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Election poll: Somehow Green vote collapsed slightly, while votes for Vision councillor and NPA went up slightly over predictions

November 19th, 2014 · 137 Comments

For those who didn’t see it, Barb Justason released the results of the poll she’d done in days just before the election at 8:45, once everyone had voted.

Interesting to see how the three Green Party candidates both saw their actual votes down compared to the poll estimates. That meant Adriane got 41 per cent of the votes, not the originally predicted 50 per cent. For Pete Fry and Cleta Brown, the difference was enough to drop them out of the running for election. On the other hand, votes were slightly higher than poll estimates for Vision councillors Geoff Meggs and Kerry Jang and NPA candidate Ian Robertson. I hesitate to try to interpret the results of this complex ballot and the intentions of 187,000 voters, but is it possible voters veered away from Greens to support the two main slates at the last minute, at least for council? Or a question of the Greens not able to get their supporters to the poll as well as Vision and the NPA? (Yet they did well at park board and school board) Or ???

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  • Richard Campbell

    So you want more old houses to be torn down? I thought you were against that. Please start making just a bit of sense.

  • Richard Campbell

    The forced transfer at Broadway & Commercial and the slower speed of LRT will obviously result in fewer people using the LRT.

    Just look at cities around the world. Typically, the grade separated Metros will have 2 to 3 times the ridership of the surface rail lines in the city even though the surface lines are signicantly longer than the metro lines.

    You are not serious about taking down the Expo Line are you? It already has around 16,000 passengers per hour per direction at peak hour. This would be very difficult to achieve with surface rail and even if it was, it would have high capital and operating costs due to the high number of vehicles required.

  • MB

    I have been subjected to struggling transit in the Broadway corridor lurching forward in fits, stalls and starts since 1979. There has been progress but it has been totally inadequate all along. Every transit study and planning effort pertaining to this corridor illuminates this issue time and time again, yet the transit demand just keeps growing.

    If you believe that the answer to Broadway’s woes is to start pumping buses onto 12th to take the pressure off then you have a lot more convincing to do, especially to the elderly destinating to Broadway. If you also believe that the second largest CBD in Canada’s third largest city “can’t afford” to meet it’s agonizingly obvious current and future demand with a subway, then I’ve got a 10-lane bridge to sell you.

  • jenables

    Which are high because of property taxes. You are right.

  • MB

    Lewis, your negative obsession with towers / SkyTrain tends to detract from your other comments. I suspect there is much agreement with you up to that point.

    As a fellow urban
    designer I do not see human-scaled urbanism magically appearing the day after the
    tram tracks are laid. Human-scaled
    urbanism existed for centuries before trams in Europe and Asia. The same urbanism coexisted with regional commuter
    rail and metro systems for decades. They
    are a separate but often complementary initiative. A comfortable form of urbanism has been evolving
    on Vancouver’s arterials with electric trolleys for decades which, if treated
    appropriately, are very efficient and have the potential to contribute much to
    the streetscape if the bus stop bulge paving, street furniture, trees,
    lighting, architectural response in nearby building façades and more zoning flexibility
    to allow an office-residential mix above commercial zoning are of higher
    quality.

    Replacing trolleys
    with trams will be an expensive construction disruption nightmare. Just ask the citizens of Edinburgh how that
    went. Just ask TransLink or the province
    to spend billions funding the switcheroo with no significant gain in ridership. This idea is repeated over and over by urbanists
    like you on a foundation built with inadequate research, no clear understanding
    of funding, or with few on-the-ground project management skills in similar
    projects.

    You don’t seem to have
    a good understanding of the public financing process, or just how much more powerful
    a vote is in low density neighbourhoods where change is commonly resented. Moreover, SkyTrain / high-density tower
    clusters and the lower heights you espouse with Eurotrams, Euroarchitecture, Euroculture,
    Eurohaircuts, Euroshoes and Euroaccessories are not interchangeable. SkyTrain is an efficient regional system. Trams are local and could never meet the
    needs of regional commuters who don’t want or need to drive a car. Further, by 2100 the Metro Vancouver population
    could arrive at 6+ million, or over 7,300 persons per km2 in the urban
    containment boundary as long as the watersheds, parks and agricultural land is
    not subsumed. Yes, replicating Chelsea would
    be a good way to deal with the growth, but I note even Chelsea and its
    surrounding cities are punctuated with high rises, built the Underground underfoot
    more than a century ago, and have lines of double decker buses chugging their way
    up rather narrow arterials. And it all works
    well together.

    In the regional context,
    towers – even with glass walls and reinforced concrete construction — possess
    lower per-capita life cycle emissions and consume far less per capita life-cycle
    energy than the mid and outer-ring suburbs.
    That is a function of having decent mixed uses and good transit. Towers can be made far more efficient by utilizing
    an infinite choice of insulated panels to replace the glass curtains, albeit at
    a higher price. One can hope for the
    best architecture, but short of imposing detailed design guidelines, most
    development companies are not willing to pay for more expensive though far more
    energy-efficient construction. However,
    I would bet a significant proportion of buyers would pay more to have lower
    operating costs years on end. This is
    where the life-cycle of a building’s environmental footprint needs to brought
    forward into the discussion.

