UBCM 2016 – Part 1

Posted on September 27, 2016September 27, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Like most locally elected people in BC, and a fair smattering of your Provincial representatives, I am in Victoria this week attending the Union of BC Municipalities convention.

This annual meeting is a chance for local government to share ideas, strategies, successes and failures. It is also a chance for us to meet with members of the provincial government and the opposition to tell them our gripes, ask them for money, or find out what their plans are for our communities, pretty much in that order.

This is my first time at UBCM (I couldn’t take time off of work last year), and my schedule for these 5 days is pretty packed, but I am going to try to blog out a few impressions in two or three posts.

My first impression is that the Saanich Peninsula is a great place to ride a bike! I send my luggage ahead so I could spend Sunday multi-moding my trip over. A good friend from Oak Bay rode up to Swartz Bay to meet me, and we pulled off a beautiful 60+km roll down the west side of the Peninsula, over a hill to Goldstream Park, and back along the Galloping Goose. It was a wonderful way to cleanse my spirit before a week sitting in conference rooms.

My first day and a half at UBCM was much less spirit-lifting, because I attended workshops and meetings primarily addressing climate change, and I wish the news was better.

In a broad-reaching workshop on Monday, the Minister of Environment, people from the private sector, NGOs, and local governments discussed progress and problems not to make big change, but just to meet the barest of our Paris commitments. There were representatives from the Minister’s Climate Leadership Team who came out (after the Minister had left) to decry how little in the plan the Provincial government asked them to put together was actually met by the resultant Climate Leadership Plan. That plan doesn’t get us anywhere near the targets we have committed to.

A big part of the problem in BC is that almost all of our electricity is fossil-fuel free (flooding of valleys notwithstanding), so the quick wins of shutting down a few coal plants is not available to us, as it is in other jurisdictions. Most of our emissions are buildings and transportation. We are doing a lot with buildings, but spending $4Billion on bridges to nowhere that none of the region wants instead of $2.5Billion on transit improvements that would make a huge difference in how our region emits carbon shows that Climate Leadership is taking second fiddle to… something. Because it sure as hell isn’t economic development.

Why do we need a Climate Leadership Plan that actually leads on climate? Because we have legislation (provincial, federal, and international) that requires it; because the potential cost of doing nothing is daunting and will crush local government budgets, not to mention global economic security; and because it is a *huge* economic opportunity. We are a highly educated, technically savvy, well-resourced jurisdiction. The amount of R&D that will come with forging a new post-carbon economy is game-changing. We can play catch up to that and buy the results of that R&D from others, or we can take the lead and reap the rewards from fostering innovation here.

All it takes is leadership. Many local governments are doing many great things, but we have two problems. We lack resources. We simply don’t have the tax base to make the kinds of investments that need to be made. We also are risk adverse as a rule, and it is hard to sell bleeding-edge ideas to a reluctant population. If I told the people of New Westminster that we could reduce the energy needs of a new Canada Games Pool and save the city $20 Million over 50 years of the life of the building, but it costs and extra $10 Million that we need to spend (actually, borrow!) today, It would be hard to convince the voters that is a good idea. Because taxes and stuff. There is a lifecycle cost reason to reduce energy use and therefore emissions, but there is a cynical electoral reason to spend as little as possible now, and let the next generation worry about the consequences.

In many ways BC is way ahead. We have the highest percentage of municipalities that have Community Energy and Emissions Plans of any jurisdiction in North America. We have a carbon tax. There was a lot of good stuff in the 2008 Climate Leadership Plan, and it has worked, without tanking the economy. Local Governments and others asking for more form the Climate Leadership Plan 2016 are not asking for the moon, we are asking for the kind of leadership in 2016 that the BC Liberals showed in 2008. Time to take the next step.

I have recently been invited to join the Board of the Community Energy Association of British Columbia, and am now part of the BC Municipal Climate Leadership Council (yes, I care about this stuff), so I was able to attend the BC Municipal Climate Leadership Breakfast in Tuesday.

We met at 7am with the Minister of Environment and a few other members of Cabinet, a couple of members of the Official Opposition, and the sole Green Party MLA. We had local government reps from several BC Municipalities, from Vancouver to Dawson Creek, talking about what we are doing locally, and (it has to be said) some asks for the province to help. Though my writing above includes a lot of criticism, it was a productive, non-partisan, collaborative conversation where the need for leadership was discussed in a respectful manner (helped by the excellent leadership – there’s that word again – of the two Mayors from North Vancouver).

Every person in that room wants to lead on climate; we all said we wanted to do more because we recognize the problem. However, MLA Weaver was quick to point out that none of it will matter if we move along with LNG production. All of the hard work and serious investments local governments in BC are making will not add up to enough savings to make up for a single LNG Plant the size of the one being announced literally while I post this.

It was at the Monday morning Study Session, after 3 hours of talk around half measures and aspirational ideas, where a younger Councillor from Haida Gwaii stood at the Q&A microphone and said, in the most respectful way possible, that he didn’t want to sound like Chicken Little here, but the sky is actually falling.

I also got a similar impression, especially as the Provincial Government representatives tried to polish the turd that is the new Climate Leadership Plan. It’s not that we are fiddling while Rome burns, it is more that Rome is burning, we are mixing ourselves a cool drink an enjoying a cigar while thinking about purchasing a fire extinguisher, when economic conditions are right.

Council – September 19, 2016

Posted on September 22, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

This week’s council dealt with some pretty significant issues in terms of the effect on how our City will look in the decades ahead, despite it being a fairly short agenda. Consequently, there was a lot of spirited discussion, and although mostly agrees on the direction we want to go, and the end result, there is some pretty strong disagreement on a lot of the process questions.

However, before that, we started off with an Opportunity to be Heard or two:

Development Variance Permit 00610 for Vary Sign Bylaw Requirements for Boston Pizza at 88 Tenth Street
The Boston Pizza wants to adapt its signage to make themselves move visible from Stewardson Way, but this requires a variance from our Sign Bylaw. We received no written submissions on this proposal, and no-one came to exercise their Opportunity to be Heard for or against the idea.

This is a pretty reasonable request, the sign fits the spirit of the Bylaw in scale and design, except that the strange geography of the Columbia Square Mall creates more street frontages than is normal, or envisioned in our Bylaw. Allowing the restaurant to advertise their presence internally to the mall parking lot and to the adjacent road seems like a reasonable request.

Council moved to support the Variance Permit.

That said, I was tempted to vote against it because of Brad Marchand, but he is lining up with Sidney Crosby in the World Cup this week, so I’ll cut him and his stinking rat face some slack and not punish every Boston themed enterprise by association.

Temporary Use Permit No. 00012 for part of 97 Braid Street
Fraser Health wants to build a temporary parking lot for their employees and contractors during the first phase of construction for the RCH expansions. We need to issue a temporary use permit because “parking lot” is not one of the current allowable uses of that open lot at Braid and Brunette.

We had no correspondence on this, and only one person came to speak on the issue, expressing concerns about the screening and visual impact of the lot, mostly pertaining to tree planting around the lot.

It is a temporary use, and the fencing and screening will be removed, but Staff was requested to review the landscaping plan in regards to the visual impact of the lot. I was also concerned that Rousseau not become a route for the shuttle bus that Fraser Health wants to run, as we don’t need more traffic impacts on local neighbourhoods when there is a viable alternative.

Council moved to support the temporary use permit.

On the neighbourhood impact point, I hope that Fraser Health takes this opportunity to promote Transportation Demand Management for its employees, discouraging the use of cars in parking lots, and encouraging the transit and other options available to them. They have agreed to work with the City on ramped up enforcement of parking restrictions on the residential streets around the Hospital during this time, to try to convince employees that parking tickets aren’t “the cost of doing business” when you work at RCH.

We then had a presentation from staff:

OUR CITY 2041 – Draft Infill Housing Design Guidelines
As part of the development of a new Official Community Plan, we are looking at ways to manage “infill density” in our residential neighbourhoods.

The draft Land Use Plan that is going to public consultation over the next few weeks includes some changes in single family neighbourhoods, including opening up the possibility of Laneway Houses (LWH) and Carriage Houses (CH) in most areas, and some limited areas where smaller Townhouse (TH) or Rowhome (RH) projects may be strategically fit into existing neighbourhoods.

