Transit funding: the most boring topic on the face of the earth, right? Until its problems happen in your backyard.
Here’s a story I contributed to in the Globe about the long struggle of this unique transportation authority to find ways to pay for its system.
While there are undoubtedly things to criticize about the way TransLink spends money and makes decisions, one of the agency’s core problems is what it’s trying to do with the money it is.
The Toronto Transit Commission spends about the same amount TransLink does — $1.5 billion to TL’s projected $1.4 for this year. But its system is paid for 70 per cent by fares and only 30 per cent by property taxes. And there are no gas taxes, no carbon taxes, no vehicle levies, and so on, at least for the moment.
What’s the difference? One is that the TTC serves about 460 million riders a year in a territory of 622 square kilometres. TransLink’s 2011 ridership, not quite tallied yet, looked like it was heading for a record … 220 million riders. In a territory of just over 2,800 square kilometres.
TransLink is also a still-growing system. So you end up with an agency getting fares from half as many riders across four times the space and with big capital projects to build yet, as it tries to capture more riders. (To be scrupulously fair, I don’t think the TTC’s budget numbers cover capital costs. Nor does the TTC have to deal with building roads or bikeways, as TL does.)
All of that means riders pay less than half the bill and the rest of it gets covered through the array of property taxes, parking taxes, tolls, and gas taxes. I don’t see that, by the way, as drivers subsidizing riders. I see it as drivers helping to pay for a complete system that helps remove some of their competition from the roads by converting some drivers to transit users, which helps reduce congestion. Transit doesn’t benefit only the people who are on it.
As you can see from the handy chart, mayors are trying to find a different mix of taxes and fees to cover the hundreds of millions needed beyond fares. That will be needed until the city and system is built up enough to the point where fares cover a bigger part of the bill.
Until then, it looks as though everyone else will have to pay more, one way or another. As Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart said to me this week, it’s not as though taxes will go down if the region stops building transit projects. There are more people and more commuters being added to the region all the time. So if there are no transit projects, there will have to be new roads — and that will cost tax dollars too.
50 responses so far ↓
1 Neil // Apr 1, 2012 at 5:54 pm
Careful at the end there: “There are more people and more commuters being added to the region all the time. So if there are no transit projects, there will have to be new roads.”
Although I’m sure I’ve misunderstood, that makes it sound like Mayor Stewart and your good self believe more roads would be the necessary result of more commuters, absent more transit funding.
In fact the result would be congestion, either in terms of finding a space for your car on the road, and in terms of finding a space to sit on the bus.
It’s not a given that all the incomers will drive during rush-hours if there isn’t more transit funding. Where those new residents live and work will determine how they commute, and prices suggest new buyers would prefer to live in a compact walkable grid like Kits over the cul-de-sacs south of the Fraser.
Therefore Metro Vancouver mayors (and their recalcitrant bureaucrats) must move far, far quicker to narrow streets and compact mixed-use: where is Coquitlam’s 4th and Yew? http://g.co/maps/5z3np
2 Jack Hope // Apr 1, 2012 at 10:24 pm
Your Globe and Mail article prompted me to do a little research on property taxes in general and how other municipalities operate. From my admittedly brief review on the subject, property taxes appear to be at best a mixed bag. For municipalities (and agencies like Translink) property taxes can potentially be an efficient source of revenue that is directly tied to the geographic area.
All too often however, they end up being regressive and costly to administer. The necessity of trying to avoid the situation of elderly lady being forced to sell because she cannot pay her property tax requires additional complexities. The fact that in most municipalities increasing property taxes even to account for inflation must be passed by the local council, expends political capital simply to maintain services at their current level.
So, maybe the question isn’t whether we should add another tax on top of the existing creaking structure, but whether its time to re-think municipal funding from the ground up. Switching away from a reliance on property taxes by transferring portions of the income tax to cities for example, might stabilize municipal funding and prove more efficient. Sweden’s local governments, for example, only derive 2.4% of their funding via property taxes.
Also it should be noted that one of the biggest problems facing the TTC is the reduced subsidy it has been receiving from Ontario since the cutbacks in the 90s under the Conservatives. That’s the biggest single reason for its high fare recovery which is actually proven to be a liability as far as planning purposes goes (it fluctuates as the economy does) sometimes leaving the TTC scrambling to maintain service.
3 Jon Petrie // Apr 1, 2012 at 10:46 pm
Re J. Hope’s mythical “elderly lady being forced to sell because she cannot pay her property tax.”
I am acquainted with a real West Vancouver old lady who lives alone in a million dollar plus property and sensibly defers her property taxes. (The nominal property taxes are lower than those of her young neighbor thanks to a post 65 age discount. And the elderly lady gets some kind of poverty grant because her actual cash income is low.)
