Tag: Acting Locally

Uber

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 4 Comments.

Uber is not coming to New Westminster any time soon, and I’m OK with that. Many of my friends, especially the younger, more tech-savvy and “connected”(ugh) cohort, will not like hearing that, but there are many good reasons to question the Uber model, and how that type of service fits into the existing regulatory environment around ride-sharing services. It may actually challenge many of our assumptions about how business operates in the decade ahead. So we need to proceed with caution, as New Westminster Council discussed at last week’s meeting.

Full disclosure: the closest thing to Uber I have ever used was in San Francisco a couple of years ago. We were visiting a friend, staying in Pot Hill, and needed an early taxi ride to the airport. Our host suggested taxis were notoriously unreliable at that time in that neighbourhood, and suggested we call for a Homobile. This was a “ride sharing” service set up to address a specific problem: the Trans community were regularly being passed by the regular taxi services, especially at night, and that even in the (arguably) most queer-friendly City in America, Public Transit and traditional taxis are often not the safest environment late at night for a demographic that still faces disproportionate threats of abuse and violence. Homobile was started as a volunteer service to make sure that everyone could safely get home, and evolved into a collective not-for-profit that returns its revenue right back into a social enterprise that helps the community. We were, of course, white bread tourists looking for an Airport run, but were told up front it was by donation, whatever we could afford. We paid what would have been the “going rate” for an airport run in a traditional cab (with a tip) and got a ride from the actual Lynn Breedlove (who regaled us with memories of the queer punk scene in Vancouver in the 90’s). It was unregulated, non-traditional, and cash-only, but to us it was revolutionary, and operating as a social enterprise that we could support.

Uber is, unfortunately, few of those things.

First off, Uber is an unregulated provider of a commercial service in a highly regulated market, and that lack of regulation provides them a large economic advantage. There is little revolutionary about that. Sure, they use a smart phone app and on-line rating system to manage their sales and billing, but that is more a distraction than the centre of their business model. If we had an unregulated parcel-delivery service without a business license, whose drivers drove un-inspected and under-insured trucks throughout neighbourhoods with drivers not licenced for those trucks, I suspect our community would be concerned. Would we want an unregulated airline offering door-to-door helicopter rides with uncertain pilot training or vehicle licencing? Of course, this is a ridiculous example, but the fundamental argument is the same.

I started writing this post last weekend, and as is typical in the “tech world” (ugh), the story changes fast, as the provincial government has started hinting towards a shift in thinking in Uber, and to put that in context, you need to know the regulatory landscape as it is.

The Taxi industry is regulated at the provincial level. Some powers under that regulation are delegated to local authorities, but the regulation is 100% provincial. If Uber wants to operate in BC, they will need to comply with the B.C. Passenger Transportation Act, and currently, there is no sign they have ever sought a licence to do so.

In saying I am not positive about Uber, I’m not saying the Taxi industry is perfect. Far from it. However, we need to recognize that many of the flaws of the industry are a direct result of the industry trying to remain compliant with an ever more restrictive regulatory environment. Some of those regulations exist for (what I hope are obviously) good reasons: to assure the fleet is safe and reliable, to assure drivers are trained and safe, and to assure the industry is accessible. There are other regulations that appear to exist in order to protect the viability and sustainability of the industry and/or to protect consumers, including regulated prices/meters, and limits to the number of vehicle licences that can be used in any given region. Some of these regulations make sense only in a government-regulated industry sense, to prevent operators from ripping people off or undercutting each other, which may impact safety.

The cumulative impact of these regulations is an industry that is inflexible and at times horribly inefficient, but for the most part safe and reliable with predictable pricing and a constantly-updated fleet. The workers are not getting rich, but can make a decent predictable living, and the owner of the companies are providing a service, paying their taxes, and mostly succeeding, while the incentives to compromise on safety or service by undercutting your competition are few. Depending on whom you ask, they are doing this in spite of – or because of – the grey-market taxi licence sub-industry that puts 6- or 7-figure values on every licence they own. But that market is (and I cannot stress this enough) a product of the regulatory regime forced on these operators and owners.

Uber, in contrast has ignored these regulations, and have leveraged this lack of a fair playing field into a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Their service has the advantage of being more flexible and (usually) efficient, leveraging a remote “rating” application in an attempt to assure higher levels of customer service, though this process alone creates problematic workplace conditions. They do not have employees, but instead have millions of independent contractors who have no control over the terms of their employment, but bear all of the costs and risks of that employment, which is not in keeping with modern employment practices in a post-industrial society. It is not clear who is paying taxes and where, whether an Uber driver is insured in the event of a crash or other incident, or who is assuring the vehicles are safe for operation. Uber spends a lot of money on lawyers assuring they hold no liability for the actions of their “employees”, fighting the established legal principle of vicarious liability. There are no standards of accessibility for their fleet, and pricing is often unclear. Drivers are not required to have Class 4 drivers licences, may not have criminal record checks, and may not even be legally entitled to work in the jurisdiction.

Now, I’m not saying that none of these issues are impossible to address, nor am I defending the complex regulatory environment that currently makes the Taxi industry as frustrating as it sometimes is. This was made apparent to me back in the spring of 2015 when two taxi companies operating in New Westminster applied for more licences, citing the need to fulfill the expectation of their customers in regards to availability and wait times. The two companies applied for a total of 17 new licences, and were given 4 by the Transportation Safety Board. Council of course rubber-stamped the approval after no negative public comments, but the fact the industry sees the need for 4x the number of new vehicles than the provincially-regulated Board is willing to grant demonstrates that the regulation may be as much of a problem as it is a solution.

The Minister of Transportation has spoken out against Uber in the past, even threatening to send in investigators and file charges under the Act if Uber is found to be operating in the province. But as of this week, there appears to be a shift in thinking on this file by the Premier and the Minister, and excuse me for being a little skeptical about the motivations.

