Thanks to Matt Laird, you can all enjoy the video of Mondays’ UBE discussion at council. Now I’m making it easy to show how much I paraphrased. Note the twitchy, swarthy guy in the background behind Laird… he looks like a trouble-maker…

Once again, local rabble-rouser Matt Laird took his 5 minutes of allotted council time to keep the issue of the United Boulevard Extension out in front of council.

For those not paying attention, a motion came out of the Working Session on Monday, the essentially told Translink to come back with something better.

Long and short of it, Translink has again managed to put off the “deadline” for securing Federal funds for this project (proving once again that the “deadline” is more like a “justrestingline”), and will work with the City to see if they can find a solution to the Front Street part of the NFPR in time to make the UBE more tenable.

Contrary to some reports, this does not mean that the City has agreed to the UBE, only to keep their minds open and see what TransLink has to offer. This is (in my never humble opinion) the right tack to take. Lets not close our eyes to all offers, let’s see what they can come up with, then decide if the proposed solution improves out City.

The public opinion on this project is such that all 6 council members felt they had to comment on Laird’s delegation and the motion that went forward. For those who missed it, the entire session should be up by some time mid-week at Matt’s website: luther.ca/newwestcouncil. Here are my comments on their comments (of course, there comments are paraphrased from my notes at the meeting, please let me know if I mis-quote any of them!).

4:21, Councillor McEvoy: Is curious to see how Translink plans to improve traffic flow but not increase traffic volume.

This is a significant question, and perhaps cuts to the very heart of the matter. As anyone involved in transportation planning can tell you, traffic usually expands to fill the void. If we double traffic capacity on the NFPR, we can only expect traffic to double, resulting in an equal amount of congestion concomitant with increased noise, pollution, maintenance costs, etc. etc.

6:10, Councillor MacIntosh: Reminded us that the industrial area in Sapperton needs help, they are suffering from congestion and need to be able to move goods to survive. She also reminded us that the Federal Money being offered is intended to increase efficiency and safety of train operations (supported in this case by replacing a level crossing with an overpass). Finally, she made it clear the Translink will be evaluating various options, perhaps including a 2-lane bridge to replace the Bailey, or re-routing Braid industrial Area traffic through Coquitlam, where new road infrastructure is being built already.

These comments brought to my mind (as echoed by Laird), that the problem is commuter cars using our industrial roads as a shortcut, clogging them up so goods-carrying vehicles can not get through. Essentially, this is the same problem as “Rat Running” in the residential parts of Sapperton. It is not clear how this problem for our important industrial citizens will be solved by knocking down some of their businesses to make room for a road that will only serve to funnel more commuter traffic through the industrial area. This is suspiciously close to fighting fire with matches.

If the Feds and Railways have the goal of improving upon the level crossing, and the City’s goal is to make Braid Industrial Area more accessible, then these goals may not coincide with TransLink’s goal to build more roads and Coquitlam’s goal to improve traffic flow to the big box hell (and soon car-oriented development hell) that is United Boulevard.

10:39, Councillor Harper: Started by reminding us that this is a complex problem, and that there will not only not be a single answer, there is also not a single goal. He rhetorically asks if we have “address” truck traffic, then non-rhetorically answers in the affirmative. Harper seems to be the one most in favour of the existing offer from Translink, as he lists the issues relating to the existing situation on Brunette and Columbia, but he fails to close the loop on how any of these problems will be solved by the UBE (although he alludes to “mitigation”) or how building a 4-lane freeway amounts to “reclaiming out waterfront”. He finishes by questioning how long before we have another “opportunity” to get $65 million in Federal money to build our way out of this problem.

After my erlier comments about conflicting goals, I think all of Council should, at least, have a single goal: to make New Westminster a more livable, more prosperous, and more sustainable community. I look back at the Mayor’s annual address, and I see one goal laid out again and again: Make the City more livable. If there are any other goals here, let’s get them out on the table.