  • MB

    Businesses, families and retirees are now leaving Vancouver because it’s becoming too expensive to live here. In the past week, I’ve heard from 5 long time residents who are now planning to leave, even though they had no intention to do so 5 years ago. Businesses are also closing all over the City due to high taxes.
    Take a walk along Denman, or Robson, or 4th Avenue or West Broadway and see for yourself what’s going on.

    Anecdotal evidence at best. Most arterials with mixed use storefront commercial zoning are thriving and business is growing.

    Local and provincial property taxes are based on the value of land. The market created the high land values through simple supply and demand mechanisms. Speculation helped, but the land values held under a major recession which tested the bubble theory and found it wanting. Businesses can write off a portion of their taxes, residents cannot. The landowners pass
    it on the tenants. Vancouver has lowered commercial taxes while raising residential taxes. So where’s your balance in the reality of the land value escalator, Gasp?

    You have posted comments lamenting the loss of “green space”, then the loss of industrial lands. You’re now defending car-dependency and suburban sprawl using a highly suspect and provably vested source. I don’t see how you can reconcile these conflicting issues.

    Now you’re going on about some kind of mass migration out of Vancouver (presumably to the suburbs) based only on affordability issues, not on other things like retirees downsizing regardless of housing costs, employment opportunities elsewhere, etc. etc.

    You also do not account for the huge jump in transportation costs families experience in the suburbs where car ownership is necessary. Even with the most
    recent decrease, fuel is still 500% higher than 15 years ago. In some jurisdictions transportation ends up
    equalizing the total cost burden on family budgets comparing more expensive inner city housing in a low-cost transit and walking environment to lower suburban
    housing costs jacked by multiple vehicle ownership. Doing the research may lead some families to
    decide to stay put in more expensive Vancouver. Mine is one of them. This economic phenomenon is common and not isolated to Vancouver.

    Families at the periphery also do not pay fully for the public services they consume. Publicly financed roads and utilities consume a horrible amount of land
    and are stretched farther out to serve fewer people. [There’s the source of your runoff toxins, Gasp.] Families who drive more have more accidents and therefore cost the public healthcare, insurance and court systems a lot more than the downtown walkers, transit users and cyclists who pay just as many income and property taxes. How is this not an inner city subsidy to exurbanites?

  • MB

    Some of the businesses simply moved to locations with cheaper rent within Vancouver.

  • MB

    While the taxes paid on high land values is high, the base tax rate is actually very reasonable compared to other cities.

  • MB

    True enough, malls suck the life out of the street.

    I would take exception to your comment about Main Street. I have lived near this busy street for 16 years, and for a 5-year period in the mid-80s, and I find it just gets better with every passing year.

  • MB

    Brillo, just shaking in my boots here. Surrey could have a million people and Vancouver would still be the enlightened, mature parent.

    However, I’d donate to any party that would move the stadiums, fireworks competition and the Granville Vomit & Slugfest Zone to Surrey. Or at least charge Surrey and other bedroom communities our policing and clean up costs for their residents who use these edifices to advanced civilization.

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    “Replacing trolleys with trams” is a long way from “being negative on Skytrain & Towers”

    MB.

    On the first point, I would keep the trolleys unitl such time as the longer trains are needed to handle the volume. I’m not the ‘go-to-person’ on this, but it is more or less common sense.

    On Broadway, to handle the 99 and the 9 volume we need more than trolleys. But we dont’ need a subway. Love to have a subway…

    Except that….

    I’m getting the feeling that a subway is going to be used as the rationale for permitting additonal height and density along Broadway.

    Height and density that has nothing to do with human-scale urbanism—like in Edinburgh—that performs a lot better than what is on view today (well, yesterday, actually) on Granville, Georgia, Howe, Alberni & Thurlow and Davie, but not Robson between Thurlow & Burrard—at least not yet.

    Not only did I do an hour long walk in the area, but I snapped some picks. (I’ll do a post on that soon—Vancouverism from the ground—All wet”.

    All my experiences yesterday point to the Vancouerism being too reliant on commercialization of the street and too ignoring of the need for urban space to sustain social functioning. Whether residential, commercial or business. all the construciton that has been erected in the Expo to Olympics era in our city seems to be disproportionately tilted away from the individual and biased to the corporate entity.

    Skyktrain, since you seem to have failed to notice, blights the urban districts it crosses.

    http://lewisnvillegas.wordpress.com

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    Yes, Richard, I am serious about taking down the Expo line. They did it in Greenwich Village for two lines in the early 1900s. Both the El in Chicago and the one line left in Paris that crosses La Defence above ground are unacceptable intrusions into the respective neighbourhoods.

    Look at how good the Expo line has been for attracting re-development along First Avenue… We got high end car lots and a donut vendor.

    Grade separated underground or subway, sure in the right cases. Train in the sky? Bad mistake.

    As far as the LRT on grade or Trolley BRT on Broadway what I hear reported seems at odds with your report. By boarding the BRT “Fare Paid” in Curitiba they are achieving subway levels of service.

    This has been going on for more than 20 years.