This week, the Premier, the Minister, and a candidate in a Coquitlam By-election have come out with announcements showing varying levels of approval of the Uber model. The Minster even saying it was a matter of “When, not if” Uber comes to BC, but there is nothing on the Ministry website suggesting any recent change in ideas about Uber, and their decidedly non-favourable Factsheet on the topic has not been updated in 6 months. So if a conversation in the Ministry is being started about this, it isn’t a public one.

Where the conversation is more “public” is over at the BC Liberal Party, where on-line ads and data-mining pages have already started asking you what flavour of Uber you would like (note the survey includes “yes” and “not sure”, with “no” not an option?):

capture2
Link to Source

You need to submit your name and contact info to take part, and as this is a Liberal Party ad, not a government document, it is simply a method to collect contacts for targeted Get-Out-The-Vote action in May 2017. There is nothing unusual or illegal about this, but it is telling that the Government is (in their official role) telegraphing movement on this at the same time they are (in their political role) collecting the names of people who like the idea of the change.

This tells me that the Liberals anticipate Uber being a wedge issue during the 2017 election, and are assembling their resources for that fight. No doubt the Premier’s former campaign coordinator, who is now paid to lobby the government on behalf of Uber, is part of this planning process, and will know how to leverage the needs of his employer(s) to the utmost political advantage of all.Capture

It already appears that the paid comment-section spammers “digital influencers” of the Liberal Party have been  characterizing the NDP as dinosaurs, old fashioned and “proponents of videos stores” if ever they call on the Government to show some actual leadership on this file with revised regulations,  so that should be fun to watch.

Which makes me suspect that the regulation of “the sharing economy”(ugh) will end up much like the gradual and ultimately irrelevant shifts in liquor laws over the last few years. There will be little useful policy developed and little real change, but a lot of press releases to sell small populist victories at times when the Government needs some good news. And if Uber never arrives in the Lower Mainland, somehow the blame will be shifted to “lefty” cities like Vancouver and New Westminster, despite our lack of regulatory jurisdiction.

But to prove I am skeptical, not cynical, I hope this does not occur. I hope that this forces the Government to take a serious review of the taxi industry and employment standards in the “ride sharing” industry, so that workers and consumers in both industries are protected, and can make clear, informed, choices about their options. And also hope the Government put as much effort into planning and developing those regulatory changes as they clearly are in marketing the political battle to come.

Tree Bylaw

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Now I very much feel like we got something done.

My first year on Council has been busy, with some really important stuff, though we were at times distracted by issues that have less impact on the long-term viability of the City. I wonder, sometimes, if we are just kicking the can down the road, or are we actually getting things done? Intellectually, I know it is the latter, I recognize that we are moving so many things forward (Canada Games Pool, Front Street, OCP, whistle cessation, etc.), and just because we are not cutting ribbons every day, the work we do on them now is as important as the closing date will be.

However, it feels good to get one big box checked off in my personal to do list, and the Tree Protection Bylaw was a big one.

Of course, *I* did not do this. It was the result of a lot of great work by City staff and an excellent consultant team. Council as a whole provided direction and political support, so this is progress for the City of which my part of the team was pretty small. But just like the guy who sets the football for the place kicker, I am happy to be part of the team that did something the City will be proud of in the decades ahead.

A Tree Protection Bylaw is something I have whinged about for several years, and New West is hardly a leader in this front. The Bylaw we have adopted is, in my opinion, well developed and pragmatic, and reflects the best practices of other cities across the region.

Short version (an you should read the Bylaw, not rely on my Coles Notes version here):

•You need a permit to cut a tree down if that tree’s trunk is larger than 20cm in diameter at chest height, or if that tree is otherwise designated as “protected”.

•If the tree is hazardous or its roots are causing damage to buildings or utilities, you can remove it, as long as you can demonstrate it is problematic, get a permit to remove it, and replace it with a less-problematic tree.

•If you cut a tree down without a permit, or damage it to the point where it dies or becomes hazardous, you will get fined, and will be required to replace the tree.

There are devils in the details here (i.e. when does a hedge become a tree?) that are explained in the Bylaw, and you can contact the City to get those details if need be. Lots of information is available here.

The other aspects of the Urban Forest Strategy we adopted on Monday are just as important as the Tree Bylaw. The City is making a commitment to increase the tree canopy over the City from 18% to 27%, which is the North American Standard. To put that in context, the Queen’s Park neighbourhood has about a 33% canopy coverage, where Sapperton and Glenbrook North have about 19% overall. If we imagine every neighbourhood being as leafy as Queens Park, you have an idea how much this will change the livability of our City.

There is no doubt there will be costs to this ambitious strategy, but there are significant opportunities to offset some of those costs, and the long-term cost/benefit of a healthy Urban Forest has been proven to be positive across the country. The aspirational goal of 10,000 more trees in 10 years is going to impact everything from what types of housing we will be able to accommodate in our upcoming Official Community Plan, to how we design and protect our boulevard spaces and parks.

The implementation of this strategy will be over 20 years, which demonstrates that even with the check in the box for a big progress step, there will always be more work to do.

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today”

In your Backyard

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 6 Comments.

There was perplexing opinion piece in the Vancouver Sun on Monday that referenced the City of New Westminster’s efforts to perform public outreach as part of its Official Community Plan process. Unfortunately, the writer (a New Westminster resident) seemed to take the position that the City was trying to sneak a bunch of changes through in defiance of our residents, and that any evidence of consultation is either “dilly dallying” with “fairy tale jargon” or evidence that planning is sprinkled in “pixie dust”.

It started with the complaint that a Dog Park had been added to Moody Park without her consultation. After two years of public calls for a dog park at that location and more than a year of open houses, council meetings, postings in the local paper, attendance by paid City staff at several Residents Association meetings, on-line call for input on the City web page, poster advertising at key park locations, stories in the local paper, draft models of various layouts, letters to the editor for and against, and a public survey that received more than 450 responses, apparently the City had not done enough to warn her that a pretty common amenity was being added to a park near her home. That sort of sets the stage for the 900 word whinge to follow.

