Tag: Media

Hyack

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 12 Comments.

OK, I’ll wade in.

For anyone paying attention locally, the Hyack Festival Association has been embroiled in some sort of internal-strife shit-show for several months now. I commented a bit on the situation back in August, when the information was scarce, and appropriately kept my comments limited to hoping that things get worked out. After all, Hyack’s volunteer force and their link to the public face of the City are important to the community. They have for 40 years maintained many of the traditions that describe New Westminster, and I hate to see babies tossed out with bathwater.

But the bathwater is getting so deep and murky, it is hard to tell if the baby is still in there.

Since my initial comments in August, I have had discussions with many people in the City about Hyack. I have talked to one current Hyack Board member (notably not one who has been commenting in the media), I have talked to both Bart Slotman and James Crosty (both of whom claim to have been drawn into this public conversation reluctantly). I have talked to Executive Directors for other organizations and business people in the City who work with Hyack, and even to a former Hyack staff member. I have not talked to Douglas Smith (I have still never met the man) or Gavin Palmer (we have not been formally introduced). I have also tried to piece things together based on various media reports, letters to the Editor, and social media conversations. I am hardly “inside” this issue in any way (although I am now a Hyack member – more on that below), but I feel I have done everything I can as an “outsider” to gather info and understand the issue as a concerned citizen.

As every conversation I list above was casual, social, and off-the-record, I am not going to quote anyone or put anyone else on a particular side of an issue. Coming out of the closet about their Hyack opinions is up to them. If they choose to speak up or correct me in the public record, I am happy to be corrected on any point of fact. I am also going to assume that everyone writing to the paper or speaking out about this is being truthful, because I have no reason to assume otherwise.

So with those caveats, here is the gist of the situation, as best I can stitch together. There is a battle going on right now for the heart of Hyack – what it is, what it has been, and what it will be in the future. There are essentially two “camps” within Hyack, and if I can paraphrase their positions:

One group has a “steady-as-she-goes” attitude about Hyack. The organization has deep roots and traditions, and it is by respecting these traditions that they have accumulated assets worth more than $1 Million, and have an army of volunteers ready to fill roles in the established routines to keep the ship floating. They have been successful for 40 years, and will continue to be successful if they keep running things the way they have proven works. Careful evolution is preferable to massive changes. This group includes the current President, two remaining Executive members, and a large contingent of ex-Presidents and former Board Members (the “Plaid Coats”). This group also probably represents a plurality of the paid Members of the society.

A second group thinks Hyack needs to makes changes to get with the times. They see some of the traditions of the Hyack Association as dated, and feel that money and volunteer effort could be better spent on updated or refreshed events. They are concerned about the Hyack’s lack of transparency and apparent inability to broaden their appeal to a more diverse community. They see flagging interest in some Hyack events (i.e. the Easter Car Parade) and recent successes on new events to attract an audience and sponsorship money (i.e. Uptown Live), as evidence that they can broaden their appeal and be a more successful festival organizer to the benefit of the entire City. This group includes the (now-former) Executive Director, and (this is the important part) a slim majority of the current Hyack Board.

The conflict arose when the majority of the Board (the second group) supported some updating of the traditions through a new strategic plan, and the Executive and Plaid Coats (the first group) did not agree with that decision. Best I can tell, from that single disagreement on long-term vision of the organization, a lot of bad decisions were made that got us to our current situation.

What is the current situation? Not good:

  • The organization is currently without an Executive Director- and seems to be burning through them at a rate that hampers long-term planning and relationship building. Now, back when I worked in retail, there was pretty good staff turnover. Low wages and hard work – that’s the reality of retail. But if I had 4 people I hired for the same manager job and they all quit or were fired after only two years, the owner would be looking at me as the problem, not the people I hire. I’m not saying…. I’m just saying.
  • The organization appears to not have a functioning board. If decisions made by a clear majority of the board can be overturned by a minority, or vetoed by a President, then there are serious governance issues that need to be addressed. Not just to make the organization function as intended, but to meet constitutional and legal requirements under the Societies Act.
  • The organization may be headed for a bad day in court. The former Executive Director has all but told the media that there will be legal action over his dismissal. We can assume from this he will be arguing for wrongful dismissal, and some of the untoward comments made in the media about alleged reasons for his dismissal probably bring an aspect of defamation into the conversation. I obviously don’t know if there were grounds for dismissal, but the hasty invitation back and negotiation of terms suggests someone received legal advice and the organization may need to dust off their chequebook and write down a lot of zeroes to make this go away, or risk spending a lot of time paying lawyers to go to court.
  • The organization is having a problem with sponsors. There have been several news reports of large sponsors distancing themselves from the current imbroglio. Some of them may come back if the confidence in the organization returns (although after making Slotman the villain, and calling for a boycott of Royal City Centre, some bridges might be harder to mend…), and I don’t know how widespread this is, but if three major sponsors are publicly announcing their concern, you can bet there are many more quietly stepping back. Continued strife, lack of direction, and potential court battles will do nothing to encourage any of them to come rushing back any time soon.
  • The organization is eating itself by not dealing with the situation. The roots of this problem go back at least to the strategic plan in the spring, and the current situation came to a head in July with the firing of Douglas Smith. We are now in October, and the Hyack President has yet to make a statement about the situation or discuss how it is addressing what may be a mortal wound. The organization was unexpectedly pulled from the agenda for Tuesday’s special meeting at Council to determine festival planning needs and requirements for the coming year. By looking at the report they provided for the meeting (with important numbers missing and typos) – it seems that Hyack is unprepared to take part in that meeting and provide a cohesive vision for the City. Meanwhile, the President, instead of busting his ass getting this report together, mending fences and reaching out to concerned citizens, is down in Leavenworth, Washington taking his spot in the Autumn Leaf Parade representing the Hyack Festival Association between the Distinguished Young Women of Ellensburg and the Martins Allstar Showteam.

First Law of Holes: When you find yourself in one, stop digging.

So where does Hyack go from here? I guess it depends on where you are looking from. In my comments in August, I said I want this organization to exist and be effective. To me, that looks more like this:

The 2013 Uptown Live event- a great compliment to the Hyack Parade.

 And less like this:

The Royal Rosarians of Portland preparing to “knight” the president of Hyack

Much like Douglas Smith stated in his report, I want a Hyack that represents New Westminster in a modern, meaningful way. Events like the Columbia StrEAT Foodtruck Festival, Uptown Live and the very successful rejuvenated Hyack Canada Day Fireworks are better examples of how our City can benefit from Festival funding and the hard work of volunteers. We drew the locals out onto the street to meet and mingle, and we drew people a SkyTrain-ride away into New Westminster to see our businesses, our downtown, our waterfront, and hopefully we put on a good enough face that they will return.

A little Pomp and Ceremony can also be good idea, if it serves to motivate volunteers, bring community together, and increase awareness of the organization and its benefits. Many would doubt, however, what exporting our pomp and ceremony to places like Ellensburg (where!?) Washington does to boost New Westminster’s profile, community spirit, or business connections. This is the case being made by some right now, but there is clearly a fundamental disconnect between the people who criticize these types of activities and those who partake in them. Honestly, I don’t know how this letter argues the case made in the first sentence – to many readers, it argues the exact opposite.

Perhaps the question I have not addressed is – Why do I care? Why should anyone care?

Those who regularly read this blog (Hi Mom!) know I am not the type to stand back and watch when a situation needs fixing, I would rather help, and encourage everyone else to help. That is the reason I had the conversations I did with the people I mentioned above. For the most part, I didn’t necessarily seek them out and corner them on the Hyack situation, but when I did run into them socially or on the street, the Hyack situation came up in conversation. Admitting I didn’t really understand the situation, I tried to get as much information as I could, mostly to separate the rumour and innuendo from the reality.

My first impression was, as I stated in August- this is an important organization in my community that I want to see operate successfully. When faced with the opinions of the “two camps” described above, I found myself agreeing with the later, more “changey” group. With reflection, it seemed obvious that this was my natural viewpoint, because I am not Member, and the traditions and “old way” of doing things were basically invisible to me. I had no frame of reference.

So I joined Hyack, and encouraged people I know to do the same. When there was talk of a September 10 special meeting of Hyack to determine the fate of Douglas Smith and/or the Executive that had him fired, I decided I wanted to join, attend that meeting, and hear the two sides argue their case. I also canvassed some of my social group to do the same, for the sake of everything that Hyack has done for the City, and the potential inherent in the organization. Some of my New West network reacted with surprising vitriol, told me the organization was not worth saving, or didn’t understand why I thought they might care. Others saw where I was coming from, got that the organization was a part of the community, and might be worth saving, if only because of the positive changes that have been seen in the last couple of years.

Then the September meeting was postponed, then cancelled, with no explanation to members or the public. I assumed the parties were working out the details of a settled conclusion and everyone was getting back to work. I could not have been more wrong.

I have not been contacted by Hyack since joining in the first week of September (although they wasted no time cashing my $55 cheque). Frankly, I have no idea when or how they meet, or even how I can get involved. The employee who received my membership forms is apparently no longer with the organization, leaving the same day that Douglas Smith decided to end his short return. Admittedly, the organization has bigger concerns than keeping lil’ ol’ me informed, and I haven’t gone out of my way to seek clarity from them, but as a new Member, I expected some kind of hello. Meanwhile, competing letters to the editor demonstrate very effectively who is in each of the two “camps”. What I do not hear is anyone looking for points of resolution. I also don’t hear anyone talking about a game plan or a way forward. Instead, one of the directors muses about splitting the organization up, while concurrent heart-felt, impassioned defenses of Hyack traditions fail to acknowledge that there may even be a problem.

