Tag: Acting Locally

No UBE for NW

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

The single biggest environmental issue in New Westminster today is not the “Toxic Blob” in the waterfront park. It is not the pending garbage incinerator. It is the United Boulevard Extension.

TransLink has cooked up a plan, using Federal stimulus money (your income tax), TransLink funding (your property tax + provincial tax), and …uh…some other mystery source… to more than double the number of trucks and cars that will enter the City from the east, with no plan to manage the traffic once it gets to the City.

And to make it more palatable, they are doing a Dr. Moreau melding of the project to the NeverGreen Line. And the whole thing is so fast-tracked, that the residents they plan to kick out of house and home were not even part of the consultation process.

This issue is covered excellently over on the Tenth to The Fraser Blog, and I think Matt Laird hits all the talking points really well over there.

The way I see it, New Westminster is a City with an enviable “sustainable mode share” (use of walking, bicycles and transit as opposed to private motor vehicles), but is still suffering from a significant traffic congestion problem. This is caused by a huge thru-traffic load. This is only going to get worse as the Port Mann becomes a toll bridge, and people divert to the Pattullo, and may become orders of magnitude worse if an increased-capacity Pattullo and the UBE come to town, bringing more cars and trucks to New Westminster’s residential streets, with no plans to move the increased traffic efficiently or safely through our streets.

All of the TransLink news of late has been about a “Funding Gap”. Major regional transportation projects like the Evergreen Line remain underfunded more than 10 years after they are announced, while our (soon to be former) Premier talks about trains to UBC and trains to Langley, with no plan to fund these initiatives. Meanwhile they are sneaking through a $150 Million highway project by tying it to the Evergreen, and pretending that it somehow “reduces greenhouse gasses” or “provides for non-SOV options” .

I can’t think of a more elegant way to say this: Bullshit.

The UBE does nothing to meet TransLink’s “6 Broad Goals” as set out in their Transport 2040 Strategy Document. It does not serve New Westminster in any way, and it takes money away from more valid projects that serve other part of the Lower Mainland better. Let’s kill this thing before it goes so far that it can’t be stopped.

Show up on Thursday at the meeting at the Justice Institute, not to protest, but to learn. The meeting will be run by TransLink staff, people who do not make the political decisions I am railing against, but are paid to bring plans to the public and answer questions best they can. Screaming, pulling of hair, calling of names will not be productive, these are not the people you need to convince that this plan does not work for you or your community.

Instead, one you know the plan, talk to your Mayor, and to your Councillors. In the end, they are the ones who are going to say “Yea” or Nay” to this project, and they are the ones you will be going into a polling booth in November 2011 to vote for.

On Blobs and politics.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The news seems bad, a toxic blob is waiting under our new waterfront park, ready to strike down our children and any fish silly enough to brave the New Westminster waterfront. Proof again that our Mayor bought a bag if cursed seeds in a pre-election rush to appease the milling hoards…

Ugh.

Contaminated Sites happen to be an area where I have some technical knowledge. Note, my information here is limited to the reports that the City have made available, and the sporadic news reports, and I am not legally entitled to provide technical advice on this, but what the hell. Everyone else has a misinformed opinion. Here is mine.

The news report that this is a “high risk” site does not mean people or fish are currently or imminently threatened by it. This is simply a procedure that all Contaminated Sites undergoing Independent Remediation go through. The evaluation involves a whole bunch of criteria. If any one of them apply, the site is determined to be “high risk”. Here is the criteria table from the Ministry of Environment:

(click to zoom it)

The list is comprehensive, but based on the media reports, it seems the trigger here is chlorinated solvents, 8m below the surface. So the only risk criterion that applies is “mobile DNAPL”. With the Ministry saying it is not getting in to the River, it seems the only pathway to the actual environment is not open. So the risk is here may be “high”, but in a future-case sense.

Nothing says anyone or anything is going to die right now from this. The classification means that there is a significant amount of contamination, and that there is potential for this contamination to cause harm.

So if you own and are cleaning up a contaminated site, what does it mean to have your site designated “high risk”? It means that the Ministry has to be informed. That’s it.

Does it mean it will cost more to clean the site? Not necessarily.
Does it mean that we have to accelerate the clean-up process, or it will take longer to clean up? Not really.
Does it mean the site has to be physically remediated and cannot undergo risk assessment and management? Nope.
Does it mean the City Park is doomed? Not yet.
Does it even mean the site is making people sick or hurting fish? Not likely.

It is also silly of Voice to suggest somehow that High Risk determination is proof that the City did not do “due diligence” in 2008. The Site Risk Classification criteria did not exist until June 2010. The City did the environmental studies it felt it required, the City knew the site was contaminated, knew the scope of the contamination as well as they could with reasonable investigation efforts, and was working on the advice of a qualified Environmental Consultant. I don’t know what else they could have done.