At first, the writer seems concerned that the City is bent on destroying everything she holds dear. Part of it is a complaint, it seems, that either the City doesn’t engage, or people don’t get engaged. Fair enough. However, both underdeveloped theses are undermined by her closing paragraph, which demonstrates her contempt for the very ideas of planning and outreach:

“Because change will happen with or without us, as consultants, developers and urban planners rush to ‘transform’ the region’s long-established neighbourhoods, as if the word transform has been dipped in pixie dust, as if hasty artificial evolution somehow trumps organic natural evolution, which is the way neighbourhoods came together before Metro Vancouver real estate turned into a shell game.”

I cannot even understand what she is saying here, but it seems to suggest that, previous to this OCP, there was no previous OCP, or even zoning. It seems the writer imagines no previous city regulation or planning process shaped our community, and that somehow planning for any change will not only hasten it, but make it “artificial”. Perhaps it is a call to freeze all change in the region, because she has her “leafy enclave” and somehow those thousands of (current and future) New Westminster families who cannot afford adequate housing should just move into a lean-to by the river… you know, keep things “organic” like they used to be. It’s nonsensical.

For the record, the City is required by Provincial legislation to have an Official Community Plan, and to update it on a regular basis. Our current one was first developed on 1998, and has seen a significant amount of (ahem) organic evolution over the last 18 years. It is time for an update, because things have changed since 1998, not the least being a significant shift in the Metro Vancouver real estate market, and in the demographics of our community.

Do you want to know what bugs me enough about this article that I am writing an lengthy retort? Is it the laziness inherent in the lack of fact checking? Is it the failure of a person whose job it is to inform people to provide any useful information? Is it the condescending language and entitled whingy spirit of the piece?

No. What pisses me off is that the writer is somehow both ignorant and contemptuous of the incredible job that our City staff have done over the last two years making something as dull and arcane as an Official Community Plan update into something that people from across the City have found engaging, interesting and rewarding to take part in. Our staff have developed a comprehensive outreach plan unprecedented in the City, have created hard copy and on-line resources, have found a huge variety of inspired ways to take these materials out to the places where people are, and have begged and pleaded for people from across the City, from different walks of life, from different family and housing stages, to provide input. And the citizens of this city have responded in an equally unprecedented way, showing up and taking part in big numbers.

The City has gone out of its way over the last 2 years to make this OCP review process open, transparent, and accountable. It has not just received public comment, it has gone out for more than 16 months actively seeking public comment. Have we done enough? Let me provide a quick summary:

  • Staff have provided information and feedback materials while attending at least one meeting of every one of the 10 Residents’ Associations and the Quayside Community Board;
  • Staff have presented reports to 11 Council advisory committees and commissions, all made up of residents of the City, including the transportation, heritage, environment, planning, youth, seniors, multicultural, and economic development committees;
  • There have been no less than eight (8) public reports to Council on the process and preliminary feedback;
  • Over the last two summers, staff have set up “Pop up Planning” booths at numerous community events, including Uptown Live, 12th Street Music Festival, the Pride Street Festival, the Royal City Farmers Market, Sapperton Day, the Summer Sizzle, Pecha Kucha, Canada Day in the Park, etc.;
  • Staff put together a stakeholder group of a couple of dozen volunteer residents and business people from across the City, representing different neighbourhoods and demographics, specifically to advise staff on better ways to reach out to their neighbourhoods and cohorts, and improve how the public engagement operates;
  • Staff held an inspiring workshop entitled “Love Our City” where more than 170 people sat down for a full day with maps and pens and talked about the things they loved and didn’t love about their neighbourhoods. They identified key features, “community hearts”, and challenges that residents wanted to see addressed on the next 20 years;
  • More recently, a similar multi-hour open workshop was held to discuss different housing forms, the opportunities and challenges, and to discuss how or where different forms may fit, on a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood basis. More than 150 people attended this day-long event.
  • There have been more than dozen “travelling workshops” at places like Century House, the Sapperton Pensioners Hall, the River Market, and Connaught Heights School, organized on different days of the week and at varying times, sometimes mid-day, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the evening, to make it as flexible as possible to fit everyone’s schedule. There are three more scheduled in the month ahead (see below);
  • There are current and ongoing efforts to connect better to underrepresented groups such as lower income residents, people with specific housing or transportation needs, and single parents, through organizations like the New West Family Place, Elizabeth Fry Society, Spirit of the Children Society, Immigrant Services Society, and the Interagency Council;
  • Feedback has been sought (and for the most part received) from Fraser Health, the Development Community (including UDI), Metro Vancouver, Adjacent municipalities, the Ministry of Transportation, the Ministry of Environment, Port Metro Vancouver, School District #40, TransLink, and the Qayqayt first nation;
  • The ongoing on-line surveys have generated (at last count) more than 700 individual responses, and those responses keep coming in;
  • Besides the native advertising of just being in your face at every community event over the last two years, staff have advertised on the City website and the City Page in the local newspapers, have purchased other newspaper ads, have put up posters at all City buildings (City Hall, Community Centres, the Library, etc.), have performed mail drops across the City, have even hand-delivered in some neighbourhoods where the mail drops were less effective, have used the illuminated billboards at every entrance/exit to the City, Facebook Ads and newsletters. They even arranged to have the School Board provide notices for every student in the district take home to their parents.

