Stephen Rees’s blog

Photo by Chris Piggott on flickr

CBC

The cost of adding bicycle lanes to Vancouver’s Burrard Bridge has quadrupled, according to the latest estimates.

“The estimated cost to do the work necessary to make the improvements in 2009 dollars would be $57 million,” Coun. Kim Capri told the CBC on Monday.

And the final cost could rise further, as high $63 million, since the work would have to be put off until after the 2010 Olympics, said Capri.

The numbers were presented to city councillors on Monday by city engineers at a special workshop on the latest plan to add bike lanes to the heritage-listed bridge.

It was always a very stupid idea. Say thank you taxpayers of Vancouver to your Mayor and the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association. It all stems from their inability to understand basic traffic management. City staff, and Kim Capri, are infected with the same disease.

The news reopens the debate about whether the city should reconsider an older plan, which called for closing traffic lanes to make room for bikes, said Coun. George Chow.

That plan was adopted by the previous council, but dropped by the current council immediately following the last civic election, in 2005.

But staff warned against reconsidering it because it would back up traffic on both end of the bridge and lead to gridlock, said Capri.

If anybody ever uses the word “gridlock” you know they are grandstanding. Gridlock is a temporary phenomenon caused by drivers entering an intersection when their exit is not clear. Networks quickly sort themselves out - which is why the idea of a trial of lane closures preceded by a public information period was also rejected by the City. Because that would demonstrate that closing lanes to cars on the bridge (to allow for bikes and buses) would work. And we don’t want that do we. Otherwise people would start saying things like “Why can we not close more lanes to through traffic?” - just like they have been doing in Copenhagen for the last forty years and seeing a dramatic rise in the use and popularity of the City Centre.

The number of lanes on the bridge is not the critical issue for traffic flow. It is the capacity of the junctions at each end. And if all the traffic from West Vancouver (and some of North) can be accommodated into the three lane Lion’s Gate Bridge, which does Kits and Point Grey need six? And why would you wreck an art deco jewel with bolted on excrescences?

The City has a Transportation Policy. It states that priority will be given to pedestrains, cyclists and transit ahead of cars. That policy has not been rescinded and is part of the City Plan. So how come this nonsense continues? Because a very small group of very powerful people put their self interest ahead of common sense.

If they have $57m to spend I can think of a lot of things that could be done with that sum that would make the City a much nicer place to be. And the Burrard Bridge could stay pretty much as it is: a bit of paint for lanes and some road signs, and a bit of re-jigging of the intersections ought to do it for well under $1m I reckon. But the people carrying performance of the bridge would be enhanced significantly - and it is people that need to be counted not vehicles!

Brent Granby of WERA advises that there is a survey on the CBC web site

Photo by Rob Baxter

New bike lane in Vancouver on Carrall near Keefer and Guzhou Alley (Chinatown) showing the correct location for a change - inside the line of parked cars but also separated from the sidewalk. As prescribed by Jan Gehl. There’s a picture of the usual, wrong, type on flckr and a link from there to a useful video

When two people send you the same story within 20 minutes, you know you are going to have to blog it.

Streetsblog got a bit bent out of shape when a large US auto (and other) insurance company made fun of someone who decided to switch to cycling due to high gas prices. The reaction was massive and predictable and State Farm backed off and has not only withdrawn the ad but yanked it from Youtube too.

Thanks to Al Pasternak and Ron Richings

Sun

This was what I was looking for yesterday. Gordon Price and Christina de Marco have now had time to look at the stats release. And this really is a good example of how to spin not very much into a good news story.

Gordon even manages to make it about development and retailing, which given the census only looks at Journey to Work is quite a feat but is a nice sidelight on my musings about Save on Foods.

More than a decade ago, when Gordon Price was a Vancouver city councillor, the civic government required Urban Fare to have 200 underground parking spaces for customers of the Yaletown supermarket.

Price, who regularly shops at Urban Fare, has never seen more than one-quarter of those parking spaces occupied, even during rainstorms.

“No one really thought that people would walk to do their grocery shopping, because people drive,” said Price, who is now director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University.

The story is about commuting - but the first section manages to deal with an outdated traffic engineering “standard” about parking requirements. This is media manipulation of a high order, and I take my hat off to him. Not only that but conventional wisdom would have it that if you provide free parking people will use it. Which, if true, would have made Lansdowne Mall much more successful than Richmond Centre.

