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

Victoria Times Colonist

A couple of things here for the residents of Metro Vancouver to envy. First they still have effective control over their transit system - it is the Mayors who sit on the Regional Transit Commission who will make the decisions, and they will have to face the electorate. Secondly, there is still effective public consultation. Most of the article is about how the Commission and staff need more time to consider what they heard. Here of course what consultation does take place is perfunctory and there is no evidence that anything anyone says is heard let alone acted upon.

[Saanich Mayor Frank] Leonard said he is in favour of bus rapid transit, light-rail rapid transit, reducing car traffic and getting people into other options than their cars, but he concedes those are motherhood issues. “The high-level stuff is straightforward, it’s the details [that are the issue],” he said. “And I don’t know if holding open houses and workshops will ever lead to [business owners] coming out in favour of the project.”

But perhaps if they heard about places where reducing car traffic has actually helped retailers and increased their takings they might agree to a trial. All over the world city centres have watched as retail trade has been sucked out to the suburban shopping centres, malls and big boxes. And the most effective response has been to reduce or even eliminate through traffic from shopping streets. This creates a much nicer environment for shoppers, who tend to spend more time and visit more shops when they do not have to deal with lots of vehicle traffic, which makes crossing the street time consuming and makes the place noisy and smelly. Of course I am talking about urban places mostly outside of North America. In most of the US, conventional town centres (”downtown”) have been allowed to die, much to the Walton family’s enrichment.

Victoria does have Blanshard Street to take the through traffic. Government Street is traffic calmed but remains open to cars. Business owners fears are real to them, but they protest too much. What is needed is better access and a better environment for all. Not lots of cars and on street parking

The Province

It’s a short story but a good one so I am going to exceed my usual “fair use” strictures and give you the whole lot

Bus only lane in downtown Vancouver (Pender Street)

Vancouver Sun

The list of Vancouver’s $50m of road projects includes $11m for the Mall. What I would have liked to see accompany the story would be pictures. I suppose the print edition might have them but the canada.com site in general is pretty mean when it comes to images - except for ads of course.

The Granville Mall “before” construction started (June 2002)

The city will also spend $5 million on a greenway along Carrall St. connecting the seawall in False Creek, Chinatown, Gastown and the Downtown Eastside. Work on the wider sidewalks and treed landscapes between Keefer and Pender has already been completed, with the next phase to cut through the Downtown Eastside along Carrall between Pender and Water Street.

The work on Cambie will include the addition of treed boulevards in the Cambie Village area centred around 16th Ave. and bike lanes south of 29th Ave. to Kent Ave., then on to a private lane suspended under the SkyTrain guideway all the way to Richmond. There will be no net loss of green space to the Cambie corridor due to SkyTrain construction once the work is completed, city staff said at a press conference Thursday.

Which is all as it should be. But there is no mention of how much the left turn bays at 49th and Knight will cost. It is the most dangerous intersection in the City and ICBC are going to help pay for it. But why do we need to widen the road to accommodate “bays”? Why not a simple advanced green for left turners in each cycle? Might it be something to do with the fact that would have the effect of reducing throughput, i.e. slowing the traffic a bit compared to widening? And what about all the left turns that can be done midblock even at peak periods - and the very high speeds seen as people race from light to light, weaving across all three lanes?

Province

Yes we need road pricing. But of course we would not use the London model - we would have to develop something suitable for our region. Distance based vehicle insurance is also a good idea. The Province article shows how easy it is for people to get confused.

There will be a very big issue - privacy. A charge which varies by time of day and location tracks people.

I  advocate user pay for all transportation modes. That is the only way that we will start to see sensible decision making by everyone. Especially when the charging system internalises all those costs that society currently bears, and are treated as “externalities”. Those costs include air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, noise, collisions, destruction of the natural environment, and so on. Drivers like to point to the amount they pay in gas tax, and say that it is not equalled by what governments spend on building roads - as if those things ought to be the same. But very few road users are willing to acknowledge the costs their trip making imposes on the rest of society - and the cost of congestion is trifling compared to the total social cost of automobility.

Vancouver Sun

At long last.

Townline president Rick Ilich announced on Tuesday his plans to redevelop the Fantasy Gardens site with a mix of retail and residential development.

But the actual plan is some way off as he is going to do some very necessary public consultation. The biggest issue at this location is traffic congestion. Firstly because of the massive development of “Riverport” - a multiplex, bowling alley, ice rink, swimming pool, hotel yada yada - and now housing too! - just outside the distance which would have given the MoT some leverage. But mostly becuase of the evening peak hour tail backs from traffic trying to get to the tunnel which causes problems for the equally large retail developments at Ironwood and Coppersmith (a big box anchored by Canadian Tire) strip malls.

