Tag: Pattullo

What’s N.E.X.T. for the Pattullo?

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

As I mentioned, I was invited to give a talk this week to N.E.X.T.NewWest, a group of young entrepreneurs, business leaders and community builders in New Westminster.

Not sure why they asked me, but I took the opportunity. As I had previously whinged, we need to hear from this community on important issues like the Pattullo Bridge. New Westminster’s business community is not just the Bricks and Mortars on 6th Street, or Columbia, or 12th Street. They are fundamental to our City, and well represented by the Chamber of Commerce and various BIAs, but I chatted at the N.E.X.T.NewWest event with people running bricks-and-mortars, and with a bunch of people running home-based business, most with home-based employees, or using services like the Network Hub –examples of what the business community of the future is going to look like.

I gave them a speech full of facts and opinions (challenging them to call me on the difference). I really had no idea what kind of reception I was going to get from the 60+ people in the crowd, and I can only characterise it as “mixed”. They mostly laughed at my lame jokes, and some folks really engaged (i.e. nodded their heads at the right time), while others were clearly not buying my bunk (i.e. rolling their eyes at the opportune time). I even got cornered after and into a long discussion with a couple of guys who strongly disagreed with me about how traffic and road building interact. Actually, it was those conversations that were the most fun, because I learned from those guys, and I hope they learned a bit from me as well.

As an afterthought, I had no reason to be as nervous as I was, they were a receptive and informal group, and fun to hang with. I perhaps should have been more depressed that I was the oldest guy in the room, considering the accomplishment and contributions of the folks in attendance. My only other mistake was assuming that everyone was already engaged in the discussion around the Pattullo, and know what the “NFPR” and “SFPR” are, or even what I was referring to when I used the term “Puchmayr Express” in reference to connecting the SFPR to the new Mega Mann Bridge.

Anyway, I drifted off script a bit, but here was my prepared summary of my talk. If you have read this blog a lot, you have heard all of this before. If not, then hopefully this is a good summary of the Pattullo Bridge issue, as I see it, with references to some documents I mentioned in my talk – so you can verify my facts and separate them from my opinion. The photos are all mine, I had them running behind me on the mother of all flatscreens at the ReMax Office.

This is the only image here not my own creation. Well, I took the photo, but the image is of a painting by one of my favourite artists, Jack Campbell. He was a long-time New Westminster resident, and captured many remarkable images of New West during his time here. Coincidentally, he is also my neighbour on Saturna Island, where he is now catching remarkable images of the arbutus trees and sandstone shorelines of that jewel of a Gulf Island. When I think of the Pattullo as being an iconic structure in New Westminster, an important part of the heritage, I think of this image, there it is between the futuristic SkyBridge and the guys doing the historic work of booming logs on the Fraser River

What’s N.E.X.T. for the Pattullo Bridge?

I’m here to talk to you guys about the Pattullo Bridge, where it came from, where it is going, and why I think you should care. I have been following this issue for a while, have written a bunch about it on my blog, have been to several community meetings, and have read a lot of reports on the Pattullo, so I am going to start off by supplying you a bunch of facts, then will work my way into a whole bunch of opinions. I will try to make it clear which is which – and I want you to call me on it, if you think I have confused the two!

First the Facts.

The Pattullo Bridge opened in 1937, a year before the Lions Gate Bridge and a year before Superman was published in Action Comics #1.

The bridge belongs to TransLink, which is kind of unique. TransLink only owns and operates three bridges: Pattullo, Knight, and Westham Island. They also own Golden Ears, but it is financed and operated by a concessionaire through the PPP process, so that is best left for another conversation. The rest of the bridges you cross every day either belong to the Province through the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure (Port Mann, Lions Gate) or to a City (Burrard Street, Cambie Street).

The Pattullo, for 75 years old, is really showing its age. Worse than the Lions Gate or Superman.

According to TransLink stats, about 60,000 cars and 3,500 big trucks cross the bridge on the average day. This is about the same car count as the Lions Gate, but there are no big trucks permitted on the Lions Gate.

However, the number of cars and trucks crossing the bridge is NOT the reason Translink wants to replace the bridge.

Instead, TransLink has provided an alliterative list of Replacement Factors: Safety, Scour, Seismic, Structure.

The safety issue is probably the one most people can relate to. The Pattullo has narrow lanes, curves at both end, and has a reputation for being accident-prone. For those prone to anthropomorphise, the term “Killer Bridge” has been used. I just want to note that there has not been a fatality on the Pattullo since 2005, when the nightime centre-lane closures were implemented. There are also fewer accidents and injuries per year on the Pattullo than on TransLink’s other bridge- the Knight Street.

The bigger concern is that the bridge is currently faslling apart.

TransLink says it is past the end of its service life, and costs them $3 Million/year to maintain. It will not last much longer without a major re-fit, which will cost about $200 Million. This will bring the bridge up to modern structural code, and get us another 50 years of life out of it, but will not bring it up to the highest current seismic codes.

So TransLink has a plan.

Actually, these plans have been brewing for some time. A commonly cited report from 2001 talks about the federal government paying $1Billion to replace the rail bridge with a tunnel, and attaching some car lanes to it (although it is unclear if this would be parallel to the existing Pattullo or replace is). It wasn’t until late fall of 2010 that TransLink announced the start of public consultation on the project. Then those consultations were abruptly cancelled.

This was unfortunate, partly because that would have given us the opportunity to discuss the future of the Pattullo and the plans that TransLink had in the context of a Municipal Election. That would have led to interesting dialogue on both sides of the River, and in the region.

Instead, the consultations were re-announces a couple of weeks after last November’s elections were over. But it wasn’t until after the Christmas Break that TransLink brought their planto the public: 

There were a series of open houses this spring run by TransLink showing us a bunch of options to consider: did we want a new 6-lane Pattullo bridge just to the left of the old one, or just to the right of the old one?