Now onto the topic of the “Toxic Blob” itself. Notwithstanding all the above, the problem is not a minor one. DNAPL (Dense, Non-Aqueous Phase Liquids) are petroleum products that are denser than water. That means that instead of going down to the water table and spreading out on top of it (like so much olive oil on the balsamic vinegar of your dippy plate at Anducci’s), this stuff sinks through the water table until it hits some layer of soil it cannot penetrate. Sometimes that layer is really far down.

This sometimes makes it difficult to manage, and challenging to clean up, as you can’t just dig down to the water table and scoop it out, like you might with fuel oil. A more technical approach is required, but, and I can not emphasize this enough, typical for waterfront brownfields in BC. These kinds of challenges were faced by Vancouver in False Creek and the Olympic Lands, Victoria at Dockside Green, North Vancouver at the Pier… I don’t think the consultants or the City were surprised to run into them here.

From the press reports, this is “chlorinated solvents”. That likely includes tetrachloroethylene (“Perc”), trichloroethylene (“TCE”), or carbon tetrachloride (“Halon 104”). To most people in Contaminated Sites work, that suggests one thing: drycleaners. There are some significant wide-area sites in BC where drycleaners (before there were strict laws about this sort of thing) dumped solvents wherever they could, and caused large contamination plumes. However, these solvents were also used widely industrially and commercially, so it will be neigh impossible to point out a single cause for this plume. And it is unlikely chasing down the source will do anyone any good anyway, as they are unlikely to be forced to pay for the clean-up. The “train derailment” theory fails Occam’s razor, as more mundane excuses (historic washing of equipment with Perc, a drycleaner located uphill in the commercial part of town, etc.) are much more likely.

Long and short: stop worrying about Blobs.

NWEP AGM: Separated Bike Lanes

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The NWEP had a forum on urban transportation on November 9th, with several speakers touching on various topics realted to the evitable shift to more sustainable transportation. This is the first in a series summarizing some of the topics.

The first speaker was Jerry Dobrovolny, the Director of Transportation for the City of Vancouver. He also happens to be a New Westminster Resident, and was once a City Councillor here in Richmond. He spoke on two topics wrapped in one title:

“How the Olympics and Separated Bike Lanes are helping Vancouver become the Greenest City in the world by 2020”.

First, on the bike lanes.

Jerry brought a lot of perspective to the issue of the Separated Bike Lanes that is lost in the recent media hype about the issue. Surprisingly, these bike lanes are not an evil conspiracy of a single bike-friendly Mayor, or even of a rabidly socialist Vision Vancouver Council . They were established as part of the 1997 Transportation plan that was passed under (NPA) Mayor Phillip Owen, supported by (CoPE) Mayor Larry Campbell, (NPA) Mayor Sam Sullivan, and the current (Vision) Mayor and Council. They are one link, (the previously “missing link”) in a City-wide cycling infrastructure program that has been happening for more than a decade.

They are also not new, but reflect what is quickly becoming the “standard” for road construction in urban areas, in Montreal, in New York, in Portland… Not to mix metaphors, but we aren’t reinventing the wheel here.

And it works. The money being spent on these cycling improvements in Vancouver is about $4 Million, out of annual transportation budget of about $125 Million, so about 3% of the budget. But in the downtown core where these improvements are happening, around 12% of all trips are by bicycle. Cyclists are no using roads they don’t pay for (roads are overwhelmingly financed by property taxes), they are actually subsidising other road improvemetns by a factor of four.

Since the 1997 transportation plan, the City’s population has increased more than 25%, jobs more than 20%, and the number of cars entering the city on a daily basis has gone DOWN by 18% (and these numbers are from before the Canada Line opened).

Yes, a few parking spots were lost on Hornby; 158 spots in total. However, as part of the program, 162 spots were added to Howe and Seymour Streets (one and three blocks away, respectively), which pales in comparison to the 10,000 off-street parking spots available within 1 block of the Hornby Street bike lane. If you survey people on Hornby, you would find 90% of them walked more than 2 blocks to get to their desination. In other words, the parking issue is another non-issue.

I wish Big, Fat, David Pratt and professional blowhard Bruce Allen were challenged with some facts for a change. Alas, that isn’t their job, is it?

Good news on the Garbage Front

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Like any good Canucks Fan, I am adept at climbing onto, and getting off of, bandwagons . Many sports fans are like that with the home team, excited when they go on a win streak (remember last May and all the moth-eaten Habs Jerseys that came out of the closet for a few hours?) and dejected when the news is less good.

