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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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  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    The very point I argue here, Bill.

    http://wp.me/p1yj4U-bo

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    Losing your lustre here, Brilliant. Urbanists measure more than population size or traffic volumes. History plays a part. There is a centrifugal force to urban pattern. The centre of Rome continues to be Piazza Navona at 2,500 years still the longest continuously inhabited urban site in the west. And the accumulation of business and cultural centres in Vancouver will continue to have a gravitational pull all their own for decades to come.

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    I just don’t believe that subway will attract 54,000 trips (half the trips of the Canada line) and surface LRT will provide only 11,000. Further, I don’t buy the 2041 projection—seems to me the Canada Line was at 100% capacity the day after it opened or so.

    Like Bill McCreery, I feel that a surface-LRT network is more important to our city than a subway on Broadway that can only attract 50k riders or half a load. If the network is up and running, surface LRT on Broadway would be a ‘main trunk’ making the 11,000-trip estimate laughable.

    Seems to me like you are pushing for the Expo line technology to extend further. I have another idea.

    Lets take down the elevated Expo and put it on the surface where it belongs! If we ever get to ridership numbers that require it (long after 2041 IMO) then we can bore that tunnel and build the subway.

    Broadway is not Bloor. And UBC is not YVR.

  • logan5

    “Why give it all to one site?”

    If one of our goals as a city is to get people out of their cars and on to transit, the Oakridge development makes sense. This is where there is going to be the highest rate of ridership. You don’t agree with that strategy?

  • jenables

    I think it’s safe to assume VGH and city hall make up a large proportion of that employment. Which begs the question why we don’t have buses running along 12th ave. Clearly the ridership is already there. If the answer is that it’s too tight between Fraser and kingsway, there are solutions. It seems beyond ridiculous to build a subway when they don’t even have a parallel bus route. Also, ubc needs a surrey campus.

  • MB

    IMMO, almost two thirds of transit users in the Broadway-UBC corridor are destinating to Broadway, not UBC. On line learning may be on the upswing, nonetheless its fantasy to suggest it will replace laboratories, field trips, working with physical objects like architectural models and geological samples, and face-to-face social networking. The campus employs an army of management and building maintenace staff on top of teachers and profs, and a lot of them take transit with thousands of students and make up over a third of the ridership in that corridor.

  • MB

    Lewis, let’s not isolate UBC from the Broadway corridor. Together they have a current LOS orders of magnitude higher than any other corridor, also a level of unmet demand.Together they also have the highest number of jobs outside of downtown and a lot more residential density than Surrey.

  • MB

    Hey Jen. Broadway is a corridor with more than 8 km of continuous mixed use commercial, retail, office and residential. It’s a major job centre, and not just for city and health sciences workers. 12th is predominantly residential with few job centres by comparison.

    It seems reasonable that transit planners would want to strenthen service on major corridors like Broadway where the demand is extraordinary and would tend to rank 12th Ave as too close to existing services to justify diluting it. The new #33 bus travels on 16th Ave which is far enough away to have its own demand.

  • MB

    For perhaps the same reason highbrises were and continue to be concentrated at the periphery of Paris: to provide an economic outlet away from lower density areas. Histoic Central Paris was saved in the proccess …. along with its sky high values. Low density, non-arterial large lots in Vancouver were saved too from having their powerful votes smacked down.

    But in a city with a diminishing land base those 50 and 60-foot lots are looking very ripe for rowhouses and low rises, especially those within two blocks of arterials. Well now … just look how many of them there are in the soon to be shadows of the Oakridge towers.

  • MB

    I would add to that the sheer convenience (especially to seniors living there) of using that wonderful instrument of human transport most valued in mixed use developments: the elevator.

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    Check your facts. Translink reports no correlation between mega towers—in fact, towers of any kind—and higher transit ridership.

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    Show me the numbers.