The Steveston Highway overpass of Highway #99 is one lane each way - which has been grossly inadequate for many years. And this intersection has also caused problems as traffic leaving the freeway northbound and trying to get into the industrial area also lines up - and the tail back can delay traffic attempting to get through the tunnel. Some recent “improvement” has been seen as the DoT has closed the scale at the north tunnel entrance. No doubt much to the relief of the tipper truck and container haulers, who were regularly prevented from moving further until they put their decrepit and neglected equipment back into roadworthy condition before being allowed to proceed. It may have helped reduce the conflict from merging trucks at the tunnel entrance but I do not feel any safer as a road user, knowing that these trucks will now be inspected much less frequently.

It will certainly be a welcome change from more temples and schools on this strip of land between No 5 Road and the Highway.

West End Residents Association at SFU 22 February

This meeting was called, I thought, to build the case for lane reallocation on the bridge. It turned out that it was supposed to be a forum. And contributions from the floor were supposed to just be questions of the experts on the panel. Yet more than one panel member admitted to be unfamiliar with the issues and there was a lot of expertise in the room.

John Whistler of WERA introduced the meeting with a quick run through of the history, starting with the 1960 freeway plan, which gave rise to the Hornby Connector. While this is still part of City Policy it now seems highly unlikely. Bikes have always an issue on the bridge but up until 1988 shared the roadspace. The city bike plan and city bike network followed but on Burrard Bridge pedestrians and cycles have to share a narrow sidewalk which is a poor solution for both groups. In 1994 Delcan was appointed to look at False Creek crossings and many options were looked at including new bridges. The lane reallocation on Burrard rated highly. In 1995 Vancouver produced its City Plan, and on transportation priorities pedestrians and cyclists were the top two priorities.

Eventually a six month trial of lane reallocation was started in 1996 but stopped within a week when motorists called City Hall on their cell phones. A staff report of the brief trial showed that most of the 9% reduction in motorists trips simply “disappeared”. In 2006 another trial became an election issue and was cancelled by Sam Sullivan. Delcan was then hired to do widening study.

Times are changing – traffic volumes across the bridge have decreased, transit riders, cyclists and pedestrians have all increased. We also now have to deal with climate change and peak oil, neither of which were an issue 16 years ago when this debate started. A report from Delcan to is due to go to council in the next few months.

The moderator was provided by the Vancouver Public Space Network: Andrew Pask

He chuntered on about urban fabric, residents, sustainability and said that questions are being asked about our ecological footprint. He also mentioned the bridge’s importance to our urban experience and quoted Bing Thom’s remarks at that iconic buildings meeting that it is his favourite place. “Burrard Street is designed for speed” and creates all sorts of conflicts but there are a multiplicity of perspectives. Sadly he did not use the amount of time he took to explain the way he was going to run the meeting, which led to conflicts later. He seemed inexperienced in moderating meetings.

Tara Scollard represented the City Engineers Department but was the first to admit that she had not been part of the process and had in fact fairly recently arrived in Vancouver. Throwing her at this meeting was unfair on her and her audience, but she was treated very gently. I suspect if the man responsible for the current mess had been there that would not have been the case. She also recited the history and said that the current condition is that SOVs are “constant” across the bridge while numbers of bikes and pedestrians are increasing. [In fact traffic volume dclined 5% from 1996 to 2004] In 2005 design direction was determined by Council (expansion of the footway) with final design in next month or two. There are two choices either widening both footways for the length of the bridge or retaining “pinch points” at the arches to preserve the current design.

Larry Frank

“I use the bridge every day and I see near disasters every day. How much money are we really saving? I am all for accommodating non-motorised travel. I think we need a Cost Benefit Analysis of how much we should accommodate the car. Since I arrived here, we seem to be in the dark. The problem is analogous to the Port Mann twinning: the policy here is to preserve the roadway. Why do we need to accommodate capacity for cars? Is there to be a transit lane on this bridge? If not, then it’s wrong! Don Buchanan [who was in the audience] has pointed out that transit is the missing piece. There is a significant volume of latent demand for cycling but people are currently afraid to ride their bikes over the bridge. This is due to a combination of conflicts with pedestrians and the high curbs, which threaten an errant cyclist with being tipped off into fast moving traffic. There is not enough space for both pedestrians and bikes on the sidewalk. Take a lane for bikes and then leave sidewalk for pedestrians. This not only mitigates vehicle use, it sends right message. How does that accommodate transit? By diverting cars to Granville Bridge which has spare capacity and is designed for cars. All my research on obesity and physical activity shows that we need to get moire people cycling and walking. Of the present plans pinch points are just a way to create accidents: neither is consistent with the vision for the region or the city but only one option (widening) is being looked at.