Love it or hate it, Hyack is a vital part of our community – this is not just about the money taxpayers contribute to the organization (although that does matter), it is about representing the public face of the City. Hyack is quick to point out their efforts are all to promote New Westminster, so what impression of New Westminster are they currently showing? Every person who has staked their future on the success of this City should care about what Hyack represents in this town, and how they do that. For this reason alone, members, sponsors and the community need to know that Hyack is not just burying its head in the sand hoping this blows over, but is taking steps to address the criticisms, manage their structural and governance issues, and find a place in the New Westminster of the 21th Century.

I realize just by writing this blog post, I run the risk of making enemies. That is not my intention. Many will disagree with me about this topic, and some will take it personally. I hope those who do will reach out to me and set me straight, and I will be happy to print their reactions here, unedited. In an absence of certainty about motivations and reasoning, I always appeal to Hanlon’s Razor. I assume everyone involved here has the best interests of Hyack and the City in mind. However, no-one seems to agree on what those best interests are, never mind how to get there. The fact so many community members, even the normally “well informed” ones, are trying to figure out what is happening is not a condemnation of us, it is a condemnation of Hyack for not communicating effectively with its constituents. As a member of the community who wants to believe in Hyack, I am struggling to explain to others why.

Up to now, too much of the media conversation has been about entrenching positions, not about moving forward. Yes, the Hyack Festival Association has a proud 40 year history, but this City and many of its traditions have a history 3 times that long. The City will be able to exist and maintain important traditions without Hyack. There are other organizations, established and burgeoning, that would be happy to step in and take their share of that $140,000 in annual taxpayer support Hyack receives, and use it to promote the City, our business community, and our History. I’m not saying that is the best or most desirable result at this point, but those pulling the strings at Hyack have to keep that in mind.

Therefore, Hyack’s first priority right now needs to be convincing us – the City, the community, and their sponsors, and their members, that they are the best option the City has to promote the public face of New Westminster and bring community events to the Royal City.

The Bridge to Nowhere.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I have already opined about the potential to replace the Massey Tunnel back when the rushed “consultations” were launched in the Spring. People with better minds than mine have already challenged the base assumptions built into the apparent need for a replacement using the Ministry of Transportation’s own numbers.

This week’s announcement that this low-priority election bauble was pushing on, full steam ahead, despite the objection of pretty much every Mayor in the region* except for the one who doesn’t want to pay for it, is still a little confounding. Our all-but silent rookie Minister of Transportation continues to dither about Transit funding models and a still-born referendum, everyone from Teachers to Nurses to Social Workers are being told there is no money in the kitty for any of their essential programs, but for some reason this multi-billion dollar boondoggle is a Provincial Priority. Depressing, but not shocking.

Since the announcement was amazingly bereft of details: size, scale, scope, costs, tolls are all things we can only speculate on. The only substantive thing we have to base our speculations upon is the fly-through animation of the proposed bridge, a fanciful piece of salesmanship no doubt created in a wet dream by the very engineering firms and Project Managers that are now engaged by the Ministry of Transportation to sell this product to a reluctant taxpayer consult on the project design and implementation on behalf of the Government, so they can eventually get paid by the same Government to build it. You know who you are.

First off, note the lane count. 10. Well, 12 if you include the “safety lanes” that appear to be full-lane width on this rendering. Plus a bike/pedestrian path. As drawn, this bridge will be wider than the Port Mann, the alleged widest bridge in the world.

Yes, two of those lanes will be “HOV” lanes. Note the HOV lane is dominated by cars and commercial vehicles, which makes them very different than the HOV lanes we know and love.

Note no substantial changes to the design of the Steveston Highway intersection as far as lanes in and lanes out, (although it looks like the overpass will be blown out to 4 lanes, which will not do much for Stevenson and No 5 Road).  Note especially how the free-flowing traffic from the new bridge disappears as it exits to the 2-lane Steveston Highway, as if by magic. The magic of road builder renderings. That traffic is distinctly “somebody else’s problem”. Or the next problem they will get paid to solve.

Nor do will see substantive changes to the Highway 99 / Highway 17A intersection. Except, of course, the current 6-lane Highways that extend through farmland away from the Bridge north and south are shown to be 10 lanes wide as far as the eye can see. Pity the Oak Street Bridge, I-5 Seattle, here we come.

Note the pedestrians on the bridge. There are a dozen pedestrians and three cyclists shown. Cyclists I’ll give you, but the bridge is 3 km long, with the north end ramp more than a kilometre from the nearest doorway of any kind, and the south end something like 5 km from any likely destination, be it residential, commercial or recreational. Where the hell are these walkers going?

Perhaps they got tired of waiting for the transit that never showed up, as the established bus stops on the Richmond side of the bridge have been removed, and the HOV lane moved to the middle of the freeway, so Transit connections have clearly not been thought out here. Probably TransLink’s problem to solve.

At least I give the rendering props for truthfully representing the types of vehicles that use the Massey tunnel route. In the animation, 83% of the vehicles shown are private cars, 14% are commercial trucks, and 3% are buses. Admittedly, they are “tour” bus types but let’s assume the animator meant for these to be ultra-luxury Transit buses that will come with expanded Transit funding to go with the new road (yes, that was sarcasm).

These stats are close to the actual current count of traffic going through the tunnel: 87% cars (including HOV, which means at least one passenger), 12% trucks, 1% transit.

Source: Massey Tunnel Replacement Consultations.

Actually, the 2% increase in trucks is almost exactly the increased number that will result from the most ambitious Port expansion plans at Terminal 2. Keep that 2% number in mind when you are told “Goods Movement” is a primary reason for spending a couple of billion of your dollars to replace the tunnel.

In contrast, the displayed tripling in transit service is clearly fanciful, as TransLink has no money to maintain the routes they currently run. This is important, because if transit use (which at 1% of vehicles, already represents 26% of the people travelling through the tube) tripled, then the numbers of cars going through the tunnel would be reduced by half. Which would end our congestion problem for a much lower cost than a $X Billion bridge.

Alas, I heard Moe Sihota speaking for the NDP on the Rick Cluff Radio Confrontation Hour (follow link to about 1:50:00) this morning, also agreeing that the tunnel needed to be replaced with a big shiny bridge, using the same incorrect data and false assumptions as Premier McSparkles(Tm). Of course, he disagreed with Colin Hansen on some arcane aspect of the funding or the opportunism of the announcement, but he was all for pissing away you tax dollars entrenching another generation of motordom.

This leaves the 100,000 daily transit users on the under-serviced Broadway Corridor and the tens of thousands in Surrey loading on stuffed and increasingly unreliable SkyTrains every morning wondering who represents them.

*note, just before writing this, I heard an unintentionally hilarious interview with Mayor Diane Watts of Surrey, where (the always-excellent) Stephen Quinn has her so confused by her own talking points, that she appears to be all for the Bridge, although it is a low priority compared to pretty much any other transportation project; for tolling the bridge, though against tolls, except for them if they are low, except not unless everyone pays; and against a Transit Referendum, except for it when important for deciding transportation alternatives, except when it isn’t. It is well worth the listen.
  

“Getting to Yes”

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Further to poorly-framed arguments supporting specific hydrocarbon-transportation projects, there was this recent opinion piece written by John Winter, who is the President and CEO of the British Columbia Chamber of Commerce. It was, frankly, disappointing. Not because I disagree with Mr. Winter, but because it was so poorly argued.

The opinion was in response to this previous piece in the same Important CanWest Newspaper of Record. In the first piece, economist Robyn Allen pointed out that the economic arguments being made by Enbridge on the Northern Gateway Pipeline proposal were “just not true”. Ms. Allen, in a tightly-argued 600 words, explained the factual misrepresentations in Enbridge’s claims, from the perspective of an economist, using Enbridge’s own numbers. No-where does she suggest the Northern Gateway, or any other project, should be stopped. Instead, she simply criticizes, point-by-point and from a position of considerable knowledge, the mis-characterization of the economic impact of the project as presented in the proposal. She then suggests:

“In the interests of transparency and accountability, British Columbians deserve better than what Enbridge seems capable of delivering.”

Mr Winter’s response to this argument does not engage in the same detailed analysis of the data presented by Enbridge, nor does he directly address any of Ms. Allen’s actual points. Instead he engages in over-the-top and largely fact-free rhetoric. He further characterizes her argument as an “intellectual exercise” to undermine the project:

“It’s disturbing to see how much British Columbian ingenuity is being channelled into our province’s alarming — and growing — ‘culture of no.’ And for what gain?”

I don’t know where I got this idea, but I suspect the gain Ms. Allen was aiming for is that the conversation be “in the interests of transparency and accountability”.

You see, Ms. Allen is a scientist who studied, spent a career working in, and teaches economics. It is her job to scrutinize economic augments and determine if they are fact-based or not. If Mr. Winters disagreed with her factual information, he might have made a counter-point. Instead he engages in a bunch of irrelevant hyperbole:

“In virtually every corner of the province, we’re seeing the same thing: Smart, highly environmentally responsible projects that can employ our children and keep our towns alive are being battered, paralyzed and stomped out.”

I’m not sure what dusty corners of the Province Mr. Winters is spending his time, but the vast majority of large industrial projects in BC are being stomped upon only by rubber stamps. If one looks at the BC Environmental Assessment Office records, one can look at the history of project proposals in BC since the Act came into force in 1995.

