But I’ll be MC for this event – heckle me your best, I’m not running for anything!
Not sure if I mentioned this…
Tag: Politics
Coming Events!
 |
| Be there, meet the candidates, and get yourself voting… |
Mayor Nantel?
UPDATE: He’s on Twitter! And apparently following Bill Gates and Bill Vander Zalm. oh boy.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, I’ve been asking it around town for a week and a half, and no-one can answer: Who the hell is Francois Nantel?
This municipal election we have no less than four people running for Mayor. Besides the Incumbent, we have Vance McFayden, a long-time resident and community builder, and we have Citizen Advocate James Crosty, and you all know who he is. The mystery to me is Francois Nantel.
Notably, last time Francois was on a ballot in New Westminster was the federal election of 2000, I was living in Illinois (the only Federal Election I have missed since the one a couple of weeks after my 19th birthday when I was living in the crappy apartment on Royal Ave…), but he ran for the federal Green Party! I’m not trying to suggest I am all things “green” in New West, but if I don’t know who this guy is, he has a serious name-recognition problem.
I spent several years serving on the local Green Party EDA (but am not a member of the party any longer… another post, another time), and I have helped the campaigns of Carrie McLaren, Marshall Smith, and Rebecca Helps, but I don’t remember him being at any of those meetings. A couple of friends I have are attached to the Provincial Party, and they have no idea who he is. He isn’t “friends” on Facebook with any of the Green Party Candidates in New West over the last 10 years. So, I guess his ties with the Green Party are pretty severed.
What about community groups? The New Westminster Environmental Partners have been at the forefront of numerous environmental issues in the City over the last few years, from the UBE to solid waste to community gardens, but I don’t remember Francois ever taking part. Neither do the members who started the group before I got active.
There are several citizen committees in New West, but I don’t see his name listed on any of the committees in 2010 or 2011. As a resident of the West End, he is a member of the West End Residents Association, one of the most active in the City, who post their minutes on-line. Mr. Nantel’s name is conspicuously absent .
I asked one of the longer-serving City Councillors on Friday night, and he said “I think he popped up about 10 years ago, angry about Wal Mart, but I don’t know where he has been since…”
I searched the minutes of every Council Meeting in 2011, and I did not find one reference to Mr. Nantel: no delegations, no correspondence. I assume he watched a few of them on TV! If he has any opinions about what he saw, he sure didn’t share them, as searches for “Nantel” of both the News Leader and the Record come up with only a few hits, all of them from the last two weeks, and all little more than mentions that he is running for mayor.
The record article is most concerning. Apparently, this run for Mayor is just a “stepping stone” to bigger, better things in Federal Politics. Yikes. Not a good sign for local leadership.
You know, I have been asking candidates two things this election: don’t go negative, and show me your vision. So I am going to avoid being negative, and accentuate the positive here. I am happy Francois Nantel has shown us what his vision for New Westminster is: a stepping stone in his rear-view mirror as he flies off to Ottawa. Bonne chance, mon frère.
New West Doc Fest – Day 1
Tonight was the first night of the First Annual New West Doc Fest.
The turn out was pretty good, including the Mayor and Councillors Cote, Williams, and Harper. After a bit of mingling with the sultry tones of the Redrick Sultan Jazz Trio, the main event began.
There were three short films before the feature documentary of the night.
The first was “Meathead”, a strangely funny 3-minute short made by students at Pull Focus Film School. It was strangely funny, because you could see most of the jokes coming, but the actor managed to sell the punchlines with a turn of expression that made you laugh. Quick, irreverent, with a message, student film-making at it’s best.
Two documentary shorts were on the subject of the proposed Enbridge oil pipeline to Kitimat. The animated talk-piece “Cetaceans of the Great Bear” told of the threat to cetaceans represented by increased tanker traffic. Although the animation and graphic treatments were at times quite compelling, the message came across a little too strident and wrapped in over-the-top rhetoric to be effective as a message to anyone but the true believer. Let’s just say Dave Brett might not approve. The second, “Oil in Eden” is a little richer in actual content, and tells a much more complete story about the reasons for the oil pipeline, the potential risks, and the groups (especially first nations) who are against the idea.
