*shrug*

Business as usual. Both the province and Feds have put in $400 mil, if memory serves. So they are waiting for TransLink (broke) and the Mayors Council (attached to TL) to come up with their share, whether property tax (too low compared to rest of Canada and the US) or whatever. It all comes out of the same taxpapyer pocket, at any rate. Hey, maybe nore efficient to knock out a level of senior government?!

Besides, it ain’t the capital expense, it’s the operating expenses, that’ll get ya, in the long run. I suspect that the cost of the particular technology and the fact that there is such a concentration of it already in just 3 or 4 Metro Van munis doesn’t mean the ROBC (Rest of BC) has much sympathy for the situation. So, everyone can start to talk about those initial costs and technology type choices, all over again.

Mayor Trasolini’s threat of votes won’t move the provincial governement, either. Now that Gordo’s gone, what will be, will be. This election will be won/lost outside of the Lower Mainland.

Yes Voony – the taxes are too low in average tax paid by homeowner. It’s part of the reason that we are selling our municipal souls in the form of density to achieve community amenity contributions. Public infrastructure that should be provided by tax dollars (libraries, park improvements, etc.) is instead only possible if it can be funded by the proceeds of development. Doing so only addresses the new load from the new residents, not replacements or existing deficiencies.

The facts have always been the same—both political and ‘other’.

Skytrain is just too expensive. Elevated service blights the places it crosses. North Road, Burquitlam, Port Moody, and the poorly planned Coquitlam Town Centre would all do better with surface LRT than elevated Skytrain—but one senses there is no one there that really understands the facts on the ground. They want elevate rail ’cause that’s classy. We don’t have surface examples locally, so that’s too risky.

Port Coquitlam is off this discussion because of the results obtained with the fly over the railway yards. One really has to wonder what is going on at the level of civic governance when confronted with the plight of private property owners just north of the Lougheed Highway on the overpass project.

Back to the other Evergreen areas. Coquitlam was planned to have surface LRT on Guildford, a super-wide, high-density artery. But the scheme being contemplated would put the transportation hovering over the Lougheed Highway instead, where you just can’t get there by walking.

In Port Moody, elevated service will go on the ground (you figure that one out). It means chain link fencing, razor wire, and all that is on view at Begbie Square in New Westminster. Real nice. Very sustainable. Horrible urbanism.

The surface route has been designed to roll on St. John’s Street, in Port Moody, where it would be within easy walking distance of the Moody Centre neighbourhood and the tower zone. There would be gains all around. Including reducing the average daily automobile trips from 45,000 to 20,000 or less.

Here’s the rub, Frances. Until we design a regional system, we will be plagued by these chicken-and-egg problems. Here, as in any other “mega scale” project, the rationale for local decisions lies in part with the way the individual part fit together to build a greater whole.

Problem seem to be that we are spelling “greater whole” as ‘greater h-o-l-e”.

Gentle Bossa Nova @ #5

A gentle pseudonym indeed: surely are you not the inimitable . . .? But I digress: word play on euphonysin embargo but I like what you write even though I suspect you are who I thinq you are . . . “greater h-o-l-e”. Yup!

To the point: is this EGL supposed to be TOD manifest? I haven’t been out that way for decades but on my drive-thrus, to other business, that area was nowhere-or-anywhere and fill in the blanks if you can be bothered?

Where the hell is Burquitlam any way? Or for that matter Ioco and all those other gerrymandered spots? Is this TOD? And if it is how come it always ends up in sprawl . . . despite New Urbanism’s decades long preaching to the contrary?

A more potent economic driver would be COD . . . cash on delivery, cash on the dot, or, more appropriately, Community Oriented Development! (i.e. a concentric, spatially oriented plan first: otherwise TOD is just another subsidy for developers.)

Vancouver area planning got off to a bad start with Bartholomew and his lines-on-paper to rush, never stopping to thinq, everywhere!

Michael,

Thanqu you for your invitation, I’d love to come but I live in Nanaimo now.

I know you will set Imperial Oil on the right course. I hope the vicissitudes of providence remain on your side: planning communities is a long time process.

