House (or, in the native German “Passivhaus”) is an ultra-low-energy standard where a typical residential home can be heated by little more than the waste heat from their fridge coils and domestic water (with a bit of a boost from low-power heaters in extreme conditions).

We have at least one Passive Houses-standard house in the City that I know of (you wouldn’t know looking at it from the street), and as the Province’s Step Code changes advance over the decades ahead, the “leap” to Passive House will be getting smaller and smaller – making it more and more attractive to builders.

However, the thicker walls required for Passive House currently mean a slightly smaller house for a given footprint/allowable zoning, and staff are recommending we change the way we calculate square footage (and concomitantly FSR) for buildings built to Passive House standard to level that playing field a bit. This Bylaw will go to Public Hearing, so aside from describing the intent, I will hold off on comments until after that.

2018 City Partnership Grants – Update
This is a follow-up on a few questions Council had coming out of the Partnership Grant applications and approvals we did back in December.

These items were Removed from Consent for discussion:

2018 Festival Grant Recommendations
This is the last of our Grant approvals for the 2018 season, with the rest being done back in December. Festivals Grants help fund everything from the Hyack Parade to the various cultural festivals and road “closures” across the City. No doubt the Festivals file has been a great news story in New West over the last couple of years, with so many great events happening. This is – I cannot emphasize enough – mostly due to the efforts of armies of volunteers from the many organizations that work to bring people together in New West. They do most of the heavy lifting for these events, but the City’s financial and logistical support can be fundamental to their success.

Our budget was $235,000, and we received 25 applications totaling just a hair under $400,000. So the Festivals Committee was charged with prioritizing funding based on established criteria. In the end, Council approved the recommended $248,100 in funding to 23 organizations – which is $13,000 over budget.

Housing and Social Planning Update and Work Program for 2018/19
This City is regional leader in the Housing and Social Planning departments, because of consistent support from Councils past and present over the last decade, and because of some remarkably strong work done by our social planning staff.

This file has grown (…expanded, …exploded) as the regional housing crisis worsened along with other social issues in the province related to poverty, mental health, and failing senior government social supports . There is so much going on: the development of supportive housing on City lands, expansion of childcare, actions under the Family-friendly housing policy, child and youth friendly city strategy, dementia-friendly City action plan, the Rent Bank, our Tenant Relocation Program… the list goes on.

We have senior governments now that are talking about re-investing in supporting the disenfranchised and marginalized citizens of the province, and there is some light on the horizon, but the City still needs to maintain consistent action, and that means we need to invest in the staff required to do that work. Council moved to support that work, and further made it clear to staff that we don’t want to slow down, but need to know that there are sufficient resources to address emergent issues. This work program is ambitious, but the City is ambitious.

Rental Replacement Policy and Inclusionary Housing Policy: Proposed Work Plan and Consultation Process
Speaking of good work on the affordable housing file, we are looking at how to encourage the development of more affordable housing options. We have been pretty successful at encouraging secured market rental gets built, but need to worry about the affordability of those units, and long-term stability of the lower-cost rental stock (this is where the Demoviction and Renoviction issues come in). We also need some policy guidance on inclusionary housing – assuring there is a reasonable non-market housing component to the new housing growth in the City. That will require some economic analysis of proposed policy changes, for which we would need to hire some consultants. This can be paid for out of our Affordable Housing fund.

There will be some stakeholder and public consultation on this work, and I am interested to see where it is going.

We then performed our normal Bylaws shuffle

Zoning Amendment Bylaw (Passive Design Exclusions) No. 7953, 2018
As discussed above, this Bylaw would adjust our zoning to support the building of more energy-efficient buildings. Council gave this Bylaw Amendment two readings, and it will go to Public Hearing on January 29th. C’mon out and let us know what you think.

Commercial Vehicle Amendment Bylaw No. 7976, 2018
As discussed above, this Bylaw which would allow an increase in Taxi licenses in New Westminster was given three readings. There will be an Opportunity to be Heard on this Bylaw Amendment on January 29th. C’mon out and tell us what you think!

Heritage Property Maintenance Standards Bylaw No. 7971, 2018
Bylaw Notice Enforcement Housekeeping Amendment Bylaw No. 7973, 2018
As discussed above, these Bylaw amendments that would help protect heritage homes in Queens Park from intentional neglect were given three readings.

232 Lawrence Street – Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 7948, 2017
This Zoning Amendment was given a Public Hearing back on November 27th, and is required to permit a childcare facility to operate on City lands in Queensborough. It was Adopted by Council, and is now the Law of the Land.