They also included a few different off-ramp configurations, but did not (as was humourously reported by many) ask us what colour we wanted the off-ramps painted. I would rather re-characterise it as offering us a few different bowl-of-spaghetti off-ramp drawings, and asking us which offended us less. Primavera or Alfredo?

It was also during this consultation that the alliterative reasoning for replacement was provided:
Scour, Safety, Structure, Seismic.

The 60,000 cars a day were not (and remain not) a replacement factor for the bridge. The two extra lanes were instead justified for “goods movement” – and were referred to as “truck priority” lanes. The definition of “truck priority” lanes was not supplied, and is hard to calculate, as no such thing exists in TransLink’s jurisdiction, anywhere else in the province, or in the Motor Vehicle Act.

There were a few other ideas that fundamental to the public discussions, but came out through the question and answer parts of the consultations.

1: the bridge will be tolled;

2: TransLink projects traffic to increase on the new bridge to 94,000 cars a day, and 7500 trucks a day.

Remember those numbers, if nothing else: 50% more cars. 100% more trucks.

Now I cannot speak for the City of New Westminster, I am not an employee of the City of New Westminster – it is not my job to speak for the City. But I do serve on the City’s Master Transportation Plan committee, and have attended a lot of public meetings on this issue. So what you are about to hear is my take on the situation, and I stand to be corrected by the City if I misquote their position.

This plan and the consultation are both – to be generous – less than optimal.

First off, the timing is terrible. The City had already begun its Master Transportation Plan process. This is a master planning document that will outline the shape and form of the City’s transportation network (roads, sidewalks, bike lanes, trails, transit facilities) over the next decade or longer. A major component of the MTP is multi-stage public consultation to determine what the visions and goals of New Westminster are for their transportation network. Here have already been two rounds of public consultations and stakeholders engagement.

So part way through this process, TransLink drops a 6-lane bridge, effectively shuffling the deck.

The City decided to not provide a formal response to the consultation at that time, but to wait until the MTP process got to the point where the goals and visions are reported out, and those goals and visions would constitute the information that TransLink wanted from the City. TransLink recognized this as a valid approach, and agreed.

And that is where we are now.

Secondly, there were some obvious problems with the plan itself, expressed by the public at the public consultations and informally by many of the elected types in New West. Primarily:

Why 6 Lanes? How does 6 lanes address the problem TransLink has with the Pattullo?

Remember what the problem was? Not cars, not trucks, it was:

…an old bridge.

At the public consultations, TransLink claimed the maintenance costs for the Pattullo are $3 Million per year. I have refuted this claim, based on both opinion and fact:

The opinion part is when you walk along that bridge and try to find evidence anyone had opened a bucket of paint anywhere near the bridge in the last three years. The storm grates are plugged with sand, there are birds nesting and plants growing in the steel superstructure.

The fact part is going back through TransLinks public financial documents and trying to identify the $3Million. It just isn’t there. The total costs for bridge operations and maintenance last year was under $300,000, and that is combined for all three bridges. The average over the last couple of years has been $1.2Million a year. I don’t know what they spend, but it is not $3 Million.

And this is an important point. The Pattullo Bridge is an old steel structure. Like other old steel structures: the Lions Gate Bridge (75 years); the Golden Gate Bridge (75 years); the Empire State Building (80 years); the Eiffel Tower (122 years); my Honda Civic (15 years), old steel structures require maintenance to be reliable. They can last forever if appropriately cared for, but will turn to dust in an instant if neglected.

But instead of addressing the issues with the existing bridge, TransLink has decided instead to build a new bridge, and a bigger one.

Now a bigger bridge is an easy sell to people on both sides of the river caught in traffic:

“Whoo hoo! New lanes! The end of congestion! No more mention of the Pattullo in the traffic report- freedom!”

But remember those numbers? 50% more cars. 100% more trucks.

Now, I’m a geologist, which is science code for “I failed Calculus”, but this is not difficult math. 50% more lanes with more than 50% more traffic is not less congestion. It is the same number of cars per lane, the same number of cars per hour in each lane. Just more lanes and more cars.

So what happens when those 50% more cars and 100% more trucks get dropped on New Westminster’s old streets, already stressed by 400,000+ through-drivers every day?

How will 50% more cars and 100% more trucks fix the situation at Front and Columbia? At Columbia and Brunette? On Royal Avenue? On Stewardson?

I’d like to stand here and tell you we need a bigger vision – a longer term plan. But I can’t say we need these things, because we already have them!

The City has its existing Master Transportation Plan, and is updating it currently. TransLink has a long-term regional transportation plan called Transport 2040. MetroVancouver has a Regional Growth Strategy, built on the old Liveable Region Strategy.

All of these documents say the same thing:

The future is in compact urban centres, in smart density, in transit-oriented development, in moving living and work spaces nearer together, in providing people options to use transit, to bike, to walk. The future relies on us ending the dependence on automobiles. Not ending cars, ending the dependency on cars, through an integrated transportation network that supports all users and provides choice. A sustainable region will be the one where sustainable transportation choices are available and supported through sustainable development practices.

And we are building this future today. Look at Downtown New Westminster. Look at Sapperton. These strategies are being built into New Westminster.

You may not realize, New Westminster is second only to the City of Vancouver for our “Alternative Mode Share” – the proportion of our population who use transit, bikes, or walking for their commuting and shopping trips. We are approaching Transport 2040 goals faster than any other City. We will be the densest City in MetroVancouver by 2041- we are leading the way on the regional planning goals. New Westminster is the target other Cities are striving towards, even as we move forward.

So why jab a 6-Lane Freeway-style bridge into the middle of that progress?