Personally (and I am not alone on Council here), I have tried to spread the word in any way I could. I helped organize an open house that brought together 50 young professionals – engineers, architects, chefs, software developers, marketing gurus, people with young families worried about their future housing needs and affordability, most who don’t traditionally take part in “City open houses” about planning issues. We got together at the River Market for a 2-hour workshop on housing types and density, and they provided incredibly varied, intelligent, and valuable input. I have written several blog posts, including one with step-by-step instructions on how to complete the City’s on-line engagement portal. I have attended dozens of workshops, open houses, and community meetings – not to do the job of staff in explaining the process, but just to hear what people are saying in response, and to encourage people to provide feedback directly to the City in any way they can. With the exception of the one meeting Christopher Bell kicked me out of because he felt he couldn’t have a “frank discussion” with me in the room, I heard valuable and sometimes surprising input, and have learned a great deal about the diversity of opinion in the City.

So if the author’s complaint is a lack of public engagement, my question is – what would she have us do? Because we are ready and willing to do whatever we need to in order to get a better sampling of the community. And the job is not done, as there is a bunch more public consultation to come.

If Ms. Fralic (as some have suggested) was just trying to goad people into getting more engaged, there are opportunities for you to take up her charge, which I whole-heartedly encourage you to do. Here are a few of the ways you can do so:

There are three more open workshops, January 30, February 6 and February 13, one of them only steps from the Dog Park of Concern. They are open to everyone – but it is way helpful if you register ahead of time so we know how many chairs to have and how much materials to prepare (you can even review the materials ahead of time). These are in the middle of a weekend day when most are available, and there will be both free childminding to make it easier for families to participate, and foodtrucks on site in case you get peckish during the three-hour event. We really want to remove any barrier to you attending.

There is still the on-line survey, and if you take a bit of time to fill it out, it is actually quite fun and interactive. If you want a step-by-step guide on how to complete it, I tried to throw one together here. Let me know if you need more help with it.

If the on-line thing isn’t for you, and you want paper copies of the materials to mark up and send in with your suggestions, or if you have a group of people who would like a little more guidance to help go through the materials so you can provide feedback, you can Contact the City Planning Department (email ourcity@newwestcity.ca or phone 604-527-4532) and they will do that for you. Or contact me (see contacts below) and I’ll arrange it for you.

And of course, any comments you have, good, bad, or otherwise can be sent to the Planning Department above, or to Mayor and Council.

If, somehow, you have missed all of these opportunities to provide input, and still want to comment on the OCP, there will be another entire round once the framework of a new OCP is developed. Which is another point Ms. Fralic could have fact-checked: Up to now, we have been collecting people’s input into what they want to see, and we have (as part of that) put a few very draft concepts together, but we have not yet created a new comprehensive plan. Everything you have seen so far (and this was made explicit by staff at every event where they were presenting) is pure speculation used to provide media to gauge public opinion. It is not the actual plan for a new OCP. Because we are too deep into public engagement for staff to have developed that yet.

The draft land use plan for a new OCP will be developed by staff this spring, and if it passes a first trip past Council, it will again go out for more public consultation. You will, at that time, again have the opportunity to come to public meeting, read materials on-line, provide feedback by computer, by mail, by phone or in person.

Don’t let this be you. 

(non)-SimCity

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The City is having this on-going conversation about housing types. It is part of the consultation process for a new Official Community Plan. If you read this blog you probably care a bit about the future of the City, so you should take part. You can now do that without leaving the comforting warm blue glow of the computer you are looking at right now.

The OCP is a legally-required planning document the City produces, and it is usually updated every decade or so. The City is operating on a 1998 OCP that, despite regular updates and edits over the last 17 years, is getting very long in tooth. The process to update it has been going on for more than a year, and there have been several phases of public consultation, as open houses, as stakeholder meetings, and as special events.

Staff have gone out of their way to try to engage more people in this process so that resultant plan can better reflect the desires of the entire community, not just the easy-to-engage groups that are usually over represented in your regular City Open House. Now they have developed a new engagement tool, so you can sit at home on your computer or tablet and provide some useful insight to the process.

It comes at a time when the OCP is looking at housing types, and addresses what some have identified as a significant problem in New Westminster: we have a lot of apartments and an adequate supply of single family detached (SFD) homes; we have very little of the in-between housing types. Townhomes, row homes, du-, tri- and quad-riplex designs, and carriage/laneway housing. With the average SFD in New West selling over $800,000, young and growing families are running out of affordable options in our City, and it is the young, growing families that we need to sustain our community, our livability, and our community in the coming decades. If they leave (or are forced out by lack of flexible housing options), then our city will change in a way that few will like.

So the question to be asked right now is: How do those housing types fit in our community? Are there places this type of “infill density” makes sense, and places where it doesn’t? you can help answer this question by taking this on-line survey. But before you do, maybe I can explain a little more about how the survey works, and what you are being asked. So click this link, open a second window, and I’ll walk you through it.

When you open the survey, you can see there are 5 “pages”, and you are on Page 1, marked by a checkmark. As you go through each page, its page number will become a checkmark, so you can follow your progress.1

Page 1 is just an intro with some factoids on it, and if you hit the “begin” button, it throws you to Page 2:2Here is where various housing forms are shown, divided up into three categories: Low, Moderate, and High Infill. In each of those three categories, there are examples of housing types, (4,3,and 2, respectively). For each of those 9 types, you can select what you think about it (from strongly dislike to strongly like, with “neutral” in the middle). You can also provide some comments for each by hitting the “optional comment” section at the bottom. You might have a specific concern about the function of any one type, or talk about the measures that would need to be in place to make that form work for you.

Not sure what these housing types really look like? The City has provided a couple of walking tour maps, one of Queensborough, another of North Vancouver, where some of these housing types are already built. You can print them off and go take a look, or just go into Google Maps and Google Streetview and have a look around. We live in the future.   

If you provide at least “like” levels for 50% or more of the housing types, you get your check mark and can move on to Part 3:3This page gives you a map of the 1998 OCP (which you can zoom into and look around), and provides you three “Scenarios” for a new OCP. None of these scenarios are necessarily part of a final OCP, but they are models used to gauge opinion and each address different neighbourhoods differently. At the roughest form, Scenario 1 would provide little more growth than we have today, Scenario 2 would provide more opportunities around transportation corridors especially, and Scenario 3 would provide the most opportunity to diversify our housing types, spreading the potential growth around a little more.