  • MB

    Show me the site plan. Prove that a tram will do more than just parrot the existing bus ridership after spending a billion bucks or more. Prove that surface rail will improve ridership and meet induced demand without severing every intersection save eight major cross arterials. Prove that surface rail can achieve high frequencies and eliminate the troublesome passups experienced today with buses. Prove that BRT or LRT in a dedicated median with signal priority won’t frustrate pedestrians, cyclists and commercial vehicles trying to cross to the opposite side of the road at 30 of 38 intersections Main to Alma. Show me that 300 passengers disgorging at a station in the centre of Broadway adjacent a major cross street won’t have higher imposed risks from mixed traffic than from any other transit proposal. Show me the evaluation of life-span per-rider costs for various transit technologies. Show me the risk assessment, engineering and independent transit planning studies specifically for Broadway.

    In my opinion limiting the scope of the debate to captial costs alone will result in a deficient transit system. There are just too many other considerations.

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    Point to understand here is that redevelopment can take place incrementally and that ‘rezoning’ is not necessary. Jurisdictions have used “overlay zones” where individual properties can qualify for a change of use, or a percentage increase in building area, if and when they meet a set of publicly vetted criteria.

    OK in plain English… We could have 800 s.f. bungalows add up to 2000 s.f. more space without rezoning, and without exceeding the character of their block. Not every property would qualify for a de-facto 2000 s.f. increase, the overlay zoning would specify details that have to be met like the average size of 20 nearest properties; not shadowing neighbours; parking; affordable rental suites; etc.

    The same overlay zoning code would give additional ‘points’ or ‘credits’ to lots fronting arterials. These might net a total built area approximating 8000 s.f. per 33-foot frontage; an outright 33-foot height above grade; and zero-side yards. In other words, on single family lots fronting arterials, the overlay zoning may allow single family lots to build fee-simple row houses.

    When we look at this kind of approach on a block-by-block, street-by-street and neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood basis it soon becomes apparent that there is a HUGE amount of space available in Vancouver that can be tapped incrementally, one property at a time, in a market regulated basis (i.e. supply driven by demand).

    Hedging this bet is the fact that fee-simple row houses are not a hot commodity in the international real estate market, on the one hand. And, that building fee-simple row houses will net affordable rental units as mortgage helpers, on the other.

    A third factor that is left out of the red-hot tower debate is the functioning of the neighbourhood itself. We’ll see whether the folks on this blog rise to sing the praises of Metrotown. I for one do not equate high volume of traffic in the mall as ‘good social functioning’. I prefer to look at the streets of that so-called neighbourhood—auto dominated as they are and not a soul to be seen around—and find there the quantifiable data that the place is not functioning to support social mixing.

    Of course, I don’t see the lower levels of use in Oakridge Mall vis a vis Metrotown Mall as a reason for the towerization of Oakridge. Maybe the mall managers can resort to good-old fashioned marketing to attract more shoppers instead.

    In the meantime we need to focus on the quality of life that neighbourhoods in Vancovuer achieve versus places like Metrotown, Brentwood and Edmonds. It seems plain enough to me that there is not the same level of community activity in the tower zones built along the skytrain as there is in the residential enclaves that developed along the old transit grid. The reasons are pretty obvious: transit level of service; resulting volumes of traffic on the street; and building type.

    Trams and human scale density deliver social functioning at local level; while residents in Skytrain and Tower zones get in their cars and go looking for it elsewhere. The consequence of all the additional car trips only serves to further degrade the neighbourhood’s ability to support social functioning. Apple yard, studying San Francisco neighbourhoods, drew the line at about 12,000 vehicles per day—or about 2 lanes of moving traffic in the Lower Mainland.

    However, that’s not where the story ends. Vancouver’s neighbourhoods—while outperforming their suburban cousins—still have a long way to go. The low hanging fruit in improving our neighbourhoods is building a fast & efficient transit network, and reversing the obsession to build density with towers.

    Instead, we need to embrace human scale density as the best way to provide affordable rentals; livable streets and walkable neighbourhoods.

    All the pieces need to fit. Skytrain and Towers—obvious in Metrotown, Brentwood & Edomonds—deliver barren wastelands of sprawl overrun by cars where no one can walk in comfort—I’m thinking of Surrey Station on King George. The flip side of the coin—human scale urbanism with surface tram or BRT—has built the best residential districts in the west (Europe & North America).

    Yep. When the ridership is there, subways work. However, it makes no sense to build towers on Broadway—giving away the livability of the place—just to put the transit in a tunnel.