I’m not sure how one “addresses” truck traffic. The way I see it, we have three options: have more, have the same amount, or have less. The things that make any single truck safer, less polluting, or quieter are outside the City’s jurisdiction. All we really can control is the number or trucks, and we control that by building the infrastructure to accommodate them. You can argue that we need to build more capacity to accommodate more trucks, but don’t then complain about increased noise and pollution. You can argue that we need to reduce truck traffic, but if you do this, you had better be ready to work with our industrial and commercial citizens to make sure you don’t drive (ha ha) them our of business or to another jurisdiction. The third option is to not build more capacity. This will, of course, require you to do both: :mitigate the already significant pollution and noise issues, and work with our business partners to make the existing infrastructure more efficient for them. In many ways, this is the most difficult option, but might represent the best option for a City like New Westminster.

Finally, the $65 million is a red herring argument. That is not Federal Stimulus money, it is money earmarked for Asia-Pacific Gateway improvement. If New Westminster along with it’s partners at the railway, Translink, and the Province find a way to free up train travel and increase level crossing safety, the money will be there. This is separate from the entire idea that we must do something because “someone else” will pay for a portion of it. That is not really visionary, especially when that “someone else” is actually us, the taxpayer. If it serves the community and other levels of Government are willing to contribute (Pier Park anyone?), then great. But if it doesn’t serve us, we should be responsible enough to say no thank you.

17:25,Councillor Osterman: Recognizes the traffic problem as a problem, citing traffic by the Columbia Square and 20th Street as good examples: “the system needs work”. He agrees that we need the long-term plan in place before we spend money unwisely. He is also of the opinion that New Westminster (and potentially all of Greater Vancouver) is on the “cusp”, but I didn’t really get the idea of what cusp he was speaking of…after all, cusps can be the top of a wave, or they can be the edge of a cliff…

It is interesting that the traffic problems Osterman outlines (primarily, his own hassles commuting in a single occupant vehicle to the airport and back, and trying to get to Council on time) are likely to be made worse by the UBE, and worse yet if the full 4-lane NFPR is built on Front Street. These projects will just move the traffic choke point to his neighborhood.

I think (and hope) he meant the cusp where a larger investment directed at public and alternative transportation will be required to make our Cities livable over into the next Century. This is the time when we start to seriously move away from building transportation infrastructure based on the individual automobile and start building it based on the realities of Peak Oil, Climate change, and what type of City we want to live in 10, 20, 50 years from now. Osterman cited European examples, and I concur that northern Europe is full of amazing cities with enviable transportation systems: Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Oslo, even London.

Imagine…

21:50, Councillor Cote: Surprised me by mentioning that he did not support the motion, as he feels strongly that the Patullo Bridge question must be answered at the same time as the NFPR question, the two solutions must happen hand-in-hand, and with the Patullo decision delayed until the fall, that cannot happen.

I can see both sides of this coin. Yes, ideally, the entire system should be dealt with holistically (and, uh, is sort of required to under CEAA, but I digress). However, the Patullo decision might just be out of TransLink’s hands, as Premier Falcon is going to want to cut the ribbon on that one at the most opportune time. So if Translink can run the numbers with each of the three most likely Patullo upgrade outcomes (refurbishing the existing bridge; replacing with a 4-lane bridge; replacing with expanded capacity) then the City may have something that can be fairly evaluated. Now, Cote surely knows more than I about the plans, as he sat through the TransLink presentation, and I am hearing about it third hand, so I am not going to be critical of him for his principled stand.

24:50, Councillor Williams: Had little to say, but going 6th, most of it had already been said, but she reminded us once again that the City willing to agree to anything unless the entire NFPR routing is dealt with concurrently.

Overall, Council’s position on this remains clear. Although there is a spectrum of views from the Councillors, they all reflect different approaches to the same point: The UBE is part of the NFPR, and we, as a City, will not accept the piecemeal management of this major regional route through the City.