You can zoom in and scan around the Three Scenarios, provide a simple 1-5 star rating, and provide optional comments on what you like or don’t like about each Scenario. If you open the Legend, you will see the shades of beige reflect the “Low-Moderate-High” infill that was discussed on the earlier page, and that is where the detail really hits the ground here.

It is important looking at this to remember, if a neighbourhood or street are zoned for “medium infill”, that in no way means every house on that street is going to be knocked down and replaced with a triplex or row homes. Development simply doesn’t happen like that. Houses belong to individual homeowners, the City cannot tell them to knock their house down and replace it. Looking at the existing OCP from 1998 (The “current scenario” map), there are many areas where higher density is permitted than currently exists. For example, the extensive “RL/RM” medium-density area around the 22nd Street SkyTrain station is still single family homes 18 years after that OCP was adopted. Changes permitted on a lot-by-lot basis on an OCP ware not changes required by an OCP on a neighbourhood basis, and with growth occurring at between1-5% annually, these changes are very gradual. This is why we need to look decades ahead in these plans.

So poke around those three scenarios, see what you like or don’t, add your opinions, and give them some “stars”. This earns you a check mark, and lets you move onto Page 4:4Here, you can provide your own plan for how the City should grow. Starting with a blank map of the City (if you use the little pull-down menu that says “City Wide”, it will zoom to specific neighbourhoods). You can drag-and-drop any of the square tabs from the top row, from “Status Quo” up through density to “High Rise”, and drop in on a block in your map. Kind of like SimCity but less immediate feedback. You can also add comments on any block if you wish:4b

You can be creative about what you think the shape of New Westminster should be, recognizing that you are not looking at tomorrow, but 20-30 years in the future. Once you have dropped a few pieces, you earn your checkmark and move on:5

Here, the survey collects a bit of demographic data. It is simple, and anonymous, but helps with understanding what groups are being reached with this tool, and which ones are not. You can provide an e-mail to receive updates (if you want), and add any extra comments. And you are done.

So this Christmas time, you are sitting around with the family, tryped out on tryptophan, presents are unwrapped, log in the fireplace, and it is a few days before the New Years College Football black hole opens up and consumes you whole, spend a half hour playing working on the computer and providing the City the data it needs to make the OCP vision fit your vision.

Merry Christmas! See you in 2016.

These people

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

thesetwo

Look at those two on my right. They aren’t just one of the cutest couples known to history, they are a big part of the recent history of New Westminster. I’m celebrating them here today because they just got on a plane, headed for Montreal and a new home, a new adventure, and a new community.

Will Tomkinson was born and raised in New West, in a heritage home on 1st street across from Queens Park. He is variously third- or fourth-generation or something the other, which makes him “Old New West”, and he has the sartorial style, baritone singing voice, and respect for traditions to fit the stereotype. Briana is a transplant to New West, with new-fangled ideas about creating local connections through social media and social justice, rarely hearing a new idea she didn’t want to throw up a flag pole, just to see who salutes. They met in Douglas College and eventually fell in enough love to start building a homestead in the West End of New Westminster. They started raising a gaggle of free-range kids, and started blogging about being a young family in New Westminster.

It was only a few years ago, but I cannot remember for certain when I first met them, or when I became aware of Tenth to the Fraser, or which came first. However, it must have been around the 2008 Municipal Elections when the Tomkinsons’ hyper-local Blog became part of my usual web surfing routine. I vaguely remember helping run an all-candidates event at Douglas College in what must have been the May 2009 Provincial election with Will and Briana (I seem to remember pulling audience-member’s questions out of Will’s fedora, but my memory is more photogenic than photographic), so we must have been friends by then.

What Briana and Will (and Will’s sister Jocelyn, and later Jen Arbo) did with 10ttF was create a social media nexus in New Westminster. It was a general-purpose Blog back when Blogs were the cool new thing. Instead of just being about them, they covered events in the city, politics, business reviews, and general interest stories about being a young family in a growing and changing community. And as with all really effective social media, it created digital connections that soon became human connections. They introduced us to, and induced us to support, new local businesses like Re-Up BBQ and new social enterprises like the Royal City Farmers Market. 10ttF was a glue that brought people together without the commitment of a club or the constraints of common interest, and their comments section was often where conversation took place amongst that in-between generation of young professionals and young families who found Letters to the Editor a little too quaint, and those who were too profane or silly to be committed to newsprint.

Through 10ttF, I was encouraged to start my own Blog, first on environmental issues as GreenNewWest (I was the President of the New Westminster Environmental Partners and an Environmental Scientist- “write what you know”, they say), then as NWimby, as my interests expanded. It was through 10ttF that I first met Jen Arbo, who once told me I had to do this Twitter thing (much to James Crosty’s chagrin), and who eventually became a huge supporter during my campaign for City Councillor. It was through 10ttF that I was encouraged to get involved on City advisory committees and other volunteer work around town, which was one part of what led to my Citizen of the Year nomination. I have a lot for which to personally thank Will and Briana.

So now the Tomkinsons are pulling up stakes and relocating to la belle province. A great job opportunity, and a chance to escape a bit from the frenetic property-value-defined lifestyle of the West Coast, they are going to raise that gaggle of kids in a wooded semi-rural area with actual seasons and where half the people speak an entire other language. Can’t say I’m not a little jealous for the adventure those kids are going to have. But even as they have been recently pulling back from their central-organizer roles in New West due to work commitments, an expanding family, and some other pressures, we will now truly feel their absence at the next New Westminster Scotch Appreciation Society meeting, at the next NEXT-NW soirée, at the next Brew Westminster kettle boil, when we need a line on a sweet artisanal axe.