How does that serve our long term plan, or the regional long term plans?
Whose long term plan does it serve?

I have an alternative approach (warning: lots of opinion ahead).

First- to TransLink. Please give the City and the region a real consultation on this. Don’t come to the first community open house with a bowl of spaghetti and ask us what flavour of sauce we prefer. Even Anton’s lets you choose the noodle first.

Let’s discuss the local and regional impacts of a 6-lane bridge; of a 4-lane bridge; or of no bridge at all.

Some have suggested the solution is to move the bridge, upstream to Sapperton Bar and Coquitlam, or downstream to Tree Island and Burnaby. I’m not personally a big fan of this argument, as it stinks of nimbyism, and if this bridge is a bad idea for New West, it is probably just as bad an idea for Coquitlam. But hey, show me the business case, and I’m ready to be convinced.

How about an evaluation of this approach: what I like to call the Lions Gate Solution.

The Lions Gate Bridge is an interesting parallel. The bridge is the same age, and had the same problem. In the late 90’s, the old steel structure was falling apart and it needed replacement.

The public consultation process started with a public call for proposals, and evaluated a suite of solutions- replacement, twinning, refurbishment, tunnels…

Here is the first lesson for TransLink, the public consultation process lasted 3 years. They even opened an office on Denman Street that operated for two years, so people could come down, look at the proposals, learn about the strengths and weaknesses.

It is a long story, and a great thesis was written at SFU on the topic, but the short version is that the West End of Vancouver and West Van would not accept increased traffic. No-one wanted a major shift in the Stanley Park Causeway. North Shore commuters would not agree to tolls. No PPP partner could be found to expand the bridge to 4 lanes (the preferred approach) so the Provincial government spent $80 Million refitting the bridge, starting in 2001.

$80 million, replaced structural components to increase the load capacity, seismic upgrade, replaced the entire deck, and kept the same number of lanes.

This is the only graph I will show, because I want you to know this is not my opinion, these are real numbers from the Ministry of Transportation (from Here, Here, and Here.) 

During the consultations for the Lions gate, they looked at tunnels, twinning replacement, because they were certain they needed more lanes. The argument looks pretty familiar: “Traffic is coming, it will grow, it always does, so we need to build a bigger bridge, here is our chance”.

They got three lanes, and this graph shows what happened to the traffic.

Over the same period, 22% population Growth in Vancouver (more on the downtown peninsula), 125 growth on the North Shore, Combined jobs growth over 18%. Housing prices are up, employment is up, every indication is robust economic growth, even through an earth-shattering recession. Where did the inevitable traffic go?

Maybe it is magic. Or maybe it is the Plan.

OK, Back to opinion:

Good enough for Lions Gate its good enough for Pattullo.
Good enough for West Vancouver, good enough for New Westminster.

So I am suggesting we fix it. Let’s spend the $200 Million fixing the Pattullo Bridge, and the $3 Million needed to maintain an old steel structure. We will still be $800 million ahead. That money TransLink can use to give Diane Watts and Surrey the transit system they want and need. I don’t care if it is light rail, heavy rail, SkyTrain, street cars, fast busses, or jetpacks. Let them build the transit sytem of their dreams with an $800 million blank cheque.

Because every person South of the Fraser who is on transit is one less car driving through New West.

Let’s fix the historic, iconic, non-killer, repairable, and affordable Pattullo.

Sapperton Day(s)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 4 Comments.

I had a great Sapperton Day(s), again this year.

This has become my favourite one-day festival in the City, not the least because it is the only festival with guaranteed Penny Farthing appearances.

As usual, there were lots of kids activities, lots of Food Truck options, a kick-ass Pancake breakfast with Real Maple syrup and free-range pork sausages, numerous community and volunteer groups, a few giveaways, random entertainment, and the music was loud and really well defended:

I did a tour of Cap’s “Bicycle Museum”. I’ve been going to Cap’s since I bought a Diamond Back Arrival from them in 1987, but I have never seen their remarkable collection of bikes, some dating back to before the Penny-Farthing era. It is amazing, as a bike geek, to see how the same simple engineering problems were solved in so many different ways, based on the best technology of the day. It is well worth the $2 admission to walk through that collection. Maybe we can get them museum space at the new MUCF?

Sapperton Day(s) also gives you a chance to see some of the new businesses in Sapperton. Last year’s big surprise was the great pulled pork at the Graze Market/The Ranch BBQ, this year it was the Pad Thai at the new Thai restaurant just up the Street, named (if I remember correctly) Thai New West.

For the second year in a row, the Sushi Restaurant right across the street from my booth remained closed for Sapperton Day(s); a strange business decision to make when 10,000 people would be walking by the front of the restaurant that day…

I spent most of the day at the NWEP booth, talking transportation with people from across the City, and across the region. I noticed a difference at this event compared to the dozens of previous events where the NWEP went to talk policy stuff: almost universal agreement.

Previously, we have been out helping the City promote the Clean Green bins, or collecting ideas for the Master Transportation Plan, or promoting backyard composting, we are introducing people to the ideas for the first time. This means you have to try to keep their attention while trying to get enough info across that they will care to learn more before wandering next door for lemonade.

And the Lemonade at the Sapperton Day(s) was great. It was a lemonade kind of day.

This time, where the main topic was the Pattullo Bridge (note it was our main topic, the TransLink Booth at Sapperton Day(s) was paradoxically bereft of any information on the Pattullo expansion plans…), it seemed most people in New Westminster knew something was going on and just wanted to know more. They were engaged in the topic before we even started talking. The first question I asked people as they wandered by was “what do you think about the Pattullo Bridge”, and the conversation flowed easily from there.

The most common question I got from New Westminster residents is “what can we do about it?”