It will be interesting to see what comes back in June. With the City Engineers working on the project with TransLink, they are unlikely to come back without something they can recommend to Council. If Matt Laird’s suggestion that the physical limits at several locations along the proposed NFPR routes will preclude the 4-lane truck highway some dream about, then we might be in for quite a fight in June.

Just in time for an election campaign.

Osmosis is a process where a solvent will move, without any external energy input, towards an area with more solute, through a semi-permeable membrane. It is a fundamental process for life, as all of our cell walls are semi-permeable membranes, and it is osmosis that regulates what goes into and out of your cells.

It works like this. If you have a membrane material, say a thin sheet of polyimide, and use it to construct a barrier between two reservoirs of water, then fill one reservoir with salt water, and one reservoir with purified water, there will be a net flow of water from the pure water side over to the salty water side. This flow would continue until the salty water is so diluted by the pure water, that the residual osmotic pressure cannot overcome the drag of the membrane. Or until you run out of pure water.

This is exactly why pouring salt on a slug makes it shrivel up. Slugs are mostly water, have semi-permeable skin, and generate a lot of mucus to maintain their fluid balance (amongst other uses). If you pour salt on the slug, some of it dissolves in the mucus, making it salty. This causes osmotic pressure, which forces water out of the slug’s body to dilute the now-salty mucus, which causes more of the salt to dissolve, and so on until most of the water in the slug is pushed out of the slug, and the slug dries out while immersed in it’s own fluids. Nasty.

This also explains why most fish can only live in salt water or freshwater, and if they are transported from one to the other, they die. Most fish have complex osmosis regulation systems based on their need to keep from desiccating in the ocean (as the salty water is constantly drawing their body’s water out) or bloating up in freshwater (as their salty blood draws fresh water in). Fish like salmon that move from one to the other have to go through a complex metamorphosis, known as smoltification to survive the transition. Sharks have a unique system where they retain urea, the waste product mammals turn in to urine, in their blood to keep it osmotically in balance with the ocean. This is why shark meat tastes simply terrible unless it has been boiled long enough to boil the urea out. If you are offered a rare shark steak, don’t take it.

There is nothing magic about osmosis, it has a pretty simple explanation, and there are thousands of examples of it working in nature, and in man-made systems.

Which brings me back to the topic of the month. I was discussing the United boulevard Connector with a friend who is a keen observer of both science and politics. He remarked:

“The laws of membrane dynamics suggest that the net effect will be to bring more car molecules into New Westminster than are removed, since the partial pressures are much higher in Coquitlam”.

…brilliantly tying the flow of traffic to the concept of osmosis.

There is the impression, I think mistaken, that the UBE will somehow alleviate a couple of nagging traffic problems in New Westminster: “rat running” through Sapperton neighbourhoods, and traffic backups up the hill on Braid.

The second is a ridiculous claim. When this $170 Million is spent and gone, cars and trucks will still need to turn left at the bottom of Braid, and there will still need to be a traffic light there. The sight lines will still be crappy, the merging issues will still exist. Some of those left-turners will now turn right and go up the one-lane ramp to the “T” intersection (to the next light), but they will still have to wait at the light on Brunette, as the through traffic will still be there. So the same cars (well, likely more, but that is my next point) will need to pass through that intersection, and will still need to stop at the same lights. How will this reduce back-ups again?

The first claim is equally silly. When (soon-to-be) 10 lanes of Highway 1 traffic and 6 lanes of Lougheed Highway traffic hit 2 lanes of Brunette and 2 lanes of Braid, there are going to be backups, and people are going to bail out onto the side streets. Adding an additional three lanes to the Bailey Bridge is not going to relieve this problem, it is going to exacerbate it, by bringing more cars into the City.

A clever person might argue that by building this overpass we are also increasing capacity out of the City, and therefore there will be fewer cars! This is where osmosis comes back in.

