Tag: Urban Living

Trip Dairy 2023

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I could have sworn I already wrote this post, but looking through the archives, I apparently never did! It is the long-awaited follow up to this post, where I reported on the results of the 2017 TransLink Trip Diary and what is says about how New Westies get around.

The Trip Diary (2023 results here) is the most comprehensive survey of regional transportation use in the TransLink area. Unlike the census data that only asks folks their most common way of getting to work (or school), the Trip Diary counts all trips over a week, and asks that people report on all modes used, not just their most common mode, and also collects more data about trip distance, municipal-level data, and more.

That last post I did in 2019 (there were actually two, here and here), reported that between the 2011 and 2017 Trip Diaries, New Westminster had grown 8.9% in population, the number of trips taken by New West residents during the survey went up a little more than this, but the number of car trips actually went down. All new trips generated were by transit, walking or cycle. In the second post, I dug a bit deeper to show that the change in the number of car trips does not correlate with population change. Turns out there are many factors driving traffic and traffic congestion other than the simplistic rubric that population=traffic.

The data form the 2023 Trip Diary has been out for a while now, so I can update those tables to see how things have progressed, and there is both good and bad news for sustainable transportation. Here’s the chart:

Though population continues to increase in New Westminster (30% between 2011 and 2023), and the number of trips over the same period increased by about the same amount, the headline is that the number of trips as a driver has only gone up 4%, and the driver mode is now less than 50% of all trips. We can now confidently say most New Westies don’t drive for most of their trips. But there is a lot of detail hidden in this chart.

The number driver trips did increase slightly from 2017 to 2023, which offset the decrease over the previous 6 years, while passenger trips have gone up steadily. This may have something to do with the rise of ride share services (which would translate to more cars on the road and worsening traffic), but may also represent an increase in carpooling (which would not result in more cars on the road).

The number of trips by Transit has gone up 19% over the same 12 years, even as it has gone down slightly over the second half of that period. No doubt the impact of COVID is showing up here, and though post-COVID ridership recovery was well on it way in 2023, it wasn’t until 2025 that ridership across most of the region returned to pre-COVID levels. Unchanged from 2017 is the headline fact that New Westminster has the highest Transit ridership of any City in the Lower Mainland (see below).

Where we see the biggest shifts are in Active Transportation – walking trips up 153% over the 12 years and cycling trips up 338%. Overall active modes doubled over the 12 years and were clearly the biggest growth area. New West has always been a walkable city, and is slowly becoming a cycling one (and yes, E-bikes are a big part of this, because hills). Here are the major modes compared across the region:

Yellow highlights three highest numbers in the region, green highlights the three lowest numbers.

New Westminster, when compared to the region, has the highest transit ridership, is third highest (after only Vancouver and North Van City) in walking, is seventh out of 17 for cycling, has the third lowest (after Vancouver and Burnaby) number of drivers and the second lowest (after Vanouver) number of people in cars. As one would expect from a compact, dense, livable community with exceptional transit service.

IWD 2026

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Today is International Women’s Day, and it always feel weird to be “Mayorsplaining” the experience of women and girls to the majority of the City who are not cis guys. Especially as I am surrounded by so many smart, strong, and bold women who are leading in New Westminster. So I’ll take this opportunity to highlight a few of the books that have guided my learning about cities and hope some of the dudes who follow me do their own learning and work to support more equitable and just cities as a path to a more equitable and just world.

The obvious first book is Jane Jacobs’ “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”. Still relevant 65 years after it was written, the book was written as a critique (attack) on orthodox city planning and became an important part of the paradigm shift that changed the planning profession.  My own copy has suffered greatly from dog-earing and marginal noting, as I return to the many insights in here round the role of sidewalks as social places, the value of framing the experience of children in a public space, and the difference between a City designed for cars an one designed for people. https://tinyurl.com/5ezdpkx2

When Janette Sadik-Khan wrote “Streetfight”, she had just left her role as Transportation Commissioner of New York City, where she led bold (and ultimately highly successful) initiatives to give the streets back to the people of New York, a City where most people don’t include driving as part of their everyday lives, but most public space was still given to cars. She was instrumental in making New York a cycling city, in the redesign of Times Square and other public spaces to emphasize gathering and community in the most famous city in the world. And one quote in this book is burned in my head: “When you push the status quo, it pushes back. Hard.” https://tinyurl.com/bdaj7e8d