However, to make this work while protecting the livability of our single family neighbourhoods, there need to be limits – not every lot or property is appropriate for LWH/CH introduction, and TH/RH done poorly can have a negative impact on neighbouring properties. Staff has drafted a set of such guidelines for both instances, which are up for public consultation. It should be a lively discussion.

LWH/CR: There are three ways that the viability of the single family detached lot for a LWH/CH is being considered: overall density, proportional density, and size. Currently, single family lots are generally limited to 0.5 FSR, which means if you have a 6,000sqft lot, you can build a 3,000sqft house (6,000 x 0.5 = 3,000). Staff are proposing no change in this maximum density. The allowable FSR of 0.5 must be split between the main and secondary house. Proportionally, the second house cannot be more than 0.15 of that FSR. Finally, the LWH/CH cannot be smaller than 350sqft, or larger than 950sqft.

Therefore, if you have 5,000sqft lot, the LWH house must be (5,000 x 0.15 = 750) 750sqft or smaller. If you have a 2,000sqft house on that lot, then the LWH can only be 500sqft (2000+500 = 2500 = 0.5 FSR). If the lot is bare, you have the option to build one 2,500sqft home, or a 2,000sqft house and a 500sqft LWH/CH, or even a 1,750sqft house and a 750sqft LWH/CH. There are also other guidelines about open space, window placement, and maximum building envelope that will reduce the impact on neighbouring properties.

For the TH/RH guidelines, these are looking at smaller, more compact developments that you might be familiar with in Queensborough or in Fraserview, and there are many guidelines around setbacks, building form, scale and open space that are designed to make them fit better into neighbourhoods – to effectively make then less obtrusive neighbours to single family homes.

Again, these are draft guidelines, and meant to start the discussion in the community. There are a half a dozen Open Houses coming up and on-line consultation, I encourage you to take part. If you read this Blog, you probably care a bit about the direction the City is going, this is a chance for you to provide real input that matters. All info here.

The following items were moved on consent:

Draft Flag Policy
The City occasionally run flags up poles (i.e. for Pride week, to celebrate Philippine National Day), and sometimes drop them to half-mast (when solemn events occur). As we are a City, we need a policy for this. The most notable difference for most of you is the little flags on our desk have been rearranged a bit to make sure we are giving proper dominance to the Canadian Flag.

We then had a few Reports for Action

City Resources and Expenses Associated with the City Truck, Trailer and Chassis Usage in Parades
The City has invested in a truck, trailer, and chassis to support the Hyack Festivals Association float program, along with contributing to the cost of design and production of the float.

Although this program began far enough back that no-one is really sure how it started, and like many things in the history of the City, appears to be on the basis of a handshake agreement, several costs are coming due. The vehicles are at end of life, and need to either be refurbished or replaced.

Unfortunately, this decision came to us without first having a discussion with the primary stakeholder – the Hyack Festivals Association. We would never decide the fate of the Legge Theatre without consulting the Vagabond Players, or the Art Gallery without talking to the Arts Council, so I don’t think we should make any decision until we at least know what Hyack wants or needs from this program, and their ability to pay for it.

The report was tabled until Staff can perform that consultation and provide us some more info.

Queen’s Park Heritage Control Clarification of Scope and Process
The highlight of the night was our detailed discussion of the process staff is proposing to address Council’s decision to impose a Heritage Control Period for the Queens Park Neighbourhood while a Heritage Conservation Area plan is developed.

Through some unfortunate communications by the City, including Council, precipitated by a failure to respond to media reports last June, the use of the term “moratorium” has been used to characterize the Heritage Control Period. I tried to be very careful back at the time, and have tried to be careful to avoid the term since, because a municipal government does not have authority under the Local Government Act to declare such a moratorium.

There are strict limits to a local government’s ability to regulate demolitions. As a property owner, you have the right to apply, and to be heard in a reasonable time. A City has a right to work through a process, but must reply to a request in a reasonable time. If a homeowner does not like a decision made on a permit application, they have a right to appeal to Council, and we may or may not have the right to turn them down. The Heritage Control Period extends to us that right to say “no” for the sake of heritage preservation, but does not remove the applicants’ right to a fair hearing before Council.

It is a bit unfortunate that we are getting into a process debate at this period, because I think (and I should not speak for all of Council) that most or all of Council is in favour of heritage protection for Queens Park, but we need to determine what the process will be to get us there, and that the community both understands the implications of this, and has been consulted on the details of the implementation.

We have, as a City, not done a great job so far on communications so far on this project, and we need to sharpen up. It was a bit of a fractious evening at Council, and the policy direction we are taking was supported on a split vote, but I think it was good for us to go through a bit of the process discussion now, and get the larger conversation started.

The process we have decided to put in place for the Heritage Control Period is a good one because it provides a high level of protection, it is completely defensible if a proponent dead-set on demolition comes to Council and we turn them down, and it gives us an opportunity to test a process prior to the introduction of a more permanent approach. The process is very similar to the First Shaughnessy process Vancouver used a couple of years ago, and that managed to act as a de facto moratorium, in that no heritage demolitions were approved during the period, while never facing a court challenge.

The following item was removed from consent

Traffic Control Requirements for Special Events
There have been a few issues for some event organizers around traffic control measures. Specifically, the Uptown Winter Farmers Market on Belmont Street was feeling a financial pinch from having to provide two full time traffic control officers during their bi-weekly road closures. Having to pay for a single event is one thing, but when you hold 10-15 events a year, the bills add up. Add to this that the road closure on Belmont is such that people are unlikely to accidentally drive on the closed street, as long as the barriers are placed properly and the road is full of tents. Traffic management is pretty much keeping people from wandering into cross traffic at the ends. Volunteers can do that.

The RCFM asked us to review this policy, and our Festivals Committee, staff, and the NWPD agreed to some adjustment to the policy impacting all event holders, not just the RCFM. Hopefully, this will make one of myriad of tasks for event organizers a little clearer and more efficient.

With no Bylaws to read or adopt, that brought our meeting to an end!

Portland

Posted on September 10, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

So we went to Portland on the Labour Day long weekend.

The one in Oregon, the city notable for its place-making street cred, for its plethora of funky beer choices, and for its spamming New West with roses planted by people in capes. I hadn’t been to Portland for probably 20 years, so I swung a 4-day weekend and we hit the rails. Instead of a long travelogue, I just want to blog a few short impressions of Stumptown from what was, basically, a first visit.

Travelling by train is very civilized. The pace is right, you can enjoy the journey, I got a bit of work done. It was fun to see New West go by from the train bridge, even if it was hours after we left New West to get to the train. Having an Amtrak station in New West would be great, but there might be a stronger case for putting one in Surrey by Scott Road Station…

There are some incredible streets in Portland. The Pearl District area and much of Downtown all the way to Portland State University has leafy, historic, sometimes cobbly, and clearly multi-modal streets. At times, you get a seriously European feel to the streets, except they are generally wider and more open that found in historic European Cities. And there are a lot of one-way streets, which kind of removes the Euro-feel, but makes “jaywalking” a lot easier.

Clearly, Portland has put a lot of thought into ways to keep their streets and public spaces friendly, or “sticky” in the Jacobsian sense. Public drinking fountains, well designed (and utilized!) stand-alone public bathrooms, squares with large fountains clearly designed to be played in on hot days as opposed to viewed from a respectful distance, and many newer spaces designed to blur the line between public and private spaces. There is a lot of reason to be on the street, and spend a bit of time watching the world go by – or “loitering”, as some may call it.

I’m, not sure why, but I was somewhat surprised by the serious number of homeless people in Portland. It seemed there were tents everywhere, and at least one well-established Tent City in the Little Tokyo area. Drug abuse and mental illness issues were apparent, and the gentrification of areas north of Downtown is happening in the midst of a lot of poverty. We never felt unsafe, but it is clear Vancouver isn’t alone in finding difficulty “trickling down” the prosperity.