The legacy they have created, however, will go on. Tenth to the Fraser has a new owner (the ubiquitous and omniscient Jen Arbo), and pieces are being put into place to create a new look and a new vibe to appeal to that larger group of digitally-connected people who are increasingly making New Westminster their home. The many connections Briana and Will made remain strong: on line, at Beer Friday, or just down at the River Market at a Saturday where we somehow find there is always someone to talk to, someone who is so familiar around New West as you consider them part of the furniture, but you can’t quite remember when you first met them.

Thank you Will and Briana. You are good friends, and great citizens, and you made New Westminster a better place for those you are leaving behind. We’ll see you again soon.

Transit Service changes

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

In case you haven’t heard, TransLink is making some changes to bus routes in New West, and have been doing public consultation, You have until tomorrow(!) to go to this website and fill out the survey if you have any concerns or questions.

My quick notes (which I based on the info provided in our Council Report from staff on Monday):

These changes need to be approached carefully. Last time we had service “optimization” in New Westminster, an apparently reasonable re-orientation of the east-west routes across the north part of the City resulted in a serious erosion of service to one very specific demographic. The large population if seniors that live in higher-density housing near 8th Ave and McBride suddenly found themselves disconnected from the Royal City Centre at 6th and 6th, which was a major social hub for them – it was a significant disruption to a social network to a very transit-dependent community. So I tried to dig through these route changes to see if I could find similar breaks in social connections that may impact our community.

The change to the 106 is probably a good thing. It will make one of the primary connections between Downtown and Uptown New West more reliable, as Kingsway traffic will no longer delay the return route. There will still be the same connection to the Highgate/Edmonds Pool areas, but if you want to go further up Kingsway, you will need to switch buses.

106

Combining the C8 and a portion of the C3 route into the new “J” route will probably adress one of the biggest capacity concerns – the high number of pass-ups on the C3. This 24-passenger shuttle commonly has 40 people lining up at New West Station to board. with it’s destinations split between the new “J” route and “H” route, some of that capacity headed for Victoria Hill should be better served.

Current Route (see below for changes)
Current Route (see below for changes)

Similarly, re-routing the C4 into the “H” route should make the service more reliable, with the bonus of returning that direct connection between McBride and 8th and the 6th & 6th area that was undone in the last changes. The “H” route shuttle is fully accessible, which is really important for the population using that route.

Proposed new routes
Proposed new routes

The modified C9 route causes me a couple of concerns. The side-route on Jamieson Court that the current C9 takes will, apparently be eliminated, and this is a bad idea. There are two important destinations to seniors on Jamieson Court- the Glenbrook Amenities Centre and Royal City Manor. To make people bound for either of these go up to Richmond Street is quite a steep hoof for people with mobility issues. If they with to catch the bus northbound, the crossing of Richmond is not the safest spot in the City – with a steep, curvy hill and problematic sightlines. The Jamieson Court stop makes sense for all sorts of reasons, and should be preserved.

The other problem I have with this route is the plan to have the C9 go down Cumberland and turn left on East Columbia. This is already a tough little intersection, as it is where there is already a challenging crossing for cyclists and pedestrians for the Central Valley Greenway. the intersection is right turn only, so re-routing the bus will require some sort of activated signal to allow a left turn, which will completely change Cumberland. The only thing keeping this from already being a significant rat-running alternative-route-commuter corridor is the unlikeliness of pulling off a left turn onto East Columbia during rush hour. It is the lack of a signal, not the little “no left turn” sign, that keeps Cumberland from becoming a through-route. I cannot support any changes here that will make Cumberland a rat-running alternative-route-commuter route, as that will have effects all the way up Glenbrook to the Canada Games Pool area. This streets and neighbourhoods cannot handle that traffic increase.

That is my condensed take on the good and the bad – hopefully you can take 10 minutes to look at the routes and provide some feedback to TransLink by on-line form or mail before the end of day on November 6th.

Can ya help a City out?

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

People who read this blog are, I presume, more interested than most on how the City of New Westminster operates. Unless you are here to correct my grammar (note this sentence fragment), or out of some sense of obligation (Hi Mom!). Since I got elected, there isn’t even that “What crazy thing is he going to say next?!” aspect, and I hardly even swear anymore. So unless you are just stockpiling my comments to undermine my political future, I am thinking you care a little more about the City we know and love than the rest of the masses.

Since you care so much, I also presume you want to help make things better, or at least shape aspects of the City into something more to your liking. According to some guy named Ipsos, New Westminster residents are a pretty contented lot (except when stuck in traffic), but if we don’t strive for improvement, stagnation sets in, and we and up like Eddie Murphy zipping up a fat suit, wondering where the it all went wrong. So here are three things you can do in the next couple of weeks to make this City better, with increasing levels of commitment.

The Survey: The City is currently running an on-line survey around Public Engagement. We are asking people how they interact with City Hall, and how they want to. This includes the full range of “engagement”, from informing residents and businesses about what the City is doing all the way to collaborative decision making, where we assure that stakeholders in the community are truly listened to in making plans and forming policy. Hit that link above, and give 5 minutes of your time to answer some simple anonymous questions, it is the least you can do, so do it now!

The Workshop: The City’s “Our City” Official Community Plan update project is ongoing, and we are now at a point where we need to have a conversation with the community about housing types. Currently, 95% of the housing units in New Westminster are either apartments or Single Family Detached houses. We have a distinct paucity of the “in between homes” – townhouses, row homes, du-, tri- and quad-plexes, or carriage/laneway homes. The new OCP will hopefully open more opportunities for these types of housing options.