To be personal, I returned to Gabriola in 1998 to visit family after living a couple of years in Mexico City where I had the good fortune to teach briefly in UNMA’s Collegio Pos-Grado de Arquitectura (phew 25,000 students: I had fourteen of them).

Interestingly, I proceed under the impression that my students’ fecund history would have given them a unique urban point of view: yunno historic interconnected public space. And indeed it did. Yet despite accepted, historic precedence new developments (i.e, Santa Fe, un suburbio noreste de la ciudad) may be compared to any of our worst.

My students, good people all and I am distressed to read of Mexico’s current upheavals.

To be even more personal, I had every intention of settling down in my old familiar haunts, Kits, South Granville etc. on return. But circumstance had it otherwise: I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and was admitted to my erstwhile project NRGH. And because I had acquired very good medical support decided to stay.

I relate this personal tale, way off topic, not to gain sympathy, I am fully recovered, but to alert our dear bloggers that cancer, so too sprawling communities, can be beaten and nowhere is there a more thriving example than myself: at eighty two I take no medication.

Wow ’em Thursday . . .

@Roger Kemble #5
“Elevated service blights the places it crosses.”

I want to take the other side here and point out that the transit experience is so, so much nicer on an elevated system than in a dark, noisy tunnel. We have a beautiful city and (most of) the Skytrain line shows it off to its best advantage.

I commuted on Skytrain for many years and on every trip I silently gave thanks for the wonderful views. It’s a disappointment to me that visitors to the city are buried underground on the Canada Line before getting a chance to take in the splendor of the city and the mountains.

I personally don’t think the clean lines of the elevated guideways are all that oppressive, but even if they were who is to say that the “blight” imposed on relatively few property owners is “worse” than condemning hundreds of thousands of transit riders to dark tunnels every day?

“Enough of the dramatics. Elevated rail … it is quite pleasant to walk or ride a bike under the guideway with the added benefit of rain protection; rather useful these days.”

Richard 10

Yep. And make sure you take the Three Monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil, [smell] say no evil.

“I want to take the other side here and point out that the transit experience is so, so much nicer on an elevated system than in a dark, noisy tunnel.”

Sean 11

Agreed. But, the problem is for those that are not IN THE TRANSIT. If you and I are watching a hockey game and the elevated transit is outside our deck door (Millennium Line)… we’re going to have to turn the flat screen on louder.

Here’s the rub, folks.

Trains in the Sky blight the places they traverse. The only example I can think of that is to the contrary is TGV approaching Grenoble, riding on stilts over farm fields (think ALR).

Every other time, including Broadway and Hastings, our choice is either below grade or surface. Chiefly for reasons of avoiding blight (Oh, and on-grade in Port Moody Evergreen doesn’t count because it will be fences off with chain link and razor wire on top).

Sometimes the right answer will be both—subway AND surface tram.

All 1, 2, 3 y 4 are not unreasonable, Boss @ #14, on any system: Grace McCarthy did it to Skytrain (cycle path/park under) in E Van.

Imagine now, though, the collected Mayors being bombarded by influence peddling TX lobbyists: these are pretty powerful dudes with limitless cash to spread around.

Lobbyists, for one group or another, have been the de-facto planners of Vancouver from its early beginnings.

You are right on every point but how do we deal with power that has needs beyond effective TX yet has the ear of the decision makers.

@Gentle Bossa Nova

Elevated rail is a lot quieter than traffic and even at peak hours, it only passes by every couple of minutes as opposed to the constant noise from traffic. I have to turn up my TV all the time due to traffic noise. Surface rail is no quieter than elevated rail and often they have to use bells at crossings making even noisier than elevated.

I suppose you are technically correct in a trivial way in none peak hours. The frequencies of LRT are typically way lower than those of SkyTrain. Off peak, trains typically only run every 15 or 30 minutes. In Porto, Portugal, the trains to one of the burbs ran just once every 30 minutes during the day on Sundays and once an hour during Sunday evenings. Yes, less noise but not very good service.

@ Richard

Absolute cobblers!

There is no evidence that SkyTrain would take more cars off the road than LRT, in fact the opposite is true, at-grade/on-street light rail takes more cars off the road than a metro.