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    Redevelopment can take place incrementally over time without necessitating ‘rezoning’. Jurisdictions have used “overlay zones” where individual properties qualify for a change of use, or a percentage increase in building area, when they meet a set of publicly vetted criteria.

    OK in plain English… We could have 800 s.f. bungalows add up to 2000 s.f. more space without rezoning, provided they do not exceed the character of their block. Not every property would qualify for a de-facto 2000 s.f. increase, the overlay zoning would specify details that have to be met like the average size of 20 nearest properties; not shadowing neighbours; parking; affordable rental suites; proximity to services & transit; etc.

    The same overlay zoning code would give additional ‘points’ or ‘credits’ to lots fronting arterials. These might net a total built area approximating 8000 s.f. per 33-foot frontage; an outright 33-foot height above grade; and zero-side yards. In other words, on single family lots fronting arterials, the overlay zoning may allow single family lots to build fee-simple row houses.

    When we look at this kind of approach on a block-by-block, street-by-street and neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood basis it soon becomes apparent that there is a HUGE amount of space available in Vancouver that can be tapped incrementally, one property at a time, in a market regulated basis (i.e. supply driven by demand).

    Hedging this bet is the fact that fee-simple row houses are not a hot commodity in the international real estate market, on the one hand. And, that building fee-simple row houses will net affordable rental units as mortgage helpers, on the other.

    A third factor that is left out of the red-hot tower debate is the functioning of the neighbourhood itself. We’ll see whether or not the folks on this blog rise to sing the praises of Metrotown. I for one do not equate high volume of traffic in Metrotown mall as ‘good social functioning’. I prefer to look at the streets of that so-called neighbourhood—auto dominated as they are and not a soul to be seen around—and find there the quantifiable data that the place is not functioning to support social mixing. An underground garage is not a people place.

    Of course, I don’t see the lower levels of use in Oakridge Mall vis a vis Metrotown Mall as a reason for the towerization of Oakridge. Maybe the mall managers can resort to good-old fashioned marketing to attract more shoppers instead. Who knows, maybe we should return to the more open character of Oakridge of old where the rain was allowed to get in, along with the sunshine, thus avoiding the green house effect of those two gallerias that must cost a petty penny to both cool and heat (depending on the time of year). Thermal performance of the glass covering those atria must be on a par with a layer or two of cardboard!

    In the meantime we need to focus on the quality of life that neighbourhoods in Vancovuer achieve versus places like Metrotown, Brentwood and Edmonds. It seems plain enough to me that there is not the same level of community activity in the tower zones built along the skytrain as there is in the residential enclaves that developed along the old transit grid. The reasons are pretty obvious: transit level of service; resulting volumes of traffic on the street; and building type.

    It works like this: Skytrain (or Canada Line) do not serve the local community, thus buses are still required to provide local service. However, buses don’t attract riders in sufficient numbers in our city, so both buses and the cars of those not choosing to use transit, end up clogging the street and the street network being served by the Skytrain (or Canada Line). Broadway subway will suffer the same plight.

    Thus, trams and human scale density deliver social functioning at local level; while residents in Skytrain and Tower zones get in their cars and go looking for it elsewhere. The consequence of all the additional car trips only serves to further degrade the neighbourhood’s ability to support social functioning. Donald Appleyard, studying San Francisco neighbourhoods, drew the line at about 12,000 vehicles per day—or about 2 lanes of moving traffic in the Lower Mainland.

    However, that’s not where the story ends. Vancouver’s neighbourhoods—while outperforming their suburban cousins—still have a long way to go. The low hanging fruit in improving our neighbourhoods is building a fast & efficient transit network, and reversing the obsession to build density with towers.

    Instead, we need to embrace human scale density as the best way to provide affordable rentals; livable streets and walkable neighbourhoods.

    All the pieces need to fit. Skytrain and Towers—obvious in Metrotown, Brentwood & Edomonds—deliver barren wastelands of sprawl overrun by cars where no one can walk in comfort—I’m also thinking of the two Surrey Stations on King George.

    The flip side of the coin—human scale urbanism with surface tram or BRT—has built the best residential districts in the west (Europe & North America).