4 Roger Kemble // Apr 2, 2012 at 4:16 am
“Therefore Metro Vancouver mayors (and their recalcitrant bureaucrats) must move far, far quicker to narrow streets and compact mixed-use. . .” Bring it on!
“narrow streets“! Now that I like, Neil @ # 1 but the SFU idea of “Charlieville” in Kits is, errrrrr, tantamount to replacing the Oval Shaughnessy with a Bantu village!
\
5 Tessa // Apr 2, 2012 at 6:59 am
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t that Translink budget also include responsibility for the region’s Major Road Network, which primarily benefits automobile users and not transit, and is something the TTC entirely doesn’t do? That would, I think, seriously skew any comparison of budgets and render those findings worthless.
http://www.translink.ca/en/Driving/Roads-and-Bridges.aspx
Doesn’t that merit a mention in the post?
6 Frances Bula // Apr 2, 2012 at 10:37 am
Tessa — I did mention in the post that the TTC doesn’t have to build roads or bike lanes and TransLink does. I hope I didn’t give anyone the impression that it was at all an apples to apples comparison. The TTC’s budget doesn’t, for example, include debt service on capital projects; it’s only operating. TransLink’s budget does include that.
7 brilliant // Apr 2, 2012 at 12:24 pm
@Neil 1-The opposite is true. There is no shortage of road space but Vancouver in particular has been at the forefront of making it less efficient. The “raise the drawbridge” mentality has ensure bottlenecks wherever people seek to enter the exalted confines of Gregor’s realm. Further Fantasyland development, like allowing developers to skimp on parking as they develop the arterials will make things worse.
8 Baran // Apr 2, 2012 at 1:49 pm
Interesting comparison of TransLink and TTC’s budget and service area. So, in essence, TL provides service to an area more than 4 times that of TTC with less than half the population, correct? Imagine all the cost of buses connecting destinations in parts of the region without any ridership along the way, e.g. the portions that are agricultural reserve lands in the South of Fraser Area. That translates into high operating cost for routes that are not very productive and that’s a reality check for our region.
As Tessa and Frances point out, comparing operating budgets of the two agencies is unfair given the vast difference in their mandates. TransLink also builds bridges along the Major Roads Network and, as we all know, there are quite a few aging bridges in our region, which equates high capital and maintenance costs.
9 jolson // Apr 2, 2012 at 1:59 pm
If Government required a GPS device and or RF tags on every vehicle licensed by the province we would than be able to construct a detailed image of movement behaviour in zones of human settlement. This would be a eureka moment for humans every bit as significant as when Galileo first peered through his telescope. It would help us to decide where, when and how to build transportation systems, neighbourhoods and a city that would truly serve our needs and protect the environment at the same time. Today we are entangled in transit debates with little information available to guide decision making.
10 Glissando Remmy // Apr 2, 2012 at 2:31 pm
Jolson #9,
Eureka!
Well said … pity the initiative was not put in practice prior to the Horrorlympic Games, that way, the Canada Line would not have run along the Cambie corridor and instead would have… on the Arbutus Corridor.
It would have made sense… it even could have run on grade, for cost, for density, for the right of way, for LOL vision!
Either way, despite I haven’t seen many overseas visitors pulling large duffel bags or carry-on suitcases plastered with location stickers, descending in the downtown core from one of these Canada Line cars, I guess it’s still good to live Downtown and work for the YVR authority. It only makes sense, eh?
11 MB // Apr 2, 2012 at 2:41 pm
Here’s a post from Human Transit on the relatively high rate of transit ridership compared to selected cities in the US and Australia. Canada ranks surprisingly high.
http://www.humantransit.org/2010/10/further-cause-for-canadian-triumphalism.html
12 Jon Petrie // Apr 2, 2012 at 3:08 pm
Re MB, #11: Human Transit study has Boston population as ~5.8 million, in actuality its ~4.5 (1) (San Francisco figure looks odd to me too.) Perhaps a an error of over a million won’t discredit a study in which Canada looks good.
(1) http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/03/27/boston_area_population_ranks_10th_nationally/
13 MB // Apr 2, 2012 at 3:17 pm
Frances, less than 30% of Metro Vancouver’s land area is found within the Urban Containment Boundary. This works out to about 810 square kilometres in which to theoretically provide transit service.
The largest land use designation in the Metro is “Recreation and Protected Natural Areas” at 67,183 hectares (or almost 24% of the total), which includes the huge North Shore watersheds. Next is agricultural at 53,619 ha. / 19%. You get the picture.