If we still continue to build very expensive metro lines on routes that do not have the ridership to justify construction, transit financing will remain a fiasco.

The Vancouver region is the only place in the world where transit planning is an alchemy of dated, 1940’s, anti tram/streetcar nonsense, spiced with invented facts and peppered with willful ignorance.

The following well illustrates our funding fiasco:

To date the taxpayer has paid over $8 billion for 3 metro lines which have a daily ridership slightly over 360,000 boardings a day. Take away the Canada Line, the two SkyTrain lines have cost the taxpayer over $6 billion and is carrying about 260,000 boardings a day.

The Calgary LRT system has cost the Alberta taxpayer over $1 billion, yet it carries more daily boardings (approx. 270,000) than the two SkyTrain lines.

As for transit frequencies, many European LRT lines see 30 second headways during peak hours, offering hourly capacities of over 20,000 persons per hour per direction.

Vancouver and its silly transit debates has made TransLink and regional transit planning an international joke – like bumbling colonials trying to reinvent the wheel. The international transit community has moved on as our politicians and hangers on are mired in the past.

Who builds with SkyTrain? Evidently we didn’t with the Canada line!

@Zweisystem

Back to the old silly debate I guess.

Calgary’s system has essentially three lines serving downtown while SkyTrain only has 1 (or 2 if you include the Canada Line). It is not surprising that the ridership is higher for the system. On a per line serving downtown, it is much lower. Pretty obvious that SkyTrain is better at attracting customers.

Back to the topic. Don’t be ridiculous, if the Evergreen Line was LRT, it would not run at 30 second intervals. It is simply too expense and there would not be the demand. In off peak, likely the best would be 15 minute frequencies, like Calgary’s. It could even be less. Porto’s system, which connects rather dense suburbs to a dense downtown, only runs every 30 minutes during the day on Sundays and and every hour in the Evening on Sundays.

The City of Vancouver is closing Granville Street and now part of Georgia Street (Ricghards to Hamilton) for Stanley Cup street parties (I guess no big write-ups because it’s not a “no-car” type of street party) – and TransLink is moving Granville Street buses onto Seymour and Howe –

Hmmm – if Granville STreet were served by LRT or streetcars – the street parties wouldn’t be possible.

Lewis @ #22

Good for you for copying my System of Urban Pearls but you went too far . . . far too many Pearls!

http://members.shaw.ca/urbanismo/DTES/DTES.charrette.html

Students are easy prey: one day, to be effective, urban designers we must face up to the big guys!

Lewis @ #22

I notice in your charrette discourse you are still referring to Leon Krier. You are very unwise to keep up that obsession.

We have talked about this before.

Krier’s built flag ship, Charlieville, has put the Duchy of Cornwall in dire financial circumstances and what with Quinlan Terry’s sloe-eyed anachronisms it is seems the old order is rapidly changing.

And of course, fortunately for Nanaimo and Luxemburg the line up of Lombardy poplars never materialized!

We are talking urban design here Lewis, not set design!

This is interesting. Remember, my idea, a year ago, to meet under the Woodward’s tower to talk charrette: we were supposed to engage DTES residents. What happened?

We were all there, David M, David S, Michael and Lewis (alias gentle-bossy).

Jim Green paid us a brief predatory visit to make sure no one threatened his pork pie hat.

We originally intended to guide local residents and HAHR to some form of compatibility! Pity it got off track . . .

I have never been able to understand why closed-shop architects and academics are called upon as urban experts in what they have no training or experience.

We were supposed to address, the neighbourhood, but ended up corralling a few captive students with Lewis doing all the talking.

Thanq God, outside this closed little clique, no one listens.

Is it any wonder Bob Rennie can lie is his cups and get away with it?

At this rate, the town is going nowhere!

Roger # ALL.
Loved your comments on this topic.

Joe, Joe, Joe – you just make it up as you go along. In Lotus land Skytrain is free to build and everyone want to build with it, but when you leave the land of BC Bud and a clearer pictures appear.

SkyTrain offers no real operational advantage over light rail and has none of the benefits either, there is no compelling reason for anyone to build with it. By continuing building with Sky?train, we continue horribly bad transit planning couples with ever increasing taxes to pay for it.