Completed:       128
Refused:           3
Pre-application:  69
Exempt:           22
Terminated:        6
Under Review:     10
Withdrawn:        21
Total:           259

So of 259 projects, exactly 3 have been refused permits. That is just over 1%. In contrast, 150 were either issued certificates or were found to be exempt from the process. That is 58%. If you re-calculate those numbers without including 79 that have not yet reached the decision stage, 83% of projects have achieved approvals. Where is the alleged battery occurring here?

As an aside,the Federal EA process numbers are very similar. Well, they were, until the Federal Government in one stroke of a pen in 2012 changed the Federal EA Act, such that thousands of Federal Environmental Assessments will simply not happen now. Where before there was scrutiny, proponents can now fill their boots.

But back to the Project in question: the Northern Gateway Pipeline. Mr Winters continues:

“So there’s a lot at stake here. And frankly, what’s yet to be decided has nothing to do with project economics (which, Ms. Allan, are frankly settled), but rather how we balance economic value against other B.C. priorities, as the Joint Review Panel is assessing.”

This is actually where Mr. Winters is wrongest. Ms. Allen has aptly demonstrated that the project economics are far from settled, and there still exists debate. At the very least, some clarification is required from the project proponent.

It is interesting that many of the environmental protection measures that come out of this type of Environmental Assessment are codified in the review documents as conditions of approval. For example, if the exclusive use of double-hulled tankers was promised by Enbridge, then using single-hulled tankers would be a breach of the Approval, and the certificate can be removed, shutting down the project. However, none of the “economic” commitments have the same status. Enbridge could promise to employ every adult person north of 50 degrees, then only employ three people once the assessment is done, and there would be no recourse for the Province or communities to whom the promises were made. I’m not saying they would do that, but that makes it important that any assessment of the anticipated economic impacts be as accurate, fact-based and defensible as possible- we only get one crack at that part of the project review.

“And with this project, as with any that proposes such substantial benefits for B.C., we hope that British Columbians will take a close look at what’s to gain here. We certainly don’t ask that environmental or community concerns be sidelined. But we’d ask that jobs and economic value not be sidelined as well.”

Ms. Allen is not sidelining economic values, she is assuring they are properly assessed so that we can, as British Columbians, take the close look at what’s to gain for which Mr. Winters is asking. Surely, the CEO and President of the BC Chamber of Commerce wants the public to be provided with factual information, both when they question the economic gains, and when they question the environmental impacts. That is why we have Environmental Assessments, and that is why responsible businesses engage in them.

Alas.

The entire argument presented by Mr. Winters is framed around “Getting to Yes”, which has become one of those abstract rhetorical phrases that everyone thinks they understand, but in reality it means different things to different people, and is actually completely meaningless. Mr. Winters suggests we need to “Get to Yes” on these projects. But who is it, exactly, that needs to “Get to Yes”?

Does the Provincial Government need to “Get to Yes” by bypassing (or tossing out a la Stephen Harper) their own environmental assessment laws, ignoring the environmental protections afforded by Provincial Law, Federal Law, and our constitutional responsibility to First Nations?

Does the Media need to “Get to Yes” by continuing to publish fact-free editorials that would have us believe that 3 certificate refusals out of 256 applications is some sort of war on resource development?

Does the public need to “Get to Yes” by agreeing to whatever Enbridge says, and refusing to listen to people who point out factual errors in what they promise?

No. It is Enbridge who needs to “Get to Yes”. They will get there by providing realistic data about what they have to offer BC, and what the risks to BC (economic and environmental) are. Then they need to convince us that those risks are managed and mitigated to the point that the economic development they are offering us is sufficient payment.

It is possible that Enbridge will not, with this project, ever “Get to Yes”. But that would not be from a failure of British Columbians to dream, it would be from a failure of Enbridge to convince us they are good for our future.

Getting serious about Coal

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 3 Comments.

Hi folks! Great to be back. August was killer, and many stories will be told, I’m sure. Now back to your regular programming.

I wasn’t sure what to write about at first, but look what the good people at one of the local CanWest Serious Newspapers of Record dropped on my lap – like manna dropped on the desert floor of my blog…

I stumbled across a pretty hilarious “op-ed” in the Vancouver Sun yesterday. I thought maybe it was clever satire in the Colbert Report style, but when I saw the byline and noted the affiliation with Patrick Moore and his Greenwashing Cabal, I realized the writer was trying to be serious. This is and example of why I stopped lamenting the demise of dead-tree news, if this is the best they have to offer. At least the Province has a decent Sports Section.

The opinion (if I can paraphrase) is that mining and export of coal is good, right, and ethically the best thing we can do, because without us supplying them coal, the developing world is doomed to eternal poverty and we will be able to get fewer gadgets from China; climate change be damned.

However, there are deeper issues with the opinions stated, which I would like to address individually:

“First, despite the current trend away from coal to cheap gas, China and other developing countries will need coal for the foreseeable future. The morality of denying them access to it is questionable. For hundreds of millions in China and elsewhere, consuming coal for electricity and heat is not a choice.”

This is sort of true, except that it isn’t. Burning coal for electricity and heat is every bit a choice for emerging economies as it is for us in British Columbia. Just like us, it is an economic choice, made for economic reasons by economic satisficers. In British Columbia, we have decided, despite our ample coal resources, to not burn coal to generate electricity or heat, because of the negative consequences to our communities, and instead generate electricity by (in descending importance) through hydroelectricity, by burning oil and gas, wood waste, garbage, and other alternatives. Cost may or may not have been the primary driver for BC making that choice, but it was no doubt a choice we made for economic reasons. Other countries have made different choices, based on their local economic situation, but it is a choice.

“Removing North American coal supplies from the market will not reduce consumption, but will likely increase prices.”

Notice how Patrick Moore’s young apprentice has mastered the self-contradictory argument skills of his master. If we fail to provide a cheap route to get coal to market, or otherwise restrict supply, coals prices will indeed increase, if one believes in supply and demand economics. Of course, the other half of supply and demand is that if the prices go up, demand will drop, as the alternatives to coal become more economically attractive. This will, no doubt result in reduced consumption. You can’t have one without the other, as coal is a commodity with negative elasticity.

“It will also encourage coal mining in less safe jurisdictions. Is it right for us to impose such hardships on our fellow human beings while presenting no current practical alternatives?”

The thinking gets yet sketchier here. If we don’t supply coal, then the increased value of coal may, indeed, increase coal mining in other jurisdictions, some of them being “less safe” than ours. However, compare this discussion of “imposing hardships” on others by encouraging resource extraction with the rest of this op-ed (where resource extraction is seen as the ticket to prosperity by driving economic development and innovation), to find deeper self-contradiction:

“One way some pundits make such imprudence look clever is to style natural resource wealth as a handicap, as if knowledge-based sectors falter when resource extraction thrives. But this is a false argument because the extractive sectors are knowledge-based and already rich with intellectual capital. Just ask any geologist, engineer, or GIS software designer. Resource wealth drives innovation, not the opposite.”

So resource extraction is good for every aspect of our economy- but we would not want to “impose that hardship” on developing nations where it might be “less safe”, would we? Which is it Grasshopper?

“Another inconvenient reality is that poverty in the developing world will worsen if we manipulate energy supplies. Industrialization reduces poverty by releasing agrarian families from mere subsistence. It creates higher paying jobs, enabling increased education for children and autonomy for women. Over the long term, this results in a more affluent, service- and knowledge-based economy. The energy driving this gradual process is coal. Blocking North American coal supplies to Asia risks driving up the cost of living for the world’s poor.”

This is an excellent example of the Bifurcation Fallacy– or more colloquially, a False Dichotomy, very popular with Dr. Moore’s writing. The writer here is suggesting that without coal, the developing world cannot possibly achieve autonomy for women or any of the other benchmarks of development. Clearly this is bullshit. There are many paths to prosperity and higher levels of development, and there are many ways a developing nation can fulfill its energy needs. The corollary argument also does not work, as ample supplies of cheap energy hardly guarantees egalitarian societies. Saudi Arabia anyone?

Also, let’s get over this illusion that the world’s poorest people rely on coal. The world’s 2.5 Billion poorest people have no access to coal at all, but instead burn wood or dung as their one and only fuel source. China (the oft-repeated example here) produces 47% of the world’s coal, but burns 47% of the world’s coal. China is not a net coal importer – any coal it does import or export is for economic trade reasons, not for the benefit of supplying energy to its poorest citizens. If you list the 10 countries that consume the most coal in the world you end up with this:

Country         Tonnes     %     Member  GDP rank
China         3,826,869   47%    G20        2
USA           1,003,066   12%    G8         1
India           721,419    9%    G20        9
Russia          256,691    3%    G8        10
Germany         256,661    3%    G8         4
South Africa    201,403    2%    G20       28
Japan           192,854    2%    G8         3
Poland          152,988    2%              24
Korea, South    139,481    2%    G20       15
Australia       131,174    2%    G20       12

So 85% of the world’s coal is consumed in only 10 countries, 4 of them in the G8 (the 8 largest economies in the world), and all the rest but Poland are in the G20. All of them are in the top 28 largest economies in the world. If you take the coal burned by the 20 member countries in the G20, the other 180+ countries in the world are left with only 11% of the coal. The vast majority of coal is being burned by the relatively well-off in developed economies, not by the poor in the Third World.

Giving the poorest nations a lump of coal is much more Grinch-like than Santa-like.

“Yes, the negative environmental, health and safety impacts of coal mining and use are significant. Poor countries are not oblivious to coal’s negative impact, but they need it at present to better the standard of living for their citizens. Why not provide these countries with North American coal that’s mined according to tough environmental and safety guidelines, creating well-paying jobs and prosperous communities on this side of the Pacific?”