One thing these two books reference, sometimes obliquely, is that cities are traditionally designed to serve an outmoded ideal – the single male breadwinner of the nuclear family. This is simply not how most people live today, and we need to change how our cities work if we want to address the needs of today. This is more explicitly set out in Leslie Kern’s “Feminist City”. This book opens up new ways to see a city and a community (at least new to folks like me), and asks a lot of questions, even if I think it falls short of providing answers to those questions (I’m hoping for a sequel!) https://tinyurl.com/szt42f3y

Have a meaningful International Women’s Day, and pass the knowledge!

CRPP update

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

As I mentioned in my last Council report, we had a presentation on the first annual evaluation of the Crises Response Pilot Project. I don’t usually report out on presentations here (there was no decision for Council to make), but this one led to some interesting discussion and is centre of mind for many people in New Westminster. It is worth taking the time to unpack the report a bit, it had both good and bad news.

For those folks new to the scene, the Crises Response Pilot Project is a collection of actions and resources meant to address the three overlapping crises impacting New Westminster and communities across the province in the echo of the pandemic: homelessness, untreated mental health conditions, and a toxic drug supply. Like Many cities, we were putting a lot of resources into clean-up and “public order” responses, and were into making progress, while staff got more overwhelmed and the community got more frustrated. It was clear doing more of what we were doing wasn’t going to get us further ahead.

Working with the province, the health authority, non-profit providers and the broader community, The City adopted a three-part pilot project, the details of which you can read about (or watch the video) here. We also committed to having an external evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the project, and to let us know what is working and what isn’t. Last meeting we received our first report from that external evaluation.

Dr. Anne Tseng, a Sociologist from Douglas College is the person performing this evaluation work, and also used hew academic expertise to develop the evaluation goals, metrics and methodology for analysis, and as some of those were challenged by members of Council during last week’s meeting, I felt it important to remind them that these metrics were agreed upon unanimously by Council back in April. It is frustrating and counterproductive to attack a person working for the City for doing the very thing Council asked her to do. But such is politics today.

“The pilot project is designed to be trauma-informed and people-centered in responding to individuals with lived and living experience of the harms associated with the three crises. Furthermore, the pilot project also incorporates strategies to address the externalities of the three crises that have spillover consequences for residents, businesses, and interest-holders in the community.”

There is good and bad news in this report, but there are also recommendations to improve data gathering and progress tracking, and recommendations to improve upon the deliverables. There is the raw data in here that tells one story, such as the hundreds of referrals to health services, including IHART and ICM, and the 135 applications to transitional and supportive housing that CRPP staff have helped facilitate. There is also, unfortunately, a bottleneck in transitional and supportive housing that means most referrals are not resulting in people getting into a housing stream. The completion of 52 units of housing at 6th and Agnes will help significantly with this, but it is still under construction, and the need for shelter services will remain unabated until housing investments ramp up to meet the need.

The operations team have also been effective, and we are receiving positive feedback from a lot of residents and businesses downtown that the streets are much cleaner and better maintained in some “trouble spots”, but we are not around the corner completely on this, and it is still a place where significant resources are being spent.

The Community Liaison Officers are responding to calls (you know about the One Number to Call, right?) and addressing issues, but increasingly they are being proactive – getting out to problem areas before the complaints or concerns come in, and again we are starting to receive some positive feedback from the community on this work. Most concerns are related to encampments and tents, and I again refer you to the point above about the desperate need for safe accessible shelter space in the short term, and more robust housing investments in the medium term.

One part of the report that is strong on recommendation (that is, where we are falling short) is where we are not effectively getting the information about this project out to residents and businesses. Simply put, not enough people know about the program, and are still asking “what is the City doing about all this?” It is also clear that in the absence of good information, misinformation inevitably fills the void. With a topic as politically charged as this one, fear and stigma are amplified through that misinformation.

“…residents mentioned the stereotypes and stigma attached to individuals experiencing the crises and the need for better education and awareness to combat misinformation. Several participants also mentioned the need to not only spread awareness but to foster empathy and understanding. A participant attributed misinformation to the media, which they described ‘drives fear and feeds into stereotyping.’”