Donald Luxton of Heritage Vancouver has been “saying the same thing since 1990s. The only alternative that we oppose is the widening of the bridge. We are not against change, but the outriggers (the worst design solution) keep coming back. We are trying to work productively but we don’t need to wreck the Burrard Bridge. It is the No 1 endangered site of Heritage Vancouver list. The present design would see masonry railings replaced with metal – and metal hoops at the piers. This will cost at least $50m, maybe more and does not address real problem which is at the bridge heads. It is on the 2006 top ten list produced by Heritage Canada and is an internationally significant art deco icon. Heritage issues do not run the show but there are times when they are paramount. We need to tackle the issue but why mess up the bridge to do it? The cost is too high and it is wrong.

Bonnie Fenton,asked why we need to do this when we don’t have to? Re-allocating lanes will not save the world or destroy the city. The major issue is the need to make the bridge safe for bikes and pedestrians. There are actually two cycling camps which she labelled pragmatists and idealists. In 15 years of talking nothing has been done. Lane re-allocation would send a strong signal about what we need to do in this city. In the 1996 trial there were 870 cyclists, a 39% increase but a 9% decrease in car trips. these were not diverted but trips not made. This suggests that these trips were discretionary and their loss caused little inconvenience. Car drivers made the adjustment quickly. And at the end of the week there was a 50-50 split in comments received by the City - for and against. Fred Bass’s motion to the last Council was visionary and would have include a major communications package – something omitted in 1996. She also quoted at length a Business in Vancouver article by Peter Ladner which conclude that if the trial was successful it would be a potential bonus for tax payers. We now that traffic disappears. The modelling assumptions used by engineers do not include this. But we know that people have brains and do not try to go where they cannot. We also know that of the trips across the bridge by SOVs, 50% are not regular. In other words those trips can be made in other ways. Logic is not being used by the City.

John Tylee was the other newcomer to the issue and represented the Economic Development Commission for Vancouver. He was the only speaker who said “I think the city is doing the right thing.” He said that strong downtowns are vital to the City and the region. “The suburban challenge is eternal and relentless.” Downtowns set the identity of the community, and you only get once chance to make a good impression. Currently Vancouver’s downtown is profitable: 25% of the region’s population is in Vancouver but 50% of its commercial property value. It is necessary to balance a large critical mass of “people like us and and people unlike us” and Vancouver has a great mix of ages, races and occupations. It must be easy for people to get in and out. Downtown is the high cost option so it has to provide a better experience than its competitors in the suburbs. “Change can be sudden and hard to spot .” There will be a tipping point: a lot of assessment left downtown Toronto for “905 area” because of congestion. San Diego and San Francisco both had similar experiences and the VEDC has “reasons for concern” as business is becoming difficult to do. Richmond and Surrey both have ambitious plans for commerce in their downtowns. Removing lanes from cars makes downtown less attractive. He said that he thinks adaptation is more interesting than preservation, and noted the way that Berlin had modernised the historic Bundestag by adding a “glass bubble” to let in more light. We can find a way but we do need to deal with the “attitude of cyclists”

At this point my battery waring flashed and we moved on to discussion, so from here on we must rely either on contributions from the small number of people who were there – or my notoriously unreliable short term memory.

I do not recall anyone supporting the City’s position. Reallocation seemed to be the most popular option though I also liked Ned Jacob’s idea. Sidewalks for pedestrians only. Two lanes for cars and cycles with a 25kph speed limit, and the centre lanes for transit only with no speed limit.

I did get to point out that the car volume across the bridge was not determined by the number of lanes but by the intersections at each end. And Don Buchanan said that the intersection at the north end is the second most dangerous in Vancouver – with a casualty number higher than all the fires in the city.

One recent immigrant from Holland was adamant that pedestrians and cyclists should never be expected to share the same path.

l to r Tara Scollard , Bonnie Fenton, John Tylee and Donald Luxton

Yesterday I wrote

Ken Bassett of the District of North Vancouver asked if there were studies of communities that have reduced road space

and really I do not think he got a very good answer. He may not have heard my unrecorded comments (since I did not have a microphone) that said Copenhagen where city government, along with Jan Gehl’s Centre for Public Space research, is constantly measuring and analyzing street usage”.