But we are getting off track.

“We’re on track for about a four-per-cent increase [in public transit use] in 2007 over 2006,” said Snider, adding that TransLink is concentrating on providing better service to suburban areas where car use is still relatively high — the suburbs in the south Fraser River area. In the past year, Snider said, “south of Fraser has received at least 50 per cent of additional service hours” that TransLink has created.

“They’re also getting newer buses there as we retire the old ones,” he said.

But of course he is not talking about mode share. And south of the Fraser has a lot of catching up to do, and 4% is way below what is needed to just catch up to recent population growth. And I doubt that getting a nice new bus wins you many more car drivers. “I think I will stop driving to work now. The bus is newer.” Naaah. Not gonna happen.

Christina DeMarco, manager of regional planning for Metro Vancouver, said she was “excited” by the census findings.

Well, when you have a job like hers, you have to grab what excitement you can. But she does manage to spin a rather lack lustre performance into a success story

Another telling statistic is that in the past 10 years, population growth in the region has been 15.3 per cent, with a matching growth in car use (15 per cent). However, transit use increased by 40 per cent.

Which sounds so much better than having to say we are still at 11% mode share for all trips, and for the journey to work we still are not as advanced as the other large urban regions which have much denser centres

Contrarily, large suburban business parks are being built away from transit lines.

Vancouver, at 16.5 per cent, still lags behind Toronto (22 per cent) and Montreal (21 per cent) in transit use, but the gap has closed.

“We’re on the right trajectory,” DeMarco said.

Clive Rock called this kind of thinking “steering a ship by only watching its wake”.

We are only going to do well if we can reverse the trend in employment dispersal - and Gateway will not do that!

If you are interested in Victoria there is a big Canadian Press story which emphasizes age differences: the young are more likely to walk, bike or bus to work.

The census doesn’t ask commuters why they chose their mode of transportation, so it’s not known if younger workers pick greener commuting options because of their concern for the environment or whether their choice was related more to financial considerations.

I think it is making a virtue of necessity - and as a correspondent recently pointed out, young people are finding it much harder these days to get a decent job, let alone buy a house and a car. (Although a quick scan of the high school parking lots around here shows that some kids get really nice cars as soon as they get their licences.)

Picture a convivial citywide Spring event with cyclists fanning across Westside to Eastside, riding under fragrant pink canopies of cherry blossoms . . .

Owing to the huge success of the 2007 Slow Food Vancouver Agassiz Cycle Farm Tour, (400 cyclists!) the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival was inspired to partner with Slow Food Vancouver to create the Slow cycle tour event, Bike the Blossoms during the 4 week long festival.
It will be a self-guided tour where cyclists go at their leisure with family, friends and visitors while partaking of tasty food and drinks along breathtaking routes that include delicious eateries, and tasting or buying artisan foods from Fraser Valley farmers. Cyclists can see farmers’ displays, meet with them and hear their talks.
The idea of biking and eating s l o w l y fosters Slow Food’s philosophy of Good, Clean & Fair while bringing a very active, tasty, fun, and beautiful experiential awareness of our city. We want to have Vancouverites, Lower Mainland residents, our American neighbours, and new visitors, s l o w l y cycle, taste and discover Vancouver’s “other” unknown neighbourhoods that they normally would not experience.

City bike route maps highlighting boulevards of peak cherry blossom viewing will feature exceptional Slow Food selected refueling stops at eateries, bakeries, coffee and tea places as well as the featured farmers.
There will also be Treasure Hunts with prizes to die for. You will be sorry if you don’t join in at least one!

By registering and participating in Bike the Blossoms you will have the chance to win 1 of 2 tickets to Japan, courtesy of Japan Airlines!

DATE: SATURDAY APRIL 19, 2008
TIME: 9 am – 4 pm (this is not a race – start & finish when you like)
REGISTRATION: 9 am – 12 pm (prior online registration recommended)
START PLACE: VanDusen Botanical Garden, 5251 Oak St.
Main Parking lot at entrance. (parking on Oak & 37th streets only)
COST: FREE TO ALL !