Council has heard clearly from downtown businesses that the false narrative being presented about downtown – that it is a dangerous place where businesses are failing – has been harmful to both businesses and to people needing support. It is incumbent on all of us to fill that fear-based information void with good information about the work being done.

On the good news side, the communication upwards to senior governments has brought positive results. Advocacy to the Ministry of Housing and Housing BC has created better staff-to-staff collaboration, investments to improve shelter services in the City, and ongoing work to develop the next phase of supportive and transitional housing. Similarly, the advocacy to health partners has brought increased and improved resources to the City, including collaboration toward an adult Situation Table (to coordinate resource supports in a client-focused way).

We were able to recently announce that our original $1.4 Million grant from the federal Emergency Treatment Fund has been enhanced with another $290,000 grant from the same fund. This demonstrates that the Federal Government recognizes we are doing something innovative and proactive here in New Westminster that will ultimately save the health care system more than this ETF contribution, while building community resiliency. The Federal Government is noting that New Westminster is taking a more proactive approach to the same challenges that are impacting communities across Canada, and that the model of inter-governmental and inter-agency collaboration we are showcasing here is scalable to other communities facing the same challenges.

This report comes as the CRPP is still in its initiation phase. We have a lot more work to do, and we are continuing to measure our work so we can adapt as the need on the ground requires. Having an external evaluator hold us accountable to the community, and to our funders, is an important commitment we have made in launching this pilot.

I’m really proud of the work staff in the City and our partner agencies are doing, and am proud of New Westminster residents and businesses in supporting us in this approach. This is what it means to live in a City that is a community.

London Street

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

If you follow Council (and if you don’t, what are you doing reading this!?) you have probably seen the saga of the London Street bikeway project. Before I report on all of Monday’s Council meeting (who has time to write?) I want to report out on where Council landed on this project and, as always, explain where my thinking so even people who don’t agree with my vote on the project understand what is behind it.

The City approved the Active Transportation Network Plan in 2022 after a couple of years of work. It is a multi-year project that is one of the pillars of the City’s (now 10 year old?) Master Transportation Plan, and also supports the City’s Official Community Plan and Climate Action strategies. At the core of it is the idea that active transportation users (cyclists, scooters, people with motorized mobility aides, etc) require a network, not just spot improvements or reactive treatments. We would never build a road that connects to no other roads, but for too long that has been the practice with safe AT infrastructure. In cities from Vancouver to Montreal to Paris to Hoboken, building the network is key to making the shift to a safe and functional transportation system that works for everyone.

It is worth mentioning that I ran on this. During my campaign for mayor three years ago, I talked about the ATNP whenever I could, and told the community that committing to a 5-year build out and getting the first couple of years built was a goal for my first term. This is a commitment I made to the community, based on previous work when I was on Council.

The Network Plan lays out optimal routes, connecting existing routes like London Street and Agnes to new infrastructure to complete the network, and making improvements on some of those existing routes to move them closer to (if not immediately) “All Ages and Abilities”, meaning most users, 8 to 80 years old, would feel comfortable and safe using the route. This will happen over about five years, leveraging senior government active transportation funding to pay for much of it.

London Street has been a local bikeway for more than a decade (since Wayne Wright days), and is a key low-gradient Uptown connection between Crosstown routes and destinations to the East and Burnaby. It was included in year two route planning, and staff developed two design ideas to improve comfort and safety on the route. When those plans were presented to the public, we got some strong feedback from residents on London and Dublin streets, who were clear they didn’t really like either of the two plans developed. So staff took a step back and did some extended consultation to get more feedback and worked on iterating the plan to address the major concerns.

It’s worth noting that at the same time, two other routes in the City were consulted on, and though the feedback was not as intense as London Street, staff still made some minor changes to the plan to address the feedback they heard on those routes as well. This is how public consultation results in iteration of designs, and this is a good thing.

Monday at Council, it was decided to adopt a modified plan for London Street. This is neither Plan A (where two-way travel is maintained, but with the loss of 39% of the street parking) nor Plan B (where most parking was preserved, but introduced a series of alternate one-way sections for vehicles). In the extended consultation it was clear that for London Street folks, the scale of lost street parking was concern #1, and though more preferred the one-way system to manage through-traffic “rat runners” and speeds, it also raised concerns about access and confusion, and there wasn’t a clear preference for this model either.