Five-Year Financial Plan (2017-2021) Amendment Bylaw No. 7938, 2017
This Amendment to our 2017-2021 Financial Plan was discussed and given three readings back on December 4th. It is an administrative update to adjust for changes that occurred during the year, and was Adopted by Council.

And, again, aside from an interesting Public Delegations session, that was the work for the evening. See you all next week, same time, same channel!

Motordumb

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

This is terrifying.

I mean, that is what it’s supposed to be. Part of the macho-truck-tough-guy/gal image it is meant to project. Sports cars were sometimes jokingly referred to as phallic symbols, projecting compensatory manhood and virility. This is a more of a rolling sawed-off shotgun, projecting violence, instability, and wide destructive swath to compensate for an inability to aim.

Big Trucks are nothing new in Canada, but look at the language the puff piece in the “Drive” section of our national newspaper (ugh) uses to describe it:

“Insane”, “ridiculous”, “’roid rage”, “invincible”, “out of scale”.

This truck is too wide (“A single lane suddenly feels too narrow… a foot wider than an already-huge F-250”), too tall (“the bottom of the seat is at eye-level”), and both creates a visual barrier for others (“Once inside you can see clearly over the tops of all SUVs”), yet has terrible visbility itself (“Nothing directly in front of it is visible, thanks to the huge, wide hood”). This lack of visibility is enhanced by mating a 450 horsepower engine with a design that features “bad steering, bad ride and bad handling.” But don’t worry, “You’re so high off the ground, there’s little sense of speed. It’s like looking out the window of a 747 during takeoff.”

Yes, this vehicle is an exaggeration of a point, and not many are sold (although the Globe & Mail will no doubt help with that little problem). But it is symptomatic of a situation where the use of automobiles is,  for the first time in history, getting less safe. And it is increasingly innocent bystanders being killed by them, not drivers.

There are many factors leading to these trends, distracted driving being a bit part of the equation (which raises an entire new rant about big LCD screens in cars). However, we live in a situation were you can roll a Honda Civic off the lot that is faster on the racetrack than a Lamborghini Gallardo. Dodge is selling, over the counter and with no special training mind you, an 840hp drag racer that does a sub-10 second quarter mile. It is so fast, that it is actually illegal to use at a regulated drag strip without doing safety modifications, but you can drive through your local school zone with no such regulatory concerns.

Cars are getting bigger, they are getting more powerful, and things like outward visibility are being compromised for design reasons. Trucks, especially, are seemingly exempt from any regulations around bumper height and fender coverage. After-market modification of lights, suspension, and other critical safety equipment is essentially unregulated.

This is all coming from the position of someone who walks and cycles in a dense urban community, but also someone who sees it as part of his job to make it be safer for 8-year-olds to walk to school and 80-year-olds to cross the street. We already give so much of our urban space to automobiles, because they serve a utility that people value. Recognizing that, we can build wide, comfortable sidewalks. We can design better crosswalks, and paint green paint at conflict zones. We can impose speed limits, improve lighting, create walkable neighbourhoods and dynamic retail districts. But our public spaces will never feel safe – will never be safe – if some agro asshole can charge through it waving a sawed-off shotgun at everyone.

We need to have a discussion about how far is too far for automobiles that want to share our urban space. We need enforceable standards of power, speed, bumper height, and other design elements that emphasize the safety of not just the operator and the passenger, but of other who unwillingly share space with these machines.

Some will suggest this is an intrusion – the end of freedom as we know it. Of course, we already have an actual law telling people to wear a Styrofoam helmet when sharing road space with this monstrosity. And when you get run over by it, rest assured the driver will say “I didn’t even see him!” like that is a defense, and not an admission of guilt. And Crown Counsel will agree.

There is no “War on Cars”, but if that’s what it takes to get these tanks off of our city streets, sign me up.

CGP2?

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

At the last meeting of 2017, Council received a presentation on the work done by staff, consultants, and the Mayors Task Force on a replacement facility for the Canada Games Pool. Here is my summary of the report, and where we are at on this project (through my eyes, at least).

There is quite a bit of background in the reports presented, but the short version is that Council evaluated refurbishment and replacement options for the Canada Games Pool back in 2015. At that time, the cost for some of the significant mechanical and structural work on the facility was larger than Council was willing to invest in the aged facility. So work began in planning for a replacement and determining if the Centennial Community Centre should be involved in that replacement program, as it was similarly approaching end-of-life for many of its components.