The main feature was “Burning Water”, a story about a couple of farmers in the outskirts of Calgary with the little problem of flammable drinking water. Although the trailer makes it look like this is about a pissed-off farmer who won’t take it any more, the reality of the story is much more nuanced. This is because of the approach the owners of Valhalla Farm, Fiona and John Lauridsen, take to the issue.
Their problems started when energy giant Encana created a few “coal bed methane” gas wells on their property using “hydraulic fracturing”. Fiona takes a rational approach of asking Encana to do something about it, until Encana determined it wasn’t their fault. She ten takes the rational approach of going to the Government, who do something worse than doing nothing: they are actively indifferent to her plight. John takes the non-confrontational approach of just dealing with it and trying to move on, much to Fiona’s frustration, until he finally decides to strike back at Encana in a rather humorous way.
What makes this more than a simple David-vs-Goliath story is the fact the town in which the Lauridsens live relies on grant money from Encana for their community theatre (a major economic driver), their library, their parks. The Lauridsens even rely on EnCana for non-farm income: from the land-use settlement for the wells and Fiona for her part-time job in the community theatre. They are acutely aware that Encana is an important part of their economy; they just want to be able to continue living on their farm, seemingly made unliveable by Encana’s activity. In the end, all they want is Encana to respect their issue, and Encana, for their own reasons, cannot.
Unfortunately, the story arc is left unfinished, we don’t really know what the solution is, nor are we left with a hint of what the solution will be. But you are not left with the feeling that Fiona’s simple dream of living on her Prairie Valhalla is a sustainable one.
The Doc was followed by a brief but informative Q&A session with the Pembina Institute’s Matt Horne. It seemed the only positive way forward was to assure that we compel our government to develop and enforce a regulatory regime that protects the environment, to counter the forces behind run-away exploration and development of oil and gas, especially in BC’s north-east. However, between BC’s inability to modernize it’s Water Act, the weakness of our groundwater regulation, the fact the Oil and Gas Commission can overrule any BC law, and our current government’s commitment to “reduce red tape” for resource extraction, I am not left filled with confidence.
But hey, tomorrow’s four documentary films have a chance to lift my spirits!
Thinking Forward
Here are a couple of pictures I took this summer, a day apart. See if you can figure what they have in common.
 |
| click to Art-decotize |
Both of these are pictures of public toilets at busy tourist areas.
The first is at Hoover Dam. This was the largest engineering project in the world at the time, and one that was built with public money during the largest economic depression of the post-industrial revolution (the kind of “stimulus spending” that actually puts people to work, well, those it didn’t kill, anyway…). This might be the finest-looking monument to urination ever built: art deco, bas relief sculpture, brass doors, and beautiful tile mosaics inside.
The second is a crappy industrial toilet built at a major trailhead at the Grand Canyon. Nothing wrong with it: four walls and a roof and a composting toilet. Wheelchair accessible, probably built in the late 90s, functional, a little squat, just dull enough to be almost completely unregarded. A Park Service General-Function Shithouse Type #4. Probably tossed together in an afternoon from pre-fab bits imported from China. It is only sad when compared to the architectural grandeur of the Hoover Dam crapper.
This, if you will follow along a bit, says a lot about where we are in North America in the dawn of the 21st century.
You see, there was a time when America (and Canada, as America’s fluffy toque) built things that they were proud of. They dared to dream. If people asked FDR why they were building the largest arch-gravity dam on earth at the height of the Great Depression, he would have said something along the lines of “because we can build a better future today!” But no-one would have asked such a silly question: they knew already. America was the place where people had big dreams and did big things.
This is why the 20th Century belonged to America. Put a man on the moon? No freaking problem: banged the most complicated engineering feat in history together in less than 9 years. From the Chrysler building in 1930 to the Sears Tower in 1998, the United States was home to a series of the world’s tallest skyscrapers. The USof A won the most medals at the Olympics, had the best schools, lead in all fields of science, from FermiLab to the Mayo Clinic to M.I.T. USA! USA! USA!