Am I the only one confused by this line of reasoning? It seems to suggest we are actually helping out the poor by facilitating the introduction of negative health, environmental and safety impacts on them, while we get the well-paying jobs and prosperous communities? How does a person in India benefit from Canada’s “tough environmental and safety regulations” when a coal-fired power plant next to his house in Calcutta has no such regulations?

“And why not encourage them to use the latest coal burning and scrubber technologies to reduce air pollutants?”

Ahhh… the simple solution. Of course. Except it is untenable and contradictory to the rest of the argument. How do we “encourage” another country to install expensive scrubbing technologies? I thought this article was arguing that coal was used by poorer countries because it is affordable and they are so teetering on the edge of energy collapse that if we make it any less affordable by lowering the supply, the poor will go without energy and suffer. Now the article suggests if the poor would just get their act together and spend some money scrubbing their dirty coal, it will be just fine. His might be the paragraph that best straddles the line from ignorance to parody.

Note: you really can’t “scrub” the greenhouse gasses out of coal emissions, but I digress.

“The problem with public discourse on coal is that simplistic answers are preferred over holistic, well-reasoned and defensible solutions. Coal adds to global warming and therefore we should ban it, they say. But the truth is we can’t ban coal. Australia will be more than happy to rake in the billions we will be leaving on the table for them.”

Here we have another common Logical Fallacy known as the “Strawman”. Make a hopelessly weak version of the opposing view, then have fun flogging that weak position.

The arguments against the expansion of coal exports through BC ports are not simplistic, but remarkably complex and multi-faceted. Some raise concerns regarding the health impacts of coal dust moving through our communities, some are concerned about the implications of moving bulk coal through our sensitive ecosystems, some argue that it is unethical to mine and export a product that is simply too dirty and unsafe for us to burn domestically – If coal is too dirty for BC to burn for energy (as our Provincial Government has codified in law), why are we OK with profiteering from its use elsewhere? Others argue that the mining and export of coal without accounting for the carbon impacts violates the spirit of, if not the letter of, the Provincial Greenhouse Gas Emission laws.

Holistically speaking, coal is a disaster for the planet. It was a pollution disaster in London in the 19th Century, an acid rain disaster for the Great Lakes in the 20th Century, and is a public health disaster for China in the 21st Century. If we don’t figure out alternatives, or find some magic bullet to sequester the resulting carbon dioxide, it will continue to contribute to a Climate Change disaster in the 22nd Century.

The answer to mitigating this disaster- moving on to a post-coal economy, is not at all simplistic, nor is anyone suggesting it is simplistic It is complex and will create hardship for people in coal towns, and for aspects of the economy that rely on coal extraction and burning. But it must happen, so we need to figure out how to get there with the least possible human impact.

What is simplistic is the argument that coal is great for our economy, and if we don’t sell it, Australia will get all of our money, so Damn the Torpedoes! There are lots of things that are potentially “good for the economy” that we choose not to do – from exporting asbestos to engaging in the trade of slaves to killing sperm whales for ambergris. All were perfectly legal in the past, but the world (with notable exceptions) has moved on, as social and economic pressure was applied to those few countries that still engaged in the activities. Some of that starts with small, symbolic acts, like those taking place up and down the west coast of North America, where communities from California to British Columbia are deciding that the local and international cost of coal extraction and burning is such that they no longer want to draw their income that way.

I am glad the author made a passing reference to greenhouse gases in his Op-Ed, like it is one of those little accessory issues, and not the centre of the entire argument about promoting reliance on coal on other nations. Not mentioned is the (ahem) inconvenient fact that it is the very poor in underdeveloped nations who will suffer the most from the impacts of Climate Change. Suggesting that burning more coal will help the world’s poor is wrong; to suggest we should have some sort of economic battle with Australia to see who can sell the most coal to the world’s poor is unethical in a deep way.

“Coal is not just a much-loathed rock we can toss aside; it’s part of the fabric of our human existence. We have a complex relationship with coal built over millennia.”

Replace the word “coal” with “cancer” in that paragraph: it makes the paragraph no less true, and no less relevant.

“We can’t rashly break it off over night.”

No, but we can begin to transition our economy away from coal, and there is no need to be rash about it. Limiting our exports to current levels as opposed to unlimited expansion, is hardly rash, and what people that the author disparages are currently suggesting. Putting a moratorium on expansion of new coal mining in British Columbia until the science catches up to dealing with the environmental impacts would also be a good step. Alternately, let’s start to include the true carbon footprint of coal in the accounting of how we mine and sell it, and apply the carbon tax to this industry to remove their competitive advantage over other job-creating industries in the Province that currently pay a Carbon Tax.

Perhaps if the true cost of coal is accounted, we will discover its reputation as “cheap energy” will be proven false, and our strange love affair with it will end. Like often happens when a relationship isn’t doing us much good, our friends are often afraid to have a serious talk to us about how we are hurting ourselves and the people around us. It’s time to sit down with coal and have a serious talk.

On Festivals, recent and future.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

I just had one of the busiest and most interesting, weekends in recent memory. Many conversations had, many things learned, many ideas shared. A large amount of it I just can’t get into right now, but suffice to say there are very good things brewing (in the metaphorical sense) right now, and I feel pretty positive about the year ahead.

Amongst the craziness of the weekend was a few hours spent in the beer gardens at the Columbia StrEAT Food truck festival thingy. This was shocking, and yet refreshingly not. For those out of town or otherwise unaware, tens of thousands of people showed up on Columbia Street Saturday afternoon/evening to sample the wide variety of food truck offerings that have descended on the Lower Mainland (and the rest of North America) in the last few years.

How successful was the event? So many showed up, that the food lines were often an hour long, and many of the trucks sold completely out of product before the end of the event. I sat in the beer garden waiting for lines to shrink, then went to get a grilled goodie at 7:00ish. I asked the operator how it was going, and she said she apologized for the limited offerings she had left.

I said “That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Well,” she replied, looking exasperated, “We have another event tomorrow, and we have no more product. It’s not like we can pick these things [her delicious homemade sausages] up at Costco.”

The only complaints I heard from the crowd was that the lineups were too long. A complaint not unlike the old saw “No-one goes there anymore, it’s too crowded”.

This got many of the noble beer-garden patrons with whom I was sharing stories contemplating what this event might mean for future “Car-free days” on Columbia Street, and what relation this has to the other big festival-related story in New Westminster right now.

On the first topic, I think we have learned that if we choose to build it, they will come. The ongoing massive success of the Show & Shine has some wondering if more “Car-free days” could work on Columbia, around different themes. Some other street festivals are really hopping in New West (I think especially of the newer “UpTown Live”), while there is no doubt some other events are getting a little stale (examples redacted – but you know who they are). I think this event shows there is an appetite, as long as there is some variety of themes, they offer something new or interesting, and they are well marketed.

The question remaining would be how would more events on Columbia serve the merchants along Columbia, seeing the effort that the Downtown BIA put into organizing them? It appeared everyone from the Heritage Grill to Starschmucks had huge days, and even further-afield businesses like SpudShack and Re-up BBQ commented on how they saw a big sales on Saturday (no doubt benefiting from those 1-hour lineups on the street). The spin-offs from having all of these people downtown should be obvious to the merchants who support the BIA.

I’m not sure the wedding shops benefited as much, but I digress.

So I look forward to what Kendra and the rest of the folks at the Downtown BIA do with this new knowledge and the vigour it promises. I could think of a few different types of events that would similarly bring hungry, thirsty, happy people to Columbia Street on a sunny weekend. Nothing against the Show & Shine, but it should be the beginning of something, not the only thing!

As for the other festival-related story about these parts, I just don’t know what to say. I have had casual conversations this weekend with a half-dozen different people who are, or should be, “in the know” about what is happening at Hyack, and from those 6 people I got at least 7 different stories, most of them contradicting each other.

I think speculation from those of us who are not “in the know” probably doesn’t serve any purpose, but I am concerned when some of the same people who usually call for openness and transparency for all things at the City are now the ones counselling that everyone should just be quiet and let this pass. Hyack spends a lot of taxpayers’ dollars, and are responsible for much of the public face of the City. This type of mysterious back-room battle erupting into public hissy fits does nothing to improve confidence in their ability to continue doing the good work they do.

For my part, I’m glad the City has Hyack, and that so many volunteers are willing to work so hard to make it successful. They are not without fault, however, and some of the allegedly-sacred traditions around Hyack may need to be updated to appeal to a growing 21st century urban centre full of young families, hipster doofuses, and the transit-oriented consumers from surrounding communities who are only a few minutes away from one of our five SkyTrain Stations.

I get the sense that was the direction the no-former Executive Director (whom I have never met, by the way) was leaning, and it seemed like there was some success towards that direction. Then today I read a letter by Bart Slotman, who is not one of the people I have chatted with about this, but for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect, and it sort of confirms my worst suspicions. Something is amiss here, and needs to be fixed.

My (in this case, actually humble) opinion is that Hyack does a great job getting folks in New Westminster to look inward and enjoy our wonderful City, but needs more successful events like Uptown Live and the Columbia StrEAT Festival to bring others into New West, to show our neighbors who we are and why they should come back. We have something to show off here, so let’s quit arguing about it, and do it!

On TransLink and the referendum

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

I really wanted to write an in-depth piece on the TransLink Funding Referendum; a withering piece using phrases like “abhorrent abdication of accountability” and “irresponsible idiocy that threatens the livability of the region”, but I realized there has already been a ton of good stuff written on this issue.