Staff took this feedback and considerably reduced the changes on the street while emphasizing a few intersection treatments to reduce though-traffic while prioritizing access for local residents. This was an issue repeatedly raised by the neighbourhood, and one of the aspects that made London Street feel less safe for active transportation and other users. The key parts of this plan is to modify the intersection at 20th and London to stop rush hour access and “rat running”, and improved safety at 12th Street and London, which has been a long-standing bone of contention for cyclists especially. The preservation of sight lines at intersections and installation of refuge areas (“pullover pockets”) on each block where vehicles can more easily and predictably pass mean a reduction of about 9% of parking spaces (45 spaces over the 545 free street parking spaces along that 2km stretch of road), a significant change from the 39% originally proposed, but with significant safety and convenience benefits for all road users.

Staff and Council are committed to building a safer All Ages and Abilities network so more people can safely and comfortably get around the City, but are also committed to listening to feedback from the community and iterating plans and designs wherever possible to best accommodate community concerns while keeping safety of all road users as the top priority. I appreciate the many people who took part in this consultation, and though no-one got exactly what they wanted, often the best result of community consultation is finding a path that more people can support when competing priorities unenviably arise.

Curbside space is the most contentions space in any urban city, the place where competing priorities are most clear. If we cannot afford to lose a single free street parking space, then we will never be able to build safer transportation infrastructure, this is a simple geometry problem. Finding balance and compromise based on clear priorities is the best we can do, it is the art of governance. I think we found that balance on London Street best we could.

Our City Our Homes (Intro)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The City of New West is facing the same housing pressures as every other City in the region, and as most large urban areas in Canada: not enough housing to meet increasing demand, housing priced out of reach of most working people, inadequate rental housing supply, and a paucity of supportive and transitional housing to lift people out of homelessness. Looking back at my own words from seven years ago, I can confidently say we have made some progress here in New West, but the scale of the regional problem has expanded faster than our response.

Over the last year or two, we have seen more action from senior governments, mostly directed at the market housing end of the Housing Spectrum, and directed at getting housing approved faster, presuming that local governments not approving housing is the main challenge we need to address.

Of course, New Westminster has met its Housing Orders targets and exceeded its Regional Growth Strategy estimates for new market and rental housing need. We have approved every unit of supportive and affordable housing that has come across the Council table. At the same time we are falling far short of our Housing Needs for affordable and supportive housing, and our unsheltered homeless numbers are going up. I’m no more an economist than Patrick Condon, but this suggests to me that serious investment in transitional and supportive housing from senior governments is what is needed to bring housing security to all residents, not what they are currently offering:

So while we work on getting more investment in non-market housing, we are also doing the work that senior governments demand of us to assure our housing policies, Official Community Plan, and permitting processes are updated to support housing growth concomitant with regional population growth.

Back in June, staff brought to Council a set of proposed Official Community Plan changes that, when taken together, assure the City is meeting both the letter and the spirit of the Provincial housing legislation changes (remember bills 44, 46, and 47?) in a way that fits our local context and addresses our local housing need, and at the same time addresses the various initiatives around infill density, family-friendly housing, and affordable housing under our Housing Accelerator Fund commitment to the federal government. This is bringing to culmination a big body of work that included Public consultation framed under “Our City Our Homes” that has been going on for about a year now.

The implementation of this work (and adoption of the OCP changes) has been delayed a bit by some weirdly technical procedural issues (some of which I talked about in my last Newsletter but wont unpack again, subscribe here). This means the timeline Council unanimously agreed to last November will be a bit delayed, and the OCP updates won’t be considered until early in the fall. This gives a bit more time to unpack some of the work that was presented back in June. The final reports when they come back to us in September might be structured differently to address those procedural issues, but the intent is to ask Council to consider the questions raised in the June report.