That’s not to say everybody had the same opinion. There were a few people who had better ideas to spend more money (on tunnels, cable cars, jetpacks) to “solve our traffic problems once and forever”, but most recognized that more lanes into New West means more cars in to New West means more traffic to deal with. Oh, there was also a long, circular and soul-crushing discussion with our local Libertarian Torch-bearer who kept saying that “you people rely on violent coercion to tell people how to live”, without explaining how voting was an act of violence or who, exactly, “you people” were.

But no-one was without an opinion on it, and that is the good thing. All we need to do is channel all of those opinions into the upcoming TransLink Open Houses, on June 23. It hadn’t been announced by Sapperton Day(s), but our main advise to people was to keep your eye on the local media and on the TransLink website, and show up at the next Public consultation.

Thanks especially go to HUB for lending us the tent: we thought it might be rainy but in the end it just reduced sunburn. We also gave away a tonne of pocket-sized folding bike maps for New Westminster and neighbouring communities, and promoted the upcoming HUB Streetwise safe cycling course in New West on the 16th.

I suppose it will appeal to folks like James Crosty and Ted Eddy, who wouldn’t be caught dead at the Pier Park Grand Opening.

This just in….

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

This just in from TransLink (emphases mine):

Hello,

In February 2012, TransLink gathered public and stakeholder feedback on bridge location (alignment) and connection options in New Westminster and Surrey for the New Pattullo Bridge Project. We invite you to attend a series of Open Houses to learn more about the proposed project, its status, and share your views.

Please join us on the following dates:

Date: Thursday, June 21
Time: 2:00 PM-8:00 PM
Location: Surrey SFU

Date: Saturday, June 23
Time: 10:00 AM-3:00PM
Location: Sapperton Pensioners Hall

Date: Tuesday, June 26
Time: 2:00 PM-8:00 PM
Location: Sapperton Pensioners Hall

Date: Wednesday, June 27
Time: 2:00 PM-8:00 PM
Location: Surrey SFU

For further information about the project, please go to www.translink.ca/pattullo or contact Vincent.Gonsalves@translink.ca at 604.453.3043.

Mark Your Calendars for the 23rd.

Two (+) Upcoming Events (edited to add more panic)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

It should be a couple of interesting weeks, and if I don’t post too often, I have some good excuses. I have said this before, but believe me, this time I am really busy.

I have both the Royal City Curling Club AGM next week (my report is written, but I may need to prep a speech and be prepared to be peppered by questions on my role as Ice & House Committee Chair) and the Environmental Managers Association of BC AGM and Awards Luncheon is also next week (I am expecting to return to the board as a VP at that event). There is also the Westminster Pier Park Grand Opening coming up, and I did my volunteer training for that yesterday. I also have an Emergency Advisory Committee meeting tomorrow evening. Don’t forget the first Royal City Farmers Market of the year is this Thursday (great fundraiser, by the way!).

Bonus last-minute panic-causing addition:
Sapperton Day is also this Sunday! See us at the NWEP Booth talkin’ transportation and Pattullo!

Although these are keeping be busy, there are two upcoming events I want to talk about here:

Tomorrow (fortunately, after the EAC meeting), there will be a Forum on the Future of the Pattullo Bridge at the River Market. Although the list of presenters is interesting, I can’t shake the feeling that this is a bit of a smoke screen.

The topic for discussion is what to do with the Pattullo Bridge after TransLink builds the new 6-lane bridge. There are some interesting ideas, including keeping it as some sort of linear parkway or re-purposing as development space. Having visited the original HighLine last year, I agree it is a compelling piece of urban infrastructure, and the impact on the part of Chelsea where it was built is undeniably positive. It is getting so every developer building an elevated walkway in every City in North America is putting a few trees on it and saying it is “a HighLine like design”.

HighLine, the type sample.

I’m interested to see what learned people have to say about this type of use for the Pattullo, but I can’t help but thinking about all of the people in this town turning themselves inside-out over a much less ambitious waterfront park very close to the Pattullo. I also wonder why, if TransLink is so convinced the bridge is in immediate peril of collapse, we are entertaining fixing it for a recreation or development space. So although I enjoy speculative thinking about the future of the City as much as anyone, let’s not take our eye off the ball here. The livability of our City is not currently threatened by a lack of elevated or waterfront park space, it is threatened by the risk of increased traffic resulting from a 6-lane Pattullo.

Ultimately, I think the best use for a refurbished Pattullo Bridge is as a transportation corridor with 4 lanes and improved pedestrian and bike facilities, or even three lanes with a counter-flow middle lane. If it can be fixed, I can’t imagine a better use for it than the one it currently serves.

Which brings me to the second event of note. Next Tuesday is a N.E.X.T.NewWest event featuring some random blogivator talking about the Pattullo Bridge.

In my natural envrionment: hiding behind beer.

I am going to give a very brief background of the Pattullo situation and talk a bit about the community open houses I attended and the City’s approach to the TransLink process. I will also have some interesting data to present about aspects of the plan, and then present a bunch of opinion about where the City should be going with its transportation system, and how the Pattullo fits into that.

It should be fun and informative, as N.E.X.T. is exactly the group of “New” New Westminster business leaders whom I was whinging about being too silent in the discussion of the Pattullo up to now. My only goal for the evening will be to convince as many of them as possible that they should be getting involved in the discussion, and not let these decisions be made without their important voice. I also hope to make a few of them laugh… with me, as opposed to at me. But I’ll take it either way.

I hope to see lots of folks at both of these events, as they demonstrate one of the strengths of New Westminster – a community coming together to discuss an issue from various different angles. The more voices we have, the more likely TransLink will listen to us.

The Chamber and Council respond…

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

A couple of developments have occurred since last week’s “dialogue” on the Pattullo Bridge that I found so unsatisfying.