In fact there have been all kinds of experience in reducing road space allocated to vehicles in a concerted attempt to regain some of the qualities that places had before we all thought we needed a ton or more of steel and an internal combustion engine to go anaywhere. Obviously, cities which have their roots before the twentieth century have a skeleton which still more or less represents a walkable city. And in many places, we are now rediscovering how to make cities walkable again.

In my experience the first time I heard about this sort of thing was when English towns started to follow the experience of Norwich and create “pedestrian precincts” to try and make traditional town centres competitive with the growth of edge of town retailers. The North American Shopping Mall - an enclosed space surrounded by parking, providing climate controlled traffic free shopping - has pretty much taken over the role of the traditional urban retail street. Not entirely, of course, and in some places the two do co-exist. But they do demonstrate that there is a skill and expertise in planning multi-activity spaces which many cities had neglected or left to voluntary bodies.

In Grenoble, France, the major shopping street was used as the route for their light rail system, and closed to all other motorised traffic. Of course when it was first mooted, the merchants were bitterly opposed, but that changed very quickly as takings rose as customers showed they appreciated a traffic free environment. In many cases, there was no net loss of road space as city councillors were persuaded to open up new, diversionary routes, often by traffic engineers convinced that vehicles had to be accommodated. But events conspired against them, as it was frequently demonstrated that when a road was lost to a network due to unforeseen circumstances - a bridge collapse perhaps, or a security alert - that congestion did not get worse, in fact it often improved as vehicle traffic declined. There are so many examples that MVA published a “study of studies” for Transport for London which listed the closures then known. (Cairns, Sally, Carmen Hass-Klau and Phil Goodwin, 1998, Traffic Impact of Highway Capacity Reductions: Assessment of the Evidence, Landor Publishing: London. See also Phil Goodwin’s inaugural lecture .)

This gives rise to my often repeated mantra “traffic expands and contracts to fill the space available”. European cities which had experimented with metro and pre-metro soon stopped since the street space freed up by the removal of streetcars filled up with car traffic. This led to more constructive thinking, and many cities adopted the strategy of deterring through traffic from their centres. Cars were allowed in, but had to return the way they came. Trams, bikes and pedestrians could still cross the city centre but not cars or trucks, which had to go round the long way. This actually is the reason the London’s congestion charge works. A few people short cutting across the central area contributed far more to the congestion than those needing to be in the centre, so the charge simply encourages them to take the (free) ring roads. Which are actually quicker.

London has also started to remove traffic from a few key streets. One of the first was one between King St and Henrietta St in Covent Garden which is now a performance space based on the portico of a church and a couple of pubs in what used to be the Flower Market where Liza Dolittle sold posies. Another very succesful project was the removal of traffic on one side of Trafalgar Square in front of the National Gallery.

At the same time much road space in London has been paved red and designated for buses only: and the buses have cameras in the their noses to ensure that miscreants get traffic fines.

More determined efforts of road space reallocation have been increasingly adopted all over the world. This has gone hand in hand with such ideas as Car Free cities - our own small start of a car free Commercial Drive once a year is very small beer indeed in this league.

The main thing to notice about all this is the way that thinking changes when you substitute the word “people” for “vehicles”. And in cities it is not the speed or even the distance travelled that should be measured but the time that individuals occupy the space. Cars want to zip through the city and get somewhere else. People want to spend time in the city for all kinds of reasons - all of them superior to the driver’s need for speed. By catering to cars we have lost urbanity. And by listening to pressure groups that represent car drivers, Vancouver has lost some of the progress it had made. And actually traffic calming is built in to our suburbs right now. Arterials may barrel through, but lesser roads don’t. They are circuitous and dead end, to deter through traffic. And they operate at slow speeds since there are no curbs or sidewalks - which means when people do walk they walk at will, and as they are your neighbours you had better pay attention. So cars slow down, the kids are (fairly) safe and the neighbourhoods resist traffic engineers who want to “upgrade the street to urban standards.” The City of Vancouver achieved something very similar in the West End with a few well placed barriers and the odd one way street. Bikes and peds excepted, of course.

We tend to think in terms of moving capacity - and of course transit can move many more people than a lane of cars. Which is why the Cambie Street situation is so unnecessary. But central places are where cities show why they have persisted for so long. The problem has been that accommodating cars has got in the way of the face to face and chance encounters that make for commercial success, cultural exchange and serendipity.