    Yep. When the ridership is there, subways worK. However, it makes no sense to build towers on Broadway—giving away the livability of the place—just to pay for a transit system in a tunnel that we really don’t need.

    PS

    I’m not thinking we are getting off track on a post about an “election poll”. I just find that this last election was “An Election About Nothing”. These kinds of issues (i.e. the upcoming transit referendum) were not discussed. The parties really didn’t have a lot to say on anything. Not the neighbourhoods, not the transit, not the funding of inner city schools.

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    OK I’ll bite. On Paris—that is not Vancouver. On the towers on the Banlieu—even the ‘best ones’ really don’t seem to work for the families living there. Then, there is the Peripherique… and the 4 lines of surface LRT built since I was last there in 2005. So, Paris is not a good comparison to Vancouver, especially considering geo-economic factors.

    No comparison with buses (for losers—that’s the way they work in Vancouver) and the Olympic Tram. You rode it right? Marvellously smooth and 0-GHG. Can trip the lights so that the traffic light is always green when its moving; and always red when it is taking on passengers—who can be waiting in ‘fare paid’ zones to speed up the process. Then, of course, trams and buses take away road space from cars. Part of the issue is just not increasing transit ridership to get a more livable city; part of the issue is reducing car trips. Oh… and is not Cambie just as bad of a street—or worse—since the Canada Line fiasco was completed?

    Trams are longer than buses, so if we are replacing the carrying capacity of the 99 and the 9 on Broadway it stands to reason that “severing intersections” like the present service does will be reduced. Curitiba has achieved subway levels of service with BRT, never mind LRT!

    The pedestrian movements are helped by separated transit lanes using medians. Rather than try to cross the impossible 66-foot curb to curb distance on a single pedestrian light on Broadway, folks that are less nimble will be able to cross two lanes to the median; wait; cross the transit lanes; wait; and finally cross the remaining two lanes.

    Are you going to bring up the obejection that trams kill pedestrians MB??

    Loading and unloading of transit vehicles can be done in many different ways. For example, the platform can be in the center of the road, or adjacent a sidewalk. But if we have 300 passengers disgorging at a station then we have beat the problem of severing the cross streets because the ridership figures are just through the roof!

    I agree with the view that all the pieces need to fit together. The cost argument is just a way to get people to give their head a shake and take notice.

    So, let’s return to Cambie… Is the so-called ‘village’ there better off with the subway running underneath?

    No.

    Would it have benefited from putting the tracks on the surface and closing lanes to traffic? Would the businesses and the local residents have benefited from a different approach than subway below and traffic madness on the street?

    I’ll let you weigh in on that.

  • MB

    The correlation is between higher densities and transit, and does not pluck towers out of the calculation, like a bent feather from a turkey’s back.

  • gasp

    Thanks for writing this Lewis. I think you have enunciated what many of us feel would be a more appropriate method of densification in the City of Vancouver.

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

    Instead of using planning to continue to have livable neighbourhoods, they are using it as a method of social engineering, to try to force people to change the way they commute. Unfortunately for the proponents of this theory, the supposed benefits, such as affordability and economic growth, don’t always materialize the way they envision:

    http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2012/07/16/questioning-messianic-conception-smart-growth

    Furthermore, IMO, it’s folly to think that people are going to stop using cars. Many jobs today rely on the use of the automobile because “time is money”. For example, low-paid caregivers that work in this City have 10 minutes to get from one client to the next, and the transit network here makes that impossible without a car. So why are they being penalized or looked down upon by those who see cars as some kind of evil.

    In addition, technological advances have both improved, and will continue to improve, the performance of cars and the methods and types of energy used to run them (eg., electricity, fuel cells, etc.) So why are we trying to redesign the City solely to try to force people to stop using them? Shouldn’t we instead try to design the City to adapt to peoples’ needs and lifestyle, rather than trying to force them to change their method of transportation?