    I find that Cambie is a disappointment. Lets set aside the cut-and-cover fiasco for the time being, and concentrate on two other points.

    (1) The Canada Line is not providing local service, so we still have trolleys on the surface filling that gap.

    (2) The street is six lanes and chocking with cars. As a result, walking along Cambie Village is no picnic. I see very few people strolling the street for pleasure. I mean, what pleasure is there to find? The streets are too narrow and too great a percentage of the R.O.W. was left in the hands of drivers.

    It seems to me that part of the advantage of the surface option (LRT or Trolley BRT—that’s not a B-line we should point out in passing—but a bus line on a dedicated lane, tripping the light signals, and loading “fare paid”) is that it takes space away from the automobile.

    [I’m sure that statement has just ‘cleared the room’].

    The Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich that I rode in the early 80s—along with their tram network—seems like a good case in point. Banhofstrasse was virtually car free, and ridership of the fast and efficient public service seemed like the preferred option for everyone except perhaps top execs with company cars & garages.

    However, the point to underline is that the feel of the place was changed due to the ability of the transit to pinch car traffic reducing it to very very low levels.

    So, in addition to points (1) and (2) we have to add the third consideration.

    (3) In order to get fewer car trips would we be better off as a city building a network of say four or five surface lines for the same price of a single Broadway subway?

    Is that going to be an option in the spring referendum??

    Part of the answer to the question about the ability of a transit option to pinch cars off the street, of course, will depend on what kind of neighbourhoods we plan.

    Evidence today is that if we keep shoving Rize towers down neighbourhood throats—for the profits additional height can net—then it won’t really matter what kind of transit we put up.

    Once the street is stripped of all ability to support social functioning we might as well forget about ‘good’ urbanism.

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    Old houses can be retained. In the case of small bungalows that abound in our neighbourhoods we can raise the structure for a pittance and build a new construction below. The trees are full of low hanging fruit. But the tower mania is all consuming

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    A perfectly good wood building was being torn down on the Rize site as I was being interviewed on camera for the CBC. I could see the bright coloured fir from stud walls erected in the 1940s and 1950s.

    Both the commercial structure torn down on the Rize site (more to come down) and the the old houses to be torn down can be saved and re-purposed instead as part of neighbourhoods that respect local traditions, have not gone tower mad like our Council, and prize building using renewable materials.

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    N.B. Logan5 Towers blight neighbourhoods; so does Skytrain</b.

    I mean, its just plain common sense, is it not? There is NO pedestrian traffic to speak of in Metrotown around where that HUGE overhead pedestrian crossing has been built at great effort and expense signifying… Nothing.

    Sure, anyone can say "it just aint so". But the facts speak for themselves and people get it. They vote with their feet. Build the towers and they will leave the neighbourhood. Whether they duck into a mall or stay home and watch the tube is of secondary importance. The sidewalks are bare and the streets are chocking with cars. Period.

    The primary fact is that the neighbourhood public spaces have been stripped of social functioning. There is no people mixing going on. Not in Metrotown, not in Collingwood, not at Edmonds, not in Kerrisdale (where the problem is cars not towers). That's not just me "saying so". That's on-site observation when returning Halloween costumes at the Disney store; when meeting the principal at Carlton Elementary last spring and the spring before that; when driving into New Westminster along Canada Way; or when I visit Zane at Light the Store.

    The West End is a different kettle of fish.

    I support building towers in the CBD. However, I expect that will also change one day as a neighbourhood matures. And I feel that the quality of the first 50-feet of street wall being constructed at a furious pace in the downtown is not where it should be.

    The folks at the WE residents association feel they are not being listened to by the city. There is discussion that view cones have been redrawn without due process just so towers can go up where the neighbours don't want them.

    Vibrant? Yes. English Bay is the most European part of our city. Davie Village has kept a pulse beating since at least the late 70s. The streets between Denman and Stanley Park clearly benefit from the quality of the neighbourhood adjacencies. And there are two Robsons to choose from: upper and lower Robson. Georgia street is a street of cars and a wall of poorly conceived towers. Coal Harbour very exclusive with the towers dark and empty most of the time.

    However, even in the West End, the urbanism could use strengthening. For example, the service lanes could be repurposed to support more neighbourhood mixing.

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    Logan5… Skytrain & Towers kill social functioning in our neighbourhoods.

    Its just plain common sense. There is NO pedestrian traffic to speak of in Metrotown around where that HUGE overhead pedestrian crossing has been built at great effort and expense signifying… Nothing.

    Sure, anyone can say “it just aint so”. But the facts speak for themselves and people get it. They vote with their feet. Build the towers and they will leave the neighbourhood. Whether they duck into a mall or stay home and watch the tube is of secondary importance. The sidewalks are bare and the streets are chocking with cars. Period.

    The primary fact is that the neighbourhood public spaces have been stripped of social functioning. There is no people mixing going on. Not in Metrotown, not in Collingwood, not at Edmonds, not in Kerrisdale (where the problem is cars not towers). That’s not just me “saying so”. That’s on-site observation when returning Halloween costumes at the Disney store; when meeting the principal at Carlton Elementary last spring and the spring before that; when driving into New Westminster along Canada Way; or when I visit Zane at Light the Store.