Wow, get away from the cool parts, and it is a short trip to freeway Hell. The contrast between the west shore of the river (where the Harbour Drive freeway was removed and turned into a park in the late 1970s) and the east shore (where I-5 Freeway stacks and flyways fill the skyline) is pretty much a case for choosing the kind of City you want. From all around the City, there are peek-a-boo views of stacked freeways. It would be interesting to study how the 4-lane I-405, which somewhat constrains the western expansion of Downtown, may actually add to the density and resultant vibrancy of downtown.

We rode bikes! Portland has a relatively new Bikeshare program, sponsored by some local shoe company. It is similar to, but different than, both Vancouver’s Mobi and New York’s Citibikes, mostly in that all of the electronics are embedded in the bike. A little solar-powered console above the rear wheel takes your info, controls the lock, and includes a GPS locator to tell where the bike is, meaning you can park it pretty much anywhere, not just at the designated stations. We paid $12 for a day pass, which gave us 180 minutes of rides. The system was easy to use, the bikes adequately tough and stable, and no helmet law required! (although I noticed most people on bikes were wearing helmets, probably more reflecting the inconsistent cycling infrastructure in most neighbourhoods than the need for a law).

Once we had bikes, we crossed the River to Mississippi and Hawthorne, two commercial/residential neighbourhoods that were not suburb, but more the fringe of the urban area, rather like W41st in Kerrisdale or East Columbia in Sapperton. Both had their charms, but Mississippi won me over with a more human scale road. Mississippi Ave is 12m wide, two-lanes with parking; Hawthorne Blvd for much of its length is one of those 16m-wide 4-lane + central turn lane no parking behemoth stroads that suck the energy off of the street. Both were cool areas, worth the time to stroll, one just felt more like a place I wanted to spend time.

There are a lot of food trucks in Portland, entire City blocks dedicated to their semi-permanent establishment. We appreciated them during our walks about, but I was a little surprised how their ubiquity didn’t actually foster much originality. Burritos, Shawarma/Gyros, and Pad Thai were ubiquitous, but there wasn’t a lot of kale tofu macaroni options. Why does mainstreaming something always take the fun out of it?

The Saturday farmers’ market at the South Park Blocks, however, was incredible. There is so much farming in the Willamette Valley, with a moderately warm climate, plenty of sun, and a long growing season, the variety of “local” fruits and vegetables is astounding. With a market like this, why would anyone ever go to Whole Foods?

Yes, peer pressure, after three days, finally dragged me into Powell Books. Skepticism verging on cynicism (I don’t have time to read any more books!) was abated by my seeing a book of Neal Stephenson essays, and a Robert Millar autobiography, which I both *had* to have. What a sucker.

There was also some beer pressure. We stopped at several small to medium sized breweries and character tap houses. We tasted beer from the premises, and beer from far-off places like Bend, and Bellingham. We tasted barrel-aged beers, sours, barley wines, and Westcoast IPAs that were like concentrated hop syrup. We were often surprised, seldom disappointed. It was also nice to be immersed in an atmosphere where drinking beer was about flavours and aromas, creativity and locality. The tap house scene was brick walls and art, not TV screens and sports. We sat at the bar, told people our stories, an they told us theirs. The food was locally sourced charcuterie, not hot wings and dry ribs. The whole vibe was hipster to the max, but cool and comfortable.

Finally, we saw a Wilco show. Which was remarkable. I have seen them many times in the past, but every time brings new and different pleasures. This was a softer, more laid back version of Wilco than some of the recent tours, which suited @MsNWimby fine, but they still blew the roof off with Spiders (Kidsmoke). Best quote of the night (I can only paraphrase) was Jeff Tweety describing Nels’ thrashing his beat-up Jazzmaster at the end of the otherwise-mellow Impossible Germany: “If you have a band, and you have a song, and you have a guitarist who can do that with it, you put it on the setlist every f’ing night!” I have to agree. Every time I see him play it, I swear it is it the greatest guitar performance I have ever seen. Every damn time. (the spine-shiver hits me at about 5:30 in the video below)

My overall impression is that Portland is fun, and an interesting place to spend time, but it reminds me that we do things really well here in Greater Vancouver. Portland has the laid-back Vancouver vibe (one we are perhaps losing?), but lacks the scenic surroundings. They do some streets and public spaces really well, but are clearly facing development pressures and expanding suburbs that limit their ability to calm their streets. The cost of housing looked like it was creeping up, if not to Vancouver crisis levels, clearly there were a lot of people left behind, and no apparent (to a passing tourist) effort to address the issue. By USA standards, it is an incredibly easy-to-visit city, with an active downtown, and has some cultural elements that really stand out, but it looks more fun to visit than to live there.

Maybe Bend.

Tree loss & protection

Posted on August 29, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

A few years back when I was still complaining about the City’s lack of action on a Tree Bylaw, I pointed out the presence of a great beech trees on my street. This was one of three, gigantic, more than 100 years old, trunks more than a metre across. They provide so many benefits to the neighbourhood and the community: shade, noise abatement, wildlife habitat, storm water detention, cooling the air.

These three had “heritage” protection, so they were unlikely to be capriciously removed, but that limited protection was not afforded to most trees in the City. The vast majority were afforded almost no protection – if the landowner chose to remove them, she was good to go. A Bylaw was needed, and through the lengthy development of an Urban Forest Management Strategy, these newly-monikered “specimen trees” are protected from removal by short-term thinking.

I was shocked last week when a neighbour came over to complain to me that the City had allowed one of the three grand beech trees to be removed. “I thought there was a Bylaw!”

Alas, I wandered over to the property in question, and indeed one of the three is no more. No more than pile of alarmingly large slices of wood, as the arbourists were working on site clean-up. I noticed a Tree Removal Permit attached to the house, so clearly they got permission, but I felt the loss as much as my concerned neighbour. So I called up staff and we have had some discussions about this tree.

*I am trying to be careful here, because the homeowner who owned the tree did not do anything wrong, and I don’t want to cause them embarrassment or any kind of trouble, but a few people have asked me about the loss of this tree, and now there is a story in the Paper, so I felt like I needed to comment about it here. It will be difficult to tell the story without providing clues about the location, and I think people need to know the story of the loss of a community asset like this. So please, be respectful of the homeowner who – I’ll say it again – did nothing wrong here. If you feel the need to act out or speak up or react negatively, do it to me and Council, not them. Thanks.*

The story of this tree is that it was suffering from senescence, which is the technical way of saying it was dying of old age. I don’t want to get into the detailed description given by the arbourist, partly because I’m not an arbourist and may not clearly translate their terminology, and partly because there are probably FOIPPA issues in releasing a report provided to the City without passing it through the privacy protection filter.

The now-gone tree in 2011, looking pretty happy. (ripped from Google Street View, no permission requested)

Our efforts to look back are, fortunately, assisted by technology. Google Street View has photos both from 2011 and from 2016 on adjacent streets. The visible decline of the tree is obvious. It looked (again, to my untrained eye) healthy in 2011, but by 2016, the leaves are sparse and diminutive, many branches looking bare. There was quite a bit more evidence of decline in the arborist report, but there is no doubt this tree was not very happy.

The same tree in June, 2016, looking sparse and lob-sided at a time of year when it should be in fill bloom. (also ripped from Google Street View)

The contributing factors to a tree like this entering full-plant senescence are usually multiple. Sometimes there is an attack by a pest, and the drought-like conditions we have experienced for a couple of summers probably hurt the resiliency of the tree. It is possible (I’m just speculating here) that poor pruning practice or damage to the roots for home improvements may have also been a factor, further reducing the ability of the tree to cope with declining productivity.

In the end, the things that made the tree so majestic – its great size and hulking branches – are the things that made it a “hazardous tree” once that decline began. The arbourist did not think this was a temporary setback, and that recovery was unlikely. what was more likely was continued decline until the branches started to collapse, potentially onto a building or person. The homeowner got a permit, had a tree health assessment done, and received permission to cut the tree down.

As this is a “specimen” size tree, and a hazardous one, Schedule A of the Bylaw indicates that the homeowner is required to replace the tree, and the City collects security to assure that replacement takes place. Of course, putting a new dogwood or birch sapling in the place does not really “replace” a 100+ year old giant like what was lost. It will be decades until the replacement starts to provide the mass of benefits that the old tree did. But even this replacement policy did not exist before the Bylaw.