New Westminster is a City with an enviable Alternative Mode Share . Because we are a compact City with very good transit infrastructure, people in New Westminster tend to drive less than most Cities in Metro Vancouver. Coquitlam is another story. It is spread out; with much more limited transit development other than bus. Its entire commercial land base is built to only be accessed by automobiles. The commercial area of Coquitlam on our eastern border is a good example, but perhaps even more telling is their “Town Centre”, a shopping mall separated from their only real transit hub (the West Coast Express Station) by no less than 9 lanes of Lougheed Highway and a half a kilometer of parking lots. The Proposed Fraser Mills development shows this is a trend Coquitlam is not looking at changing any time soon.

(click image to enhance pie-viewing experience)

Good for them. Coquitlam can continue to develop their City the way their elected officials and citizenry wish. If I don’t like it, I don’t have to live there. Fine.

However, because of their different planning, Coquitlam has lots of cars. They generate a lot of traffic. Cars, (in our now-finally-assembled allegory), are like water molecules. Open spaces between cars, and empty back streets and laneways in Sapperton and across the City (i.e. a lack of congestion) are like the salt dissolved between the water molecules and attracting them. The United Boulevard Extension is the semi-permeable barrier. The cars can pass across it, the empty spaces cannot. And since there are more cars on the Coquitlam side every day, the opening of the semi-permeable membrane means there will always be a flow into New Westminster that more than compensates for any flow out of New Westminster, until the osmotic pressure is relieved. And the worst part is that the more we do on our side to relieve congestion (say, riding our bikes, taking the Skytrain, or just walking to the store), the more empty space we create, and the more osmotic pressure that will be exerted across the membrane.

The UBE will not solve any traffic problems in New Westminster. It will only exacerbate them.

“If there was an easy answer, then it most likely would have been found already, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation”

–me. Just now.

I see the discussion on the United Boulevard Extension entering an interesting phase: the wild enthusiasm phase, when everyone all of the sudden has a quick answer to “solve the problem”. I have read long explanations of better routes, I have seen hastily-scribbled lines drawn on a Google map printouts, I have seen Rube Goldbergian schemes to get trucks across a set of railway tracks. As much as I like to encourage creativity, I don’t think this is productive in our current situation. Here is why.

We are all “traffic experts” when caught in traffic, we are all “transportation planners” when waiting for a bus in the rain, and we are all “NHL Referees” while watching Canucks games.

Every time I start thinking about the NFPR, encapsulated rail lines, etc, I feel this itch to grab a pencil and start drawing. I call up Google Earth and imagine straighter routes, tunnels, grade separations, sightlines… but in reality, I’m just not trained to understand the nuances of these designs. I am not aware of the standards for road design or rail corridors mandated by Transport Canada, the Ministry of Transportation, or any other agency. I don’t know how many yards of concrete it takes to build 500m of bridge, or how big a footing you need in specific soils. I have no idea how much it costs to install a traffic light. I don’t know who owns which pieces of land upon which the corridors of my dreams are sketched.

For the same reason I shouldn’t perform liver surgery or install wings on airliners, I should not be drawing up plans for a highway: I don’t have the skills. Let’s leave that to the professionals.

I can hear you now: “Those so-called professionals at TransLink got us into this mess with their terrible designs!” But I suspect the problem is not technical incompetence of the engineers, it is that the problem they were tasked to solve was poorly defined, or simply wrong. They didn’t understand the problem from New Westminster’s perspective. To come up with a technically feasible solution that addresses our concerns, they have to know our concerns.

That is where we should come in, and that is what public consultation should be about. We need to define for the City what is and isn’t acceptable to the residents of Sapperton, and to the residents of New Westminster. What are the pressures that need to be addressed? How can the needs of Braid businesses be met, without impacting Sapperton homes? How much will New Westminster be expected to give to make up for Coquitlam’s failed transportation plans? Where do these potentially competing ideas fit in the inevitable battle of priorities?

Once we have that discussion as a community, then we let the professionals come up with a viable solution, and we can comment on whether the solution properly balances our needs. In this case, I would love us as citizens to get together and came up with a vision, a list of demands, a list of priorities, etc., and then go to TransLink and tell them to adjust their plans to fit our vision. When I talked a few posts ago about failed vision from our local Council, this is what I was getting at. How could TransLink be expected to fit something to New Westminster’s plan, when New Westminster had no model to work from?