    I found David Suzuki’s comments yesterday to be quite interesting:

    “If we continue to look at the world and the land around us just in
    terms of dollars and cents, we are going to destroy the very things that
    make that land so precious to us, the very things that keep us alive
    and healthy,”

    (http://www.vancouversun.com/news/teens+cross+picket+line+protest+Kinder+Morgan+pipeline+with+video/10407182/story.html#ixzz3K1XF96BU)

    Now, substituting the word “City” for the words “world and the land”:

    “If we continue to look at the City around us just in terms of dollars and cents, we are going to destroy the very things that make that City so precious to us, the very things that keep us alive and healthy,”

    I find these words quite hypocritical, considering he supports Vision
    and what they’re allowing the developers to do to this City, since he has personally benefited financially (without complaint) from the closure of Point Grey Road to vehicle traffic, which is forcing 10,000 cars to drive an extra 20 minutes a day and increasing both pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

  • MB

    … Paris is not a good comparison to
    Vancouver, especially considering geo-economic factors …

    Well, why compare it then? I note that the trams in the
    Periphery 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. I also note that the planning has already started for Phase Two of London’s CrossRail (express) rail project. Phase One alone exceeds $24 billion Canadian for a metro population only 3.4 times greater than Metro Vancouver’s. And that’s in addition to 11 lines of which 192 km are underground.

    Both the French and British national governments have no problem being full participants in the well-being of their urban populations. I would bet their per rider costs over time are phenomenally low despite the high capital costs.

    … You rode the Olympic Line didn’t you? …Can trip the lights so that the traffic light
    is always green when it’s moving; and always red when it is taking on passengers …

    Yes, I rode the OL. It was too narrow (lower capacity than required), slow and presumably not achieve the required 75-second frequencies specifically as the missing Broadway segment of the regional rapid transit system. Looks cool, though, and would be more
    appropriate on outlying, narrower arterials where it won’t replicate an existing trolley bus service. You will need a
    wider surface light rail train to soak up future demand on arterials like 41st Ave.

    There are 25-28 signalized intersections on Broadway, Main-Alma. Other than arterials where you’d expect cross traffic, you will be severing ~20 sets of signal lights currently used by pedestrians to cross the street. Significant numbers of the elderly patronize the medical services offered on Central Broadway (Cambie-Burrard). To have a walk light turn red not 5 seconds after you push it to let trains go by in both directions would lead to an untenable level of risk, in my view. So yes, you can count on me to bring up the inevitable deaths and injuries every time.

    If you continue think this can be done on the 30m Broadway road allowance, then I invite you to do a
    scaled plan and map out both pedestrian and vehicular movements at stations which will be situated next to major cross arterials. Split stations are a weak compromise to the efficiencies of double-loaded station platforms, in my opinion. Sidewalk-oriented platforms are better, but not as good. But you will always have
    the conflicts between vital commercial delivery vehicles and trolley buses and trains, even if you banned all cars.

    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.

    Broadway is unique and I feel the best way to realize the existing and unmet demand and its full potential as a medium for appropriate 21st Century urbanism is to
    build a decent subway with automated technology and very high frequencies all the way to UBC, enhance the Number Nine trolley for better local service, greatly
    expand the pedestrian realm at the surface by, yes, removing much of the parking lane space, and foster better architecture and energy efficiency in buildings.

    Regarding GHGs, the carbon savings would be astronomical over the 100+-year life of the subway asset simply due to displacing more trips by petroleum-burning cars than any other transit mode, and by using clean hydro power.

  • MB

    Lewis, for an idea of the kind of in-depth analysis required on projects like Broadway I draw your attention
    to the latest evaluation of rapid transit alternations for Surrey. This one is still one step shy of a final report.

    From skimming the report it’s evident that the cost / benefit evaluation seesawed between LRT and
    RRT (SkyTrain on the Fraser Hwy to Langley City) until you get to Appendix 3. There RRT soared above LRT in
    terms of life-cycle costs, overall benefits and net present value. LRT never goes higher than NEGATIVE $50
    million annually in terms of the above criteria in any of its five options, which were tabulated on the specifics of capital costs, operating costs, life-cycle cost analyses, life-cycle benefit analyses, emissions, land use, ability to meet demand, and trip mode share. Even the geotechnical conditions were accounted for. RRT achieves break even in 2035, and hits $500 million a year in net benefit value in 2044.