Which bring me to the point – the Tree Protection Bylaw does not mean no trees will ever be removed again. What it means is that the City has applied measures (call it Red Tape if you are so inclined) to act as disincentives to the removal of trees, and to provide compensation to the community for trees lost. When it comes to private property, that is about as far as we can go as a City. It has proven to work in other jurisdictions, though.

The Bylaw is only one part of our Urban Forest Management Strategy, but it is an important part, and this fall Council will be taking a closer look at the Bylaw application to see where it can be strengthened, and where it needs to be relaxed to make it more functional for residents. If you have opinions one way or another, please send Mayor and Council an e-mail or letter.

The TransMountain Panel

Posted on August 24, 2016August 25, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

For reasons probably not relevant to this discussion, I attended a couple of the “Trans MountainPipeline Expansion Project Ministerial Panel” public meetings in Burnaby and Vancouver.

For those who have not been keeping track, here is the TL;DR background condensed to a single run-on sentence:

An American tax-dodge scheme called Kinder Morgan bought a 50-year-old oil pipeline from Alberta to Burnaby, and now wants to replace and twin it, tripling capacity, and shipping mostly diluted bitumen for quick export via daily Aframax tankers berthing in Burrard Inlet, which previously would have required an Environmental Assessment, but the Harper Government changed the rules in 2012, giving an Oil and Gas Regulator/Booster in Calgary called the National Energy Board the ability to review and approve the project, which they unsurprisingly did in May 2016 despite significant local and First Nations pushback, causing the new Trudeau government to say “hold yer horses, Cowboys” and strike a new “ministerial” panel that will be doing further stakeholder, community, and first nations outreach to “seek additional views that could be relevant to the Government’s final decision on the project”, a panel whose validity is being questioned by many critics, as its Chair was, until recently, working with Kinder Morgan.

I went to the meetings as an observer, not a presenter, so this post is made up of my impressions of the presentations of others. You may not agree with them (me?), and although the public meetings are pretty much wrapped up now, you can still take part by sending your comments or filling out a questionnaire here.

The roundtable I attended in Burnaby took place in one of those familiar hotel convention rooms, all crystal chandeliers and pukey carpets, which was essentially empty for most of the day, with many more seats than participants. Right from the get-go, it was hard to determine what the actual plan for the day was.

The morning session was meant to feature “Environmental NGOs” (I counted three), with two later sessions featuring “Local Governments” (a total of four, including New Westminster, who were well represented by City staff). There was no fixed agenda, so there was no idea who was presenting when, and any member of the public was apparently able to sign up and get their time at the microphone after the pre-designated speakers were finished. There was a polite request that each of the speakers would have 5 minutes, but there was no timekeeping, and some presenters went on for better than a half an hour.

In her introductory remarks, the Chair instructed the audience that this was meant to be an “informal dialogue”. They appeared to have perfectly nailed in the “informal” part, but the dialogue was distinctly lacking. In three sessions totalling almost five hours, I can recall a single instance where a Panel Member asked a follow-up question of a presenter. Even when directly asked questions by presenters, the Panel members seemed unable (unwilling?) to answer, but more on that later.

The Vancouver event was crowded and went well into the night, where the lack of any formal organization led to the inevitable. There was a significant presence of the patchouli and gorp crowd that, as usual, had a frustratingly hard time keeping on topic. Concerns were expressed about everything from Site C to salmon farming to LNG. At one point, a gentleman came to the microphone cradling what was, apparently, a plastic doll swaddled in a blanket and finished his talk with a short a cappella folk song of sorts. Perhaps I missed the point. No, I’m almost positive I missed the point.

However, there were also several compelling arguments offered, including the failure of the NEB process to address significant concerns with this project, questions about the ability of the Federal Government to respond to a significant spill in the Canadian half of the Salish Sea (the risk of which will clearly increase if this project is approved), and questions about how Canada will meet its stated GHG emission goals if Oil/Tar/Bituminous Sands developments proceed at the pace outlined in the business case for this project. The one question hanging over the entire proceeding was clearly “Why?” How is accelerating the extraction of a non-renewable resource for rapid export in the “National Public Interest”?

It was the sparsely-attended Burnaby event that was actually more interesting. Mayor Corrigan of Burnaby, love him or hate him, can be a hell of an effective orator, and he was on his game this day. He spoke clearly without notes for about a half hour, and despite his reputation for, uh… being outspoken, he was respectful and calm for the length of talk. He started by talking about the history of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline, and how 50 years ago Burnaby consented to a cooperative-owned pipeline to supply the 5 refineries around the Burrard Inlet because of the important local jobs and domestic supply needs it represented. He also spoke of the history of Burnaby gifting Burnaby Mountain to the University, then buying large portions of it back 40 years later to protect the conservation area that had become so important to Burnaby and the region.

He went through how his Council and Staff evaluated the Kinder Morgan proposal to “twin” the pipeline, primarily for export, and in comparing the significant costs and limited offsetting benefits, determined it was not in the interest of the City. They then learned about the National Energy Board, a non-elected body in Calgary made up of (mostly) former energy executives, who would be tasked with reviewing the project to determine if it was in the “national public interest.” They identified fairly quickly that there is no national plan to develop our hydrocarbon industries or to manage our non-renewable resources over the short or long term, making determination of how any project fit within something called the “national public interest” a very difficult thing to determine. At no point was there an explanation of what the “national public interest” was, nor a discussion of how one would measure it. For a Municipal Politician, whose job it is to plan and make those plans a reality, the complete lack of planning or even a clear definition of a goal, was shocking.

Further, going through the process with the National Energy Board, the City of Burnaby (along with most everyone else involved) soon discovered that the hearing process was cumbersome, chaotic, and lacking in some pretty fundamental protections that a formal hearing should have, such as the ability to cross-examine witnesses and test the evidence that has been presented to assure it was credible and had merit. In challenging the process, Burnaby discovered that Kinder Morgan’s legal fight was funded by a special surcharge on the pipeline use approved by the NEB, a source of funds not available to local governments and other stakeholders in the process, and that the NEB was not made up of a broad representation of citizens from across BC and Canada who can fairly evaluate what is reasonable to the general public, but are drawn from within the Oil and Gas industry and friends of the (at the time) oil-soaked federal government.

After discussing some of the technical and safety concerns the City of Burnaby has, and the inadequate responses to these risks provided in the “conditions” to the NEB approval, Corrigan compared these to the inferred benefits: maintaining some jobs in Alberta to accelerate the removal of harder- and harder-to-extract oil reserves so they can be exported faster for the benefit of a few multinationals,with little or no long-term evaluation of Canada’s long-term petroleum needs. Are the needs of future generations included in “the national public interest”?

He summed up by calling the Panel out for what they really are – a political body comprised of two former politicians and a former Deputy Minister – and the review for what it is – a political process to correct the fundamental flaws of the NEB process that Prime Minster Trudeau recognized prior to his election. In summary, the Mayor quoted the Prime Minister, stating “Government can grant permits, but it’s communities that grant permission.”

He then put a period on that point: “Well, we don’t.”

I was also fortunate to have heard Kai Nagata from the Dogwood Initiative ask some rather pointed questions to the Panel, for which he received respectful non-answers. To paraphrase heavily from my memory, the exchange went something like this:

Q: Who was invited to speak? Is there a list of which organizations were sent invitations? What efforts were taken to get the word out to impacted parties, so they can take time from their summer schedules to take part? Was there any vetting of the people who wished to take part?
A: There is no list. Everyone was invited. Anyone can speak.

Q: So you are taking anything from anyone. How are you vetting the information received? With no opportunity for cross-examinations, how are you assessing the strength of evidence? What measures are you taking to determine if the voices you are hearing represent a fair cross section of stakeholders, or the general public. What processes have you brought to weigh the evidence you have received, and where is that process explained?
A: We are here to listen, and we will produce a report summarizing what we hear.

Q: There does not appear to be any official recording or video of these hearings, nor does it appear that official transcripts are being produced. Some presenters have provided you written materials, how will the record of these hearings be entered in to the official record, and how with the public know what transpired here? What process exists to assure the public input is fairly reflected in the report you provide to the Minister, or that the written evidence you have received has been vetted for accuracy?
A: We are here to listen, and we are taking notes, there are no official transcripts.