Over the next week or two, I will write some more posts here that go through the sections of that report, hoping folks can better understand the City’s approach to the new legislation when consideration of the OCP update happens. There are some details in here Council will need to consider, and I cannot predict where those discussions will land, nor am I taking a position on where they should land. On some issues the public consultation has provided a pretty clear idea which way the community thinks the City should go, on others the feedback is less clear, but staff have strong technical recommendations. Ultimately, these details are a discussion for Council and going into them with an open mind, it will be fascinating to see where we land.

Happenings

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The spring-summer transition is a busy time, rivaling only September in the calendar challenges in this job. Besides the work, which also ramps up at this time, there are a lot of community events to take part in. It is really hard to report out on it all.

The (almost) regular schedule of Newsletters has been keeping me on track, and i usually talk about events over there, but this week I decided to switch things up a bit. I send my Newsletter subscribers (you can join here – its cost-free and spam-free! and shows up in your inbox about every two weeks) an update on a couple of slightly controversial issues in the City and how they relate to our public engagement efforts, and I’m coming over to this website to do a bit of a picture essay of some of the community events I’ve taken part in since Hyack Weekend that I haven’t had a chance to talk about much out on social media. So without too much writing:

I was honoured to attend the Change of Command ceremony at the Royal Westminster Regiment. I have really enjoyed working with outgoing commander LCol Greg Chan over the last couple of years, and the relationship between the City and the Regiment has been really positive. Incoming commander LCol Clint Uttley is well known in the New West community, and takes over at a time when the Regiment building is refreshed, but the work of the regiment is feeling new pressures and urgency. It was nice to be able to reiterate the utmost support this City has for the regiment and the soldiers and officers who work so hard to be prepared for whatever call comes.
I’m a proud Brow of the Hill resident, and was able to spend a bit of time at the Brow Garden Party put on by the Brow of the Hill Residents Association in the little park known as Cornwall. I even got to meet a few new neighbours, and catch up with a few I hadn’t seen in while.
I’m also an irrationally big fan of Mariachi, In this case, at the New to New West Intercultural Festival and Information Fair at NWSS, hosted by WINS Local Immigration Partnership, with support form the City. At this event hundreds of people met to learn about resources available for newcomers and share supports that can make New West and Burnaby easier places to land, prosper, and raise your family.
The first week of June was Seniors Week in New West, which means i attended several events, from the Sapperton Pensioners 90th Birthday party to the Resource Fair and Social Dinner at Century House (where you can join if you are 50+!). I also joined the Police and Fire Chiefs for panel discussion on Seniors Safety in the City.
June 8th is Philippine Independence Day, and in New West that means the annual raising of the Philippine Flag at Friendship Gardens. This is always a fun event with the singing of national anthems (Canada and Philippines) and traditional Philippine songs, dancing, and a lot of photos!
There were a few other events during the first week of June to celebrate the Pinoy community, including lunches with several groups, all cumulating with the annual Pinoy Festival at Swangard Stadium. This is the biggest Filipino festival in BC, with music, booths, food, cultural displays and celebrations of the diverse indigenous communities of the Philippine islands.
June is Field Trip season as well, which means a few different school groups came to visit City Hall. This is always a fun chance to talk to elementary school kids about what City Hall is and what the job of Mayor is like. They always have interesting questions about me and about the City, and almost universally love seeing the guest book in City Hall signed by people from the Queen of England to the King of Pop. They are inexplicably less impressed by Raymond Burr.
I also took my State of the City address to an audience of slightly older Youth at Century House. The questions here were equally fun, if a bit more challenging as topics from homelessness, climate action, the poisoned drug crisis, and scooters and bike lanes were top of mind for the mostly high school aged audience.
The Queensborough Kids Festival at QCC was a massive success, with hundreds of kids and their families listening to music and seeing performances, doing crafts and activities, and enjoying perfect picnic weather.
The Sapperton Pensioners Hall hosted an incredible spectacle last weekend, with the Vancouver Battlezone 2025 – Hip Hop Dance competition for all ages, with competitors from around North America and even Europe, DJ Oscar from New West and Shash’u from Montreal put the beats down and the crowd was into it. The street dance culture is such a breath of fresh air – youth of all sizes and shapes competing and supporting each other. So much fun to watch.
Finally, the 36th New West Pecha Kucha Night was a rousing success, with 9 people presenting short talks and fast slides on the things they are passionate – from garbage to Metis history to citrus fruits. Even Tasha had fun!