This is found on the Metro Facts sheet under Land Use (some math skills required):
http://www.metrovancouver.org/ABOUT/STATISTICS/Pages/KeyFacts.aspx
14 MB // Apr 2, 2012 at 3:21 pm
@ Jon #12, Jarrett Walker placed this caveat at the bottom of his Human Transit post:
UPDATE: Just to clarify, the dots here represent entire metro areas, not just incorporated central cities.
Perhaps this has someting to do with the static in the stats.
15 Rico // Apr 2, 2012 at 4:59 pm
I am too lazy to look but both Translink and TTC probably define their service area which should exclude areas they do not provide service to (obviously there would be some portions of ALR that get some service on routes that have destinations on the other side).
16 Bill Lee // Apr 2, 2012 at 6:30 pm
@Glissando Remmy // Apr 2, 2012 at 2:31 pm #10
“Either way, despite I haven’t seen many overseas visitors pulling large duffel bags or carry-on suitcases plastered with location stickers, descending in the downtown core from one of these Canada Line cars, I guess it’s still good to live Downtown and work for the YVR authority. It only makes sense, eh? ”
I find the duffels and rolling cases getting off at the Broadway station.
I think that a fee difference at the Airport (and to) is impolite, and discriminatory. Same fare throughout the line. (If anyone ever pays)
And they have damned few non-English signs in obvious places. Whole thing should be multilingual and with an expanded and 60 cm high AIGA signs
http://www.aiga.org/symbol-signs/
Not everyone has Canadian money for bus fare when they disembark and will instead exchange the next day when banks open. Passengers are exhausted, dehydrated and lacking sleep having done 8 to 18 hours of flying.
I would rather they closed the money-leech airport as Chicago’s Mayor Daley did with the City Airport, installing traffic barriers across the runways.
If it wasn’t for the international border, we would all be flying out of Seattle-Tacoma.
Even now, many international flights could make for Calgary and other “inland” places except for the supposed requirement to land a first customs port. They could fly on to Calgary or other cities and now will cross the Pole from Toronto.
The Canada Line is really a free line from Richmond’s No. 3 road, as evidence when the 98 B line first week’s free opening back in August 2001.
The 98B only cost $52 million to set up and was one of the most used routes in the TransLink system.
[ Speaking of Free, what was the result of Prince George's All Buses Free last month, and the end-of-strike Free-to-End-of-Month weeks in the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM)? ]
17 Dan Cooper // Apr 2, 2012 at 6:39 pm
Jon Petrie (Apr 1, 2012 at 10:46 pm) comments, “I am acquainted with a real West Vancouver old lady who lives alone in a million dollar plus property…”
Doing a search on realtor.ca for detached houses west of Main in the city of Vancouver, I find a grand total of eight with an asking price of under one million dollars. One of those is a non-prepaid, high cost leasehold on Musqueam land. None of the rest is west of Cambie, except the one that looks like it is smack on the corner of 70th and Oak.
That is to say, owning a million dollar house ain’t what it used to be, at least hereabouts.
18 Dan Cooper // Apr 2, 2012 at 6:47 pm
Oops! Make that only five west of Main (including the leasehold). The others are all actually just west of Main.
19 Frances Bula // Apr 2, 2012 at 8:34 pm
@MB. I’ll take your analysis on this over mine, but isn’t part of the issue that some of the big chunks of land where TransLink does not have to provide service in the middle of other areas that need to be connected. Burns Bog is the most obvious example. No transit service needed there, but buses have to travel a long way to service Ladner and Tsawwassen on the edges. Same with Cloverdale, which sits to the east of a big chunk of ALR land in Surrey.
I realize that some of the land is, yes, mountains to the north where buses have no need to travel. But not all of it. Are you able to figure out what the realistic area of the TransLink network is?
20 MB // Apr 3, 2012 at 8:31 am
Frances, yes you’re right about transit travelling through Burns Bog and agricultural land to get to the communities on the other side. White Rock, Tsawwassen and Langley City come to mind along with, as you mentioned, Cloverdale. These communities look like blobs that broke off from the Burrard Penninsula.
I would suggest the service area wouldn’t be much larger than the 810 km2 within the urban containment boundary to account for the corridors transit vehicles travel on (#99, Fraser Hwy, #10 ….), so perhaps rounding the figure to ~ 850 km2 would be realistic.
This is hardly a detailed calculation, but I think we’re in the ball park.
Cheers
21 MB // Apr 3, 2012 at 8:35 am
@ Bill Lee #16, I thank Kevin Falcon every time I save over $25 on cab fare when I take the Canada Line — with the $5 YVR surcharge — home. I am also thankful that the machines accept Visa and debits cards.