Q: So with no formal process to solicit input or assure the presenters are representative of the community, no vetting of the information you hear, no process to determine the validity of evidence, and no official record of what transpires – how will this Panel, to quote the Prime Minister “restore public trust and confidence in Canada’s environmental assessment processes”?
A: Hrrm…

I don’t mean to come down hard on the Panel Members. They were hastily called up and thrown into a hastily assembled process, with a mandate that may appear simple, but suffers from a lack of definition or process. Their job is to report to the Minister with some ideas or impressions of whether this project, a narrowly defined pipeline delivering and extra 600,000 barrels a day of products to the Pacific Coast primarily for export through Burrard Inlet, is in the “National Public Interest.” Unfortunately, they have not been provided the tools to define, never mind measure, such an ethereal concept. This “informal” and apparently ad-hoc process is not going to get them any closer to that definition.

Nor will this process restore the public trust in the way the Prime Minister anticipated. The only question remaining is whether he has the political courage to stop this project based on this failure, because it has not moved him any closer to receiving a mandate to approve it.

on the commute.

Posted on August 16, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. 5 Comments.

The Ides of August was hellish for people trying to get home from work. It was a hot day by Vancouver standards, without much of a breeze, but the sweat on the brows was more caused by a series of incidents where cars unsuccessfully tried to share space with one another.

However, on a hot day like this, one incident causing delay often cascades into a series of other incidents as people become less patient, less rational, and the natural dehumanizing effects of being in a car get people treating everyone around them, the people they share a community with, like their mortal enemies for having the gall of trying to do the same thing they themselves are doing because aaaAAAARRGGH!

I commute by car, by transit, and by bike, depending on day, weather, schedule, and lifestyle factors. Yesterday, I was fortunate to have taken my bike into work, so my commute home was relatively stress free. I have to admit a bit of smugness enters the mind when you are relaxed on a bike, enjoying the weather, and pedaling softly by a long line of single-occupant cars, which almost offsets the self-hatred I suffer every time I am in the car, stuck in a line, and see some much happier person riding their bike past me. However, having been that person stuck in a car, stuck in traffic that I am also a part of, it never occurred to me to blame the person on the bike for my physical predicament, or my mental state.

So yesterday, I am riding east along Westminster Highway near the Nature Park during this traffic chaos when I see something new to me. I am exposed to Richmond Drivers on a daily basis, but this was a little over the top. There was a line of about six or seven cars just rolling down the bike lane. It is almost as if the drivers had decided that two lanes were not enough, and had, en masse, decided this is a three lane road, passing the vehicles stuck to their left. At some point, a group of about 4 were stopped at a light, and I rolled past them. This might have been a little untoward, but after all, it is a bike lane – no sharrows or bus stop or shared parking space or right turn lane ambiguity here, and I was on a bicycle.

This was too much for a guy in a 4th generation Camaro Convertible with the ginormous Polska Pride flag decal covering the the hood. He took the opportunity to suggest to me in no uncertain terms, that I should not be riding my bicycle “on the road”. I saw this as a great time to remind him that I was, in fact in a bike lane, as evidenced by the nearby signage, and that he, in fact was also in the bike lane, without a bike, so I may have been in the right here.

At this point, he started into a lengthy screed, which was about 40% profanity and about 60% Bruce Allen “reality check”, neither of which were probably appropriate for the 8 year old in the passenger seat to witness. The short version was that bicycle riders don’t buy insurance, they should not be on the road, and that I, although obviously homosexual, engage in unwholesome acts with my mother.

I rode away from him and his impotent rage, and generally enjoyed the rest of my ride home. I did so, however, once again wondering what it is about driving a car that dehumanizes us. Why do we behave in a line of cars like we never would in a line at a bank? Why do we feel a car allows us the threaten and intimidate other people, be they children or senior citizens, and yell racial and homohpbic epithets that we would never do at a public park, on the beach, at work or in a mall? Outside of actual war, is there any other group activity we volunteer to engage in where we so publicly and unabashedly hate the people we are surrounded by? Why do we even do it?

Also, what is this strange fascination with attempting to license bicycles like they are some sort of parallel with cars? As His Snobbiness (slightly profanely) reminds us: you don’t need a commercial pilot’s license to operate a car. Bicycles present pretty nearly no risk whatsoever to drivers, passengers, or public property, except for some risk of scuffing the paint on their car, for which ICBC will make the person at fault pay. Even if I did buy insurance attendant to the risk I present to third parties (which would surely cost a few dollars a year relative to the risk I pose when I shuffle down the road at 100km/h in 2,000lbs of steel), do I think Mr. Polska Camaro is suddenly going to see me as a legitimate sharer of road space and afford me respect?

Yet for some reason, otherwise seemingly rational public servants from Toronto to Vancouver suggest there is some problem with adults riding bicycles that licensing can somehow cure. They aren’t too sure what the problem is, and have a hard time tying this solution to it, but they need to be seen to be doing something about the bicycles, because people in bicycles are not angry enough.

Let’s all try to get along, folks. Autumn is nearly here.

What do you do?

Posted on August 5, 2016August 4, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

I’ve been at the City Councillor thing for a year and a half now, long enough that I have to stop referring to myself as “the new guy”. At some point, I have to stop blaming / giving credit to the previous Council for everything going wrong / right in the City. I suspect (hope?) the steep part of the learning curve is now behind me, and I start directing more of my learning towards the problems I want to see solved, the opportunities ahead. It is also long enough that I should be able to answer the simple question “What do you do?”

I have tried, over the last 18 months, to report out on this blog some of the mechanics of City Council, as it was my goal when running to open up the process a bit, and try to do a better job explaining the sometimes-incomprehensible decisions Council (and the City) make. Recognizing many in the City will disagree with any given decision made by Council, I wanted to at least provide enough information so that they know what they are disagreeing with, and not rely on the few very vocal boo-birds in town who assume a decision is bad only because this Council makes it.

However, this post isn’t about that, it is more about the actual day-to-day duties of a person you pay $40,000 a year (plus Vehicle Allowance!) to represent you, whether you voted for them or not. So here is my summary of the job.

*This is a good time for one of my disclaimers about how everything I write here is my opinion and my viewpoint, and doesn’t necessarily reflect the ideas or opinions of any other members of Council, who are, believe it or not, individual people with their own ideas and biases. Like the rest of this Blog, this is not the “official position” of the City or any entity other than myself.*

Council Meetings:
Council meeting days happen about every two weeks on average. In the spring and fall we meet more often, and we more time off in the summer and around Christmas. The schedule is flexible around work load and stat holiday schedules, but we have about 26-30 meetings a year.

Council meeting days are comprised of a Closed Meeting and an Open Meeting, only the latter of which you see on TV. About 10 times a year (the last meeting of most months), the Open Meeting is coupled with a Public Hearing. We also, at times, have Committee/Taskforce meetings (more on that below) and Council Workshops on these Mondays.

A long Council Monday can be 12 or more hours, with breaks for lunch and dinner. The portion you see on TV is only the Open Meeting and Public Hearing part. On any given meeting day I am at City hall at 9:00am, and typically wander home sometime between 9:00 and midnight.

Council Prep:
We cannot show up at Council Meetings unprepared to discuss the business of the day. Our schedule on Monday is typically pretty stuffed, and we cannot hope to learn enough about the issues on which we will be discussing during that time. On the Friday before the meeting we are delivered (electronically in my case) our “Council Package”. This contains the staff-prepared reports and background info we need to put discussions in context. The Package varies in length, but is typically about 1,000 pages when Closed and Open agenda items are combined.

My practice is to get take a glance at the Package for maybe an hour after I get home from work on Friday or first thing Saturday morning. This allows me to get an idea of what is on the agenda, to determine if it is a 700-page or a 2,000-page week, and to do a first pass over the topics being discussed. From that I can plan out my weekend to assure I have enough time put aside to review at the detail needed, and do any other research I might want to do in order to understand the issue. That is usually when I decide if I have time to do a bike ride on Sunday or attend a Saturday function.