Go logo

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

By now, most of you have probably seen something about a new logo at the City, or have seen it pop up in Social Media. If you want to get a sense of the thinking behind the logo, there is a great video produced by the City to put it in context:

There is also a bunch more background info here that includes discussions of new wordmarks and colour palates that will be used as design guides in new City digital and printed communications.

I have of course received some feedback on the new logo, and so far it’s about 50/50, which is about as positive as one can expect with something as subjective as this, especially when you recognize people are much more likely to write if angry than they are if happy. Examples from the two more recent emails I received on this:

“My husband and I are appalled at the change in the Logo. We were born and raised in this city, our children and grandchildren were all born and raised in this city. All very proud of the history of our city. Why do you have the right to try and change history by changing the Logo? It distinguishes us from all the other surrounding municipalities and cities.”

”Both my wife and I like the new logo. I represents both the history of New Westminster and today’s reality”.

(I am going to go ahead and assume these two emails were not from the same husband-wife couple).

I wrote a blog post about the process to create a new logo last year as we were launching the public engagement process, and it has a few answers to questions that came up at the time, and are coming up again.

The discussion about updating the logo began almost three years ago. The current yellow-crown-on blue-serif-wordmark logo, adopted in 2008, is pretty dated, and through extensive public consultation (more than 650 people) and guided by a committee of volunteer citizens of the City, the new logo was selected a few months ago (with some presentation development and refinements between then and now). I think it honours the past of the City – subtle but obvious-when-you-see-it nods to the Indigenous history of this place on the Fraser River, and a more obvious link to the industrial “working river” history and the present relationship to the river. Far from erasing history, the new logo it meant to honour the diverse and unique history of the City and this land. I think the process the City chose to let the community lead the rebranding process also honours the people who live, work, learn, and play in this community, and the builders of this community in the past and present.

I also like the modern symbolism of the logo, and this was the part that the brand creators talked about that really pulled me into seeing it. We often talk about New West as a small city with big ambitions, we make big moves and are bold in taking on large challenges. We think of ourselves as hardworking, powerful beyond our size. These characteristics of the humble tugboat – a small but incredibly powerful vehicle moving big loads against the current – evoke that same spirit. This sprit, and the clear centering of the Fraser River as the symbol of our City are the foundations of the new logo. And I can’t disagree with that.

As was the case last time, the new logo will be phased in as we work through old materials. You will be seeing both the old and new logos next to each other for some time. We will use the existing letterhead (for example) until the supply is exhausted, and the new supply when ordered will have the new logo. Things like vehicles that take a while to age out of use will have the old logo on them until the vehicle is replaced or refurbished (indeed, we still have older vehicles in the City with the old “Crest” logo on them because they are older than 2008!). That means the cost to shift to the new logo is minimized, and is part of regular operational budgets in the City.

Anecdotes and Data

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I don’t usually dip into media criticism here – there is an old saying about politicians not pissing off people who buy ink by the barrel – but every once in a while an article comes out that needs a response.

In this case, a predictable Douglas Todd article mentions New West. For those who don’t know him, Todd is Post Media’s go-to guy for anti-immigration and anti-urbanism opinion. As in this article, he often taps Patrick Condon, a UBC Landscape Architect who feigns “housing expert” status by pining for Vancouver’s pastoral past.

The reason I highlight this story is that I wanted to test the central premise – that increased growth and increased density means increased taxes. Todd is an opinion writer, not a journalist, because a journalist would do a bit of research to test their idea against data, while an opinion writer is comfortable relying on anecdotes that fit the narrative he is trying to craft.

I’m not a journalist, but I do love data. So I dug through news articles and budget documents from 20 Lower Mainland municipalities (all but Anmore – because their data was hard to find, and after a bit of digging, I decided meh Anmore) to determine what their tax rate increases have been over the last three years, since the beginning of this council term. I do this all the time anyway because I see it as part of my job. I really should know where we stand in comparison to other cities, even if I am the first to acknowledge, it isn’t a competition. I also took the short term rate of growth data from the Metro Vancouver Population Projections report for 2024. Plot the two against each other, and this is what you get:

I don’t want to get all Stats 101 on you (the R-squared here is 0.07), but that distribution is pretty close to a circle, meaning there is no correlation between rate of growth and tax increases. The highest tax rate increases over on the right in red (Bowen Island, Langley City and Surrey) are cities pretty close to the middle in growth-wise and the three fastest growing cities up top in green (New West, North Van City, and Langley Township) are mid-to-low in tax rate increase.