The President of the New West Chamber of Commerce, Andrew Hopkins, provided an on-line message that sort of clarifies the Chamber’s position in these discussions. I say “sort of” because the Chamber doesn’t really take a strong stand on the future of the Pattullo (unlike the Surrey Board of Trade), but instead acknowledges that there are differing opinions and that the Chamber has some work to do, gathering information and arriving at a position that fairly represents their members.

This is both a reasonable and appropriate response, and I applaud the Chamber for taking the cautious approach, appropriate for a project of such magnitude. Again, the model here should be, as Jim Lowrie has pointed out at the recent meetings, “Debate then Decide”, not the other way around.

As such, we can re-characterise last Thursday’s meeting as the New West Chamber hearing one side of the story- that of the Surrey and Lower Mainland Boards of Trade.

I wouldn’t be NWimby if I didn’t also point out in irritating detail the concerns I have in the release by Mr. Hopkins. My criticisms of the Chamber Dialogue last week stand: it sort of failed as a forum to share differing ideas, there were no “varying perspectives” presented. It was instead the Surrey Board of Trade, City of Surrey, and TransLink telling New West what was good for Surrey, without even acknowledging what might be good or bad for New West. I hope the Chamber will seek out and give fair audience to the other sides of this discussion before coming to any conclusions on the Pattullo.

Anyone who sat through 2+ hours of Elizabeth Fry-related delegations at New West Council last night also heard Council pass a resolution (moved by Councillor Puchmayr) asking that New Westminster businesses be consulted by the City regarding the Pattullo. To hear Puchmayr call some of the comments by the Surrey Board of Trade “shocking” was promising. In fact, many of the points I raised last week also came to the fore in this week’s Council meeting, with our Council raising concerns about why Surrey’s business community seems to be setting policy for the City of New Westminster.

I feel much better just hearing that our Council was just as concerned as I was coming out of that meeting. Which brings me to the thesis of what was discussed at the Chamber Dialogue, summarized effectively as the final paragraph of Mr. Hopkins’ note from the Chamber:

Traffic is increasing and there are more and more buses, trucks and cars on the roads. The cost of congestion for the region’s economy is estimated at $1.3 billion annually. We must address our transportation infrastructure today for the sake of our tomorrow.

I can take this line by line:

“Traffic is increasing” is not a stand-alone phenomenon: it is not an unavoidable force of nature like the tide, nor is it the inevitable result of increasing population and economic growth. It is one possible result of the decisions we make today, and not necessarily the best one. The only way it is inevitable is if we believe it is inevitable, and attempt to build our way out of it. We don’t have to look very far to find examples of this.

Between 1991 (the first census after opening of the full SkyTrain system) and 2006 (the most recent census for which data is fully available), the City of Vancouver grew in population by 22%, and increased the number of jobs by 18%. Over the same period, the number of automobiles entering the City every day went down by almost 11%. Why? Largely because Vancouver resisted the urge to build freeways into the core of the City, starting with the East Van Freeway being cancelled in the 1960s, and continuing with the refusal to increase the lane count on the Lions Gate Bridge a decade ago. Yet Vancouver still has more than twice the number of jobs of Surrey. Economic and population growth without automobile growth is not just possible, it is demonstrable.

“there are more busses, trucks, and cars on the roads” This is verbatim the way the Board of Trade talked about traffic on the Pattullo, but the order those parts of the traffic system are mentioned belies the reality of the situation. According to TransLink, there are 3,500 trucks a day crossing the Pattullo, and exactly 11 busses a day that cross the bridge (all operating at night, well out of peak congestion times). Compare this to 56,800+ cars. So let’s stop kidding ourselves: busses are not the problem here, when we are talking about congestion, we are talking about 94% of vehicles on the bridge that are neither trucks nor busses.

”The cost of congestion for the region’s economy is estimated at $1.3 billion annually” This is a number that is repeatedly dragged out by Gateway Program proponents to justify the spending of tens of billions of taxpayer’s dollars to build freeways. No-one ever cites a source for this very large number, it is just part of the numeric folklore of British Columbia politics. You can find it, without citation, here, here and here.

Coincidently, this is the same amount of “money” that congestion annually costs the state of Colorado, the cities of Moscow and Melbourne, and the amount that Chicago could “save” just be reducing congestion by 10%. But where does this number come from in BC?

Best I can tell from my extensive research Googling is this report by Delcan, completed in 2003. The “$1.3 Billion” number seems to be based on a growth projection to 2021, based on conditions in 2002, and estimates of anticipated “congestion” on the roads, in the rail system, and at the ports resulting from that projects growth. The report sees the replacement of the New Westminster Rail Bridge as the biggest regional congestion issue.

Interesting to note this report was written long before the Port Mann 2 and Highway 1 expansion, before the Golden Ears Bridge and the South Fraser Perimeter Road and Pitt River Bridge doubling (all told, $6 Billion in road expansion since this report). There is also major Port expansion at Vancouver and Delta on line right now. Yet the rail bridge pinch point of so much importance is not yet addressed.

The $1.3 Billion number is a vestige of roadbuilders’ dreams from a decade ago. To use this report to justify expanding the Pattullo Bridge is simply dishonest. One thing we know for sure is that the Pattullo Bridge is not currently costing anyone $1.3 Billion a year.

Oh, and interesting aside from that report. In 2002, the best option for the Pattullo going forward was apparently a combined road and rail tunnel connecting McBride to the South Fraser Perimeter Road under the Fraser River, proposed to be funded in whole by the Feds for $1 Billion. Guess that option is off the table now…

“We must address our transportation infrastructure today for the sake of our tomorrow” Yeah, that sounds kinda right. Except that I would rather say we need to build the transportation infrastructure for tomorrow, instead of building the transportation infrastructure of yesterday.