    The West End is a different kettle of fish.

    I support building towers in the CBD. However, I expect that will also change one day as a neighbourhood matures. And I feel that the quality of the first 50-feet of street wall being constructed at a furious pace in the downtown is not where it should be.

    The folks at the WE residents association feel they are not being listened to by the city. There is discussion that view cones have been redrawn without due process just so towers can go up where the neighbours don’t want them.

    Vibrant? Yes. English Bay is the most European part of our city. Davie Village has kept a pulse beating since at least the late 70s. The streets between Denman and Stanley Park clearly benefit from the quality of the neighbourhood adjacencies. And there are two Robsons to choose from: upper and lower Robson. Georgia street is a street of cars and a wall of poorly conceived towers. Coal Harbour very exclusive with the towers dark and empty most of the time.

    However, even in the West End, the urbanism could use strengthening. For example, the service lanes could be repurposed to support more neighbourhood mixing.

  • logan5

    “The primary fact is that the neighbourhood public spaces have been stripped of social functioning. There is no people mixing going on. Not in Metrotown, not in Collingwood, not at Edmonds, not in Kerrisdale (where the problem is cars not towers).”

    Mt. Pleasant (where I live) is a great neighbourhood, I’m sure you’d agree. It has good “social functioning” despite all of the mid-rise towers, and despite all of these nondescript 3 story walk-ups that are set back too far from the side-walk. Most of the social interaction in Mt. Pleasant is concentrated on Main St in the coffee shops, restaurants, bars, grocery stores and so on. It’s our high street. Same scenario in the tower neighbourhoods of Lower Lonsdale, the West End, and Kerrisdale. (How you think Kerrisdale is dysfunctional is a mystery to me). These neighbourhoods do not have great residential areas, they are in fact not very good residential areas, but what they do have is a great retail street to rally around. This is what Metrotown is missing. Despite having the highest population density outside of downtown, a vibrant high street has not developed. In its place there is an oppressive traffic generating, street grid killing, soul sucking shopping mall.

    Another example. Coal Harbour and Yaletown are exactly the same in form (all towers), and approximately the same in demographic – same everything. Yet one is dull and lifeless – no pedestrian traffic, and the other is alive and energetic. How do you explain this tower paradox? Luckily for Yaletown they had great urban streets to build around like Hamilton and Mainland. No such luck for Coal Harbour.

    I dunno Lewis. There seems to be some pretty conclusive evidence that towers don’t kill social functioning. And certainly not Skytrain, which creates pedestrian activity in numbers trams could never hope to match.

    By the way, you never did really give me a straight answer as to why sections of normally vibrant Main Street are dead in (your preferred) low rise sections. More specifically 17th to 19th ave. You answer in riddles a lot of the time. An arm chair urban planner like myself would prefer a simpler to the point explanation. Thanx. Talk to you later…

  • spartikus

    Perhaps Gasp could cite us the vacancy rate for business properties – statistic that is publicly available.

    I remember another commenter here claiming 4th Ave. was a ghost-town due to the Pt. Grey Rd bike lane. So I walked it’s length and found precisely “For Lease” signs on stores.

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    Mt. Pleasant (where I live) is a great neighbourhood

    Logan

    The volunteers during the community plan process got together on a saturday and workshoped ideas for what would make Mt. Pleasant support a higher levels of social functioning. Result is here:

    http://wp.me/p2FnNe-9U

    Instead of having to dive into a cafe for social life, which we do, the idea was to close down some (or all) the lanes on Unit Block Kingsway (in front of the library) and create an outdoor open space. A place we can go to first—without texting or calling—bump into some people, and then decide if you need to go somewhere else

    A place, an urban room, has infinitely more possibllity than a retail strip for social mixing. Compare Gassy Jack Square and Commercial Drive. Among the best people places in our city, but the Square outstrips the Drive by an urban mile. Of course, it says something about Vancouverites that Gastown is used mainly by visitors. We go there. But we meet a lot of travellers when we do.

    Among the places to meet in Mt. Pleasant would be a living room or a front door yard (see below) in a 3-storey walk up.

    That form can be greatly enhanced as it is brought up to energy codes. By adding insulation on the roof and double glazing on the openings engineers have calculated that heating fuel consumption can decrease by 50%. That’s a saving of about $15,000 to a strata of 40 to 60 units. Not bad. It is also very good for green house gas emissions. They are reduced by half. More if you consider that better performing units can be heated by renewable energy sources rather than natural gas.

    When the units are retrofitted, the ground level units (33% of the units in a 3-storey strata) can be given key-access through their patios, and these can evolve to function like the front door yards of Cabbagetown, Greenwich Village, Beacon Hill, the Garden District.

    Lower Lonsdale? C’mon the scale of the street there is monstrous. West End and Kerrisdale we’ve already discussed. As far as Metrotown, All the Kings Shops and All the Kings Men…. It’s the urbanism that sucks, ok? You don’t fix that with store front. You have to have the urban footrpint right first. A comes before B, before C, etc.