So before wading through MY diatribe below, why not see what noted Bridge-and-Freeway advocates like Mayor Diane Watts and Mayor Richard Stewart have to say on the subject. Or you can follow the writings of the leading thinkers on regional development, like Gordon Price, or Stephen Rees. Or how about the dirty hippies at Business in Vancouver? It seems no-one outside of the Premier’s office (and it’s PR wing at the Vancouver Sun) think this is a good idea. Even the new Minister of Transportation seems to skirt around the issue.

The Referendum is a bad idea, and perhaps the best way to explain how bad and idea is to take a (supposedly) thought-out and argued case FOR the referendum, and disassemble it. Please forgive me if I stray towards a Strawman fallacy here, but I am not making up a preposterously weak pro-referendum case here, I am just relating one that appeared in one of the PostMedia Papers of Note. If you hear a better argument for the referendum than the one I critique below, please send it to me, so I can tear that one apart as well.

I present to you, Province “Metro View” columnist Jon Ferry:

I’m no huge fan of referendums to resolve major public-policy issues, any more than I’m of penalty shootouts to decide hockey or soccer games.

Why are you not a fan of referenda? Perhaps you can expand this, because the 490 words following your initial expression of dislike seems to argue that referenda are a good idea, even for complex issues. If you hate them, why are you advocating for one? This sentence makes the rest of the discussion sound like one of those rants your drunk uncle goes off on that starts with “I don’t want to be racist, but…”

But they have their place, especially when an issue gets so tied up in political knots that a direct appeal to the people in a simple, take-it-or-leave-it vote is the only way to disentangle it.

But this cannot possibly be a simple take-it-or-leave it vote, can it? If that is what you are proposing, a question that says: “Do we want to raise your taxes through ‘X’ to pay for a subway to UBC and buses to White Rock and fancy offices for TransLink bureaucrats who couldn’t plan their way out of a wet paper bag? Or not? ” then we all know it doesn’t matter what the ‘X’ is: it will fail. We all know this is how any request for more tax money from any source will be framed by the Vancouver Province and Sun other car-dependant media. I hardly exaggerate, as you can see that narrative is already being drawn.

Then we will all be here in the same place 16 months from now, wondering why Skytrain keeps breaking down and why busses are passing people by on the curb, with no plan to deal with it and no new revenue source. If anyone can imagine a simple yes-no referendum question to which the majority of voters will say “Yes” and which will also lead to TransLink being funded adequately to meet the Transport 2040 goals, then I have not yet heard it expressed. The referendum will not untangle any political knots, it will only tighten the string for another two years and drag TransLink failures into the Municipal election cycle, pitching “Pro-Tax Mayors” against “Anti-Tax Mayors”.

That’s why I think the Christy Clark government must not bow to the wishes of the Metro Vancouver mayors and must refuse to renege on its election pledge to hold a referendum on possible “sources of new funding” for TransLink.

Right. Why should the Premier show any leadership at all, or even work together with the Mayors in an honest discussion of the issue without the side-show of a doomed referendum? The TransLink Board is her baby – it came with the job – so unless she is willing to turn TransLink back over to the Mayors to run, she should start thinking about how she is going to pay for it, and take the plunge. It is the willingness of Victoria to make random and ill-advised decisions regarding TransLink (FalconGates, the terrible Golden Ears Bridge deal, endlessly delaying Evergreen) that has put TransLink in its current financial bind. Now the Premier wants to continue to run TransLink from Victoria, but get the Mayors to pay for it so she doesn’t have to raise any taxes. The Mayors are right to tell her to get bent.

I believe that the mayors are being downright patronizing when they say the topic is too complicated for voters in their area to decide upon.

Look- referenda have their place, but this is not it.

I think referenda should be reserved for significant changes to government structure (e.g. changing the Constitution) or questions where our “social norms” are being evaluated (e.g. the legalization of marijuana). Where they should never be used is when the question is one of the rights of a minority (e.g. same-sex marriage equality or  the stunningly inept BC Aboriginal Treaty Referendum of 2002).

I would include tax policy as a third subject that should never go to referendum. (see discussion of HST referendum below). Ultimately, revenue generation and spending is what we hire a Government to do, it is the core of the budget every year, and in a place like BC where the government rarely sits in a legislature, it is almost the only thing a government does. There is a referendum on their tax policy, and it is held every 4 years. It is bad governance to parse out one small part of tax policy and put it up for referendum, because you cannot forecast spending or growth, you cannot even frame a balanced budget, unless the results of the referendum are pre-determined. Which, in this case, it will be, So why go through the exercise?

They’re also being alarmist in claiming a defeat by taxpayers of new “sustainable funding” — meaning new taxes — would doom metro to a stagnant transit system.

Alarmist? How is pointing out the obvious negative consequences of delaying, yet again for another year or two, investment in public Transportation being “alarmist”?  If you do not think the current funding crisis is hurting the current system, you have not tried to catch a 99 B-line or been on a westbound SkyTrain at 8:00am or had to make last-minute changes to your plans because “switching problems” scuttled the morning Skytrain Commute for the third time in a week.

A “stagnant Transit system” is, at this point, not “alarmist”, but an optimistic dream. In the last year, TransLink has not only been unable to move ahead on expansion plans (other than the Evergreen Line, which is finally seeing construction after more than 20 years in delays, mostly due to money committed years ago), they have actually cut bus routes to growing communities. Queensborough, Coquitlam, Maple Ridge- these areas are seeing bus service reduced, even as their population and density increases. The system is shrinking, squeezed of dollars at the same time that Billions are spent on new freeways and bridges. As service becomes less reliable, people will stop relying on it, and will instead avail themselves of all those new roads and bridges, increasing congestion, increasing GHG impacts, increasing roadbuilding costs and maintenance, making our communities noisier, less safe, more crowded, and more polluted. This will cut TransLink off from what has become its most stable form of income- fares. Indeed, with no more money inputs, the system will not stay stagnant- it will fail.

Now, I disagreed with scrapping the HST. But I think Victoria was right to put it to a referendum in 2011, if only to clear the air.

OK, let’s nip this comparison in the bud. Victoria was forced to put the HST to a referendum, they didn’t decide to – they had no choice! This was an example of a bad policy choice being made by the populace in a referendum, simply because the word “tax” was attached the wrong side of the story. This actually makes the case for the “patronizing” position of the Mayors.

What should have happened with the HST is the Government of Gordon Campbell should have been honest with the populace, introduced and explained the HST to the public, and sold them on the merits of the tax over the old system. They should have done this a year before the provincial election when they started negotiations with the Feds, not just introduce it with little warning a month after an election. The referendum campaign and overturning of the HST was a reaction to a dishonest and cowardly government, not a bad tax. Any policy discussion where Bill Vander Zalm is seen as the voice of reason is a clear sign governance has gone off the rails. The conversation during the referendum was distorted into an anti-Gordon Campbell plebiscite and the result was a bad decision made for the wrong reasons.

And I think a fairly worded referendum on raising, or not raising, new tax money for metro area transit would do the same.

Really. You honestly think if during a Municipal election, the government asks the Taxpayers of the region if they want to pay more taxes to build a subway for UBC students and bike racks for buses (because, mark my words, that is the level of discourse we will end up having around this referendum) that there is any chance of more than 35% of them voting yes? What planet are you sending your dispatch from? Please, Mr. Ferry, or anyone, show me a question that will result in a properly funded regional transportation system. I dare you.

The Mayors Council on Regional Transportation voted June 19 to formally oppose such a referendum, planned for the fall of next year, saying “making complex policy by referendums is contrary to principles of good governance.”

Of course, no-one ever accused Christy Clark of good governance. She can sure campaign, but so far her governance skills are as suspect as her driving. This is why, when she is stuck in a corner here and needs to display some governance skills, she is choosing instead to make a “campaign” of it. She will turn the entire conversation about the future of the region into one of those he-says/she-says confrontational radio call-in shows that were her specialty. The conversation will not invest deeply in fact, established principles of regional or transportation planning, systems science, or any of the complex ideas that make up a complex infrastructure strategy. It will be quips and “ya know’s” and pandering to the voter about what is “important to families” and gotcha moments. There is no risk of good governance arising from this.

What pompous nonsense. The public makes great decisions on complex issues at the ballot box, even if the politicians they elect aren’t always the brightest of the bunch.

(I’ll leave aside the fact you just said you disagree with the results of the last referendum) Following your reasoning, what decision should NOT be made by Referendum? I never got to vote on the $5 Billion spent on Gateway freeway projects (the SFPR, Port Mann2, Highway 1 expansion, etc). I never got to vote on a $500 Million roof for a football stadium. I never got to vote on the Billions spent on the Olympics. I am not being offered a vote on the replacement for the Pattullo Bridge, or the Massey Tunnel, or on the Kinder Morgan Pipeline expansion. I cannot even vote on the betting of our entire province’s economy on building a half-dozen LNG plants. If the single largest industrial investment ever in the Province, one that will radically restructure the BC economy while contributing multiples of our current GHG output to the atmosphere isn’t worthy of referendum, if no other transportation infrastructure investment in the history of the Province has ever needed a referendum, If BC Ferries rate increases, BC Hydro Rates, Carbon Tax increases, run-of-the-river hydro expansion, the sale of our Provincial assets, if none of these can be trusted to referenda, why this one little local transportation authority held to a different standard?

No, the big problem with the provision of public transportation in our region of 24 local authorities is that those supposed to be piloting it get so paralyzed by indecision they don’t seem to know whether they’re coming or going.