If others can see this, why can we not?

Who builds with SkyTrain today?

The real problem is, the south Fraser politicians have woken up to the fact that they are being used as tax milch-cows to fund gold-plated mini-metro lines North of the river, while at the same time transit goes wanting South of the Fraser.

For less than $1 billion we can build a 130 km. Vancouver to Chilliwack tramtrain service using the old interurban route, while $1 billion doesn’t pay for a 11 km. Evergreen line SkyTrain.

What we need is affordable transit and not Translink fairy tales about SkyTrain rapid transit. The regional taxpayer is maxed out and its time to start building what we can afford and not pie in sky metro lines that will be built by 2030,40,50, etc.

In reading the above comments my sense is that Lewis … er … Gentle understands human scale urbanism, neighbourhoods and history well, but is obsessed with the local over the regional, the past over the present (let alone the future), facadism over deep urban economy and ecology, and academia over the realities of the grubby municipal paradigm.

There is a broad interlinkage with more important issues snaking around in the undercurrents of our cities. And they are way, way beyond set design and idealistic courses taught to pimply adolescents with little experience and the overblown sense of entitlement that permeates Gen X-ers and Y-ers these days.

In this sense, Nova, we get your enormous effort to convolute transit technology to support a theory of small-scale urban design, like mandating lace curtains in the cottage windows of imported and sickenly quaint English villages, and great ignorance on things such as the physical limitations of the energy that makes cities and the economy tick in the first place.

The millions of bricks that built droll Old World villages (like we’re a village by the sea anymore) and Gastown have a certain, well-defined relationship to the laws of thermodynamics. So does city building at the wider scale, and that will face the challenge of a decline of around 30 percent in total available energy within the next generation.

How to build more with less of everything will become a core requisite course in post secondary urban educational programs.

Talk about yer urban challenges.

Transit comes in many forms, and the greatest cities in the world use it in its many forms. They are not concerned about limiting the choice because they obviously see the benefits of all, and make decisions on what the opportunities and constraints different technologies offer.

Paris has a wonderful (but severely overcrowded) Metro system that is about to be doubled from 200 km to 400 km of track with an enormous expenditure of $30 billion (E21.4 billion). Some of it will consist of elevated and automated trains, like SkyTrain. Yet they are not distracted by the light rail versus metro diversion: They have both and have placed them where they are most suited for either regional or local service. However, high-capacity Metro gets the largest piece of this pie because it serves regional needs.

http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2011/05/27/paris-region-moves-ahead-with-125-miles-of-new-metro-lines/

Building transit in our cities is as much about national energy security as it is about urban design and local and regional use, and it remains a shame the federal government has chosen to avoid creating a national transit plan. For example, think of the vast savings on unit prices when ordering transit vehicles (of whatever technology) on a national scale. Think of the money to be saved by the average Joe Just Joe by offering a real alternative to making direct deposits into the bonus fund for Big Oil CEOs.

Zwei will say anything to attempt to dominate a debate and make a point. Joe correctly pointed out his highly selective mention of financing and operating costs.

Well, let’s run with that one. In all fairness someone with a less biased view should put it all on the table … capital + operating + financing + depreciation costs for all public transport modes over one century, which is the anticipated life span of a subway on Broadway. With surface light rail, one cannot ignore the cost of injuries and deaths at crossings an d the resulting litigation in the absence of grade separation. It is not insignificant.

Then they should do the same for all public expenditures on private transport (i.e. road infrastructure), and factor in the societal cost of car / oil dependence.

Guess which one takes the lion’s share of public money?

Light rail versus SkyTrain. Who give a flying donut? Public transit and more efficient cities versus the I Love Lucy’s Pink Cadillac School of Urban Planning … now there’s a debate that needs more attention.

Sean is right about *any* type of transit reducing congestion – it just doesn’t, as Jarred Walker explains at:

http://www.humantransit.org/2010/07/what-does-transit-do-about-traffic-congestion.html

I would also agree with MB that the best transit plan is your land-use plan, and everything else should flows from that.