It is pretty clear to anyone not currently running for President that those times are gone. The US cannot put a human being in space without relying on the very ballistic missile technology developed to destroy the USA. The Middle and Far East are competing to build the greatest Cities in the world. China wins more gold medals, builds more high-speed rail every year than the entire stock of high-speed rail in the United States, and now builds almost twice as many automobiles as the country that made the building of lots of automobiles their entire business plan. There are many countries in the world looking forward and building great things. The USA just isn’t one of them anymore. And now that Steve Jobs is gone…
I’m thinking the toilets above are emblematic of the problem. Where we used to dream and build great things, now we seem to think “what’s the point?” Especially if we can build something less great for less money. When the biggest building in any town USA is the WalMart (and the biggest building in New Westminster is a Lowe’s), why build it fancy? The race is on for cheaper, faster, more of less. There is a cultural malaise where all they can do is look inward, protect what they have. This is a place where people are afraid of the future.
It’s not just me saying this, it is an ongoing theme I am noticing from people much, much smarter than me, and with diverse back grounds, like Umair Haque and Neil DeGrasse Tyson .
I suspect a large part of the problem is the one thing in which the USA still leads to the world: Negative politics.
The problem with negative politics is that it creates an environment where things like Vision and Hope are set up for ridicule. Why come up with a new idea when you can make cheap political points outlining all the potential problems with your opponent’s ideas? Criticism is much easier that creativity. As a result, no politician in the 21st century is going to say “were going to put a man on the moon and return him safety to Earth by the end of the decade”. No-one is brave enough to suggest the US should invest in high-speed rail, or a sustainable energy future (other than “Drill, baby Drill!” – a non-solution that nonetheless is easy for the noisemakers the chant), or in renewing their public education system. Suggesting that maybe people should have health insurance is enough to cost significant political capital.
In today’s political climate, the dreams are too easy to crush:
But that’s the States. What does it have to do with us?
New Westminster is a City that is proud of it’s past, and for good reason. But this Municipal election, I’m going to be thinking about it’s future, not it’s past. This City, like it or not, is going to grow to 100,000 people by the middle of the century. We need to start thinking now about how that future works. How are people going to live in New Westminster in 2050? How are they going to move about New Westminster? Where are they going to work in New Westminster? How will we maintain our livability, our economic stability, our infrastructure?
Now is the time to dream, now is the time to have a vision. I think there are glimmers of a bright future offered by the current Council. I don’t think many will argue that Sapperton and Downtown are more vibrant places, more “complete” neighbourhoods than they were a decade ago. Progress is being made. To continue this trend, we are going to need some bigger ideas. We need to be brave enough to build things we are proud of, so our future is as bright as our past.
There are several members of the Council that I support strongly, but I think there is room for some fresh vision at that table as well. I wish good luck to all the Candidates, and hope to hear some great discussion about the City’s future. Let’s keep it above the belt, and be ready to wow us with your ideas. However, if all you bring to the table is the problems with every one else’s ideas, then may I humbly suggest you get out of the way and let someone else lead.
The Trains of October -UPDATE
I guess once James Crosty stepped up to run for Mayor, it was inevitable that a distraction like train noise would become a central talking point in this election.
 |
| Vital transportation link or loaded shotgun? Actually, both. |
Based on recent comments in the local media, trains are either the worst thing that ever happened to New Westminster, or they are completely benign and only bother a couple of Nimby whiners. Like most things, the reality is somewhere in between the two. And like most political hot-button topics, there are numerous interacting issues here, none of them being addressed by the overtly-partisan letter-writers to the local papers. Yes, I’m talking to you, Ted Eddy.
First off, and pointed out by Matt Laird in a letter that garnered no feedback a few weeks ago, the issue that the Quayside Board and the esteemed Mr. Crosty was fighting is a completely different issue than train whistles and the City’s new plan to address whistle cessation. Matt should know: he is named in the court case, Mr. Crosty is not. The City doesn’t really have a horse in the first fight, but has significant input on the second. I’m not sure if conflating the two issues is particularly helpful, as any success we will make in whistle cessation is going to require participation with the railways in question and collaboration, not court fights.
Scott Larsen’s very long letter to both papers last week was a treatise on the “who gives a shit?” side of the argument. The thesis, that being “trains are here, love them or leave” is kind of unsatisfying.