Typically (and this varies quite a bit), I spend about 8 hours on Sunday reviewing the package and taking my notes. My notes form the backbone of the Blog I will eventually write about the week’s Council meeting, but more importantly they create a framework around which I organize my thoughts on the agenda items. This is an old trick from studying during my University years, but I find that if I write a summary of a topic I am trying to learn, it forces me to learn enough to summarize the important points, and to understand what questions I need to have answered yet. Often, you don’t know what you don’t know until you try to write it down.

I print those notes out, so you can see me at Council using my computer screen (where the agenda and reports that make up the Package are) and written notes, along with the extra papers that we receive on Council Day, typically supporting reports that weren’t available Friday, presentation materials, or other relevant documents. My desk is a mess.

Committees and Taskforces:
Like the rest of my colleagues, I serve on several Committees and Taskforces for Council. These each meet anywhere from once a month to once every second month. Most meetings are in the later afternoon, mid-week, after I get off my regular job, and meetings typically last about two hours. With my being on three taskforces and four committees, this adds up to an average of about one meeting a week during the busy months, but not many in the summer (except occasional exceptional meetings, like the Transportation Taskforce last week, and the ACTBiPed next week).

In these meetings, Council members, staff, and stakeholders work through issues, ideas, programs, or proposals, and (hopefully) provide guidance to Council to make better decisions. Prep for these meetings varies greatly, but rarely takes more than an hour. Follow-up on some of the issues that arise at these meetings, and some of the extraordinary meetings, tours or other activities involved with the work these committees are doing takes quite a bit more time.

Community Events: There are various types of community events, some you have to attend, like the Civic Dinner where we thank committee volunteers, some you attend to show support to organizations or people doing good work in the City, some you attend just because they are fun.

This is a challenge for any Councillor’s schedule. We get a lot of invitations, and cannot hope to attend everything. I try to be careful about stretching myself too thin, and end up missing a lot of events I really want to get to. I try to respond to every invitation and send a decline if I cannot make it, but scheduling is an ongoing challenge, as is managing my work and Council calendars while still finding some time to remind @MsNWimby that I exist. The job does not come with a social coordinator, and every calendar app I can find for my phone is worse than every other one. I’m still working on this part…

Constituent Services:
This is a big, but pretty loosely defined group of activities, and each Councillor can make their own decision about how they manage this, and how much time it takes. This is another part of the job that “expands to fill the space available to it”.

Sometimes, a person complains to you about potholes on their street, or the noise from their neighbor’s wind chimes. Sometimes they call you to ask for help with a business license issue, or to complain about a development in their neighbourhood. Sometimes people complain about unfair enforcement of a Bylaw, while others complain about lack of Bylaw enforcement. Some people just want to be heard and the problem acknowledged, some want you to fix things for them.

I try to take an approach to this based on a few principles. I am not there to help people get out of Bylaw requirements, to get their stuff pushed to the front of a line, or to help them get around a process that exists. I am really conscious that procedures and policy exist in government, and that we have professional staff working on directives from Council as translated through their management – they should not have to deal with an individual Councillor coming and telling them how to do their jobs. That said, if a resident or business owner feels that the process is unfair, or that they have received treatment form the City that is not in keeping with City policy or good customer service, I am happy to talk with management at the City and (this is important) get both sides of the story and figure out what went wrong.

It is a delicate balance. Sometimes my job is to help explain to a resident or business owner why things are so bureaucratic and irritating, and why the Bylaw is written or enforced the way it is. Sometimes staff do mess up, or processes are developed that don’t really work when put into practice, and someone needs to facilitate a better outcome for everyone. I don’t see my job as advocating for either party in a conflict like this, but as a mediator trying to figure out an outcome that works best for the City and the Residents. And occasionally the approach required is to work with the Mayor and Council at the executive level to fix a process or a system that is not working for the residents and businesses in the City. Deciding which of the three is the right course when hearing from a complainant is a tough job, and something I am still learning about and developing my skills at.

Communications:
I receive dozens of e-mails a day and a few phone calls a week from residents or businesses in town. I try to respond to all of them. I fail.

When I first got elected, I dreamed I would answer them all promptly and personally, but reality has set in. Some (like the every-couple-of-day missives from the hateful racists at Immigration Watch) go directly to delete. Some I am just cc’d to, and am not the best person to answer, so I usually wait to see if a more appropriate person responds before chiming in. Some raise interesting and complex questions that I need to put a bit of thinking too before I respond. Some scroll off the first page, and I get back to them a week or two later and feel bad about not having responded right away. Some, I just don’t seem to have the time to keep track of.

So if you wrote me an e-mail, and I was slow to respond, please don’t take it personally, and don’t feel bad sending me a reminder e-mail. I will get back to you eventually. Unless your comments are full of hateful racism or other abusive language, in which case I’m likely to just ignore you and hope you go away. In that case, I guess, you can take it personally.

This other stuff:
Writing this Blog is, to me, a really important part of how I do this job. It takes a lot of time, and is almost always done after 10:00 on weekday nights. Summarizing a Council Report can take a couple of hours, depending on how many items on the week’s agenda require extended explanation. I find free time to write pieces like this wherever I can (in this case, I am sitting at one of the little desks on the Queen of Alberni crossing the Strait of Georgia while @MsNWimby enjoys the blue sky on the sun deck).

Tracking the local and regional media (including the social media) is also an important part of the job whose hours simply cannot be counted. Keeping track of the goings in the City, of the trends in the region, of Provincial and Federal politics as it relates to our City, is vital if we hope to make good decisions for the City. This includes a fair amount of general interest research, following great local sources like Price Tags, or global sources like StrongTowns along with reading great urban and economics leaders from Janette Sadik-Khan to Umair Haque.

Nothing in New West is new, we don’t have completely unique challenges, but the same challenges as other Cities and regions have had. Learning what from their successes and failures is the best way to train myself to make better decisions.

I have been at this for 18 months, and parts of it are getting easier. I am now better able to judge the amount of my Saturday and Sunday I need to spend reading my Package, more of the “background” in my Package is familiar to me, requiring less review. I have a better idea who in City Hall to call and get a question answered. The trade-off is the expanded time I spend doing that last part – the constant learning to empower myself to make better decisions and dream bigger about the future of the City.

Now if I can only get ahead of my e-mails and get my scheduling figured out…

Mobi

Posted on July 27, 2016July 26, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. 4 Comments.

The long-anticipated and irrationally-political Mobi bikeshare program has finally launched in Vancouver. I hope it works, but have my doubts.

Regular readers (hi Mom!) will remember that I went to New York City around Christmas time last year, and had a chance to try out their massively successful bikeshare program, product-placemently named “Citi Bikes”. The experience not only made me a fan of bikeshare- but changed a lot of my misconceptions about what bikeshare is. As I see many of my own misconceptions being repeated in the Vancouver media (social and otherwise) around Mobi, it is worth discussion.

Citi Bikes operate on short-term rental system. You can pick up a bike while walking by a station, and ride for up to 30 minutes (or 45 minutes if you have an annual pass) before you need to check the bike in again at any station. You can buy a day pass for $12, which gives you unlimited rides within 24 hours, or you can buy an annual pass for $150 and use it whenever you feel the need.

Now, 30 minutes seems a pretty short period of time to rent a bike, but that is the entire point of the system. If you want to rent a bike for a couple of hours to noodle around Stanley Park, or for a few days to add biking adventures to your vacation, then a private bike rental company is still the best option for you. Bikeshare is not about replacing other bikes, it is about expanding your walking distance and facilitating multi-modal trips.

I can probably explain better by talking about the day we spent in Brooklyn and Manhattan using Citi Bikes:

We walk the block from our place in residential Bedford-Sty to our nearest Citi Bike Station. After about 5 minutes of paying for a day pass and checking the bikes out, we were on our way east along brownstone-lined streets.
About 20 minutes later, we were at Barclay’s Centre where another Citi Bike station was awaiting. We dock the bikes and hang out a bit at the sprawling plaza. The dock also has a digital map kiosk, so we orient ourselves and plan the best route to the Brooklyn Bridge before we check out a couple of new bikes.