So it is with me and New Westminster City Hall. They build up my faith, only to occasionally knock it down. However, this week you can consider me “on the bandwagon”. I attended the Brow of the Hill Residents Association meeting last night, and the Supervisor of Solid Waste and Recycling for the City was talking about the Clean Green collectors and automated trash collection roll out.

He brought good news: The City is collecting a lot of organics, more than 8 Tonnes a week. The clean green bins are being used heavily, and there is a measurable decrease in the volume of trash going to “garbage” right out of the gate. There were some predictable roll-out issues, but they seem to have a good plan for addressing them, and are dealing with complaints on a house-by-house basis.

Best news I heard: they are considering making smaller Clean Green bins available (essentially, buying some green lids for the 120L bins). This is good, as it was one of the nagging complaints NWEP had during the announcement of the program. For those of us composting and otherwise reducing our trash footprint, it will be nice to not have the 240L Green behemoth in the back yard.

And speaking of my backyard, I also managed to secure a demo Green Cone organic waste digester. I am hoping to get it up and running in my back yard this weekend. Stay tuned, I am really interested to see how well this thing works for the stuff that can’t go into my compost.

They are also ready to swap my (so far, completely unused) 240L garbage bin for a slimmer, trimmer 120L model. I will be taking the trash out for the first time in a month next week.

This is the year.

More on transportation

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

My letter in Today’s New Westminster News Leader (with some links added, for internetty reasons):

It was interesting to read the recent discussions in the NewsLeader about Tenth Avenue and the Stormont Connector, the routing of the planned Pattullo Bridge replacement, and the impacts of these regional transportation projects on our neighbourhoods.

I couldn’t help but note that the compelling arguments Mr. Crosty made for “encapsulating” McBride Boulevard (reduced traffic and safer communities, reduced pollution, reclaiming valuable land while bringing our divided community together) could equally be made for completely removing McBride Boulevard.

Instead of spending billions burying a problem soon to be made worse by expensive expanded bridges and new connectors, perhaps we should take a fresh look at what the alternatives are to building more roads.

Are we still labouring under the illusion that building roads is a solution to traffic?

This topic and others will be the basis for an open forum on transportation planning that the New Westminster Environmental Partners will be holding as part of its annual general meeting.

We will be bringing together transportation experts and sustainable transportation advocates to discuss the future of the regional transportation system and how this will impact New Westminster.

If you have questions, concerns, or ideas about the Pattullo Bridge, the Stormont Connector, the ongoing TransLink “funding gap,” or other aspects of the local and regional transportation puzzle, please come by the Douglas College Student Union Lounge on Tuesday, Nov. 9, at 7 p.m., and join the discussion.

For more information, see the NWEP website for details: www.nwep.ca.

For those in need of inspiration that sustainable transportations work in the real world, I suggest showing up to see Jerry Dobrovolny talk about the transportation plan for the Olympics, and how it really, actually, in reality, no shit, worked.

Another really inspiring story is that of Cheonggyecheon, and some more examples of Braess in action.

See you next week.

A Pause in programming:

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I have been pretty busy, working on this:

It should be a good event. The topic is relevant for several reasons. The City is developing a new Master Transportation Plan right now. The Province is spending a few billion dollars bringing more cars to our eastern border. The North Fraser Perimeter Road will include the United Connector, which will include the expansion of a one-lane bridge (already part of a long-standing dispute ) to a four-lane bridge and the passing-over of a rail line currently signal-controlled- with no plans to adapt New Westminster traffic to fit the new capacity. Rumblings are afoot about reviving the Stormont connector. The Pattullo is due for an upgrade. Translink is mired in a “funding gap”, while the Premier runs around promising trains to UBC and Langley while still not funding the trains he promised last decade. Still, no-one is talking about Front Street.

Our speakers are high-quality: Jerry Dobrovolny used to be a City Councillor in New West, and is now Director of Transportation for the City of Vancouver. He will be talking about the massive transportation success that was the 2010 Olympics, and how that relates to longer-term plans in Vancouver to increase the “alternative mode share” (people transporting themselves without cars).

Joe Zaccaria from South Fraser OnTrax has been an advocate for a better regional transportation system, and smarter development South of the Fraser. Since most of New Westminster’s traffic problems are caused by through-travel, and most of that through travel goes across the Fraser, his interest inevitably is our interest.

Finally, Jonathan Cote is a City Councillor here in New Westminster, and is also an advocate for alternative transportation (who lives what he preaches: I see him walking by my house to go to work every day!). He will be talking about the future of development in New Westminster, and how municipal planning can result in high “alternative mode share”. I suspect he will also be talking about the “funding gap” and road pricing as a policy.