    The study even considered urban design considerations (LRT is superior than RRT due to the presence
    of the guideway), yet in tabulating all considerations, RRT came out on top, notably in Alternative RRT 1a where it works in tandem with BRT on King George and 104th. BRT should be implemented in the form of articulated electric trolleys.

    Google: “Surrey Rapid Transit Alternatives Analysis Phase Two Evaluation, TransLink and the BC
    Ministry of Transportation”. The report is 537 pages long and accounts for everything but the kitchen sink. Thanks to Voony for supplying a link in another blog.

  • Chris Keam

    “The Heartland Institute is a Chicago-based free market think tank and 501(c)(3) charity that has been at the forefront of denying the scientific evidence for man-made climate change. The Heartland Institute has received at least$676,500 from ExxonMobil since 1998 but no longer discloses its funding sources.”

    http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-institute

  • gasp

    So by your reasoning, even though he’s an expert in urban transportation everything he says should be discounted because you don’t agree with the Heartland institute’s position re climate change?

  • Chris Keam

    “Joel S. Hirschhorn: “Sometimes it is necessary to bring attention to terrible work because many people can be conned and believe its lies, distortions and misinformation. Wendell Cox is a sprawl shill-meister with a long history of presenting pro-sprawl propaganda in the guise of scholarly work. But as others have also concluded, his work does not stand up to scrutiny.””

    http://placemakinginstitute.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/wendell-cox-intellectual-terrorist/

  • gasp

    Thank you for pointing out what others think of his work or motivation.

    Nevertheless, I think it’s useful to read other points of view, even if you don’t agree with them, because they also inform us about human motivation generally.

    Even accepting that climate change is caused by human activity, I don’t think it’s possible for humanity to eliminate all fossil fuel use until there is an economically feasible alternative. People won’t change unless they want to, and most don’t want to change if it means giving up their financial security, their job or their lifestyle. Furthermore, I don’t think there’s ever been a time in human history when all humans have been motivated to act in concert to achieve a common goal.

    It may seem counterintuitive, but many young families and retirees are now leaving Vancouver because they realize they can’t have the lifestyle that they want if they stay here. So in a perverse sort of way, densification here is driving people out of the City, into those very areas (like the Fraser Valley) that it’s supposed to be saving from development. There’s obviously a disconnect between the theory of what people “should” do and what they actually do, and I think that disconnect can only be explained by individual differences in motivation. Limiting choice and punishing people can only go so far in forcing change, because people will ultimately do what they perceive to be in their best interest.

  • logan5

    Can I get a link to this Translink report. Chad Skelton at the Vancouver Sun looked at transit use, broken down by census tract, to find out which neighbourhoods use transit the most. Unfortunately that link (from a bula blog post) is dead but it showed a clear correlation between TOD’s and transit ridership. I bet you even saw that report, but simply choose to ignore it.

  • Chris Keam

    Life’s too short to lend credence to fools. Your posts are legitimizing Mr. Cox. Please don’t.

  • logan5

    ‘OK in plain English… We could have 800 s.f. bungalows add up to 2000 s.f. more space without rezoning, provided they do not exceed the character of their block.”

    Help me out here Lewis. What are you saying? Which residential properties in Vancouver are not already zoned for at least the sq footage you’re talking about? Unless you’re suggesting that a 2000 sq foot laneway home should be built in addition to the old 800 sq foot bungalow.

    “In the meantime we need to focus on the quality of life that neighbourhoods in Vancovuer achieve versus places like Metrotown, Brentwood and Edmonds. It seems plain enough to me that there is not the same level of community activity in the tower zones built along the skytrain as there is in the residential enclaves that developed along the old transit grid. The reasons are pretty obvious: transit level of service; resulting volumes of traffic on the street; and building type.”

    There are plenty of towers in vibrant neighbourhoods like the West End, Kerrisdale, and more recently (mid-rise) Mt. Pleasant. So there must be something other than towers dragging these neighborhoods down. The building types in these suburban neighbourhoods are the same as you would find in Vancouver. In fact he majority of the building type in Metrotown is 3 story walk-up. And, in fact, Metrotown has the highest rate of transit use in Metro Vancouver, so what could be the cause of the inactivity on the street? You said it yourself… it’s shopping malls.