But even before we do that, can we all just take one more step back and ask the biggest question of all: Why are we doing this? Does this project solve any problems? Are there bigger problems to be solved with $170 Million of your dollars?

Can anyone tell me how this overpass solves anything?

Wow, what a night. There were a lot of people at the Justice Institute last night, and lots of lively discussion about the United Boulevard Extension. Now, I might be biased, but the overwhelming message from people I talked to was that this project is a non-starter.

The TransLink staff might have been a little over whelmed by the turnout, the room was often packed beyond comfort, and it was hard to spend a lot of time at each display poster, as there were so many people about. The displays were a little short on detail, and a lot short on rationale. But the plans were pretty clear.

The questionnaire offered to us for comments began with a strange question, and one that was hard to answer: “Are all the problems defined”?

Hmmm… there are vague references to moving goods, greenhouse gasses, and bad intersections, even a suggestion that the Bailey Bridge was dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists, many references to “Challenges”, but it was hard to determine how any “problem” was being solved.

Truck Traffic? The trucks backed up at the Bailey bridge pale in comparison to the trucks backed up at Front Street or Stewardson Way. This may be a choke point, but hardly the only one.

Truck Pollution? Too many trucks belching diesel on the Brunette will somehow be cured by adding more room for trucks?

Cycling access? The Bailey bridge is pretty bike-friendly, as it is one lane (no on-coming traffic) and everyone pretty much crosses it at cycling pace. More importantly, the bike trail behind the Braid Station connects seamlessly, and the stretch on United Boulevard east of there is great for bikes: but ironically built too narrow for 4 lanes of traffic and bike lanes: no plan here to widen United. This project may hurt cycling access.

Seems to me, the only real “problem” being addressed here is the $65 Million dollars of Federal money that has to be committed by Christmas, before it turns into a pumpkin.

That seems like a lousy reason to spend another $100 Million and to invite more trucks and cars into our City. At least until there is a plan, with committed funding sources, to manage the traffic once it enters out City.

The good news is that I heard very encouraging things from the Mayor and Councillors who attended. This is not a done deal, and they all assured me no decision would be made unless it served the people of New Westminster. At this point, I am taking them at their word.

I was simultaneously encouraged and concerned by the Mayor’s words on the CBC this morning, which I transcribe here, in their entirety, for the record:

Why this project?

“In the lower mainland, there is properly not another pug for the transportation system or the trucking than there is on the Translink portion of the Gateway Project. That goes all the way from our Queensborough Bridge right through the City and ending up at the Braid Street Connection which goes onto Highway #1. And so, with this back-up, they have been trying to fix this for years and years since I’ve been here and we are in the process now of looking to see how do we do this so it mitigates the problems for the travel industry, but as importantly, how do we take care of the Citizens of New Westminster with as least an intrusion as possible.”

On removing houses:

“Well, first of all, before the decision is made that we will lose anything, we will make the decision. That has not been made. We made it perfectly clear to TransLink that we ware going to go to the public and let them see what the four options are, before council makes a decision of what their choice is. I can tell you, probably, there is no-one who wants the disruption you are talking about, and we are not going to support some disruption. Let’s see the people tonight, there will be lots of them coming out, I’m sure.”

Quote from Sapperton McBride Residents Association President (paraphrased): Residents were surprised, didn’t like “freeway interchange” design, wondered why were these options never raised in the past?

“Well, because they just came up (chuckle). So it is very simple. It was just brought to our attention, and as soon as it was brought to our attention, we said “Just wait a minute, we’ll take this back to the public, you will hear from the people of New Westminster, you’ll hear from this council, and then we will sit down and we will see what had to be done, if we want to go ahead with this. Because, if there is no benefit to the City of New Westminster, there is not going to be much support to go forward at all. We are trying to help the region, but the region has to make sure we are kept whole, that this City isn’t affected by just being a transition place for cars to drive through and hurt our neighborhoods. I can guarantee you that.”