Council and staff worked together on setting some conditions around which future planning should occur. Work was done on a site analysis to determine if the pool should be moved (in the end, the business case did not support changing locations), and how/if to support existing programs during replacement (Council committed to not demolishing the old pool building until the new is built to maintain continuity in programming).

Around the same time, a large public consultation and stakeholder engagement program (“Your Active New West”), engaged the community in discussions around what types of programs the new facility must have, what programs would be nice to have, and what the community was less committed to. The members of Council also toured a number of relatively recent pool and recreation centres around the Lower Mainland, from Coquitlam to West Vancouver, to hear from other communities what worked well and what didn’t in their facilities. A few of us even toured a facility outside Ottawa during last year’s FCM meeting.

There was also a forward-looking needs analysis completed, looking at facility use now (at CGP and other regional aquatic facilities) by the numbers, and projected 30 years into the future. This included demographics on the types of users, facility capacities, and such to provide solid data to back up the expressed desires of the community, and support a business case for operating an expanded recreation facility. “Build it and they will come” is often true, but we need a defensible business case both to demonstrate due diligence, and to bolster our applications for senior government support.

With all of this in hand, the Task Force worked with a team of consultants to develop a proposed program for a new combined Aquatic Centre and Recreation facility. This proposed program is laid out in the detailed Feasibility Study you can read here.

From all of that, the current proposal is to build a natatorium (word of the day!) of similar scale as the Hillcrest Centre build in Vancouver in 2011: a competition-sized tank (8 full-width lanes, 54m long), with a movable floor on one half to provide flexibility of programming, and a separate large (~450 person) leisure pool primarily for family fun, but to also accommodate some (short) lane swimming. The proposal also includes two high-school sized gymnasiums, a fitness/exercise centre more than twice the current capacity, a childcare centre, and 8 very flexible multi-purpose rooms of varying size to accommodate the types of programs the Centennial Centre does now. Throw in change rooms, office space, and common areas, and you have 114,000 square feet of community centre.

Amongst the many issues that the Task Force have worked on is how to fit that much building on a relatively constrained space. Keeping the existing facilities operating was important, and much of the area where the current parking lot and gravel field are cannot be built upon because of a buried Metro Vancouver sewer line and geotechnical concerns. The Firehall (it is almost new) and the Curling Rink (the City doesn’t own the building) aren’t going anywhere, though the recycling yard may me movable. With traffic access, CPTED, and logistics of construction, the site is very constrained.

As I’m making these points, I need to emphasize that the design and layout suggested in the feasibility study are preliminary and diagrammatic. We don’t yet know what this building will look like in any detail, as we simply are not there yet in the iterative process of design, budget, and construction. However, we know what we want to build, and we know we can make it fit, so now is a good time to take this back out to the public and do a check-in before going forward to the next steps.

There will be public consultation happening early in 2018, but this will be somewhat different than the previous community discussion in 2016-2017. This will be more of a check in to assure we have hit the mark from the earlier consultations, not a time to go back to the drawing board that we already spent a year scribbling on. We also need to start the discussion about how we are going to pay for this.

The budget estimates (and yes, these are early estimates suitable to the early part of the iterative design and planning process we are going through, subject to change for various reasons within and outside of the control of Council) is that the entire centre will cost between $85 and $100 Million. When offering a preliminary estimate, we try to include reasonable contingencies, and are budgeting in 2020 dollars to account for some inflation. However, building costs do not necessarily track the CPI, and anyone trying to hire a contractor right now knows it is  a crazy hot and expensive building market in Greater Vancouver right now. Needless to say, this will be the single largest capital investment ever made by the City of New Westminster.

Council and staff have reason to be confident that the program proposed will qualify for some senior government grants, and potentially some significant Federal Infrastructure dollars. It ticks all the right boxes that the federal program has outlined (inclusive and accessible community infrastructure, improved recreational and social opportunities, significant energy efficiency gains and reduction in GHGs). That said, we cannot move ahead assuming those monies will arrive. We are required to put together a 5-year capital plan that shows we have demonstrated our ability to pay for this, and that will inevitably involve dipping into reserves, some debt financing, and tax increases. There’s no way around that.

So over to you. Public engagement is coming in January, and in the meantime will be doing some more technical work on things like geotechnical constraints, parking needs, and some sustainability targets for the building (is LEED Gold the right standard?). We will also be preparing to submit grant applications to senior governments when the windows open (if you know anyone in Victoria or Ottawa, put in a good word for us!). This is a big project, and an exciting time for the City. Let’s hear what you think. It is important to let Council know what you like and if you support this project, and to let us know if you have concerns.