I live in a Single Family Detached in the Brow of the Hill, one of the more affordable parts of New Westminster. When we bought it something like 8 years ago, I joked “it’s a little old, in a slightly sketchy location, but we can almost afford it”. Truth be told, it has turned out to be a sold house causing us very few problems, and I absolutely love my location halfway between Uptown and Downtown, with a 5-minute walk to the SkyTrain (alas, the walk home is 10-minutes – can’t do much about the hills in this town), and have great neighbours. Recently, however, three relatively modest 1930’s vintage homes on my block, ones you would have traditionally considered “starter homes” for young families or “fixer-uppers” have sold for more than $800,000. The ongoing regional housing affordability crisis keeps creeping up into higher and higher income brackets, and New West is not immune.

One approach to help young families grow in our community is to provide a rich diversity of housing types, those “in between” types that balance affordability with a large enough living space for kids and their accoutrement, and maybe just a small patch of grass or garden, without the bells and whistles (and costs) of a single family detached.

However, the process of fitting these housing types into our exiting single family neighbourhoods is concerning to many people who already have their Single Family Detached dream. They worry about parking, about green space, about visual intrusion and proximity, and about the oft-cited but difficult to define “character” of residential neighbourhoods. This is the conversation we need to have right now.

It should be a good conversation on November 7th, whether you are a young family looking to move out of the two-bedroom apartment and into something roomier, or you are a family in a Single Family Detached wondering what carriage homes or duplexes would mean to your block, you should come out and help the City understand your needs and concerns. It is free, you will get fed, but you need to register to take part. Do it now.

The Committee. Finally, if a 5-minute survey or a 6-hour workshop (with lunch!) isn’t enough for you, the City is currently doing its annual call-out for Advisory Committee volunteers. There are no less that 22 separate Advisory Committees, Boards, or Panels where you can serve the City by showing up to anywhere from a few to a dozen meetings per year (depending on the committee, see the 2015 schedule here to get a sense of the workload). You get to give us advice on specific policy ideas or other happenings in the City, and can really influence how decisions are made, mostly by having closer contact with the people (staff and elected) who are making the decisions about how our City runs.

Go to that list above, check out the Terms of Reference for the Committees, and see what might pique your interest. You can serve on more than one, and as competition for some of the Committees is pretty fierce, you might want to apply for several.

So if you are tired of sitting on your front deck, shaking your fist at the passing clouds, and writing angry letters to the editor, start making the City yours by taking part in shaping it. You will feel much better, learn a bit more about how the City works, and maybe meet some new , interesting, like-minded people.

UPDATE: I was told that this Saturday’s Our City event is completely booked full, which fills me with joy. That so many people are willing to spend their Saturday talking “Urban Planning” and helping inform the future of the City reinforces my love for this community and its desire to engage! If you didn’t book, don’t panic, because after the Workshop, the show is going on the road. The dates are:

Nov. 10, 1:00–4:00pm            Century House

Nov. 12, 5:00–8:00pm            Sapperton Pensioners Hall

Nov. 14, 1:00–4:00pm            New Westminster Public Library

Nov. 18, 5:00–8:00pm            Unity in Action Church

Nov. 21, 9:00am–12:00pm     Sapperton Pensioners Hall

Nov. 28, 9:00am–12:00pm     Connaught Heights School

Election stuff!

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Again, I am mostly avoiding talking about the ongoing election on this site, partly because my time is limited due to (totally partisan) election work I have been doing, and partly because I want to keep this page less about fighting (depressingly partisan) fights and more about building local community. I am reserving most of my regular political (unabashedly partisan) rants for my Facebook Page, so if you care about my (hilariously partisan) opinions on “the horserace”, you can go over there. I do, however, opine here occasionally on the election as a process, and what it means for the state of our democracy.

Two quick points on that:

The politics of fear and division are rising in Canada in a way I have never seen in my (admittedly-short 40-year) awareness of politics. I draw a distinction between “Vote for us because our opposition’s policies/ideas are scary” and “Vote for us, because we are the only ones who will protect you from some dark-skinned boogeyman who is hiding in the shadow but wants to murder your family”. These are two very different uses of the term “fear”. The former is drawing a distinction between people running for office, and is the root of the reason we have elections. The second is fear-mongering, and a dangerous erosion of civil society.

When we draw these types of distinctions between groups of people, it seeds a garden of hate towards all identifiable groups, and supports a volatile coalition of ignorance, xenophobia, religious intolerance and outright racism. Done well, it allows the target voter to pick their own boogeyman to fill the gap (remember how Sikh and Hindu people were attacked in the United States in the immediate aftermath of 9/11?) and can target specific voter groups. This stuff is the specialty of Harper’s new adviser, Lynton Crosby, and I am chagrined that it is working.

My second point is that you, before you vote, should take a bit of time meet those vying to be your representative. You should ask them questions, and you should hear answers. You should make the connection so that after the election you can contact them with your concerns or ideas and start with “we met at…”. A few of you have reached the level of local fame that they can just put a few silly questions on a blog and expect answers. Others can attend one of several All-Candidates events, where you might be lucky enough to get a question in, and may or may not get the answer you were looking for.

This is why for the last few years, through Local, Provincial, and Federal Elections (excepting the last one, where I was an actual candidate!), I have worked with the NWEP, NEXT New West and Tenth to the Fraser to put on a different type of All Candidates Event. We have had a comedy night, a Jane’s Walk, a Cocktail Party, all with the desire to break the partisan and confrontational mould of the typical debate, and bring the candidates together in a social setting so that voters could get to know them better. We are doing it again this year, and we are doing it on a boat, so the candidates cannot escape your questions!

Next Tuesday, we will set sail at 6:30pm and do a 90-minute cruise of the Fraser on the MV Native. Cocktails and canapé will be available. We will be strictly limiting the speechmaking to only a few minutes, and will instead rely on the candidates and participants to mix and mingle for the rest of the cruise and schmooze the fickle voter (you!). We emphasize that this is not a confrontational environment, and heckling or badgering will not be tolerated. The Captain has the authority to throw jerks in the brig for the duration of the tour, so no candidate should fear appearing here. Unless they are jerks, I guess.