    Yaletown, of course is NOT all towers. The warehouse district could have—should have—been as good as SoHo in NYC. But here we did learn something new in this election (well—it was confirmed). The city will not contract out. The foks that are there do not get an injection of urban design—a fresh outlook—when they tackle a new project. The handling of the streetworks in Yaletown is awful. A real wasted opportunity. Compare that to the still-going-strong Granville Island.

    However, where the towers begin, Yaletown fades. No paradox here. Yet it requires analysis that goes deeper than one line.

    For answers on why Main Street vibe drops significantly beyond 16h avenue consult your local history. Or join us on the Jane’s Walk next spring. We treat that question every 12 months; but its better understood walking in the place than on the blogs.

    Consider this… There is a need to learn about how to live in urban places in cities like ours where the immediate past was a suburban migration that gutted the place and rolled over what small amount of urbanism had been building since 1865. Then came the CPR (cementing Vancouver’s future as a company town) and the arrival of the automobile.

    The dessimation is not just in the urban landscape. It is in our lives. We have forgotten—or have never known—living in urban places. So making one will be no small feat.

    Given that, and the local predilection for the smell of money, it is easy to get it wrong.

    Folks don’t understand that it is enough for local Councils to give density. We go too far when we give additional height. Nothing is gained (except profits) building over the dictums for human scale.

    We know who wins. Guess who loses??

  • MB

    Recycling all the wood in stick-framed buildings would add to the costs of the new housing built on site if they too were built from wood. This in the context of very expensive land and housing. Dismantling a house and sorting and denailing the wood and other recyclables is labour intensive and thus expensive. The politicians who campaign to ban demolitions without addressing the cost of the alternatives are doing the city a disservice. Why not allow an extra suite or rowhouse or two to developers and builders who save character houses and recycle materials from others to at least cover their costs without escalating the sale prices.

    Perhaps you could have started a wood recycling firm and actually do something about your concern and have made an offer to the Rize owners who obviously will not be using much wood. Perhaps you can join Michael Green’s office and help design –GASP!– towers made from recycled wood.

    Large dimension Douglas fir timbers are always recycled here because of their value and beauty. Many local cabinet makers recycle even the smaller fir 2x4s into furniture. Some of us who have renovated old houses save the fir, sand it and reuse it in millwork.

    You can do better than just complain about it.

  • MB

    Anyone can pull examples from the air and claim they will work anywhere. So just how do the geo-economic, demographic and urban geometry of each of your anecotal observations compare specifically to Broadway-UBC? Where is your analysis? Where is your credibility when you suggest tearing down the Expo Line with a straight face?

  • Chris Keam

    As someone who rides Skytrain 3-5 times a week, the best part of the trip is the views one gets when riding the line. They should make the Broadway line elevated too, so that people can note the businesses along the route and patronize them, along with enjoying the vista.

  • Internet made me obsolete

    There is no good eveidence that the remains I excavated were related in any way to the native population of today.

  • Chris Keam

    No one cares.

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    It seems to me that many people have bought into the theory that “smart growth” [i.e. towers] and rapid transit via a subway will make Vancouver “green” because people will stop using cars to move around the City.

    gasp

    It is worth repeating: the only comparative advantage of tower forms over human-scale density is profits to the developer. In every other measure including: social, environmental and urban functioning the towers under-perform human-scale density.

    http://wp.me/p1yj4U-nr

    As the documentary I discuss in the link provided shows, GM electric cars were in the market place in 2004 and then withdrawn by the giant in 2005. Thus the analysis provided under gasp below is correct.

    The cars are not going away. Our choices are to provide a fast and efficient way to commute to work, or face gridlock. Either way a transportation system will be in place in one generation.

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    I note that the trams in the
    Periphery [of Paris] do not cross into the centre. That’s because 14
    Metro lines and five RER (express) lines (i.e. 19 individual lines) do all the heavy lifting in Central Paris, and much of it at the edges.

    MB

    I am not a transit engineer. I specialize in urbanism. I depend on the transportation experts to provide concrete analysis in their field using verifyiable numbers. I try to do the same in my area.

    1. Vancouver is NOT Paris

    Paris Metro Area 17,174.4 km2
    Metro population 12,292,895

    Vancovuer Metro Area 2,878.52 km2
    Metro Population 2,313,328

    Difference Metro Area 6x
    Difference Metro Area 5.3X

    We’ll leave aside the history of Paris that is about 2000 years old (founded by the Romans) and Vancouver 130 years old (founded by the British). The Europeans have a different attitude about cars and transit, and that is probably the most important point.

    If we were to continue to develop our neighbourhoods with livable streets and walkable footprint, then we would be continuing to evolve our city as a place where cars take a second place to people.

    However, the future direction of Vancouver is precisely what is at stake here.

    The choice is not between a surface LRT and a subway on Broadway. The choice is between building a transit network of street cars on the surface vs. building one subway line every 20 year or so.

    On to your carefully articulated points.

    2. Olympic Line of Broadway

    Olympic Line… You failed to provide the numbers:
    (1) capacity than required)
    (2) speed
    (3) frequency
    (4) design capacity for Vancouver arterials

    It would be instructional for you to elaborate on the need to keep the existing trolley bus service on Broadway. Broadway or 9th Avenue. 12th and 4th Avenues are within easy walking distance. It seems to me that if there is not sufficient capacity on Broadway to handle the population, service on 12th and on 4th could provide supports.