I don’t see trains as different than any other business or resident in the City. They have a right to use their land and to do business, and to not be unnecessarily fettered by unreasonable neighbours. Like any other part of the community, they also have some (ethical, if not legal) responsibility towards their neighbours, and need to consider what reasonable accommodation they can afford their neighbours. Since Rail companies are not beholden to City Bylaws and do not pay property tax, there is little that Cities can do but respectfully request these accommodations, and work with the Rail Companies in a partnership to manage them. For this to happen, both sides need to be honest brokers, and the Rail Company needs to be concerned about the needs of their neighbours.
I have worked with railways on “emissions” issues in the past (emissions being the catch-all term for air pollutants, vibrations, and noise), and from my limited personal experience: the small guys are great to deal with, the two big Canadian railways are harder to deal with, and BNSF are a bunch of jerks. My suspicion is that this reflects their corporate structures, as the larger and more pan-national the organizations, the less accountability the guy across the table has to the community and the more he has to the “shareholders”, wherever they are.
In the case of the Quayside, it seems that efforts to be honest brokering fell apart years ago, although none of us really know what happened, as the agreement was kept confidential, and no-one is talking about it. However, continued engagement is the best bet the Quayside has, and Mr. Crosty and company should get kudos for doing so much to keep the issue moving along. I’m not sure conflict through the courts is the best approach, but I am on the outside, am not party to the confidential agreement, nor to their strategy discussions with their legal counsel. Here is the point: neither are most of the people commenting so vociferously about this issue! Therefore, you are criticising Mr. Crosty and the Quayside about something you don’t know anything about!
The most idiotic and useless part of this public discourse is the “they were here first” trope. Residential development pre-dates rails in New Westminster by at least 20 years. Of course, the rails were here before James Crosty moved to the Quayside, but James Crosty and many of the Quayside condos were there before SRY Railway (the current keeper of the bridge through the Quayside) was created, and down the rabbit hole we go. All of this built the idea that whoever is here first can do whatever they want, and anyone who comes later has to lump it. That is anti-community, anti-democracy, anti-development, anti-progress, and a silly argument for an adult to make.
That said, Mr. Crosty’s argument that the First Nations were really here first is kind of bizarre: I don’t think the First Nations experience is a good image to evoke about how newcomers should treat long-time residents…
His long response to Mr. Larsen’s letter the New Leader makes it clear that Mr. Crosty wants this issue to stay in front of the election. Which is too bad, because I think that there are other issues in the City that need more attention this election than the Quayside’s ongoing battle with the Railways. Clearly that is one issue that will not be solved in this election or during the next council term. The role of the City in finding that solution is also hard to define, and in the end, Mr. Crosty and Mayor Wright are on the same side of this fight: they want the rails and the people of the Quayside to peacefully coexist.
Finally, does anyone else think it is a bizarre that there was a lot of news, much generated by Mr. Crosty himself when the Court of Appeal hearing was held, now that the decision has been returned, and the Quayside appears to have lost, there has been no mention of this setback in the local news or on Mr. Crosty’s website?
UPDATE: Mr. Crosty sent me a message, and addressed some of the issues above. here is his note:
What you state is a loss may not be. We are waiting for the CTA to determine the outcome. The Judgement’s first page states the following:
“The appeal is allowed, the decision of the Agency is set aside and the matter is returned for re-determination in accordance with the reasons of the Court with one set of costs payable by the Canadian Transportation Agency to the Appellants.”
In other words the second complaint was rejected and the original complaint has yet to be dealt with. The CTA ruled on the second complaint this was rejected by the court hence the CTA is required to pay costs on this successful appeal by the rail companies.
As per usual court decisions are complicated matters we will not know what happens until the CTA convenes with it’s legal council. Sorry you have to wait but this is not a simple court case. We prefer to wait for the CTA to render it’s findings. The QCB has been patient, these things move slowly thru the system when it is the first time – after all we been waiting 5 years whats another week, month, or year 🙂 I trust you understand.
Like I said, I’m not a lawyer, and I am not in the middle of this case, so I am obviously missing a lot of the subtlety. Mr. Crosty’s trust is misplaced, as I really don’t understand. But the QCB has a strategy, so let’s wait to see where it goes before we pass any judgement.
One year on.