More Advertizing (updated)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.
Do you care about the future of the Pattullo Bridge
…and the impact on traffic in New Westminster?
TransLink has decided to tear down the historic Pattullo Bridge and replace it with a 6-lane bridge.  By their own estimates, this will increase the number of cars crossing the bridge by 50%, and double the number of trucks! Yet TransLink has no plans to accommodate this traffic in New Westminster. So far, the only consultation they have had with New Westminster is to ask us which flavour or offramp we prefer.
Meanwhile, the City is working on a Master Transportation Plan, to better understand the goals and visions of the people of New Westminster. Through this plan it is hoped better-informed decisions can be made about our transportation future.
The City has made it clear to TransLink that it will only support a plan for the Pattullo that fits the City’s goals. The upcoming open houses are your chance to help form those goals…with TransLink moving fast on the bridge planning, this may be your only chance (see below) to have a real say on the project that will define traffic in New Westminster for the decades ahead.
City Staff and Officials will be on hand to answer your questions and address your concerns about the Pattullo or other transportation concerns in New West.
Your voice is needed at one of these important open houses!
Thursday, May 3, 2012.
2:00pm at Century House (620 8th Street, in Moody Park)
or
6:00pm at the Justice Institute (715 McBride Blvd, McBride and 8th Ave ))
For more information check in on the
City’s Master Transportation Plan website: tinyurl.com/NewwestMTP
or the New Westminster Environmental Partners website: NWEP.ca

Edited to add: The City is now also using a new piece of social media called “Place Speak” to collect opinions on the MTP and the Pattullo Bridge. It is just starting up, but you can go there to add to the conversation. Remember, though, to make your voice really stand out, you should still attend one of the May 3rd open houses. Without support of the citizens of New West, the City is going to have a hard time convincing TransLink that a proper consultation needs to take place.

Law of the Instrument

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 4 Comments.

This is similar in tone to an earlier post I wrote regarding the misapplication of technology. In that post, I questioned how “on-line voting” was going to fix the low turn-out rates in elections. The problem of low voter turn-out was not caused by the lack of options or access to polling booths, so increasing that access through the wonder of the Internet was not really a sensible solution. It was the wrong tool addressing the problem from the wrong direction.

This time, I hope to convince you that increasing the volume of traffic is not the solution to the problem of an aging bridge.

In earlier stages of my career, I had plenty of opportunities to work with drillers. Guys (and yes, they were all guys) who operate drilling equipment are a special breed. It is hard work, intensely physical, dirty, noisy, and you are doing it in the rain, the sleet, the snow, and any other unpleasant environment you are asked. Days are usually 12 hours, and you spend much of your off time living in flea-bag hotels on the outskirts of towns you wouldn’t otherwise visit.

I have drilled (actually, stood there watching other guys drill while I sketched on a clipboard and put samples into jars) in pounding down rain in February in Port Alice, in frozen sleet in September in Wells; In heavy snow in Anahim Lake, and on bright sunny warm days while standing on bulk sulphur storage piles. I have even stood on a small barge in Burrard Inlet in the middle of winter with drillers running a Pionjar off the side. With all of these conditions, they are operating a piece of equipment that can kill or maim them instantly if they lose attention. As a result, drillers are tough, skilled, determined, crude and practical: Every edge they have is rough. They all smoke every cigarette like it is their last; I have never seen a group of people so enthusiastic about smoking, and I grew up in a Pulp Mill town.

L to R: me, a notable bridge, a Sonic drill rig.

All that aside, one of the charming things about drillers is their tool kit. It contains two types of tools: hammers, and unused. There is nothing a driller cannot fix with a hammer. If there is, it needed replacing anyway. Every process in the instruction book “Drilling for Dummies” starts with these two steps: 1) Get a hammer; 2) No, a bigger hammer.

As a result, drillers generally have a lot of broken and bent equipment around. When something goes wrong on the drill rig there are two ways it can go: lots of banging and then back to work; or lots of banging then back to the shop. The only shocking past is how often it is the former.

There is a truism called the Law of the Instrument, which is colloquially “when all you have is hammers, every problem looks like a nail”.

When applied to how our province has been operating its roads, and overseeing Translink’s management of the Major Road Network (including the Pattullo Bridge), it could be said that there is no problem that cannot be fixed by building more roads. Never mind what the problem is, or whether this solution has worked in the past, building more roads seems to be the one thing upon which this government has no problem spending taxpayers money.

If the connection isn’t obvious, let me put it this way: At a time when they are cutting back on bus routes and are putting all transit expansion on hold, TransLink is fast-tracking the “consultation” on the Pattullo, saying they need a new 6-lane bridge PDQ. This seems to be the solution to some problem, but there problem isn’t “traffic” or “truck movement” or “growing communities” (the talking points used to justify a 6-lane bridge). Their problem is an aging bridge.

Look at the “Replacement Factors” listed on their website for the project, what do we find? An alliterative list: Safety, Structure, Seismic, and Scour.

“Safety” issues are related to traffic operations on the bridge: lanes too narrow, inadequate railings, too many accidents. If TransLink or the Government was really concerned about driver safety on the bridge, they would put four photo radar cameras on the bridge and enforce the 50km/h speed limit. A revenue-generating end of the problem.

“Structure” arguments are all about corrosion of steel components on the bridge and degradation of the bridge deck, so exactly the same factors that led to the extensive refurbishment of the Lions Gate Bridge. There, things were repaired at a much lower cost than replacing the bridge.

“Seismic” seems pretty straight forward: a 1938 bridge does not meet 2012 earthquake standards. The Sandwell Report done for TransLink in 2007 was pretty clear: “…the bridge is vulnerable to collapse even under moderate earthquakes and is in urgent need of retrofitting.” So what are we waiting for? Let’s get on with that retrofitting and make a safe bridge, at a fraction of the cost of building a new bridge.