Vacation

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I haven’t written much here as of late, and I’m only here to say I’m not going to for a bit longer.

It was a busy last few months, and @MsNWimby and I have taken a vacation. We’ve relocated for a couple of weeks to some place sunny where we can ride bicycles in the morning, sit on a beach getting caught up on some reading in the afternoon, and spend altogether too much time staring off in to the distance and thinking about the plans ahead…

If you follow me on Facebook, you may see the occasional glimpse of my vacationary adventures. I’ll post if I feel like it, but hey, I’m on vacation.

Regular (or at least the usual semi-regular) programming here will resume early in January. I have a bunch of half-formed ideas for posts, a few things in the queue, and some ideas about next year, which looks to be a busy one. Also, there is some sort of electoral event arriving in October, the “silly season” for which has clearly already started. Alas.

In the meantime, I hope you are spending Christmas doing the things you love the most, with the people you love the most. See you in 2018.

Bikes on the SFPR

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 8 Comments.

Bike lanes are in the news a bit again, here in New West, and out in one of our higher-profile western suburbs. It got me thinking about good and bad cycling infrastructure, and I haven’t gone off on a rant on this blog for a while, so make a cup of tea, because I am going to launch off on the Worst Piece of Cycling Infrastructure Ever®, known around these parts as the South Fraser Perimeter Road (“SFPR” or Highway 17). As this will most surely be tl;dr, you can skip down to the important part here.

When some previous Minister of Transportation (Falcon? Lekstrom? meh, it doesn’t matter) was hyping the region’s biggest-at-the-time motordom project, loosely defined as “the Gateway”, they were quick to point out the benefits to cyclists. The SFPR was announced as part of the largest MoT investment in cycling infrastructure of all time. This hyperbole was supported by the entire ~40km length of this glorious new road having cycling lanes affixed.

At the time, a few skeptics suggested that the shoulders of a high-speed truck route through farms and industrial areas may not be the ideal place to ride a bike, and by the time the new highway was opened, the previously-promised cyclist benefits were being seriously downplayed (hence all the dead links in that 4-year-old post above). But a Bike Route it is, to this day. There is a sign every 500m telling you so:

One of these green signs is found every 500 m for 40 km of great cycling infrastructure like this.

A couple of years on, the disaster of this poorly-placed, terribly-designed, and wholly-disingenuous cycling investment is pretty clear to anyone brave enough to venture onto this designated cycling route. No point dancing around the point: for cyclists of all skill levels, the SFPR is so unfriendly and dangerous that those “Bike Route” signs represent a reckless disregard for public safety.

That is a strong statement, so before I committed to it, I headed out to the SFPR with my bike to experience the length of the route in its harrowing glory, just to build up the temper necessary to commit that charge to hypertext. I went into it nervous, spent the ride terrified, and left enraged. Mission accomplished.

Funny I never ran into any other cyclists on this sunny fall day.

For the majority of the SFPR, the “Bike Route” is a 2.5 metre wide paved shoulder adjacent to industrial traffic moving at highway speeds. Nowhere is there a barrier protecting the shoulder from intrusions by trucks, not even rumble strips to warn drivers who may vary from their lane. The traffic is mixed, but the route was ostensibly built for and dominated by large trucks. The speed limit is allegedly 80 km/h, but speeds vary incredibly, from closer to 60 km/h around intersections (trucks accelerate slowly, after all, creating great rage moments for commuters!) to well over 100 km/h in the more open stretches.

Seriously?

In places where there is a soft shoulder or a low jersey barrier, having 80 km/h truck traffic blow by 2 metres from your left shoulder is unsettling. Where you are between those trucks and a 4 metre-high sound barrier wall (marked by the occasional gouge from vehicle swipes) or a 10-m concrete buttress, it is nerve-rattling.

shudder…

The knowledge that a momentary lack of attention by one of those drivers, or an impromptu swerve or technical problem with your bike means certain death provides a certain… clarity of thought. That thought is not “sure am glad I wore my helmet!”

The rational move (other than to avoid the SFPR altogether, which I will get to later) is to squeeze as far over to the right and put as much space between your body and the trucks. The problem with this strategy is that the SFPR “Bike Routes” are dotted with particularly deep and treacherous rainwater catch basins, and the further you get from the traffic-swept white line, the thicker and more challenging the road shoulder debris becomes:

Rocks and a hard place.