So fallacious an argument that it isn’t even wrong. TransLink knows exactly where it needs to go. Transport 2040, knows the funding it needs, knows what is available to it and what isn’t. The Mayors are also on side, as is the regional government. The direction forward is clear. Planning- knowing whether they are coming or going- is not TransLink’s problem. Political interference that drops in just long enough to muck up the the business plan, then steps back to avoid accountability is the Problem. The only people who paralysed with indecision on TransLink have been completely ineffectual Ministers of Transportation Blair Lekstrom and Mary Polak. Kevin Falcon, when he was in the role, made bad decisions that are still costing us, but at least he made decisions.

Part of the reason for this is the awkward/awful governance structure of TransLink. There’s also confusion about whether TransLink is a bus firm, rail company or simply another Vision-style bicycle-promotion scheme. Or is it an agency genuinely serving the travelling public?

I cannot believe one the major newspapers in Vancouver could have a “Metro View” writer express such a stunning ignorance of the largest single issue in the region today. No wonder Postmedia’s ship is sinking. TransLink is a regional transportation authority, responsible for a “bus firm”, three distinct “rail companies”, a transit ferry, three bridges and the entire Major road Network (>1,000km of roads used by cars every day!), and, yes, indeed, last year they spent 0.2% of their budget on bicycle infrastructure to further the Great Socialist Cycling Agenda. In every aspect of the above, they are serving the travelling public (even those who dare travel on bicycles!). They move hundreds of thousands of people every day – it is virtually impossible to move in the City without interacting with one of thier assets, and are one of the most cost-efficient transportation authorities in North America. If Mr. Ferry is confused about TransLink’s role, he should start reading, or get a new job far, far away from the “Metro View” file. Maybe you can parlay your talents into full time Climate-Change denial, as you only seem to dabble in it these days, and that stuff can really pay off.

B.C.’s new transportation minister, Todd Stone, confirms there’ll be a referendum on possible new TransLink funding sources, but the wording of the question to be asked voters still has to be decided. He says discussing this with the metro mayors is one of his top priorities. How TransLink is governed will also be addressed.

Wait- maybe there is some promise here. Why not have a referendum just on the governance? Because we all agree – the taxpayer, the Mayors, and now even the Minister of Transportation, that this is the problem with TransLink. Simple question: Who should run TransLink, a Council of Mayors that the voters get to vote for, or an unaccountable board of Political appointees chosen by the Premier?

“We have committed to having the governance worked out and agreed upon in time for the spring sitting of the legislature in 2014,” Stone told me.

Worked out and Agreed upon might be two different things. It is clear the Mayors are not going along with this referendum plan, if if that is the case, will the Minister forge ahead without their consent? And just who is paying for the Referendum? Who is financing the “yes” and “no” campaigns? Will the referendum only be regional, or will people in Fort St. John get to decide if their Provincial Income Tax or Carbon Tax are used in Greater Vancouver to build bike paths to avail Hipsters of their Latte?

Vancouver city Coun. George Affleck says he doesn’t really like referendums, but the metro mayors should stop being in denial about the Clark government’s obvious commitment to one. Affleck, of the Non-Partisan Association, also believes there’s “an appetite in the region for people to start to pay a bit more for transit infrastructure.”

At the risk of repeating myself: Please, Mr. Affleck, show me a question that will result in a properly funded regional transportation system. I dare you. And if only the people in the region are voting, that pretty much takes the Provincial government off the hook, doesn’t it? If the Province is off the hook, can you ate least admit they should then disband the Victoria-appointed board and put TransLink back under regional control?

I’m not so sure about that. But I look forward to finding out about it in a referendum. So far, the alternatives haven’t exactly worked out.

OK- here it is. Mr. Ferry admits he thinks the referendum will fail. So the only alternative he thinks will work is the one that he knows won’t work. Great analysis there Mr. Ferry. That sound you hear is my slow, ironic clapping.

The numbers tell the story

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

Gordon Price has almost the opposite Blogging philosophy than me – he just puts direct, incisive, short messages out there, and provides enough links so you can put the pieces together yourself. I tend to draw things out laboriously and write with about 2,000 words what a brighter person could in 200.

Case in point- this post you are currently reading, which is a follow up to this post on Gordon’s blog “Price Tags”, where he provides two images, a quote from the source, a couple of links and says everything that has to be said in three short sentences. Contrast this with the long diatribe below.

Clearly, the Province Newspaper has the hate on for bicycles. I suspect it has less to do with bicycles and more to do with not particularly liking the current Mayor of Vancouver, whom they blame for the sudden appearance of bicycles and bike lanes in Vancouver. The fact that all these bicycles and bike lanes are appearing because of a Transportation Plan developed in the City of Vancouver in 1997, and moved forward by Mayors Philip Owen (NPA), Larry Campbell (COPE), Sam Sullivan (NPA) and Robertson (Vision), is missed in the current discussion, but I digress.

So I follow the links Gordon Price provided, did 5 minutes of Google research, and figured that the Province was indeed profoundly dishonest in their reporting on this issue. As is my wont, I went to twitter and called the Province on it. I might have used slightly stronger language than Mr. Price, but I clearly got a reaction, which led to this chain of communications:

Yeah, I’m a bit of a jerk, but I think they deserved it. Here’s why.

Start with the headline:

“Bike-lane ridership stalled on Burrard Bridge”

See, bike riding is increasing across the City, as is transit use and just plain old walking to work, while car use is the only mode of transportation in Vancouver that is on a steady decline. The Burrard Street Bridge bike lanes, as successful as they are, were the first time that the idea of dedicating a small percentage of the City’s asphalt to bikes hit the front page. It was, if you will, the first public battle in the imaginary “war on cars”. It also happens to be directly attached to the now-controversial Cornwall-York-Pt.Gray Road bike plan, which is the were the latest battle in the same imaginary war is being fought.

So what better story than a story about how no-one is biking over the Burrard Street Bridge anymore?

Too bad it isn’t true.

“Cherry Picking” is a common rhetorical technique where you take a big body of data, and selectively choose from that data the specific set that makes your point. The best example of this is with the current crop of Climate Change Deniers who say something like “It hasn’t gotten any hotter since 1998”– knowing full well that 1998 was the hottest year in history (well, not really, it is complicated), and ignoring the fact that every year after 1998 was warmer than almost every year before 1998. It is the easiest way to lie with statistics.

So look at the data set that the Province graphed for your benefit, and you see some months were ahead of others (likely related to week-long runs of bad weather that dissuade some riders, but maybe also related to road repairs, Canucks playoffs, whatever little bits of data go into the bigger noise:

It is hard to take from that that data set that cycling is declining, or “stalling”. In this very first level analysis, from two specific time points, on one of the routes measured, there was a 1% reduction in counted cyclists on one route. The model for Cherry Picking data.

Being the detail-oriented guy I am, I went to the City of Vancouver website and tried to find the data source. The only thing I found was this site, which does actually report cycling traffic counts for the last few years on specific routes. I brought the .pdf  file into Excel and created a chart as close as I could make to the Province one. This proved rather challenging, as their y-axis didn’t make sense- (75,000, 10,000, 20,000 !?!)- and clearly made the raw numbers of cyclists look smaller than they were. Anyway, I used the real numbers, and it looked like this:

Which was subtly different from the numbers reported by the Province. Compare September, October, pretty much any month- the numbers they used are clearly not those from the City’s website.

So then I went to Twitter to ask Province what their data source was, and got no reply after 48 hours. What did happen was the Province, a few hours later, changed the chart that had in the online version of the story:

It looked a little more like mine in a few months (January and February), although some months still had bad data (see September). At least they had their y-axis figured out. Progress for the old media.

So let’s ignore their charts, perhaps a mistake was made by an unpaid intern – really, with the Province laying off all of their paid staff, these kinds of things will happen. Let’s look at the actual data.

If you look at the last 12 months for which data are available, there are 7 months when more cyclists used the Burrard than in the same month in the previous year. There were 5 months when there were fewer cyclists. In longer-tern trends, you can pull other things out: January, February and March 2010 were anomalously high – which is clearly an effect of the Olympic traffic disruptions, and not something you can hang a trend on. The June 2011 anomaly can likely be similarly linked to the Canucks Stanley Cup run. My point only that the data is noisy, making Cherry Picking a simple technique.

Looking at the raw data, it is clear that there have been something like 1 million bike trips cross the Burrard Bridge within any 12-month period in the last 4 years. Which makes one wonder how the Province ever found a situation where they could take a picture of the bridge and only have one cyclist in frame.

To quote the article:

“Despite years of Mayor Gregor Robertson and his Vision Vancouver councillors peddling the merits of pedalling, ridership on the controversial Burrard Bridge separated bike lanes has declined in the past year. Total bike trips compiled by the city for the 12 months ending April 2013 — the most recent statistics available — show that ridership is down by 16,000 compared to the previous 12-month period from May 2011 to April 2012.”

The data tells us May 2012-April 2013 saw 1,028,000 crossings where May 2011 to April 2012 saw 1,044,000 crossings. So the 16,000 reduction is true. But is it relevant? I took the 12-month cumulative ridership ending in every month from July 2012 to June 2013, and here is the trend (the two time periods mentioned in the Province story are highlighted in red):

I’m no expert, but that doesn’t look like a meaningful decline. The number of cyclists crossing the Burrard is basically stable. Meanwhile, the use of bicycles on other routes in the City are increasing. How do I know that? The free toss-away paper I found on the SkyTrain offered a different version of the exact same story on the same day.