“Scour” is the argument that after 75 years, the River is now starting to scour away the sand and silt around the foundations of the bridge. Give me a couple of barges of 1-tonne rip-rap, and we can take care of the scour issue. No need for two lanes of extra traffic to fix this one.

Notably, not one of these “Replacement Factors” justify increasing the number of lanes on the bridge, and most can actually be facilitated at much lower cost by reducing the lanes to three (with counter-flow) like the Lions Gate. As compelling an argument TransLink makes for extensive refurbishment of the Pattullo Bridge, nothing that says we need to accept the negative impacts on the City and the region of increasing road capacity, or the loss of the iconic steel arch span that is part of our City’s heritage and skyline for 75 years. Nor do they justify ramping up a $200 Million refurbishment project into a $1Billion bridge expansion project.

However, bridge replacement and expansion is the hammer that TransLink has. Collecting tolls on the bridge is the force behind that hammer. So no surprise when the problem is an aging bridge, the solution is not fixing it. The solution is to imagine other problems that may be solved by expanding it and slapping on tolls.

Simply put: the Province will not pay $200 Million to upkeep the infrastructure it has, but will throw a bunch of money building other infrastructure with no plan for long-term maintenance costs.

Hardly a model of fiscal prudence in my book.

We interrupt this Public Affairs program… to bring you a Football Game!

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

With all due respect to Homer, this week’s televised coverage of the Council Working Session was pretty compelling. You can watch it here, by choosing the date (April 23) and selecting  “Regular Working Session of Council”

Most of it was spent talking about the upcoming Open Houses (May 3rd, have I mentioned those before?) on the Pattullo Bridge. It is interesting to hear Council work their way through the material, some of them clearly very up-to-date on the issues at hand, some not so much.

The Consultant does raise some interesting issues about the bridge itself (starting at around 23:00). He seems to spend a lot of time suggesting that the form of any replacement bridge is as important as the other aspects: as this is an iconic structure in the middle of a major urban Centre, do we want the simplest, cheapest, IKEA “Billy” bridge that is likely to result from a PPP? If the bridge is to be replaced, this is an opportunity to add to the value of our Community with a spectacular feature, perhaps one resulting from an international design competition. This is indeed an interesting idea, and one I have not heard used for major infrastructure projects sponsored by the Province. Unless people can play football under it.

But the Councillor’s differing ideas around the project are also interesting.

Starting at 30:00 Councillor Cote rightly suggests the one approach that few have discussed yet is the refurbishing of the existing bridge. This is the direction I am leaning right now ( he even mentions the similarities to the Lions Gate consultation process).

Starting at about 31:30, Councillor Puchmayr seems to be suggesting we are putting the cart ahead of the horse: why are we talking about the shape and form of the bridge, when we should be talking about the alleged need for a bridge? You don’t bring a puppy home to ask the family if they think the family should get a puppy – you make the choice before you go to the puppy mill to pick one up.

I am a little thick, but I think I finally get where Councillor Puchmayr has been going with his on-going diatribes about the lack of a connection between the new Port Mann and the SFPR. Up to now, I thought he was just pointing out an example of bad planning on the Provincial Government’s part (or shooting fish in barrels just for sport). I have now realized he seems to be suggesting that building that connection now might be a more cost-effective way to get trucks across the Fraser than re-furbishing the Pattullo. It couldn’t possibly be as expensive, and the truckers seem to think it’s a viable solution. I am liking this approach…

Starting at 34:30, Councillor McEvoy spares no love on TransLink and their “consultation” process. He is also clear that the City of New Westminster has not taken a strong position on Transportation Planning up to now, and with other communities making clear what their position is, the City needs to have their clear, sensible, and logical position prepared. (hopefully this is what comes out the MTP if we havea good turnout on May 3rd). 

Councillor Harper (@43:00) is also right to raise the central question about all of these options: the one question we are going to have to have a clear answer on before we make difficult choices around the bridge is the impact on our City of the different plans. I am especially glad to hear him suggesting the City may need to spend some money to do the traffic surveys and studies to get the hard numbers, and not rely on TransLink’s obviously-loaded numbers.

I think the block we needto watch out for here is that many people think the “Problem” that TransLink is trying to solve is traffic, and therefore the solution all involve moving lanes or bridges or onramps. However, TransLink’s Pattullo Bridge Consultation page is pretty clear: their “Problem” is an aging bridge, not traffic.

But that is the topic of another post.

The Lions Gate Solution (?) – Part 1

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The more I discuss the Pattullo issue with people, the more I find myself referring to the Lions Gate Bridge.

There are significant similarities. Both bridges were built in the mid 30’s; both connected an established (now Historic) part of the Lower Mainland to an expanding suburb, leading to the expansion of suburbs; both are immediately adjacent to historic parks; both are iconic structures that define the skyline of their region; both were supplanted from being the main crossing of their respective waterways in the early 1960s with the completion of the Trans-Canada Highway; and both have suffered from enough short-term thinking and neglect that their immediate replacement became a high priority.

So while we discuss the potential replacement of the Pattullo, it might be useful to look back at the history of the proposed replacement for the Lions Gate.

Just for context, this was back in the heady days of 1993-1994. The NDP formed government after an upstart right-of-centre party split off votes from a scandal-plagued government with a hapless place-keeper Premier, The Canucks lost in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup playoffs and riots ensued, and in the USA, a popular Democrat President was going into the re-election campaign after spending most of his first term cleaning up after the economic havoc the previous Republican administration had wrecked, partially through an unfunded war in Iraq. Times change.