Another common Todd/Condon argument is that density of population leads to tax increases. Data on population density is easy to find, so here goes plot number 2:

Again, the cluster of four highest-density cities up top (Vancouver, New West, White Rock, and North Van City) are about the middle of the tax increase range, and the tree highest and three lowest tax increase cities are across the spectrum of density, with none of them in the top 4 growth wise. With an R-squared of 0.003, the data here just doesn’t correlate.

The data does not tell the whole story, as it never does in these comparisons, because these are 20 different municipalities with different pressures and priorities. Some cities are intentionally running their reserves down to avoid tax increases, while others are building reserves. Some are making up for previous council underfunding of services, others are paring back on services. Langley City increasing taxes at a high rate doesn’t tell you that they have gone from the lowest-taxed jurisdiction in the region to the third-from lowest, or that West Vancouver at one tenth the density of New Westminster and with the lowest rate of growth in the entire region is still the highest-taxed municipality in Greater Vancouver, despite its relatively modest tax increases in the last few years. There are stories to be told in this data beyond the simple scatter graph; the anecdotes that Todd relies on belie those details.

His narrative is that density and growth are bad, and he will find any ill the public has concerns about, and blame it on density and growth, facts be damned.

The last time Douglas Todd wrote about New West, he lamented there are no cafes on Carnarvon Street, when there are at least 4 places to get coffee in the 500m stretch of Carnarvon he was describing. I just don’t know where Mr. Todd gets his bad information about our City. He sure never calls me.

If you want to read more into the data above, here’s my table. If you find a wrong number, or have Anmore tax data and really want me to include it, let me know!

Lower 12th

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

There was an interesting discussion at Council Workshop on Monday that is worth unpacking a bit. I don’t usually write up Workshop reports here, because these are not typical Council meetings. They tend to be more free-ranging conversations Council has about items that are preliminary or half-cooked; more of a check in and request for direction from Council on an ongoing initiative than final decision points. We talked about spending on Canucks viewing parties, about the Liquid Waste Management Plan, and about next steps on Vision Zero, but the most interesting item was staff checking in with Council on the Lower 12th Special Study Area.

Blue dashed line shows the “Lower 12th Special Study Area” in the City’s Zoning map.
…and in the City’s Official Community Plan land use designation map.

Lower 12th is a (mostly) grey spot on the City’s zoning map, and an equally distinct purple spot in our Official Community Plan maps. It was an area identified during the 2017 Official Community Plan discussions as being unique, and requiring a unique approach. The current OCP updates (being driven by Provincial mandate) and some preliminary applications by developers interested in putting mixed-use residential development here are pushing staff to ask Council how they want to deal with this space.

The background here is that Council back in 2017 saw this space as needing to continue to be a job-generating space. One of the larger policy goals of our OCP is to continue to develop job growth on pace with population growth (as we have managed to do over the last few years, despite the COVID blip). Staff and Council identified this area as being one of the last parts of the “mainland” where job creation is the main land-use driver. It is also unique in the downtwon area in that there are relatively large lots, it is generally flat, and the transportation connections are robust, including being a short walk from a SkyTrian station. This all means there is opportunity here.

Much of the land there is zoned as light industrial and commercial, and with no OCP designation (except “special study area”), significant development would require OCP amendment and rezoning. Although valuable commercial businesses, used car lots are not likely the “highest and best use” of properties in the centre of a dense urban city only a few hundred metres from a SkyTrain station. There is pent up value here that developers would love to release, and the most value in the region right now is in housing.

Up to now, much of the discussion of this area has been how to maintain ultra-light industrial and commercial space, maker space or light manufacturing while adding housing to help finance the redevelopment of an under-perfomring area. But the demands in New West in 2025 are different than those in 2017, and Council is more interested in learning how new modes of retail and commercial land use can be supported. Council also recognizes the increased need for green space in the Downtown and Brow neighbourhoods, need for school space and potentially other institutional spaces, and even need for expanded community amenity space for everything from a new Firehall to city administrative space and community centre space.