I curse Kevin Falcon for everything else, though.
22 Agustin // Apr 3, 2012 at 9:05 am
There’s no airport surcharge if you use a pre-purchased bus ticket. The 7-11 in the airport sells the books of 10.
23 jolson // Apr 3, 2012 at 10:46 am
The bottom line for every urban design decision we make is the carbon emission consequence. Mass transit in the GVRD is mostly hydro power based, clean and renewable. We should certainly be developing a mass transit network for this very reason. However, when we are not commuting by this method we are still driving all over the place in vehicles powered by combustion engines.
Does it make sense to invest in both mass transit and electric vehicles at the same time? Might money be well spent today on developing local electric vehicle manufacturing capacity for tomorrow? Could this be a new green economy of the future city? On a one hundred year timeline what is the path that will turn out to be better for the environment in terms of carbon emissions?
We could take the Evergreen Line dollars and build a manufacturing facility in Coquitlam, have full local employment, eliminate a lot of commuting from this catchment area and provide a product that would benefit the entire region. There are a lot of ways to think about these issues, as long as we make carbon emissions reduction the bottom line.
24 Roger Kemble // Apr 3, 2012 at 11:25 am
“We could take the Evergreen Line dollars and build a manufacturing facility in Coquitlam, have full local employment, eliminate a lot of commuting from this catchment area and provide a product that would benefit the entire region.” I like your thinquing Jolson @ #23/I>
Build self-supporting communities first then meddle with the shiny trinkets. (The best TX is no TX)
But as an aside, two issues. 1. “The bottom line for every urban design decision we make is the carbon emission consequence.” We must discard this CO² fixation. CO² makes the plants grow . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11TAWkx8o6w&feature=related
. . . and 2. mass transit is only peripherally related to urban design. Urban design is what it’s like when you get there.
Usually we have spent so much energy talking and our last dollar spent on shiny trinkets urban design is the last priority. Look around at the devastated wilderness of concrete, glass and asphalt and wonder how the hell we got here.
25 Agustin // Apr 3, 2012 at 11:41 am
@ Roger,
And water makes me less thirsty, but I can also drown in it.
By designing for the car as a transportation mode. I agree that there is more to urban planning and design than transportation, but transportation is a huge part.
26 Richard // Apr 3, 2012 at 1:27 pm
Building transit projects and operating them is a far more realistic way of creating local employment than building electric cars locally.
Electric cars are very expensive and building them locally would increase the cost especially if the workers where paid living wages. Competition has pushed the salaries down in auto manufacturing so much that they are barely more than fast food restaurants. In fact, I suspect the there is a large opportunity cost in attracting auto manufacturing. The companies typically demand huge tax breaks. That, combined with the low wages, a region is likely better off without an auto manufacturing industry. Just name me one area in North America with a major automotive industry presences that is doing well economically. I don’t think there are any.
Electric vehicle (cars and bikes) sharing systems would also likely create more employment than building them here. Paris has just started up such a system
Regional transit and high speed rail are great compliments to electric vehicles. If people can use transit and rail for longer trips, they can use smaller, lighter, slower lower cost electric vehicles that don’t require large expensive batteries.
27 Glissando Remmy // Apr 3, 2012 at 1:53 pm
Thought of The Day
”
MB #21…
I could only assume that you are talking about you returning from an overseas vacation, right, ’cause I don’t buy you saving $25 from commuting to work, right?
And I have to say, that I still don’t buy it, unless you are one of those frugal travelers, that carry only a pair of slippers and their pipe in their man-purse, right?
Me, my family, like to carry stuff, gifts for friends, the occasional duty free contraband, I need that blue tie, or pair of shoes, I even take my travel guides for all the countries we’re flying over… Putting the suitcase on the scale, it’s always the scariest moment of my trip, the flight is a breeze, if I’m honest!
And here’s the thing, when we come back home we’re tired, possibly hungry, stressed out, so in other words, we’re cranky, we’d rather put our behinds on a soft cushion, inside one of these limos that are queuing up around the arrival terminal, that will us home, right in front of the entrance.
Because, you know what? I’m thinking, after spending thousands of dollars on air fare and hotels, sure thing… we are going to save on cab fare… in Vancouver! LOL
Augustin #25
Sorry but I agree 100% with Roger on this one –>
“We must discard this CO² fixation. CO² makes the plants grow”
I know there are some academic phonies trying to establish themselves as the gurus of the World, and portray as Global Warming / Climate Change Connoisseurs … Bollocks! All you have to do is to think for yourselves, for once in a while, people!