Near the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, we dock the bikes. We grab a coffee, then wander over to the bridge. The pedestrian/bike walkway is packed with tourists, so we slowly walk across enjoying the sites, the crowd, the experience, without abandoning bikes at one end we need to retrieve later, or feeling like we needed to drag them along.

We spend an hour or two wandering around China Town and Little Italy, then hop on a Citi Bike to loop around the Bowery to the Village. Some places were better for walking, some better for riding, and we made the choice.
After some more meandering, we check out another set of bikes and cross the Williamsburg Bridge. Back on the Brooklyn side, we quickly swap bikes to get ourselves an extra few minutes, then head through Williamsburg to find a brewery.

After a tasting and a meal and some wandering about loving the vibe of Williamsburg, we found a nearby station and mapped out the best route home to Bed Sty as the sun was setting. Probably being a 40-minute ride at an easy pace, we figured we would need to swap out bikes half way. We didn’t know about the “Citi Bike Dead Zone” in the Hasidic part of south Williamsburg, but managed to find a station with 5 minutes to spare. If we had downloaded the Citi Bike App, we could have avoided this peril.

Back at our base station as it was getting dark (the Citi Bike has built-in front and rear lights run by a generator in the front hub), we checked in and walked the block home with time enough to catch a great Sousaphone-Accordion trio.

A nice 8-hour day, about 7 bike station stops, we probably covered 20 kilometres on bikes, just to connect up our fun walking spots. We never fussed with a bike lock (or a helmet – more on that later) or worried about bike storage or security, and were left with nothing but a pocket full of access codes.

That is just a tourist experience. If you live and work in the service area, the Citi Bike can change the decision you make every day when you walk out the door to run an errand or meet a friend. Walk for 15 minutes? Bike for 5minutes? Wait for 5 minutes for the bus? Screw it, I’ll just drive? The magic of bikeshare is that you don’t have to worry about the hassles inherent in the “Bike for 5 minutes” choice: you don’t need special clothes, you don’t have to fuss with locks or worry about bringing the bike back with you if you have a multi-stop trip planned. Bikeshare, when working properly, is like having a bunch of moving sidewalks around that can cut your walking time in a third, with no more hassle than walking.

The ease and functionality of Citi Bike relies on several things, though, and New York gets them right.

Stations need to be ubiquitous. Within the service area of Citi Bike, you are never more than a 5-miunte ride to the nearest station. They also manage the bikes well, in that I think there was only one occasion when we arrived at a station and found it empty of bikes. Fortunately, the on-line app and maps in the station kiosks have real-time measures of how full the stations are, allowing you to plan at the beginning of your rental. How ubiquitous? Look at the map of Manhattan and Brooklyn:

Bikes need to be Euro. By this, they need to be durable, friendly, simple, and built for casual use. Citi Bike rides are bomb-proof and a little heavy, but run like a Swiss watch. The transmission is internally-geared with a twist-shifter, the chain is in a case, so no grease or oil splatter problems. The wheels have full and deep fenders to keep the spray off, and to keep toes, cuffs, or scarfs out of the spokes. The pedals and seat are wide, flat and grippy so no special clothes are needed. There is a unique-sounding bell, a big basket for groceries, and front and rear lights are always on thanks to the nifty generator in the front wheel. They aren’t specifically elegant, and won’t win any criterium races, but they are the right tool for the job.

The payment has to be simple. Similarly, the kiosks for Citi Bike are simple to use, but have a ton of utility. It takes only a few minutes to buy a day pass using a credit card, and once you are in the system, it takes literally seconds to check a bike out (check in is as easy as park-it-and-walk-away). I could see how an annual passholder would be walking down the street, see a kiosk, and, on a whim, check out a bike to get 6 blocks down the street faster. As a bonus, there are digital maps to show you your location that allow you to zoom out to other station locations, which (as a super-double-bonus) serve as wayfinding tools for all tourists who happen by, not just Citi Bike users.

You can’t have a helmet law. Everything above about the need for the system to be easy, fuss-free, and comfortable is tossed by the wayside when you add helmets. Citi Bike is successful because it accommodates street clothes and on-a-whim decision making. Aside from the (not insignificant) yuck-factor, helmets significantly increase the hassle factor, and change the math on that walk-for-15/ ride-for-5/ wait-for-bus math. The kludged Vancouver solution (ugly, uncomfortable, dirty helmets that are likely more of a choking hazard than actual brain protector) stands in contrast to everything that makes Citi Bike work.

The most significant stat about Citi Bike is that they have, since summer of 2013, had more than 25 million rides, with no fatalities and no major injuries. Manhattan and Brooklyn are not famous for their excellent roads or courteous drivers – the roads are crowded, potholed, and at times chaotic, and Citi Bike users are (reportedly) every bit as chaotic as other users. Many are novice riders, and very few wear helmets. Bikeshare is safer than driving, and Manhattan, it is safer than walking. The statistics are the same for bikeshare systems across North America. Part of this is intrinsic to the bikes: upright, slow, stable, comfortable, and visible. Part of it is the demonstrated phenomenon that the best way to make cycling safe is to put more bikes on the road – areas with bikeshare systems have been found to be safer for those cyclists not using bikeshare systems. Helmets Laws are not only a deterrent to use, they are demonstrably unnecessary for the inherent risk.

So I wish the best for Mobi. I’m not sure there is a sufficiently saturated market outside of downtown and the Commercial-to-Kitsilano corridor to provide the effective station saturation you need to make the system work, but within that area all of the pieces for success are in place. However, until we grow up and have a rational re-evaluation of the province’s silly anti-cyclist helmet law, I am afraid the system will suffer from lack of appeal. And that would be a shame.

BridgeNet

Posted on July 24, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

I haven’t talked too much about BridgeNet here, the City of New Westminster’s fibre optic utility initiative. It is one of those things in the City that I am less involved in, as I am not on the Economic Development or Intelligent City committees, though it is an idea of which I am supportive.

There was a recent discussion in a community Facebook thread that breezed past traffic, talked about the current long-term lending plan, and various taxes and spending issues, but some good questions were raised about why and how the City is investing in fiber optic infrastructure. So instead of lengthening that already lengthy thread, I thought I would answer the questions here (and link back, of course). The questions are thus:

I am curious however why NW has ‘invested’ $9M of taxpayers money in a fibre optic network to compete with Canada’s four private sector service providers Bell, Telus, Rogers and Shaw?

The simple answer is that access to higher speed internet connections is something residents and businesses want, and is part of both the City’s Intelligent City initiative, and a part of our Economic Development Plan. There is a new generation of business, a new type of worker, where an internet connection is as important to their success as access to truck routes are to some more traditional industries. These types of value-added high-paying jobs are an important part of developing a City where people can work, live, shop and play in the same community. And the Big 4 Telcos are not bringing 1Gb service to New West any time soon.

Some are under the mistaken impression that the City is starting a Telecommunications company (“Telco”) to compete with the Big 4, but that isn’t the plan. If I can stretch the analogy of this being the trucking industry of the next century, it might cast a little light on what we are actually doing.

In most of Canada, consumers hoping to connect to the internet have to choose from one of the Big 4 Telcos. This is because those companies have had the financial wherewithal to build a full network, mostly off the infrastructure backbone of the telephone companies that spanned the country in the first half of the last century. In the data-as-cargo analogy, these companies are like the large railways. There are few of them, because they had to pay to install the infrastructure that they use (with significant legislative and material support from supportive governments, interested in “opening up the markets”) and as a result, they have a pretty solid grip on the competition within the market. They are, effectively, an oligopoly.

This doesn’t mean they completely lack competition. Trucking companies also move goods, and what they lack in might and capacity, they make up for in a built-in efficiency: they don’t need to build the roads or bridges they operate on. That infrastructure is built as a commons, and everyone can use them. Local, regional, and provincial governments build roads using your taxes, but they don’t run trucking companies. They can, however, choose where they build roads, and how they provide access – something they really can’t do with railways.

So it is with a dark fibre utility. The City is, essentially, building the roads (“fibre”) so that any trucking company (“ISP”) can come in and compete with the railways (“Big 4 Telcos”). There are many small ISPs who can and are willing to offer boutique and discount services in New West, but cannot build the trunk infrastructure needed to get into the business. Meanwhile, the Big 4 are concentrating their infrastructure upgrades in the biggest markets like downtown Vancouver and working to outcompete each other where the money is easy.