We need to pay for the boat and snacks, so the tickets are $15*, and tickets are limited by lifeboat capacity, so you need to go on-line to buy them. This will be a unique (and very #NewWest) event, you should join us, so you can also say “I knew them back when…” Tickets here.

*Hey, we want to be as inclusive as possible, because money should not be a barrier to participation in democracy-building events. So an anonymous donor has agreed to contribute a few dollars to buy tickets for some people who feel $15 is a barrier to their participation. Please drop me an e-mail at info@patrickjohnstone.ca if you know someone who might want to take advantage of this offer.

Stroads

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Can we avoid a stroad problem in New West?

The word “stroad” is a slightly tongue-in-cheek portmanteau combining “street” with “road”, and it is becoming such common parlance in city planning that even small towns in Pennsylvania are talking about how to deal with them. The term came from people who understand the difference between how a “street” operates, and how a “road” operates. The former is a place where people do things, like socialize and perform commerce; the latter is a conduit for travel to get somewhere else. The term “stroad” pinpoints the problem created when you try to combine those two mutually exclusive uses into the same space.

I would argue that New Westminster has very effectively dealt with one stroad in its midst when the Council of the day put Columbia Street on a road diet. I remember the boo-birds talking about the disaster that would befall the City, and many of them still pop up to complain about pedestrian bumps or crosswalks or any other thing the City does to make the pedestrian space safer. Columbia is not back to being the Miracle Mile of the 1940s, and it never will be. However there is no doubt it is a better place for walking, for shopping, for living and for driving, than it was in the 1990s.

stroad5

Stroads are rarely created intentionally, they evolve into existence, with a bunch of small (and at the time, seemingly rational) decisions. Most commonly, a city finds one of its shopping streets is increasingly used by through-commuters. In hopes of eking some value out of this apparent windfall, automobile-oriented development happens along the route, displacing the existing landuse with the intent to capture the fleeting attention of through-commuters. This (often strip-mall commercial) development also attracts local drivers who used to shop on the street, and now blend with the through-commuters. Congestion is exacerbated, and the engineering solution is to increase capacity. You widen the road, removing on-street parking if necessary, which requires you to build parking lots, further separating the road from the businesses, and creates in-out driveways or more light-controlled intersections, which slows the through-drivers. To fix this, you put in a left-turn lane or two so the through-traffic doesn’t get stuck, then a right-turn lane to get them even further unstuck. Which kind of works for a while (see Byrne Road and Marine, or Kingsway at Metrotown), as long as you have a bottomless asphalt budget.

stroad3

All of the sudden, you have a road in the middle of your City right in the middle of the street in the middle of your City. Anyone who wants to try to put value into the street by using their local commercial businesses discover the shops are behind expansive parking lots that are hard to get into or out of, and walking across the street means braving 40 metres of asphalt where the people trying to turn right through the crosswalk are separated from the people trying to pull a left turn across traffic by the people in between speeding along to be the first to get to the next red light, frustrated by all the traffic. So, complicated light timing, “pedestrian islands”, or expensive overpasses are required to make the space marginally safe for people who failed to bring along 3,000lbs of metal when they went to buy a loaf of bread. And we have built a stroad.

stroad4

Stroads are expensive to build and maintain. They move traffic poorly, yet provide the appearance of moving it well, which paradoxically increases induced demand while not actually increasing capacity. They are dangerous for all users, but especially for cyclists and pedestrians, who end up avoiding their chosen mode because the stroads are so uninviting. Worst of all, they strip away the value of expensive and precious urban land space, and contribute less to the local economy than an active street. They represent a planning failure, an engineering failure, and a leadership failure that must be avoided in modern urban areas.

So when you hear about plans for East Columbia Street, 12th Street, Ewen Avenue, 6th Street or 20th Street, or any of the busy streets in New Westminster, think to yourself: do we want this to be a street, or a road? Without first making that distinction, we will inevitably hedge towards a stroad, and end up with neither.

Opening Streets

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Much like this earlier post, I want to address a common use of language that has been bugging me of late: that around “closing” streets to hold events. It is a convenient term we use in a City to organize traffic management, emergency planning and engineering needs, but it is wrong. It implies that our streets are only there to serve people driving along them, or for temporary storage of your vehicle while you are off doing other things. There is so much more we can do with our streets when we stop worrying about “closing” them, and start creating better ways to “open” them.

Last weekend, I was at the New West Pride Street Party on Columbia Street, where two lanes of road was indeed closed for 10 hours so that people could walk, sit, talk, drink, dance, shop, share, eat, sing, and celebrate. I defy anyone to look at this picture of Columbia Street (which I borrowed from Bif Naked, because her view was better than mine!) and tell me that street is closed:

A photo posted by Bif Naked (@missbifnaked) on

This weekend, we are doing it again, with 70 food trucks and (if last year’s event is any evidence) tens of more thousands of people will be enjoying themselves on Columbia Street. These are not just New Westminster people, but folks from around the region coming to New Westminster to add to the vitality of our downtown, support local businesses and entrepreneurs from around the region, and hopefully discover that Downtown New Westminster is a great place to spend some time, not just a place to drive through.

closed

I also noted a news story this week about the Royal City Farmers Market plans to move uptown for their winter market season. The story mentions “Belmont Street will be closed to traffic from 11 am to 3 pm”. This statement is only true if you define “traffic” as cars. I am willing to bet that there will be more people using Belmont Street for those 4 hours every second Saturday than on any other day – it is just that the “traffic” will be on foot. By being on foot, they are more likely to stop, to shop, to talk to their neighbours and enjoy a laugh. People can, just with their presence, bring several hundred square metres of dead asphalt to life by making it a place of human interaction and commerce, not  just a place for cars to drive and park.

Language matters, so let’s stop talking about a day where tens of thousands of people flood onto our streets as a “Road Closure”; let’s start calling it a “Street Opening”.