With all of this in mind, I opened the discussion at Council asking that we take a bit of a step back, and Council unanimously agreed. Staff is going to do more work on the Parks and Recreation Comprehensive Plan, on our Economic Development plans (Retail Strategy, Employment Strategy), and bring Council some more options around how this unique part of the City might develop differently. That may, or may not, include significant residential density to support redevelopment, and this is where I think Council still needs to give some clear direction in the next little while. But we need to give that direction with a fuller understanding of the land economics and potential for this unique area.

We are not a City that has traditionally said “no” to housing, and have taken seriously our responsibility to meet our Housing Target Orders, and meet our regional commitment to housing need. Our upcoming OCP update will address our 20-year housing need as required by regulation. That said, it is not obvious that we need housing in this location to meet those commitments or obligations, and we certainly don’t need housing at the density envisioned by the early catalyst projects in this area. I don’t think we should preclude, however, the opportunity to leverage truly affordable (non-market supportive or transitional) housing in this area if senior government partners are ready to fund it.

Everyone recognizes we also schools, we need green space, we need institutional, community, and creative space to support the livability of our community, and this “grey area” is a place that may provide unique opportunity to fit more of those needs in one of the denser parts of the City. It was a great conversation at Council, and I’m happy we were all able to come to a pretty clear consensus on this.

More to come!

McBride

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Last night, another New Westminster pedestrian was struck by a vehicle on McBride Boulevard, and died of their injuries. My heart aches for the person who died, their bereaved family, and the driver or drivers involved who are no doubt dealing with their own trauma today. Everyone is harmed by an incident like this, including our First Responders who yet again have to respond to tragedy.

We don’t know the details of this tragic incident, and cannot rush to judgement, but this is the third serious incident involving pedestrians in less than 6 months on this 1km stretch of McBride, all with differing causes and impacts. We need to take action on the common thread.

With that in mind, I will be calling on ICBC to immediately install intersection cameras at two key intersections in New Westminster, and for the Minister of Public Safety to expeditiously act on the calls from UBCM member municipalities to give local governments the authority to install and operate these life-saving interventions, so that our City can take quick action to save more lives moving forward.

McBride Boulevard is a part of Highway 1a, a Provincially-regulated truck route and key connection to the Pattullo Bridge for regional commuters. It is also a local-serving road that connects New Westminster residents to key destinations, including schools, shopping and recreation areas. The intersections of McBride with Sixth and Eighth Avenues are important crossroads in our community for all modes of travel, and New Westminster residents need to feel safe when using them.

Along with this recent spike in serious incidents where pedestrians were killed or seriously injured, residents are sharing their numerous anecdotes of drivers far exceeding the 50km/h speed limit on McBride and ignoring the existing traffic lights in these heavily-travelled intersections with frightening regularity.

We must work to assure it is safe for New Westminster residents to move around in their City. Engineering improvements to McBride are already being considered following a recent Intersection Safety Review. With the upcoming opening of an expanded (and safer!) replacement for the Pattullo Bridge, we will be engaging with the Ministry of Transportation to determine what speed control measures are required to assure there won’t be negative impacts on vulnerable road users as new traffic patterns emerge. However, engineering alone cannot change the dangerous behaviours that are resulting in death and injury on our streets.

This year, the City of New Westminster is launching a Vision Zero task force to bring partners in from all provincial and municipal agencies involved in local road safety to change the culture of road safety in New Westminster, with a vision to put an end to these unnecessary injuries and deaths. In the meantime, we can still take action in areas where we know immediate intervention is possible.

Intersection and speed cameras save lives and reduce injuries. This is why ICBC funds the Integrated Safety Camera Program. With 140 cameras province-wide, it is insufficient to the current need, and local governments are not empowered to install cameras where we identify safety concerns in our communities.

Give us the cameras, and we will save lives.

Three serious pedestrian incidents in a 6 month period should be a wake-up call to everyone. Drivers need to slow down and follow the rules of the road, and governments have to work together to make the engineering and enforcement interventions we know will save lives. I’ll be delivering this message straight to the BC government when I meet with elected officials in Victoria next month.

Stay safe out there folks.