    Of course, that envisions a different citiy where big towers are NOT built on Broadway making a bad situation worse.

    BTW I did notice the narrow cars. I’m sure that there is a good answer. Adding the width of an extra seat; doubling the car and making longer trains to match Broadway’s huge blocks; etc. However, I am not expert at this level of detail.

    3. Pedestrian Crossing Distance, Broadway

    Arthritic knees cannot cross the 60-foot curb to curb distance exiting on Broadway today. That is FACT. And it will not be changed by a subway.

    Surface LRT riding between 5 foot medians that become 10 foot station medians at quarter-mile distances. Pedestrian crossing distance would be reduced into three 20-foot segments (car, tram, car) and an island of safety either 5 or 10 feet wide.

    14.5 foot sidewalk
    20 foot carriage way (parking off-peak)
    5 foot median
    20 foot tram way
    5 foot median
    20 foot carriage way
    14.5 foot sidewalk

    =99 foot R.O.W. (widened in 1926-29 from 66 feet)

    Set back new development 10 feet (per the London Drugs store) and achieve 25-foot sidewalks.

    Replace trolley service with LRT-tram, spacing stations 1/4 appart; linking them to a transportiation grid on the arterials.

    Arbutus, Cambie, Main and Commercial are obvious choices for N-S service. However, I would expect a few more can be built for the SAME price as the subway.

    Of course, this would change the character of the arterial street and the nature of driving on Broadway. However, that is why it is called a “paradigm shift”.

    4. There are 25-28 signalized intersections on Broadway, Main-Alma… Serving pedestrians

    Agile pedestrians will be able to cross safely mid-block using the naturally occuring gaps in traffic. Pedestrians riding trams will only have to cross a single stream of cars. 50% +/- will cross the tram way

    5. Split stations are a weak compromise to the efficiencies of double-loaded station platforms, in my opinion.

    I invite other opinions. This is a good question to put computer modeling and case-study observations to work.

    6. Cambie is NOT Broadway, and will never achieve the level of ridership potential. The job and residential densities, pedestrian and commercial traffic, and destination targets are not there, Oakridge notwithstanding.

    Lets see some numbers. In the new paradigm the urbanism is achieving a smoother grain than the tower urbanism with its hot-spots of concentrated density and destinations—like Tower Oakridge.

    7. MBs Broadway

    Subway [note: stops at Arbutus, not UBC]
    Trolley on dedicated lanes (?)
    No parking
    Tower architecture [lower efficiency; lower social functioning]

    8. New Paradigm for Broadway

    Broadway is one place in our city that invites comparisons to the Paris of the Napoleons (uncle and nephew).

    Between the Lee Building and the BowMac sign Broadway bows in the middle in much the same way that the Camps Elysees was made “concave” between the Arc du Triumph and Place de la Concorde. What’s more, both measure about 1.25 miles in length.

    The opportunity is to make Broadway into the pedestrian spine for neighbourhoods strung along the north and south sides. Here walkable neighbourhoods would energize both Broadway and the other two arterials on their periphery—4th and 12th. As demand presents, these arterials would carry tram service.

    However, following historical patterns, the tram service would be on 4th, Broadway and 16th avenues.

    9. Reducing carbon

    [Built on top of an electric car fleet] The surface transit will achieve greater over-all savings in GHG (green house gases) than a Broadway Subway due to the built form it will attract.

    We all agree that the subway will be paid by towers. The energy efficiency of towers vs. human scale construction today is about 50% or half.

    The only way to make towers more efficient is to make them more expensive. However, there is no way to make them achieve the same social and urban levels of performance as human scale density.

    On the other hand, we can make human scale buildings more efficient by retrofitting windows; adding insulation as part of re-roofing; and adding shutters.

    MB… your dog wont hunt.

  • Chris Keam

    “12th and 4th Avenues are within easy walking distance. ”

    “Arthritic knees cannot cross the 60-foot curb to curb distance on a single pedestrian light cycle exiting on Broadway today.”

    “Agile pedestrians will be able to cross safely mid-block using the naturally occuring gaps in traffic. “

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    Change paradigm Mr. Keam—In urbanism the Whole is Greater than the Sum of the Parts.

  • Chris Keam

    I find anyone claiming walking from 4th to Broadway is not an issue, then claiming crossing the street is problematic for people with arthritic knees, might want to revisit these contradictory stances. I find your assumptions about transit use largely contradicted by the real world Lewis, where people (including myself) choose rapid transit in droves, while slow, multi-stop buses are a last resort for most, or just as often, a means for reaching a transit hub.

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    Broadway to 4th = 1200 feet, or a 1/4 mile. That’s five minutes, a little more if you are going up hill. Broadway to 16th = just under 2x that distance. When I was in Islington in London, walking 12 minutes to the Tube was not an issue. That was over 1/2 mile. One supposes that residents living between Broadway & 4th, or Bway & 16th would walk to the line closest to their house (we are discussing a transit network, right?). Buses would not be required.