    You mentioned Edmonds, which is not overwhelmed by a shopping mall and is not nearly as densely populated as Metrotown, but you can see a vibrant neighbourhood street developing along Edmonds. And the Collingwood section of Kingsway is alive and well despite all those towers.

    Here in Mt. Pleasant, the blighting culprit are the low rises. Look anywhere along Main and wherever there are low rises, it is a dead zone, so this business about building form being responsible for blighting a community is entirely unfounded.

  • spartikus

    I don’t think it’s possible for humanity to eliminate all fossil fuel use until there is an economically feasible alternative.

    Meanwhile…

    The cost of providing electricity from wind and solar power plants has plummeted over the last five years, so much so that in some markets renewable generation is now cheaper than coal or natural gas.

    Utility executives say the trend has accelerated this year, with several companies signing contracts, known as power purchase agreements, for solar or wind at prices below that of natural gas, especially in the Great Plains and Southwest, where wind and sunlight are abundant.

    Those prices were made possible by generous subsidies that could soon diminish or expire, but recent analyses show that even without those subsidies, alternative energies can often compete with traditional sources.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/business/energy-environment/solar-and-wind-energy-start-to-win-on-price-vs-conventional-fuels.html

  • spartikus

    Or are attempting too, anyway.

  • spartikus

    So why are they being penalized

    How are “low-paid caregivers” being penalized? Exactly?

    In the real world 95%+ of roadspace remains reserved for the automobile.

  • gasp

    It’s not legitimizing Mr. Cox to observe what is going on in Vancouver.

    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. If everything is so good here, why are they leaving?

    Also, many of the new immigrants coming to Canada, particularly from China, are even more car dependent than Americans are. In the past, houses here had a one or two car garage; now the new Asian houses have 4 car garages. For them and many others, driving and owning multiple cars is a sign of status rather than a need for transportation. How do you change that mindset? Or do you just stop all immigration, or all immigration from countries whose people want to use cars?

  • gasp

    New carbon taxes, vehicle levies, road pricing etc. are all being proposed to fund transit, and these will increase their operating costs even though it is infeasible for them to use transit as an alternative. Since they only get paid for the actual time they work at a client’s home, additional travel time caused by traffic congestion can result in a loss of income.

  • gasp

    Wind and solar may be cheaper in some markets, but they aren’t used to power internal combustion engines. A new technology to replace the internal combustion engine is needed before all fossil fuel use can be eliminated.

  • boohoo

    ” I don’t think it’s possible for humanity to eliminate all fossil fuel use”

    Why is it always so black and white with you? No one is suggesting eliminating all fossil fuel use.

    The whole ‘Well we can’t immediately achieve the ultimate objective so there’s no point starting’ framework is ridiculous.

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    Logan, you’ll just have to attend some of the transportation breakfasts that are held around the town. It was a presentation by a translink official made about spring time last year. Needless to say it got my attention.

  • Chris Keam

    Other than the horrific death rate, I don’t worry about cars too much. They will come or go. It doesn’t matter.

    People will come or go. Same with businesses. Stop worrying so much. This place was unchanged for tens of thousands of years and people were actually fairly healthy and happy. Stressing about who owns how many cars and houses and whether or not they are immigrants is a distraction. Are there fish in the river? Berries in the forest? That’s important. 🙂

  • gasp

    It’s not so black and white with me, but it is with many self-proclaimed environmentalists, who believe we can only save the planet if we stop using fossil fuels NOW.

    In our family, we drive minimally and have retrofitted our home for energy efficiency to minimize fossil fuel usage. But that doesn’t mean I can get my next door neighbour or anyone else to do the same and minimize their fossil fuel use unless they want to. If I could, there would be a lot fewer SUV’s and “luxury” cars on the road.

  • logan5

    But you are aware of the Chad Skelton story in the Sun are you not? I’m sure you saw those colour maps.

  • jenables

    Few job centres? How can you say that? Aren’t you contradicting yourself by stating Broadway’s demand is extraordinary but shouldn’t be “diluted”? Isn’t that the point? How is 16th anything but residential? Why is preposterous to have east west routes in close proximity when we have lots of north south routes that are?