I wouldn’t rely on LRT/streetcar to change neighbourhoods automatically for the better [1]. WRT to skytrain, it does have advantages like its frequency [2].

IMO skytrain performs well for its corridor, but i’m not dogmatically attached to it – it might work well for SoF, as might a skytrain spur down KGH.

“Seeing our future in the rear view mirror.” was one of Marshall McLuhan’s most lasting profundities. We seem to be adept at that more than ever.

May I, on a lesser level, add another aphorism relevant to the current TX conversation: “The best transportation is no transportation.” and no I do not expect anyone to all of a sudden up and agree, except that our obsession with movement is both unrealistic and destructive to our communities.

I am sure there are many flaws we can attribute to the emissions free tram car just as there are with any modal split: but one of them is not capital intensity! We simply cannot afford to lavish all our wealth on shiny trinkets just because the Nintendo Generation is bedazzled by them: indeed, the Nintendo Generation is. too, yesterday.

Best not take as gospel what we read in the glossy architectural press and do a bit of creative work for ourselves: especially avoid dumping our acquired prejudice on unsuspecting students

What I mean is the pedestrian scale community must come first. I like for instance, Lewis’s co-option of the term “Quartier he attributes to Krier. And name-wise it may be attributable but the actual form at ground level comes from the UK’s 1947 Town and Country Planning Act.

I was there but not professionally involved: it described a functional community loci, pub, church, school, High Street surrounded by a population of 5,000 within one quarter mile radius or five minutes walk. The act was significant in that it was ignored the minute the ink dried.

So, In essence the drum I have been pounding since God knows when is TOD must be replaced by COD (community oriented development). And by that I mean cities comprising manageable. self-governing, pockets of population, jobs, recreation interconnected (inevitably some inter community movement cannot be avoided) by a network of emissions free tram cars.

The essential destructive force that is destroying our way of life is our banking system (fractional reserve usury) but indiscriminate TX we cannot afford isn’t far behind!

The Thought of The Day

“Schools will have New Roofs. Homeless will be Extinct. Wars will have No Benefits. ‘Barter’ will be the most Popular Family Name. Transportation will be Free. Imagine…a World Without Banks.”

Roger,
You made my day!

“The best transportation is no transportation.”

No need to be modest. IMO, I think you just worded the complex Transportation Theory in the simplest possible way.

In respect to Transportation,…if you remove the more advanced types of rail or vehicular (terrestrial) ways of moving around, if you take away the veneer of glass, concrete, wood and metal that we have used to cover all the former virgin forests with, if you cut the bull theories saying that we are so much better than our predecessors… we’ll find ourselves in the same medieval paradox; wall-less fortresses with one purpose in mind: to concentrate, and enhance the commercial activities of the landlords, and shelter them from the thugs and from the people that forms the peasantry, or from what the top 1% of our society is calling in our days… the middle-class.

We have a Principal ‘Shopping Malls’ connected transportation system in here; With Secondary Sky-train Hubs being enforced and peddled as livable alternatives to… nothing at all.
Our way or…the Highway.

The motivation that drives the transportation agenda is Greed and only Greed, community driven agenda my arse. All the democratic debates, open houses or referendums on future solutions, blah, blah, blah, are pure manure shovelled by Mall Development interests on flip-flopped agricultural land bought on the cheap, and financed for profit by the… Banks.

So, next time when you guys start putting together your transportation wish list, just before concurring on a charrette, don’t forget to invite …all the bankers.

Roger, I could not have said it better myself.

Fractional reserve banking is the greatest scam of all time because it creates debt for no reason other than to enrich the banking system and the power structure. Ask our different levels of government why they are in debt. Let’s start with that. Then finding 1 Billion for transit would not be a matter of ‘hat in hands’ kind of thing.

I think, that’s enough from me. Here’s one from Tommy…

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.”
Thomas Jefferson

We live in Vancouver and this keeps us busy.

MB @ #42

“There are challenges that transcend neighbourhood values.

True: where would Vancouver, indeed the west coast, be without the valuable thinquing behind the Panama Canal?

Life is more complicated than challenges though.

Vancouver would be a more mature city had not the beautiful couple prematurely declared, in the early ’70’s, the challenge of the executive city without so much as a forethought for the value of resource manufacturing.