    So, in the first case folks would walk not more than 2.5 minutes to get to the tram line, then an additional distance to get to the stop. In the second instance, they may walk as much as 5 minutes to get to the line and then a further 5 minutes to reach the stop. However, these would be the few living furthest away from the stops. The vast majority would be closer than 10 or 12 minutes walking distance.

    The walking is part of the daily exercise routine, so one doesn’t feel too apologetic about designing a neighbourhood that makes you walk. Rather we put the emphasis on making the place pleasurable for walking.

    The towers don’t help that.

    In the case of the arthritic patient crossing Broadway to attend a physcio-therapy clinic, the person drove to the destination then tried to walk the last few hundred feet. The solution became quickly apparent. She would park on the same side of Broadway, or ride with someone that would drop her off and pick her up that the door of the clinic, then find a parking spot.

    But that’s the point that I am raising: we are not building the streets to be walkable. The recommended maintenance program for the arthritic patients? Keep moving. Walking or swimming was recommended as ‘best options’.

    Hard to do that when the crossing distance presents an insurmountable barrier.

    On the bus vs. rapid transit issue we are on the same page. Maybe I am not expressing myself clearly enough. Local buses stop too frequently.

    I’m asking—not trying to assuming—if stops at 1/2 mile distances would not be better than stopping ever 400 yards? Main to UBC is about 6.5 miles or 11 1/2 mile stops. MB counts twice as many traffic signals over the same area. Guess the signal spacing there…

    My suggestion is that if we build a transit grid on the street rather than a tunnel, then we won’t need a bus to get to fast & efficient transit. If we live in the area we’ll walk and get on a tram.

    Now, we are talking about taking away road space from cars and giving it to transit. Yet, somehow I think you’re OK with that. But you seem to not have ridden a tram system that worked.

    Go to Portland, Toronto, Zurich, Nancy, Amsterdam or Milan. Those are some of the examples that spring to mind of places where that I have ridden transit successfully and effortlessly.

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    I just replied to this post this morning (see top of the thread). But I’m jotting down a note here so you will get an email notification.

    I’m still struggling with this Disqus format, experimenting with grouping all the replies beneath my initial post.

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    In a lot less than 536 pages—back in 2010—Dale Bracewell provided an overview of the role a “streetcar network” can play in a “regional transportation matrix”:

    http://atl.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2011/07/Bracewell_Web.pdf

    I travel the Fraser Hwy from time to time. I have visited Willowbrook mall since the 1970s (my observation—the willows were the first thing to be mowed down before the brook was put in a culvert).

    I really do not find any relevance in a comparison between Broadway and the Fraser Highway.

    Instead, I find that we are really ‘up against the wall’. Broadway can serve as a ‘model’ for how to make the region sustainable. Or it can be another sign that ‘the last people out of here please turn out the lights’.

    We can only tolerate THAT MANY transit implementation mistakes before we have just… given it all away.

    I am well prepared to accepting that the CPR townsite on the west coast of Canada ultimately failed to achieve ‘good’ urbanism.

    How ’bout you?

  • MB

    That’s quite the post, Lewis. I don’t have time to respond at
    the same level of detail, but I will start with a request that you stop condescendingly putting words in my mouth.

    Paris vs Vancouver

    Metro Paris population density: 3,350 persons / km2 overall
    (Wikipedia), denser in some arrondissements, and more so when you eliminate the large parks where no one will ever build. Central Paris has slightly less than the population of Metro Vancouver contained within 130 km2 giving it a density of almost
    21,200 persons / km2, which is similar to Kensington – Chelsea in London.

    Metro Vancouver population density: 2,890 persons / km2 overall when you eliminate the North Shore Watersheds, the ALR and large regional parks i.e. the places where no one
    will ever build. These forests, lakes and farms are collectively 3.5 times larger in area than the Urban Containment Boundary. Metro Paris has a similar relationship between forest and farm and urban development, but the latter is proportionately higher than Metro Vancouver’s.

    City of Vancouver’s population density: 4,626 persons / km2.
    Not central Paris or London, but certainly high enough to attract better quality transit than any other Metro Vancouver community, and comparatively better than any other city in Western North America except for parts of San Francisco.

    The inception of European Vancouver occurred the day the CPR arrived at the foot of Dunlevy Street in 1876. But the earliest evidence of local civilization radio carbon dates back 9,000 years to Sto:lo villages on the Fraser near Chilliwack. The Hul’qumi‘num on Southern Vancouver Island have similar archeological foundations to their traditional territorial claims. You cannot discount aboriginal history here; it is active today and recognized even under our European-influenced
    Constitution. It is the epitome of colonial arrogance to suggest local history “started” only 138 years ago, especially when
    aboriginal title was never ceded. Moreover, world history is not Euro-centric.

    The choice is not between a surface LRT and
    a subway on Broadway. The choice is between: (A) building a transit network of trams vs. (B) building one subway line, but just from Main to Arbutus.