    It’s funny how people have to glom onto the most expensive idea without even TRYING to add capacity any other way. Nothing untoward about that, right? Much like cancelling the 98 b line because of the Canada LIne, I’m not seeing any concern for the current state of transit… just another foolish and desperate stab at prestige and profit. (For the few, paid for by the many… that should be on the b.c. coat of arms)

  • Richard Campbell

    There are very few empty storefronts along Hornby and Dunsmuir. It should be pretty obvious that businesses are leaving Denman, Robson, Broadway and W 4 due to the lack of protected bike lanes 🙂

    Actually, I expect it is due to high rents.

  • Richard Campbell

    All the numbers are in http://www.translink.ca/~/media/Documents/plans_and_projects/rapid_transit_projects/UBC/alternatives_evaluation/UBC_Line_Rapid_Transit_Study_Phase_2_Alternatives_Evaluation.ashx

  • Richard Campbell

    And there is a table in http://www.translink.ca/~/media/Documents/plans_and_projects/rapid_transit_projects/UBC/alternatives_evaluation/UBC_Line_Rapid_Transit_Study_Phase_2_Alternatives_Evaluation.ashx showing the estimates for 90 second head ways. It does significantly increase ridership.

    However, there are capital and operating costs associated with that. The study does not estimate what the costs or the additional revenue would be.

  • Chris Keam

    “But that doesn’t mean I can get my next door neighbour or anyone else to do the same and minimize their fossil fuel use unless they want to.”

    If it’s out of your control then don’t worry about it.

  • boohoo

    You’re making it black and white by only ever arguing or discussing based on the most extreme position. When the objective is, let’s say reducing pollution, you always point out the one person or group that says ‘we need to stop all pollution tomorrow’ and argue as though that’s the mainstream belief or objective.

  • Internet made me obsolete

    Healthy and happy for thousands of years? Nobody has any evidence of pre-historic mood, but I have excavated quite a few human remains. Physical anthropologists will tell you that the native peoples suffered from a multitude of ailments against which their medicine was ineffective. Average life expectacy was 40 years.

    There are fewer fish every year and the berries are contaminated with radioactive isotopes marked Made in Japan. But don’t worry?

    I guess iff you’re really concerned you could always go get yourself arrested for violating a court injunction. That usually works.

  • Brilliant

    Ah yes it was just an Arcadian paradise. Well at least in between slave raiding parties and intertribal warfare. Conveniently there isn’t much pre – contact mortality data though it’s probably no better than other societies stuck in the deadend rut of a hunter – gatherer society. Don’t stop romanticizing it though.

  • Chris Keam

    My point is that worrying about the fish and berries is important. I think that’s fairly clear in my last sentence. “fairly healthy and happy”. Certainly as much so as their pre-contact contemporaries. Average life expectancy is misleading. Anyone who digs up other people’s ancestors for a living would surely know this.

    “So is modern society more beneficial for health and longevity than, say, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle? To help gain an answer to this question, scientists have compared the life span of adults in contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes (excluding the infant mortality rate). It was found that once infant mortality rates were removed, life span was calculated to between 70 and 80 years, the same rate as that found in contemporary industrialised societies. The difference is that, in the latter, most individuals survive childhood (Kanazawa, 2008).”
    See more at: http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins/life-expectancy-myth-and-why-many-ancient-humans-lived-long-077889#sthash.2C0HiMUA.dpuf

  • Chris Keam

    No one is claiming anywhere or anytime is a paradise. There are a lot of sad, angry people on this blog.

  • Chris Keam

    “Motor vehicle crashes are the single largest cause of death and hospitalizations for children under the age of 14.”

    http://www.parentscanada.com/baby/15-accidents-that-can-kill-kids

    Don’t stop promoting car use though.

  • Richard Campbell

    The nonsense is rather tiresome. Few if any of the towers that you and others have been opposing have resulted in the tearing down of house. Most have been built on parking lots or old industrial buildings.

    Ironically the lower density low rises what you are proposing will result in a lot more houses being torn down than if the same number of units were to be built in towers.

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