Vancouver Sun

This is a repeated national survey by Angus Reid. What I think is really interesting is the way that BC differs from the rest of the country.

But, possibly because of the rain, fewer of us in B.C. are willing to park the car and walk more.

This seems to me to be supposition on the part of Gordon Hamilton. There are a number of more plausible explanations but it seems that either Angus Reid did not probe further, or the Sun could not be bothered to publish more information.

Where we live determines how we get about. Downtown Vancouver is not like the rest of the City let alone the rest of the region or the province. That means most people live in places where walking is not encouraged. There are no direct walks and no destinations within easy reach. There are no sidewalks in most suburbs. Bike facilities are often sparse and poorly designed . And transit sucks. Sure ridership has increased, but mode share hasn’t. Most people still do not see transit as a viable alternative.

But the survey also reveals that British Columbians are more likely to do nothing about the bigger bite gas is taking out of their income than most Canadians, an interesting twist to the results that [Angus Reid director of global studies Mario]  Canseco said reflects our obsession with personal choices.

“That was surprising — more than a third of B.C. residents don’t want to do anything or don’t feel that they should,” he said.

Now since he is talking about his poll, I suppose that reflects the way the question was asked. But in the suburbs of Vancouver and out in the Valley, the transit mode share drops off like a stone, mainly due to the paucity of service. And the complete absence of service between suburbs - and most trips these days are suburb to suburb. Which is a market that the transit system ignored for a long time and is only now getting to grips with.

I would like to see the same survey conducted in the main conurbations - Montreal, Toronto and here. And more pointed questions asked about perceptions of the options available. I have a sneaking suspicion that we are not keeping up. I have never been to Price George so I have no idea what they feel about their transit system. But I bet the market share there is pretty low.

Bike Lane Built for Two, originally uploaded by Fußgänger.

New York City’s new, physically-separated 9th Avenue Bicycle Lane safely and comfortably accommodates two cyclists side by side. If drivers can have a conversation between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat, why can’t two cyclists enjoy the same pleasure - rather than yelling at each other in single file in a narrow, 5-foot wide bike lane?

So today I went to Steveston Bikes to collect my trusty steed. It has been cleaned and serviced and a new rear brake fitted. The tires have been inflated to a pressure I would never attempt manually. They also etched my driver’s license number onto the frame - for free, and I bought what is described as “bicycle pyjamas” but is in fact a large plastic bag to put over it as it has to be stored outside. It has lived in a storage locker for the last 16 months, and had not been used much before that.

I felt that if I was going to write about bikes, and I should get back in the saddle. And indeed, it was a very pleasant afternoon, though I think next time I will spend a bit more time and see if I can find my gloves. I do not wear any special cycling gear, except for the helmet required by law. I am not at all convinced that helmets are necessary. But I do find the data which shows that the more bikes there are the lower the accident rate is very compelling. And we would all be much healthier if there were more bikes and fewer cars.

On my ride today I saw lots of robins, mallards, a bald eagle and a rabbit, not one of which even so much as raised an ear to my passing. The properly maintained bike being almost silent. Which reminds me. I need a new bell. As was remarked yesterday, when you drive through an environment at speed you really don’t care what it looks like. On a bike you have time to appreciate where you are, you are part of it, not looking at it through a window in a steel box. And of course I could stop and look at anything interesting - so I should have brought my camera along too. Fraser Titan is dredging at the bottom of No 5 Road and another one of those huge Honda car carriers was honking for it to get out of the way.

I think $35 for a professional tune up was money well spent, and I would happily recommend Steveston Bicycle & Kayak Shoppe at London Landing. The bakery next door is good too. And as long as the weather is reasonable I intend to be out and about on the bike more often. I might even be able to get into some of my old trousers again before too long.

Oh and one thing I should have mentioned about Richmond’s bike routes. There are no special cycle push buttons at signalised intersections, as there are in Vancouver. On Williams Road there are bike detector loops at the stop line - but the painted dots to show you where to stop have all faded away. For many busy intersections, it is safer to stop and use the pedestrian button than take a chance as many drivers are purblind and incapable of proceeding at any speed near or below the posted limit. But I can report that today several commercial truck drivers took extra care to give me room - which is not something that busy Mums in Hummers or Chevy Subdivisions think about.