    There is no choice in the Broadway Corridor. Elsewhere? Perhaps on one or two other arterials (e.g. 41st Ave, but this requires research), but it depends on a lot of things. On Broadway it’s about building the highest-capacity, downtown-like frequent transit service all the way to UBC (anything less is a cop out in too many ways to articulate here) while enhancing
    the existing trolley bus service and universal accessibility throughout the city. Your beloved trams, in my opinion,
    will succeed in only replacing the trolleys at great cost and with major disruption and will not obtain a significant improvement in service. The choice you propose is the result of poor
    analysis which focuses solely on capital construction costs and not on life cycle cost-benefit analyses.

    Broadway Urbanism

    My only desire is to place humans above all on Broadway. In that regard, the elderly with arthritic knees will have a 12 m curb-to-curb crosswalk distance (not 18 m), an extra-long
    signal light, and an additional 20 or so mid-block crosswalks to use, at least half servicing the Central Broadway medical sciences zone where thousands of patients and staff spend a lot of time every day. There will be a 6 m sidewalk standard on both
    sides of the street for kilometres, bumped out to 9 m in two places on every block frontage, and in three places on those 20 blocks mentioned above. This still leaves room for short commercial loading, taxi / HandiBus drop off, bike parking and limited car parking zones between bump outs located currently in the parking lanes. I would add very good quality pedestrian paving, planting, public art, lighting and pocket parks, and give awards to adjacent developments that bring these open space improvements across the line into their developments in the form of public courtyards.

    Pedestrians will have a choice of very efficient, seamless and fast regional transit AND a very efficient local transit service AND a great street that imparts a meaningful urban experience reflecting the character of the neighbourhoods at a fine grain
    as it passes through. Transit technology alone will not bring life to the street. Mixed use zoning, a fine grain architectural frontage texture and better pedestrian street assets will.

    We all agree that the subway will be paid by towers.

    Horsefeathers.

    According
    to the studies published so far a subway was justified economically and I terms of transit demand (both existing and potential) decades ago even if not even one more tower was built. Low and mid-rise development with design guidelines could be the corridor standard at the stroke of a pen, with the possible exception of Central Broadway. No, Lewis, my Broadway is NOT Manhattan, and it is quite condescending of you to attempt to put words in my mouth. You now stand corrected.

    As for shadows, you obviously need to spend a few more winters here to see how irrelevant that is at least half the year. Even
    your precious street-width-to-building-height ratio for solar access is blown out of the rainwater when the sun reaches only 18 degrees at noon during winter solstice, or far more likely, is well concealed behind the deep, 4,000 m cloud cover. I am more concerned about rain protection for pedestrians, the relevance and quality of the architecture, if the zoning allows for a wide range of uses, and the quality of the streetscape than
    formulaic pronouncements about how human urbanism is magically carried on the roofs of Eurotrams.

    Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.

    ― Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, “In Praise of Shadows”

    Your comments on emissions appear to be just more cherry-picking to reinforce your personal image of urbanism and bias toward trams. You seem to have no concern for proper accounting standards. If you did, then you would let life cycle per
    capita measures influence your opinions. This includes things like GHGs, capital costs and net benefits.

    On the subway, you ignore the life-long (100+ year) per-rider emissions of a clean, electrically-powered, high capacity subway and focus only the emissions from the concrete tunnel lining in the first year. Ditto capex. On towers your comparison is always with low and mid-rises, never with the sprawling suburbs
    and their vastly-wasteful petroleum-fueled transport networks. Again, life cycle comparisons indicate that the high density inner city is hugely more efficient than the low density suburb with respect to emissions, energy (both for construction and operations), and capital expenditure on a per capita basis.
    In other words, the competition should rightfully be placed between transit and roads, and density and sprawl. However, there are outsulation-clad towers that actually do have a pretty
    decent exterior wall panel energy efficiency rating.

    I have neither the time or inclination to respond to your other points.

  • MB

    MB counts twice as many traffic signals over the same area. Guess the signal spacing there…
    No. My count is 38 intersections between Main and Alma. It has increased since, but my last count of signalized intersections was 29. You can eliminate 8 due to the fact that they are majior cross arterials and would remain in place in any case.
    With surface LRT operating at a higher capacity you will have to entertain closing 30 intersections to cross-traffic. There are four more signalized intersections from Alma to Blanca that will require similar treatment.

  • MB

    Is the demand to UBC the same as to YVR?
    Asked and answered previously. 38% of Broadway corridor transit destinates to UBC. Broadway accepts almost 2/3rds of the traffic. Both are important parts of the same corridor.

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    Queen line in Toronto carries 50,000 passengers per day. Cars drive on the rails and the streetcars often veer of and turn onto arterials. No intersections are closed and the service is the back bone of the neighbourhood.

    That’s what I’m driving at. Disperse the load over a network, rather than pile it up all on one line.

    New vs old paradigm, except that the new is not very new after all. It’s just news around here.

  • Chris Keam

    “But you seem to not have ridden a tram system that worked.

    Go to Portland, Toronto, Zurich, Nancy, Amsterdam or Milan.”

    Yeah, I’ve actually took the whole GHG emissions thing to heart. I know, what a maroon amirite? My air travel has been very limited for the past couple of decades, so overseas travel hasn’t been on the menu since the mid-90s.

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