A healthy living organism is made up of functioning parts. The best way to understand it (if it is healthy) is to separate it into manageable parts.

In the case of the city the best way to understand it is recognize each component: neighbourhoods / communities if you like. Even the downtown central business district is a neighbourhood.

Vancouver, as it is currently administered, is unwieldy, remote controlled.

There have been movements to establish wards vigorously, and successfully, opposed by interests arguing the old Tammany Hall syndrome.

But wards are not semi-autonomous urban villages. The semi-autonomous community / neighbourhood owns the authority to reject, for instance, developer financed spot zoning or off shore squandering of our local domicile: ergo the neighbours know what is best for them, no more condescending public hearings. And neighbours know how to generate and keep their own wealth.

There are more advantages.

Global business and military challenges have no place in the civic dialogue: indeed they transcend “value” and become interests and may be equated with acne on . . . a pimply-faced idealistic youth!

MB, both you and Roger have wondered: Is anyone listening? Again, I point to the City’s current review of the community planning process. I attended a City workshop in May about this that had eleven planners present. I recommended charrette-style planning to streamline the LAP process, and partnership with universities to leverage resources. By the end of the day, charrette was rated the top idea for “Streamlining” by the 60 participants, so there is some hope they will take a good look at our model. Given the current funding/demand crunch for LAPs, the time may be right to pilot a new local planning paradigm. I believe the Process Review report and recommendations will go to Council this summer.

Beyond Vancouver, yes, other municipal representatives have shown some interest. I also plan to publish our reports to the UNU’s RCE network, and a top UNESCO rep last week was very excited about the possibilities for other RCEs around the world to try similar projects.

Roger has articulated well in #43 what he calls Community Orientated Development (COD), and I agree that the scalability of the local plan and process across the municipality or region is the connection to addressing the regional needs. For example, if Metro projects 140,000 more people and 70,000 new dwelling units needed by 2040 in the City of Vancouver, how is that 25% density increase going to play out? Until we break those regional projections down and develop targets in each of the neighbourhoods, how can we expect Local Plans to be meaningful, or give participating residents guidance on what infill to expect over the next 30 years?

The neighbourhood network concept we’re developing is an attempt to integrate the regional and neighbourhood plans. In Vancouver, there could be at least 23 linked neighbourhood sites like the SUNN prototype we are working on. With the mapping work we did, we can project pretty accurately how much density, what forms, what uses, infrastructure and amenities etc. will be necessary to meet both the regional and local needs, and how to make it liveable and sustainable. Presumably, this would remove the perceived ad-hoc and contentious nature of the current process, and help with local buy-in. With so many units projected, I think the City and developers are going to remain busy (and earning profits) no matter what the local neighbourhood visions look like.

As you say, there are numerous great plans that never see the light. Unfortunately, LAPs too often get published and start collecting dust immediately as well. With a legacy site like SUNN for each neighbourhood, the Plan could become a living document online, able to be updated and revised easily over time, keeping everyone informed and educated, the development maps and tallies clear and transparent, and reducing the need to keep doing full-blown and expensive re-planning every decade or two. In a nutshell, that’s a key purpose of this demonstration project. Time will tell if it is given any consideration.

“These are working class people who don’t know what “urban design” means and who are perfectly capable of exercising their power as voters.”

MB 42

I am quite happy to report that “don’t know what urban desing means” is not a class-specific problem. Higgins, I think, points out that our Director of Planning may have succumbed to the disease either in his tenure as Director of Planning in Calgary, or in his early career with suburban developers in Ontario. The Carnagie Community Action Project may miss on one or more cylinders as they map their way to understanding the reality on the ground. The Chinatown Merchants Association may be guilty of presenting a blind spot or two in their analysis of Chinatown Revitalization over the last ten years, and their vision for the next decade. Federal, Provincial and Regional governments may be implicated. Our Mayor and Councillors have show a lack of understanding of urbanism here and again. Translink… let’s just say “Evergreen” and leave it at that.

We are all whores in urbanism, as the Gospels would have it, and not one of us is worthy to pick up a rock and hurl it.