I found an interesting source of info when researching the history of the Lions Gate, it is this Masters Thesis from the SFU Department of Geography, completed in 1998 (notably, more than a year before the actual bridge refurbishment project commenced). Doubly cool for me, as I was a student in Geography at SFU up to 1997, so I probably met this guy (it was pretty small department), although he was clearly on the “Human Geography” side, and I was over hanging with the dirt-and-rocks “Physical Geography” types.

The Thesis provides an excellently-referenced timeline (and time capsule) of the consultation process that went into the decision to refurbish the Lions Gate as opposed to replacing it, twinning it, or building a tunnel under Burrard Inlet. [NOTE: all quotes below are from this thesis].

The one remarkable part is how wide-reaching the consultation was. In contrast to the Pattullo “consultations” where New Westminster and Surrey were asked to comment on which colour of onramp we prefer,the Lion’s Gate discussion started in 1993 with a public call for proposals and ideas.

In 1993, the provincial government began its public consultation process. This involved informing the public about the project and gathering feedback at a number of stakeholder roundtables, open houses, debate sessions and a proponents’ showcase. The meetings began with presentations from technical experts about the possible routes and alternatives under consideration, followed by question periods. Panels made up of representatives from stakeholder groups and technical experts answered questions from the public. Interested people could also submit their opinions on paper at the meetings or by mail to the Lion’s Gate Bridge Public Information Center, which was located in Denman Place Mall until early in 1997. In total more than 1000 submissions were received.

Note, this was all before they had even chosen a shortlist of approaches to the problem posed by an aging bridge. There were no less than 21 alternatives seriously evaluated (including such things as replacing the bridge with a gondola, improving ferry service, and commuter train options). By 1994, these proposals have been whittled down through technical, stakeholder, and public review, to 8 options, ranging from just repairing the existing bridge to refurbishing the bridge, replacing it, twinning it, and no less than 3 different tunnel options. It seems the only thing missing was a serious discourse about the colours of the on-ramps.

By 1995, these options had been reduced to the 4 most favoured, some for technical reasons, some simply due to cost, and on the basis that the Province, the City, and the Park had agreed that any new replacement would be a 4-lane option. No more, no less.

Then things got political.

The four-lane-refurbish option was the clear favourite out of the consultation process. It was determined by the engineering team* that the bridge could be rehabilitated to carry the loads of 3, 4, or 6 lanes of traffic, with increasing cost for reinforcement as proposed loads went up. There was a significant public resistance to the idea of having a large increase in capacity, due to impacts on the park and neighbourhoods (at the time it was felt the traffic on the bridge was so “peaky” around rush hour that 4 lanes did not represent a significant increase in capacity over the existing three-lane-counterflow design).

However, for reasons that became obvious, the decision was not announced prior to the 1996 Election. That was the election that saw the Glen Clark NDP re-elected, at least partially due to what would become known as the “Fudge-it Budget”. Not long after the election, money got very tight, and the government’s appetite for spending was curtailed. The Government released the decision to pursue the 4-lane refurbish option in 1997, but due to financial constraints, floated the idea of using the new-fangled “Public-Private Partnership” model to finance it.

In a news release the Minister of Transportation and Highways, Lois Boone, stated she was seeking bids for a crossing that met the following conditions:

  • The new crossing is to follow the existing First Narrows alignment from Marine Drive in North Vancouver to Georgia Street in Vancouver;
  • Four fanes of traffic, two northbound and two southbound, but with surface traffic through Stanley ark reduced or eliminated;
  • No net detrimental effect on Stanley Park;
  • A plan to reduce traffic impacts on the West End;
  • The province will invest up to $70 million over five years, which is the same amount as would be spent on a three-lane rehabilitation;
  • Additional costs are to be financed from tolling revenues. (BCTFA 1997a)

This clearly shows the government’s commitment to improve the Lion’s Gate Bridge but not to pay for it.

In the end, the tolling option was not acceptable to the North Shore communities, so the PPP model fell apart. The Province finally tendered the work for $66 million in 1999, and with no PPP partner or tolls to pay for the structural upgrades required to build a 4-lane bridge, they instead took the more affordable option of the three wider lanes that could be afforded, and kept the counter-flow. Essentiually, those chose the second place finisher, based on costs alone.

However, this does not take away from the point that the entire evaluation process was transparent and involved extensive input from stakeholders and the public along the way. The communities at each end and stakeholders such as the Vancouver Parks Board and the Friends of Stanley Park had a real say in how the final design was achieved, the last-minute cheap-out by the Provincial Government notwithstanding. This is important: the last minute cheap-out was and acceptable option to the stakeholders, if not the preferred one to many.

How does this compare to the experience that New Westminster and Surrey have had at the TransLink consultation table for the Pattullo Bridge?

*Reference:Lion’s gate crossing : bridge rehabilitation options report  by Bridge Expert Panel. [Victoria] : Province of British Columbia, Ministry of Transportation and Highways, Bridge Engineering Branch, 1994 1 v. (various pagings) : col. ill.  

A study in contrasts

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I’m not even sure what to say about this.

Quote 1, April 3, 2012

Mike Proudfoot, CEO of the province’s Transportation Investment Corp., said modeling shows the Port Mann tolls will not cause any significant net diversion of traffic to untolled bridges, because other drivers now using those routes will switch to Highway 1 and pay tolls to take advantage of travel time savings.

Quote 2, April 18, 2012:

Commercial truck safety crews are confident they can handle the increased traffic along roads in New Westminster once tolls kick in on the Port Mann Bridge.

Why am I not filled with confidence by either of those stories?

Be at one of the May 3rd Master Transportation Plan open houses, unless you are completely confident that there will be no increase in traffic, and that those non-increases are going to be absolutely no problem at all.

Here is the quote you need to remember from that link:

“The City is also seeking community input on the proposed replacement of the Pattullo Bridge.”