Things are so busy these days, I forgot to notice I have been doing this for a year. It’s been a year since I first posted with what has become my regular schtick: Half complaining about the City, while also giving them kudos.
1 year
139 posts (~one every 2.5 days)
13,000 all-time hits (including, I suspect, 6,500 by my Mom)
1,500 average monthly hits for last few months.
All-time most-read post: “on being visionary”.
O.K., when it comes to bandwidth and net presence, this is clearly not CNN, or even DrunkCyclist, but 40-50 hits a day is more than I should probably expect, as my target market is pretty tiny, I tend to blather on about the same crap, day-in and day-out, my marketing is non-existent, and anyone on the web in New West really should be spending their time over at 10ttF, where much more useful discussions ensue, and there is less profanity and fewer unending run-on sentences like this one.
However, going in, the purpose of this blog was to give me some practice writing, which I clearly need. I still start too many sentences with conjunctions, and end too many with prepositions. This has also forced me to bring my ideas and thoughts out in to open, which hopefully causes me to reason them through a little more, and hopefully learn from your criticism. This goes for my political ideas about the City, and my ideas about what it means to be an “environmental scientist”, when so much of the rhetoric around environmentalism (for and against) lacks scientific rigor. It also helps keep my spleen vented, and all the money I raise through it will go directly to my political campaign.
Clearly, I still need these things, so onward to Year 2. And thanks, Mom, for coming by.
Finally, for those who have come this far, I thought I would provide a rare glimpse into the process. Here is a brief behind-the-scenes view in the Green New West Headquarters, with me at my creative best…
Trucks on Front Street
The City’s official jump onto the Let’s-Make-Front-Street-Livable bandwagon has received a little media play locally. It has also caused some rumbling in local blogosphere. Much like the UBE debate last year, there is a lot of miscommunication. There is one point I want to clarify when it comes to my vision for the waterfront.
As much as I support the City’s new vision for Front Street, there are aspects I am more reluctant to support. I think the entire Parkade has to go, not just the more decrepit half. I think we need to reassess how more 30-story buildings with 5-story pedestals fit on our waterfront. I think we need to connect our waterfront east to Quayside and west to Sapperton. Most significantly, I don’t think it is necessary, or even desirable, to force trucks off of Front Street.
This is not a new position, but something I have been saying all along. Some local comments have suggested I “hate trucks” and want to move everyone back to “horses and buggies”. Anyone who knows me well knows that I really, really hate horses. So that argument is spurious.
When considering a future for Front Street, we need to deal with what we have and make the best of it. We have three sets of rails that are not going anywhere soon, so this is never going to be a completely re-claimed area. The main impacts from trucks and trains are noise and soot, both of which will be significantly improved with the removal of the Parkade.* With the loss of the parkade pedestals, there will be lots of room for two lanes of through-traffic, and some combination of back-in angle or parallel parking with wide sidewalks, trees and greenery to provide a buffer from the exhaust stacks of trucks and trains. It will still have a bit of an “industrial” feel, much like the Warehouse District of Yaletown, but with the river as a view and a provider of breeze. It will be a livable, commercially viable space. It could even become a regional evening entertainment district if connected smartly to the Plaza 88 Theatre complex and Skytrain stations.
With a 30km/h speed limit, there is no reason trucks can’t continue to use Front Street, as long as we keep the pavement in good repair (to reduce noise) and integrate green buffers. New Westminster’s waterfront has historically been a working one, and the design of the new park reflects that. I suspect development of Front Street could continue that trend, and connect seamlessly. Anyone who has been to the Quays of Old Montreal knows what I am talking about. Rails, trucks, commercial property, and livable space; intelligently planned to work together.
The other way to look at the problem is what happens if we close Front Street to Traffic? Some have suggested pushing the trucks to Royal Avenue or 8th Ave. Evidently, these people do not live on Royal Avenue or 8th Ave. Royal already has difficulty with it’s truck traffic, especially around the big hill between 8th Street and Stewardson. The hill is steep, with a light-controlled intersection at the top, and half-way down. Between laden trucks grumbling to get started on a steep slope going up the hill to truckers using Jake Brakes to go down the hill and the inevitable rattle-and-crack of containers over the necessarily-uneven pavement at the mid-hill intersection, the large number of residents on Royal have enough truck problems of their own. 8th Ave also has it’s own traffic problems, and connects poorly at either end. It is worth noting both Royal Ave and 8th Ave are the locations of two major school-building projects. Generally, truck routes and school zones don’t mix.