So come out, let’s hear what you have to say. Hopefully we will find a more…uh… nuanced approach than this guy:

at the intersection of 5th and Vermouth

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Thank you Tom.

Anyway, what I really want to tug on your coat about is the intersection between sustainability and engineering, and how it is too often frustrating, and always challenging. A good example is alternative transportation planning (let us, for now, skip over the irony that “walking” is now considered one “alternative” to the normal mode of riding around in a metal box burning dead dinosaurs). When shoehorning non-car infrastructure into traditional roads-and-sidewalks planning, it often starts so late in the process that any contribution we can make is either inconvenient, or impossible with the depth of planning already done. As a result, we are seen as a roadblock to infrastructure improvements instead of a positive contributor.

A good example of this is the long-running issue that we in the New Westminster cycling world know simply as “5th and 5th”That phrase is now one that causes anyone involved to roll their eyes emit an audible groan. This is a nice residential neighborhood, with a couple of quiet, traffic-calmed streets, that happens to border a commercial building where (amongst other commercial upgrades) Save On foods opened a new retail outlet. Coincident with this opening, the world’s ugliest fence was installed. As if an ugly fence to stop people walking through their neighbourhood was ever a good idea, but I digress again.

After several complaints about the re-configuration of the intersection, Transportation staff finally kind of admitted it was rather an ad-hoc contraption stop pedestrians from crossing the street, with little planning (or, ostensibly, to protect the drip line of a tree from large trucks servicing Save-on-foods). However, now that it is installed, the design clearly presents several problems, aside from the esthetic issue. Did I mention the fence is ugly?
Cyclists heading south-east on 5th Street can turn right with traffic (after passing a narrowing of the road, and with their vision and the vision of drivers limited by vehicles parked right up to the corner, but alas, that is our lot). For a cyclist to turn left, one is expected to make a 90 degree left turn from the right side of an unmarked right-turn lane, go up on the sidewalk, cross the median (presumably on the sidewalk), then cross the northwest-bound lane (presumably on the crosswalk), then cross both lanes of 5th Ave (on the crosswalk?) to resume your proper place on the road. To go straight, you must do the same 90-degree left on to the sidewalk, then do another 90-degree turn on the crosswalk, then hop off the sidewalk on the driver’s blind side in the middle of the intersection (predictable quote from driver: “He came out of nowhere!”) while merging with drivers turning off of 5th Ave coming from the other direction, crossing the lane and heading on your merry way. If you look at approaching the intersection form pretty much any other direction, the cyclist choices are equally poor, and completely ambiguous.
No wonder cyclists are accused of flaunting the rules of the road, the rules of the road often cannot apply if the road is not designed to accommodate cyclists.

Now that the problems have been brought to Transportation staff (via PBAC and the VACC), they say they will review the plans. No doubt this will cost staff time and money, so they will have to wait until resources are available. But that is not the point. The design, as it is, requiring expensive re-design should never have been installed! Any member of the PBAC could have gone to the site during the design phase and predicted this problem. Any professional transportation engineer, if asked to review the situation for bicycle and pedestrian access, would never have approved this design. It was a much-up from the start, because they simply didn’t think about what they were doing. It was a Ad-hoc approach to a problem, poorly executed, and it will costs us (the taxpayers) more money because of that approach.

Now I see the City is advertising to hire a new transportation engineer , presumably to replace a senior person in transportation who moved onto another Municipality recently. The fact the posting lacks any reference to alternative-mode planning or sustainable transportation, well, I can let that pass assuming those types of skills would come up in the screening / interview process. But is not a good sign when your City, which brags about it’s 47% “sustainable travel mode share” downtown, and it’s new “transportation demand management system” requires its new transportation engineer to drive a private vehicle to work!.

More of the same.

Placemaker Blog Post

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I really want to post once a day as a minimum, but things are crazy right now.

Mostly, the “free time” I would have today was spent doing edits and formatting a report I am helping some friends put together. Here is a paragraph, to explain it all.

The Glenbrook North Zero Waste Challenge (GNZWC) took place in the spring of 2010. It was modeled after a similar challenge which took place in the Strathcona neighbourhood of Vancouver in the summer of 2009. Both challenges were grass-roots efforts, led by local champions who wanted to see a greater emphasis on waste reduction, recycling, and composting. By sharing resources, ideas, and energy, these small groups were able to take action and reduce the environmental footprint of their community. The end result was not just an increase in recycling, but a remarkable reduction of the amount of garbage going to the curb, along with the drawing together of neighbours for a common cause, and the strengthening of the ties that build our community.

The three women running this thing did a great job running a grassroots Challenge, all we need to do is burn a little midnight oil to get the report completed!

Check out their website and send them some love.