Of course, they were also lying, depending on how one reads the statistics.

Peak Oil coming home.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

By now, the front page of the newspaper has moved away from Lac-Mégantic to more recent tragedies and travesties, while the body count in Quebec is still incomplete and the memorials have just begun. Cities like New Westminster that are wrapped around rail yards are taking the opportunity to do a little inward reflection – are we under similar risk? What’s in those tankers over there? What can we do about it? Meanwhile, remaining discussions of the original incident are circling around whom to blame- and who should pay.

Everyone is trying to score “political points”, mostly by accusing others of trying to score “political points”. The media treated us to the strange spectacle of an unprepared Corporate Boss ham-fistedly talking to people who recently had their City and/or families destroyed- then the media somehow concentrated on his poor management of a PR opportunity and not on his poor management of a Train Company that just killed 50 people… alas.

Mistakes were made.

People (including me) who have found themselves questioning for several years what our country slowly evolving into a Petro-State really means find we have to censor ourselves at times like these. Yeah, it may be hard to directly link the Calgary Floods and the Toronto Storm and the fact most of the western United States is currently on fire directly to fossil fuel burning and profiteering, and if I were to suggest a link, I am the one trying to capture “political points” (whatever the hell those are) from others’ tragedies.

One thing is certain about Lac-Mégantic: this is what Peak Oil looks like. Much like the Deepwater Horizon disaster and our Federal Government’s decision to approve Shell’s new Bitumen Sand megaproject while acknowledging it will violate the Species at Risk Act, the Migratory Birds Convention, and there is no technology yet invented to mitigate the destruction it will do to the environment, the people at Lac-Mégantic died because the cheap and easy oil is gone and burned.

When pipeline proponents used this as an example of why pipelines were safer than trains for moving oil, they were missing the point here. The oil that destroyed Lac-Mégantic could not be moved by pipeline, because it came from parts of the Bakken Field where pipelines are not part of the mix. This is not a place where porous rock full of oil sits in the ground until an enterprising driller sticks a pipe in it and sees a black gold gusher. This wasn’t even a viable oil field 20 years ago, even though it has been considered a hydrocarbon source rock since the 1950s, when all the easy stuff was skimmed off the top. The currently-accessed Bakken oil is trapped in non-porous shale deposits, and cannot be removed from the ground without hydraulic fracturing. Essentially, the rock needs to be made porous enough for the oil to flow to the well through violence.

Problem is, the oil produced by a hydraulic fractured well is not plentiful. Each well head does not have decades-long lifespan, but will only produce economically for months. This is why the Bakken Field looks unlike any conventional oil field. New technology had to be invented that allowed wells to be jacked up and moved around quickly. This is the reason that 2,000 wells are being drilled per year and an equal number abandoned, not to expand the field, but just to maintain production levels. With the source of the oil moving around daily- it is neigh impossible to build an economic pipeline system that connects it all. By the time the pipe is laid, the well has run dry. So Bakken Oil is moved by truck and by train, re-purposing the rail sidings in small rural towns where there used to be silos to store grain and sugar beets.

As a bonus, because there is no viable way to sell the gas that vents from these spurt-production wells, it is vented or flared, making Bakken Field Oil almost as GHG-intensive as Canada’s Bitumen Sands.

This is just another face of “unconventional oil”- the place where a society economically addicted to oil will go when the easy oil runs out – this is what Peak Oil looks like. Hydraulic fracturing (despite what some might suggest) is not a new technology- it has been used for at least 60 years – you are only hearing about it now because it has suddenly become the only economically viable way to suck the last bits of oil and gas out of formations that do not give them up easily. It is economically viable now because oil is over $100 a barrel, and because Western Governments have decided to subsidise the practice, both directly with cash and tax incentives, and indirectly by removing the type of environmental protections that would make it more difficult or expensive to do.

This doesn’t stop when it gets out of the ground, either. Moving oil by trucks and trains is more expensive, in a number-of-pennies-to-move-a-barrel-of-oil-a-mile sense, but we are out of options for these marginal fields and the good fields are gone. It isn’t David Suzuki and Al Gore who are responsible for the number of railcar loads of heavy oil crossing our country going from 500 just 4 years ago to 140,000 today; this is a product of the continued exploitation of more marginal oil supplies as our addiction goes on.

Of course, when your transportation service is more expensive than the competition, there is large incentive to cut back, reduce cost, pinch pennies to remain competitive. When asked why there was only one Engineer on the fateful train carrying $6,000,000 worth of volatile substances, the President of the rail company made vague statements about how if your competition reduces costs by 1%, you need to keep up. In an industry that is steadily becoming more self-regulated as the government reduces costs by cutting back on inspections, safety is one of those places where a few pennies saved can pay off. It’s not like no-one was warning that the DOT-111 rail cars being pressed into service to move oil were ticking time bombs. This is not limited, of course, to trains. A similar situation is facing us with Trucking in BC, where regular inspections are replaced by self-regulation and “inspection blitzes” where the vast majority of trucks are operating in violation of the law– and more than 40% are deemed too dangerous to continue their trip! No doubt saving pennies along the way.

It is the race to the bottom, as the resource becomes more marginal, and the need remains insatiable, because we refuse to consider shifting gears until we are forced to. Like any other addiction, this leads to poor decision making, hasty rationalization, and irresponsible risk taking. This is the horse our nation is tying itself too – as we migrate into full Petro-State status, throwing all of our eggs into an increasingly threadbare basket.

As long as this happens, we will have a prosperous economy that keeps too many children in poverty, a thriving business climate while long-term youth unemployment reaches record highs, and we will promise low taxes to support these important businesses, even as the systems that support the citizens fall apart from lack of funding.

A week after the deadliest corporate crime in recent Canadian history, the bodies are not even identified yet, the grim count not yet complete, but it is business as usual in Stephen Harper’s Ottawa. He shuffled his cabinet to clear the air of an increasingly stale stench– changing a few of the pawns in the middle rows while the suits in the front row maintain their armour. The Minister of Transportation- the person who should be held to account for this massive failure on his watch – is quietly shuffled out of his post and moved to Industry – making it easy for he and his replacement to cowardly avoid ever having to answer any uncomfortable questions. None of these question are going to come from the Elected Representative of Lac-Mégantic, as their MP is Christian Pardis, who was himself busy being moved away from his Minister of Industry post and into International Development – where he can oversee the continued deconstruction of Canada’s aid systems for the Third World where the impacts of our continued exacerbation of Anthropogenic Global Warming for quick profit will be felt the most.

It’s the circle of political life, Petro-State style.

Is there enough shame in being the “Second Worst Road”?

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

It didn’t start last month. I have lamented the BC Parkway for quite some time.

There was a time, back in the late 1980’s when I lived on Royal Avenue and worked in a warehouse just off Royal Oak, and I would ride my bike along the Parkway to get to work. Back then, it was great – an actual road just for bikes and pedestrians! In hindsight, the connections and some of the route choices were a little sketchy, but that is only with the benefit of hindsight. For ca. 1988, it was a kick-ass bikeway.

Twenty-five years later, I live two blocks from that crappy apartment I shared with my brother on Royal, and the lovely Ms.NWimby has a new job in Downtown Vancouver. A fair-weather bike commuter (the Skytrain ride is only 20 minutes!), we pulled out a bike map and tried to figure the route to her new job for those sunny days when the bike is calling.

We both immediately ignore the BC Parkway and look for alternates: CVG? (stays at low elevation, but seems a long way around New West). Cariboo to Adanac? (nice, but a little out of the way- and killer hill on the way home) Tenth to London to Griffiths to Rumble to Patterson to Moscrop to Smith to 22nd to Slocan to Charles to…(ugh).

Nope, the near-straight line, on a gentle slope (as it used to be a rail grade) that makes the most sense is the BC Parkway. If only it was safe or lived up to its promise. Instead, 28 years of local re-development, new roads, and failing pavement (along with a few original design elements that look hysterically outdated now) have made the route one to avoid for most cyclists.

So now that my little campaign to get the BC Parkway noticed is having its little media push– the whinging has gone as far as it can- so what to do?

First off: Jurisdictions. The BC Parkway is almost completely on TransLink property, and is ostensibly TransLink’s responsibility. Portions of it, however, are clearly on the property of and subject to the decision-making of, the three municipalities through which it passes. Any comprehensive refurbishment will require partnership between TransLink and the Transportation Departments in those Cities.

It’s not like TransLink doesn’t know the Parkway needs help. Back in 2008 there was an assessment report prepared for TransLink. I quote from that report:

Over the years, the dual trail design has proven to be less popular with BC Parkway users while land use adjacent to the trail has intensified, resulting in the paved portion of the BC Parkway becoming a heavily used, mixed-use facility that is generally narrower than the Transportation Association of Canada’s guideline of 4.0 metres for a shared, bi-directional urban path. Intense use of this inadequate facility and lack of proper maintenance has lead to its physical deterioration. The route is indirect in some locations and wayfinding is poor, making navigation difficult, particularly where the route transitions between the off-street pathway and urban streets. Efforts to upgrade sections of the Parkway have resulted in disjointed designs and application of the TAC standards that are not contiguous with other sections of the Parkway.

Yeah, that’s what I said!

Stakeholder meetings and concept plans were drawn up to fix the problems in 2009. Then what happened? Two things come to mind: the Canada Line, and the entire TransLink funding crisis.