On Federal Funding:

“The deadline for the matching funds, which is approximately $60-65 Million, is at the end of December, I think December 31st. Now let’ face it, it is good to have some additional funding that comes come through, but we have to be very careful that what we are going to do is not create more problems than what this amount of money will give. Now, since we have been in this situation for this piece of property or this roadway, it has gone three times the value that it was ten years ago, since I have been here. This comes right back to the funding. The funding for transportation has to be changed. It is no longer so simple that you give something that is so important to everybody in the region no method of funding. And that’s what this is. Now we are trying to match the $65 Million, it is still going to be short, we are going to have to come up with another 25 or 30 Million, if there is a particular choice that is made, because the choice that looks best for the City is what is called the “T”choice, in the shape of a “T”, and that T is I Think $170 Million dollars now, and the other choices may save them a bit of money, $120 Million or $150 Million dollars, but let’s face it, this is forever in this neighborhood, in this community, and we are going to go for the one, if we go forward, that is going to make sense for us, as well as the region.”

Where is the Grand plan? How does this fit a bigger plan?

“I have no idea, I have asked many times why TransLink has this piece of the Gateway. Why; no-one has ever been able to explain to me. But I can tell you this, we are also, with the uh, Translink organization, we have given them things that we need. We have given them the Front Street, which is our main downtown area, which is part of this, has to come forward, we have to have and agreement about how that will be fixed, if it is un… if it is encapsulation , if it is tunneling, but that has to be dealt at the same time as this. It is part of the broad corridor that is there. The Brewery study has to be done, that ii s where the old Labatt’s is, that corner has to be looked at, if you look at it: it is part of it. Then when you come down to McBride, You’ll see that’s where the trucks all stop because there is light down there that comes up from the bottom and it needs to have a tunnel. Now we’ve talked about that. We have talked about the bridge ramps that are coming. All of these things are part of a bigger picture you are asking about, and that’s what we are negotiating right now with the TransLink people”.

What about tonight’s meeting?

“I think the people will come forward, The question Mr. Pinkerton asked “how come we didn’t know before” will be answered pretty quickly. They’ll show all the slides, of what they want to do, and they will have some of us there saying “wait a minute, take a look at this, this is what we have been talking about for the past 10 years, and you people give us your opinions”. Now, I think we will end up, at the end of the day, people are going to say if it has to come, this is the particular one that looks like the one that we may be able to live with. Now give it back to the Council, let us negotiate with the Translink people. The council has been here long enough that, we don’t sit in a room with them and our staff and let anyone run over us. We’ll be alright.”

That last line was encouraging, as it reminded me of the neon sign/installation art by Martin Creed, visible over the DTES from the Skytrain when pulling out of the Stadium station. In big, white, friendly letters, the sign simply says: “everything is going to be alright”.

But I was also concerned that in the ten years he “has been here”, none of the traffic problems have been solved between the Queensborough and Braid. Yes, there are multiple jurisdictions, multiple pressures, no money, etc. But I think after 10 years of no action, our local leaders should stop looking for others to make their plans for them, and step up with some policy. After 10 years, we should have stronger statements from our local leaders than “let’s see what they offer, and if there is outcry from the public, then we will react”.

Instead of winging about our traffic fate, New Westminster should say what we will and will not accept for Front Street, for Columbia, for Braid, for Royal and for Eighth Ave. That way, when TransLink or MoT show up with hastily-assembled plan to patch one area, the answer from the City is is easy: does this meet the City’s policy objectives, our Master Plan? This year, the City is updating it’s Master Transportation Plan. Let’s include the higher-level policy statements about how we want to move cars, goods, and people thorugh our City. Let’s stop waiting for others to identify and scab over our traffic woes: let’s make policy now and get ahead of this issue. Beats waiting ten more years. The time is now.