Far from competing with the Big 4, the City is building a fibre network that will open up competition, such that more companies can challenge the limited offerings provided by the Oligopoly, promising businesses and residents along the network much faster internet service, and more affordable and flexible service plans. We are not offering those services, but we are charging tolls to the companies that will offer them through the fibres we install. Those tolls will (for the first decade or so) pay for the cost of the infrastructure, and after that it will provide a revenue source that a future Council can use to offset taxes, much as the Electrical Utility currently does.

I guess New West has decided that running it’s own Crown Corps is a great way to ‘increase revenue’, a phrase I’ve heard repeated on several occasions at City Hall.

Yes, providing services that people want is a good way to increase revenue in the City, and it provides an opportunity to offset your taxes. Especially when a City leverages opportunities that come with operating roads and utilities, and can use its solid financial position and favorable Municipal Finance Authority rates, the City can provide things that people want for less money. Sort of the thing people who ask Cities to “operate more like a business” would suggest we do.

Governments are not for-profit businesses. I can write an entire blog post about how Governments and businesses are fundamentally different, but that would be a long digression at this point. Suffice to say, providing a utility service that improves the competitiveness of our business community, is attractive to residents and people who work at home, and doing it in a way that will first pay for its own infrastructure, then return value to future taxpayers, seems like a pretty good governance decision.

This $9M in this optional financing program also intrigues me seeing as, based on walking around town, this network at least appears to be mostly installed. How did we pay for it in the first place?

The network is not mostly installed. A couple of trunk lines are in the ground to allow communication between City facilities so our internal corporate network can run better. Those were paid for by taxpayers, like the rest of the City’s computer network system.

Perhaps what you are looking at (?) is the conduit we have installed – the plastic tubes that fibre can be fed through. The City was forward-thinking enough to install conduit while road and utility works have happened over recent years. Conduit is cheap, and it is easy to drop it in the trench while you are doing other works before the asphalt goes down. The Ministry of Transportation does similar things when they build major road projects, like the SFPR. Stick the conduit in, because you never know how you are going to use it in the future. in fact, BridgeNet will use MoT conduit for part of it’s system, a service BridgeNet will pay MoT for.

What we have not yet done (but are working on right now) is put fibre into those conduits, nor have we built the infrastructure at the junctions and end of the lines that would allow that fibre to light up. That stuff costs money, and we are investing in it now. We will also be investing in last-metre connections as customers sign up to access the services that the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will be providing. That stuff costs money, and rather that use property tax money or dipping into reserves, it makes sense to borrow the money at the low rates the Municipal Finance Authority makes available to us, and to pay back those loans with the income earned from the operation of the Fibre Utility. Utility customers – the users of the infrastructure – will be paying this infrastructure loan back, not taxpayers.

BridgeNet is a pretty exciting initiative, and one that is about the future of the City. There was a great open house last month where industry leaders came to the Anvil Centre to talk about the potential that high-speed internet provides to Cities, to businesses, to institutions like Douglas College and our Schools, and to residents. We had four ISPs there, demonstrating the types of services they want to deliver, be it discount home 1Gb service or specific boutique offerings for office centres. There were hundreds of residents and businesses there, excited to look at the map, and all asking the same question: When will this service be coming to my street? The answer can be found at the BridgeNet Website, and the map you can find here.

Vacancy Tax

Posted on July 20, 2016July 21, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

Homes in the lower mainland are getting to be too expensive for people working in the lower mainland to afford. There are few who would argue this point. It was all fun when we watched the $1Million line march eastward across the City of Vancouver, then the $2Million line, but now single family homes in New Westminster are regularly selling over $1Million, we cannot bring on alternate housing types (townhouses, row homes, cluster homes) fast enough, and high-rise condos are selling out before the ground is broken.

It is a classic market run, and people are both afraid to get in and afraid to miss the boat. This is a situation ripe for unscrupulous profiteers inside and outside of the semi-regulated Real Estate industry to start the raking in cash. However, those skimming value from an opportunity cannot be blamed for the problems that created that opportunity. Free enterprise, folks.

As with any long-emerging crisis, there is rampant speculation by people ready to pin the problem on their pet bugaboo, though few deny the complexity. I get weekly e-mails from racists telling me it is an immigration failure. People speculate (on thin data) about the number of vacant homes being held for investment. Efforts to bring more stock on line run up against “character of the neighborhood” arguments in Kerrisdale, on Commerical Drive, in Queens Park. Following on 20 years of dropping rates following the peak of the 70’s recessions, we have now had more than a decade of bargain-basement mortgages, making the borrowing of money to buy a house (or houses) the only sure investment for a generation. We have in-migration (foreign and domestic) pushing for more supply, limited physical area for growth, and a complete failure to fund regional transportation infrastructure that would improve the accessibility of regional housing options. Disruptive technologies and economic drivers (AirBnB, remote work, etc.) are pushing against zoning, taxation, regulation, and any attempt to manage a shrinking supply. Equally disruptive is the generational change caused by baby boomers cashing out “wealth” accumulated during an unprecedented post-war economic growth cycle while voting to strip apart the social contract that made it possible before it can be passed forward to the next generation. At the same time, real wages have been stagnant, failing to even keep up with a decade of record-low CPI increases (“it’s not a depression, and it’s not a recession. It’s an unprecedented kind of breakdown: a divergence, regression, implosion”). On top of this, the federal government, then the provincial government, got completely out of the affordable housing business, leaving local governments and a patchwork of social service agencies attempting to fill the gap with none of the resources to do the job.

It’s a mess (as was that last paragraph!) and it would be ridiculous to claim that any one of those alleged causes is the only cause. But a ridiculous reactions to unsupported claims is the current BC governance style, so here we go.

The BC Government has managed, for years now, to avoid addressing the root causes above in any meaningful way. To be fair, not all of the issues leading us to this place are provincial jurisdiction, but developing strategies to keep housing in our communities available and affordable is 100% provincial responsibility, thanks to the Constitution Act of 1980. However, the story has now become enough of a front-page annoyance that the Premier has decided it necessary to be seen to be doing something.

In the most knee-jerk reaction possible, they have called an emergency session of the Legislature to change the Vancouver Charter to allow the City of Vancouver to charge a tax on vacant homes. This is, in their defense, one of the short-term measures speculated upon by the Mayor of Vancouver, but no-one can seriously believe this is a going to solve the housing problem, nor is it clear how this spit into the ocean warrants an emergency summer sitting.

Not surprisingly, Mayors from across the region are perplexed about how this approach (which will only impact the City of Vancouver proper, as they exist under separate legislation than every other City in the province) will help or harm the situation in their housing markets, and the pressures they are feeling now that the problem has clearly become a regional one. But that is not the only problem they (correctly) point out.

The venn diagram that connects “vacant properties” with “non-resident” owners, “investment” owners and “foreign” owners is a muddy one – which makes applying a punitive tax to any one group a complex problem for the province or a City. Of course, we have no idea if the proposed approach will actually have any effect on the real issue at the core of this, which is (do I have to remind you?): homes are becoming uncomfortably expensive relative to wages. Realistically, we can be pretty confident it will not be a solution, but will cause repercussions across the region we cannot predict.

We don’t know what legislation will be introduced next week, but we know there is little chance that emergency legislation passed in a brief summer session will provide the complex suite of governance tools required to address the multiple causes of this emergent situation – one that has been growing for several years. This shameless pandering to headlines, this feigned effort to look like they are “doing something” after years of providing no discussion of real solutions, this duplicitous offer to allow a local government to tax their way to a solution while remaining somehow above it all (and at the same time blaming local government taxation for worsening the problem!) should be resisted as a point of principle, and called out for the bullshit cynical lack of governance that it is.

The Opposition and every Mayor in the region should resist this short-hand legislation to change the Vancouver Charter, and prevent it from being expanded to the rest of the province. Speculative and punitive tax measures should only be applied as part of a comprehensive plan to address the actual governance problem, not the headline problem.

Patrick Johnstone

Fan of cities; Mayor of a great one.

Category: Uncategorized