The Canada Line Bridge is a great piece of cycling infrastructure (worthy of its own blog post, which I will do at some point soon), but few know it wasn’t actually part of the original Canada Line plan. Canada Line was not, strictly speaking, built by TransLink, but was a PPP dedicated to getting the damn thing in the ground before the Olympics started. The idea of putting a pedestrian-bicycle path on the side of the bridge came from strong lobbying by cycling groups in the City, and concomitant support from Richmond and Vancouver Councils. However, strapping the path to the side of the bridge was not part of the original plan, so the concessionaire building the Canada Line was certainly not going to pay for it, leaving TransLink holding the bag. The only solution was for TransLink to take it out of the bicycle infrastructure budget.

Notably, the cost of attaching the pathway to the Bridge (about $10 Million) was only 0.6% of the Canada Line budget, but represented 200% of TransLink’s annual bicycle infrastructure budget. So for two years, little other bicycle infrastructure got built by TransLink.

After the happy glow from their massive success moving people during the Olympics wore off, TransLink somehow became the whipping boy of the media and most levels of Government – for reasons poorly understood by anyone. I have gone on at length about this in the past, but short version: everyone has decided it is time to stop paying for the transit system at the same time other sources of revenue have been failing (some the fault of TransLink’s own success). The bicycle program budget is alternating between deep cuts and complete defunding. In this financial climate – when TransLink is actually cutting bus service as the region continues to grow – it appears the BC Parkway was simply not high enough on the priority list to see the plans realized.

I recognize I am only pointing out the problem, not what to do about it. I wish I knew.

The first obvious answer is to fund TransLink. There seemed some real promise that this was going to happen before the last election, but the surprise winner seems to think tax collected for Public Transit is the one type of tax that requires a referendum! There is no doubt, based on TransLink’s plans and policies, that they want to have safe, accessible bike routes as part of the integrated regional transportation system, especially ones that connect to their stations and bike lockers. People who ride bikes to SkyTrain stations buy tickets on SkyTrain, the business case is obvious. They just can’t afford to prioritize this right now.

So that leaves the Cities, Vancouver, Burnaby and New West all have budgets for cycling and pedestrian infrastructure, and all are challenged in setting priorities when transfers from senior Governments increasingly come in the form of responsibility, not compensation. For the BC Parkway to be improved, the Cities will need to take them on as a “Pet Project”, and through direct infrastructure spending or finding innovative funding strategies (remember, 7-11 and Molson paid for the first iteration of the Parkway) they will need to come to TransLink with some kind of matching fund. Given an opportunity to “share the cost” will be the only way that TransLink is likely to push this route to the top of the priority list when so strapped for funds.

Ultimately, the BCAA “Worst Roads” campaign is about shaming whomever owns the “Worst Road” (Municipality, Regional Government, or Ministry of Transportation) into in prioritizing the identified roads in their medium-term planning. Note that last year’s #1 finisher also finished first again this year- despite the $19 Million this particular “Pet Project” has recently received. Finisher #3 this year is also in the middle of a multi-million dollar planning process to find what will no doubt be a billion dollar solution. So maybe shame works.

But I don’t want to shame TransLink – I think they know the problem, and they wish they could do something about it. The shame here should go back to the multiple levels of government who have consistently failed to fund alternative transportation programs with the fervour used to provide smooth driving surfaces for cars.

My Nominee for the Worst Road in BC

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 9 Comments.

MORE UPDATES BELOW (May 22)

Every year, BC’s Car Nobbling Council the BC Automobile Association has a little campaign to shame municipalities into giving more money to the BC Road Builders. This “news” is dutifully lapped up by the popular media, and many fingers are wagged at Cities for not maintaining their infrastructure.

It is good media, good advertising for the BCAA, and after the rush of the contest cools down, AM radio goes back to complaining about high taxes and the evils of socialism. No-one ever mentions that roads are, de facto, a socialist enterprise. Government pooling money from taxpayers and spending it building something for the common good – roads are the very model of socialism. But I digress.

This year, I want to nominate a candidate. There is one route that I have been lamenting for a few years, and it never seems to get the attention it needs. It is 9 kilometres of undulating, root-cracked, potholed, uneven, poorly marked, inconsistent, horribly maintained, and (IMHO) unsafe pavement connecting the New Westminster Quayside boardwalk to Burnaby’s Central Park. It sees a lot of traffic, provides an important arterial corridor connecting numerous other routes, and it has seen little more than a few asphalt patches in 27 years.

Yes, I am talking about the BC Parkway, or to give credit to sponsors from 27 years ago, the combined “John Molson Way” walking path and “7-Eleven Bike Route”.

Let me take you back to the heady days of Expo86. The theme was “World in Motion” and transportation was central to most exhibits. When the SkyTrain was built out to New Westminster to bring Vancouver into the 70’s, transportation-wise, the entire line was paralleled by the BC Parkway. I’m not sure why Molson decided to sponsor a walking path, but for a decade around that time 7-Eleven sponsored a major international cycling team. In fact, the only Canadians to ever wear the Yellow Jersey in the Tour de France did it for Team 7-Eleven: Alex Stieda in 1986 and Steve Bauer in 1990. (Bauer also wore yellow in 1988, riding for Weinmann – La Suisse the year Greg Lemond was busy being shot, but I’m geeking out now). At the time, they also provided me countless post-ride Slurpees. No-one has to convince me of 7-Eleven’s credibility when it comes to support for cycling.

The BC Parkway represented Greater Vancouver’s first multi-community-connecting active transport route – our first “Greenway” that didn’t wrap around Stanley Park – but time has not been good to it.

In the intervening 27 years, the BC Parkway through Burnaby and New Westminster has seen a lot of development. Metrotown, Edmonds, Downtown New Westminster and the Quayside have all blown up since 1986. With all the change, some connections on the BC Parkway have been improved, some have been severed. The pavement has degraded, the crossings have become hazardous, the sight lines destroyed and the route chopped up. The asphalt in place is so bad that tree roots have pushed right through- and are being eroded by bike tires! What other road in the province features tree roots being held back by tires? This is a shameful state for our region’s first real integrated municipality-spanning Greenway!

So, please, I implore you – go to the BCAA website and vote for “BC Parkway, Vancouver ” for being “Unsafe for Cyclists and Pedestrians“. You cannot select it with the map, but enter “BC Parkway” in the search, and if it doesn’t find it, choose the highlighted “following form” text to the left. It takes 30 seconds to use the pull-down menus, and if we enter it enough, they may need to acknowledge us. They have acknowledged us! We are now in the top 10 list of worst roads, so you can enter “BC Parkway” in the search and vote with one push of the button! Tell your friends, tell your neighbours, tell your mom, tell cyclists you see rattling their teeth or getting lost on the BC Parkway, tell pedestrians tired of being treated like pylons on the BC Parkway! If you only vote once this month, do it at the BCAA website!

May 22 UPDATE: You can now Choose “BC Parkway Burnaby” or “BC Parkway Vancouver” – and at this point, I don’t care which you choose, as they are both in the Top 10! All the pictures below are form the Burnaby and New Westminster portion, but applies as well to much of the Vancouver portion. Oh, and the BCAA has subtley changed their marketing around this, to make it apparent that they are OK with a bikeway winning! So get one more vote in – only 3 days to go!

In case you need more convincing, here are some highlights of my tour yesterday from Central Park to New Westminster along the Parkway:

The new parts through Central Park are actually quite pleasant!
First problem at Patterson Station. No traffic controls. Do I dodge pedestrians
on the narrow sidewalk / bus stop / newspaper kiosk, or do I go against
 the Do Not Enter sign through the bus lane? 
Sometimes I’m separated from the sidewalk, sometimes not. What is
a pedestrian to think? 
I guess I could go through the bollards onto the narrow sidewalk to avoid
the pedestrians, but there are signs and bus stops. 
Completely nonsensical intersection, no bicycle controls at all,
high pedestrian traffic, blind approaches. Alas, I dismount.
Hard to get contrast, but this root lump is better than a foot high. 
Yes, tree roots. Yes, they are exposed, and the bark rubbed
off of them by wheels and feet. They have been exposed that long.
Suspension at work. 
Bad pavement, blind intersections, forced to go to the sidewalk,
and unclear way-finding. This picture is the full BC Parkway experience.  
I hope it is legal to ride a bike on the sidewalk in Burnaby, because the
Parkway has completely disappeared.  
Oh! There it is, a few hundred feet down the road. 
I like surfing as much as the next guy, but prefer my waves more watery.
Regular way-finding signs remind you where now-destroyed portions
of the BC Parkway used to be. Memories of EXPO86. 
Interesting fact: much of the Parkway follows the old BC Inter-Urban
electric rail bed. No point removing the tracks, I guess.  
More crumbling pavement…
…and another terrible blind crossing with no accommodation
for bicycles, high traffic, and few options!
Speaking of options, the way-making sign to the right has no
relation whatsoever to the multiple junctions within view. 
There is a sign, there must a Parkway around here somewhere. 
There are my bollards! All I have to do is cross 20th street
with no traffic light, no crosswalk, and terrible visibility. 
This is where the trail takes me in New West – to a narrow sidewalk on the wrong side
of 6th Ave., with no access to the rest of the parkway for several kilometres. 
Insider tip – the Parkway continues on the south side of Stewardson, you just
need to cross the Queensborough Bridge. Please dismount. 
See? Queensborough bridge makes the obvious connection!
(I ranted two years ago about this little way-making fiasco) 
Unfortunately, the trail over here does not have better pavement…
…or safer crossings.
Our journey ends at Stewardson and Third Ave- where you can choose two roads
with no cycling infrastructure, or an overpass to some unknown place,
there being no way- finding around here. Thanks for joining me! Now go vote!