So, no. Removing trucks from Front Street probably creates more problems than it solves. However, that doesn’t mean we need to build a 4-lane high-speed truck route to, as people euphemistically say, “keep traffic moving”. Nothing we do on Front Street will solve the problems of congestion at the Queensborough Bridge interchange, on Stewardson and Third Ave, Front and Columbia, Columbia and Brunette or the Brunette and Highway 1 interchange. The last 50 years or study on traffic demand management around the world has shown one thing: if you replace two congested lanes of traffic with four lanes, the only long-term result is four congested lanes.
Keep Front Street at two lanes, keep trucks on it, to reduce the load on other routes, but don’t let the presence of a few trucks take away from a larger vision for a useable and commercially viable Front Street.
* I note if Larco builds a 30-story development on a 5-story parking pedestal, a la Plaza 88 and Carnarvon Canyon, we are into a whole new level of negative impact traffic noise and pollution wise – but that’s another post for another day.
The “Jobs Plan” and lack of leadership
I cast my eyes down, shook my head slowly, rested my forehead in my hands, then had to go outside and get some air. It is rare that a politician so profoundly demonstrates her lack of vision, I had to re-calibrate my cynicism.
What caused me this mental distress strong enough that it caused physical distress? It was Christy Clarke’s “Jobs Plan” announcement at Thompson River University.
Someone has to tell Clark that the industrial revolution is over, that we are now in a post-industrial economy, a “knowledge economy” to borrow Moira Stillwell’s campaign plank. The days when BC jobs used to rely on cutting down trees or digging up dirt are gone. There are a lot of places in the world with trees and minerals, most with more relaxed environmental standards, and many with huge pools of uneducated and semi-skilled workers who will cut the tree or dig the dirt for way less money than the average BC worker. We cannot compete with China in the cheap-labour department. Simple supply and demand, and to race the other countries to the bottom for raw material supplier will destroy the “Greatest Place on Earth”. That is not a future of BC I want to see.
If you want to solve unemployment, if you want to build a home-grown knowledge-based economy, if you want entrepreneurs, wealth-generators, people who can develop the products and ideas that the 21st century needs – you need to have an educated workforce. The only government jobs program that has ever really worked long-term is the public education system.
It has the side benefits of being the most effective health-care program, and the most effective crime prevention program. There are few aspects of a post-industrial society that are not directly linked to the education system.
This is why Premier Clark’s announcement filled me with such dismay. She stood up in front of a University crowd and said she wanted to attract more foreign students, because they pay a lot for an education, and that is, like, free money! At a time when our public schools (K-12 and Universities) are feeling space and financial crunches, at a time when she should be sitting down with the teachers union and setting a course for the decade ahead, at a time when our entire school system is suffering for infrastructure development, Clark’s big plan is to take seats in BC schools that BC students increasingly cannot afford, and sell them to the highest overseas bidders.
Christ, she really does hates teachers, doesn’t she?
This is the public education equivalent of cutting down trees to sell the raw logs overseas. The product of chronic short-term thinking. Who are paying for these seats? People from China, Korea, India, Brazil, the Persian Gulf States. What do these countries have in common? Rapidly expanding economies, and the ability to think about the future. They recognize that an investment in education is the fuel to power their economies. These countries are looking forward at what they can do in the next generation, not back at what the last generation should have been. When will BC have the vision to invest it our own education system, so that the students of British Columbia can compete in the world economy with students from abroad?
This is a failure of vision, and a complete absence of leadership, and speaks very poorly for the future of the Liberal Party. This is a party that cannot afford to drift along on it’s past, because it’s past looks much worse through the lens of hindsight. It needs to look forward. The NDP are resurgent, Adrian Dix is politically astute, is almost as telegenic as Christy Clark, and is clearly brighter. Grampa Cummins will slice off a significant number of “Big C” true Conservatives, who always held their nose when voting for Campbell, because he wasn’t a Socialist. If the Liberals want to have a future, they need a vision, they need to start thinking big, or Christy will be back on CKNW in no time.