We will have to retrofit our suburbs, as cars become steadily less affordable - and desirable. At present getting a straight route through a subdivision for pedestrians and cyclists meets with suspicion, and fear. Eventually the real security of eyes on the street will win out, I hope. We also have arterials that have been reduced from four lanes to two lanes, two bike lanes and one bi-directional turn lane. The traffic capacity is actually the same but the speed is much closer to the posted speed, and is therefore much safer. Before too long I am confident that we will see more roundabouts than traffic lights, more pedestrian crossings - many of them raised and between sidewalk bulges - and much wider sidewalks with room for cafes or fountains or chess tables. Urbanity.

And it all starts with getting in the way of the cars.

Over on the Livable Blog Patrick Golier is drawing attention to the activity by the City of Vancouver Engineers who want to increase car traffic on Cambie now that construction of the Canada Line is nearing completion.

Now the first thing we need to note is that the Canada Line is supposed to have the capacity to shift 100,000 people per day - or the equivalent of ten lanes of single occupant vehicles. So why do they now need more car capacity than they had before? Of course there is no need for that much capacity so they have already reduced the number of trains, to stay within budget.

As I have written on here many times, if you go for cheap, surface light rail you can not only increase people carrying capacity you can also reduce car capacity. As Meredith Botta pointed out Copenhagen has long-standing policy of removing just 3% of the space allocated for cars every year. And that has worked very well to improve the liveability of the city and because of the gradualism that I advocate for changes in density, it is accepted becuase it is not really noticeable. So the City could have simply put back what was there before - or actually used the opportunity of all the people moving capacity underground to make Cambie less of a drag strip.

I have always been a bit wary of that “heritage boulevard” designation. I mean, yes it looks nice as you swish by, and it improves the view from the residents’ front windows - as they only see three lanes of moving traffic not six. But for a sizeable chunk of city real estate it does not seem to me to have much utility. Perhaps re-allocating space to produce a slower, 3 or 4 lanes of gp traffic - and use the rest for walking, cycling and recreation of various informal kinds might be more urbane. But then streets are the territory of the engineers, not the planners. And they don’t even speak the same language.

And the other thing that they should do is put back the trolleybuses, and also put in bus bulges at the stops. These bulges also make crossing the street easier, as the distance to get across is shorter. Why would you do this? To get in the way of the cars. Because what we need to do is build a place for people - not a place for automobiles!

Two stories in the Richmond News today show how much attention is paid to community input in Richmond.

On the north side of Lulu Island the stretch of land north of the railway and east of No 6 Road is pretty grim. Most of it is still zoned agricultural but there is a lot of other activity of other kins. And on the 16000 block of River Road most of it is illegal. Mainly vehicle and other commercial storage.

At an open house in October, the majority of respondents filling out feedback forms opposed the rezonings. Traffic safety issues resulting from increased truck traffic topped their list of concerns.

“Many respondents also questioned the performance record of property owners in the 16,000 block of River Road, which were undertaking activities in non-compliance with zoning regulations,” a staff report says.

The city wants to legitimize the businesses, but as a condition of rezoning, it wants some concessions, like road dedication for a future industrial road access.

Now the actual decision would have been made last night after the paper went to bed. But the principles here are worth thinking about. Zoning is supposed to achieve something that the market would not produce left to itself. The zoning of this land maybe should have been changed, but wasn’t. And now the city seems to be on the point of allowing a change in land use which will certainly increase the value of the land for the current owners. But may make the current nuisances that the neighbours complain of worse. And the owners do not appear to be doing much to meet the city’s perfectly reasonable requests to try and reduce traffic impacts of truck movements now and in the future. But staff are recommending that they be given approval anyway.

Why?

Meanwhile over at YVR - another one of those unaccountable, “professional” organizations, are trying to enlarge their fuel storage and have more of it shipped by barge. Which may or may not be a good idea: barges are certainly better in terms of diesel exhaust and ghg emissions than trucks. But then there is the risk of spills. So it is always going to be controversial. So YVR comes up with a way to deflect it. Would you like the tanks green or white?

The expansion was the subject of two open houses Jan. 31 and Feb. 2.

The Fraser River Coalition says the open houses were not well advertised and did not provide a forum for dialogue.

“This whole public input process is flawed,” coalition member Judy Williams told the media. “Why did they limit public input to two three-hour open houses without the benefit of a panel or an open mike so people could listen to other people’s concerns?”

[Member of the Richmond Advisory Committee on the Environment Gordon] Kibble said he was not even aware of the proposal and open houses. Neither were Councillors Harold Steves and Bill McNulty.

McNulty called the open houses “typical YVR consultation method.”

The deadline for public comment is February 15

Fans of the H2G2 will find a ring of familiarity about this.