The road debris on this route is not surprising for an industrial truck route, unless you are surprised by the raw number of rusty and broken bolts and other important-looking parts that are ejected from trucks. Debris encountered on my ride included rocks large and small, glass, plastic vehicle parts, kitty-littered oil slicks, random lumber, nails, tire carcasses, tie-downs and bungie cords, and the occasional dead animal. These only serve to heighten the chances of one of those life-limiting impromptu swerves or technical failures. Once you realize the “swept clear” parts of the bike lanes are only done so by vehicles crossing the line at speed that you start to wonder if the route is designed specifically to kill you.

I hope that speeding truck didn’t need those parts…

Or just designed to confuse you…

Seriously, what are they trying to do to us here?

To add another layer of frustration to this alleged “bike route” is its isolation. Choose the SFPR and you are stuck with the SFPR, because it largely fails to connect to an established regional network and actively prevents you from getting on or off the SFPR where these types of connections may be obvious.

There are two locations on either side of the Alex Fraser Bridge, where a perfectly safe, low-traffic road is separated from the SFPR (one by a tall sound barrier wall) in such a way that getting out of danger’s way is impossible. For lack of a connection here, crossing this 5 foot barrier requires a multi-kilometre detour.

That over there on the left is NOT a designated bike route.

This lack of connection to regional cycling infrastructure is most obvious at the three regionally-important bridges under which the SFPR passes. The quality of the cycling paths on those three bridges is (east-to-west) really good, terrible, and not too bad, but they are all nonetheless important links. Again, either no connection has been contemplated for the bike route, or actual multi-layer physical barriers have been installed to prevent an SFPR cyclist from getting to the bridge where connections would be natural.

You can’t get there from here.

To get on the Alex Fraser Bridge from the SFPR requires a 3-km detour through two hairy multi-lane intersections. The Pattullo requires 1.5km and riding right past a pedestrian overpass, which would make for a great connection if it wasn’t barriered from access from the bike lane. The connection to the great bike infrastructure on the Port Mann is so far that is it actually a shorter distance just to ride to the terrible cycling infrastructure on the Pattullo.

Multi-layer protection – keeping cyclists from entering or leaving the SFPR at the Pattullo.

So the SFPR fails at every aspect of effective cycling infrastructure: it lacks the most basic safety and comfort considerations, it lacks connections, it lacks any form of appeal. It is not surprising that during my ride of the entire 40km length of the SFPR, both ways (done over two sunny mid-week days early in the fall), I never saw a single other person on a bicycle on the entire route. However, every 500m there is one of those little green signs. Or something like this:

Share the Road!

So it is time for the cycling community to wake up and recognize we got played. Of course, this is the Ministry of Transportation’s standard playbook, so we could have seen it coming: This “bike route” is a safety pull-off area for trucks.

One of these signs improves safety.

We were sold “cycling benefits” of a Billion-plus-dollar piece of transportation infrastructure, and got something else: bike signs placed on paved shoulder really intended to keep trucks in the other two lanes moving if the occasional vehicle needs to pull over, or of someone just needs to park a trailer for a few hours. Aside from that, it is a gutter for gravel and trash and carcasses and truck parts to prevent them from accumulating where they may impede truck travel. This “Bike Route” is just a part of the truck route, nothing else.

This is why this shoulder exists, signage be damned.

(I need to super-emphasize this) The SFPR it was never meant to be a Bike Route. 

So what to do? I’d like first to call upon the new Minister of Transportation to take down those “Bike Route” signs.

It isn’t her fault, she didn’t create this mess, but she adopted it by getting elected, so it is on her to do the right thing. The MoTI must stop threatening the lives of cyclists. Removing the signs and anything else that may incite otherwise-unaware bicycle users from mistakenly entering this cycling abattoir. Put an end to the ruse that this is any place for bicycles.

I could ask her for many more things – investment in cycling infrastructure for Surrey and Delta to make up for the funding-securing lies told by her predecessors, a commitment to policy changes to prevent her staff from ever doing this kind of bait-and-switch again – but those are opportunities for the future, and will require budget and policy decisions and such. She is a busy person with a huge mandate and new to the job; there will be time for those niceties later. First we must undo this mistake made intentionally by the previous government.

In the short term, someone in Minister Trevena’s office needs to call up the road maintenance contractor that bought the rights to not clean the shoulders here, and ask them to send a crew out to remove those signs. It shouldn’t take more than a day, it won’t cost any money, and it’s the right thing to do.

Where the SFPR meets another truck freeway, cooler heads prevail.