I mean, how far can you coast on charm?
More on the Waterfront Vision
Now that some committee meetings are available for streaming at home, we can hear a lot more of the discussion around topics that go to council, discussion that at times is more important than the Staff Reports that are available in the on-line agendas.
The discussions last week of the new vision for Front Street and the Parkade, is a perfect example. Here are a few things I picked up on.
As much as I like green spaces and innovative park design, I don’t want to see half the Parkade preserved as some sort of elevated park/viewpoint over the Pier Park as Councillor McEvoy suggests. Putting a green roof on the white elephant won’t change it from being a white elephant. Making any long-term investment in “improving” the Parkade would be money wasted, as its very existence will continue to be a blight on our waterfront and limit the potential to convert Front Street into human space. Parks should be on the ground, and putting one up in the air that will limit the economic development adjacent is less than optimal.
To hear Councillor McIntosh still talk about further “beautification” of the Parkade was depressing. Her Twitter feed last week read:
“more customers needed to park on Front St. Parkade. Should park ‘n ride be promoted?”
This creates a strange paradox. The Parkade is underused, on average about 25%, up to 38% at peak times. So it seems Councillor McIntosh is looking for way to promote the use of something, in order to justify not demolishing it because it is underused relative to the expense of repairing and maintaining it. I know Councillor McIntosh is on the record as being a “fan of the Parkade”, but it is time to move on. The Parkade is holding back the development of our waterfront, it is a blight on the face of our City, it limits the development of potentially high-value commercial Real Estate on Front Street…it is time to let it go.
I think Councillor Cote put the right stamp on the discussion: the City needs to start looking forward to when the Parkade is no longer there. That will definitely include making some hard decisions about how to accommodate the parking elsewhere in downtown, which will have to follow some sober discussion about how much parking we need downtown. I suspect a large proportion of the Parade traffic is already park-and-ride folks, but there is no doubt downtown businesses can make a compelling case that parking will need to be found for the 200-odd cars that use the Parkade on the average day. I’m not saying tear it down tomorrow, I’m saying let’s start planning for the day we do tear it down, and in the meantime, let’s not dump any money into it. (It is important to note that the City is not, as of yet, dumping money into the Parkade. It operates much like a utility, and has something like a million dollars in its contingency fund. But major refurbishment will be expensive, and I would like to see our money spent elsewhere).
Councillor Cote also points out the importance of connectivity, between downtown and the waterfront, between the MUCF and the Quay, between the Pier Park and Sapperton Landing. If the council elected in November has one “developing the City vision for their term, I hope this is it.
Finally, it was interesting to hear Councillor Harper express his concern about the zombification of the NFPR. When the UBE went down the drain, TransLink made several announcements that the NFPR did not make sense without a UBE, and as such, the NFPR is not a project they are considering further (see final page of this presentation) . Or maybe they said it isn’t a priority. OR maybe they said no such thing. The message has been a little uncertain. I distinctly remember thinking the NFPR was dead after hearing Sany Zein talk to the Public open house, and to Council. So zombie or not, I think we have to take TransLink on their word, and proceed with building the waterfront we want. We have waited 20 years fro TransLink to build the NFPR, and that waiting has slowed down the growth of our commercial centre. Time to cut the cord.
Finally, I disagree with the idea that we need to get the trucks off Front Street to make it a livable, human space. To do that, we need to get rid of the Parkade. We need to clean up the rail area, we need to build a pedestrian-friendly streetscape on the north side, with adequate green space, and we need to build safe crossings of the rails. Keeping the traffic lanes to two lanes and limiting speed to 30km/h is all the traffic control we need. The rails are not going anywhere, and the park itself pays homage to the working waterfront, slow-moving trucks can be accommodated.
Less trucks might be nice, but it will only open up the road for commuters, who will quickly fill the space, and generally drive faster than trucks. This way, we avoid the other big debate: pushing trucks onto Royal Avenue 24 hours a day. There are more than thousand residents of Royal Avenue who know all too well the number of trucks that ignore the night-time truck-closure of that street. This traffic should remain in the commercial parts of town, where the noise impacts are less personal, and affect property values less