Start here:
“When Climate Change Predictions R Based On Fruit Flies Mating Rituals This Happens:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/15/the-un-disappears-50-million-climate-refugees-then-botches-the-disappearing-attempt/
All Z Renowned Academic Phonies Running 4 Cover!”
I’m not saying, follow their lead, all I’m saying is… “Read”!
We live in Vancouver and this keeps us busy.
28 Roger Kemble // Apr 3, 2012 at 2:16 pm
Richard @ #26
“. . . far more realistic way of creating local employment than building electric cars locally.”
From my own point of view Richard I did not have in mind building our own electric cars and, I suspect neither does Jolson.
My idea is to provide work closer to home to minimize any kind of TX: isn’t that what a green city is all about?
29 Richard // Apr 3, 2012 at 2:26 pm
@Roger Kemble
Jolson said “Might money be well spent today on developing local electric vehicle manufacturing capacity for tomorrow?”
30 Agustin // Apr 3, 2012 at 2:52 pm
@ Glissando Remmy
No need to apologise there: I’m not offended by your agreement with Roger.
31 Frank Ducote // Apr 3, 2012 at 4:19 pm
Jolson @ 23 – electric vehicles are still vehicles, and I would submit that road congestion is also a huge issue in this region, with costly impacts on the economy as well as quality of life (commute time, etc.).
Not to say that cleaner or reduced emissions aren’t a good thing, but for my buck building a full transit network would be a better investment.
Retrofitting loops and lollipop (cul de sac)suburbs so that jobs and services are closer to home, plus building a connected suburban form and densification that promotes walking and biking, these are long term but necessary parallels if not preconditions to improving transit service in outlying areas.
Now if we could only get the transit car manufacuring plant to locate here…
32 MB // Apr 3, 2012 at 4:34 pm
@ Glissando, I usually travel domestically with a “large” carry-on and a man purse. And yes, I do take cabs, mostly getting to the airport first thing, but I enjoy the 15 minute walk from the CL station if the weather’s nice.
And yes, I save between $20-$25 in cab fare when you include the tip.
33 Bill Lee // Apr 3, 2012 at 6:59 pm
@Frank Ducote // Apr 3, 2012 at 4:19 pm #31
“The Millennium Line extension precipitated the introduction of a new SkyTrain vehicle, the Mark II (MK II). UTDC’s successor, Bombardier Transportation Systems, delivered 60 new MK II’s from 2002 to 2003. Much of the vehicle assembly took place at the former Bombardier assembly plant in Burnaby, BC.”
from Translink’s REQUEST FOR EXPRESSION OF INTEREST (RFEOI) Reference No.: Q12-007 February 10, 2012
So they did something here, but probably a bolt-job of parts shipped from Thunder Bay and other Ontario and Quebec factories.
The Burnaby depot is the old Kenworth truck plant. They could have built buses instead of sending it all to a Kelowna greenfield site.
(The Burnaby depot will be the scene of more chaos when they close North Van depot. And Burnaby will be badly served when buses are send to the Hamilton Depot in Richmond.)
“There are currently 82 buses that operate on the North Shore, not including West vancouver’s separate Blue Bus fleet. When service shuts down at night, those 82 buses are parked at the North Vancouver Transit Centre at 536 East 3rd St. with no capacity to add more vehicles.
But that depot is scheduled to close in 2015 and there are no current plans for replacement, leaving the North Shore dependent upon the Burnaby Transit Centre across the Second Narrows Bridge for all services until 2028 at the earliest.”
…”Coun. Roger Bassam called it unacceptable that North Vancouver’s transit access would be at the mercy of an accident or police incident on the bridge.
“It’s very important TransLink hears the message we don’t want those resources not available to us,” he said.”
http://www.northshoreoutlook.com/news/145993775.html
[ and there are never any stoppages of the Second Narrows Bridge are there? Some days you can't approach the bridge for 3 km long lines of cars blocking 5 approach roads. ]
34 Mark Allerton // Apr 3, 2012 at 7:35 pm
@Bill – the funny thing that struck me about that NS Outlook story is that I thought there was another bus depot in North Van, on Lloyd Avenue – I ride past it often. But it turns out that’s the West Vancouver “blue bus” depot, not translink’s. Silly me, *of course* West Van’s bus depot is in North Van, where else would it be
35 Dave 2 // Apr 4, 2012 at 12:47 am
Gissando, it’s quite common to see suitcases with YVR baggage strips on the Expo Line, at least a lot more than pre 2009. Granted, there aren’t a lot of families with children wearing Mickey Mouse ears, at that point the cab does trump public transit.
Cambie vs Arbutus? Really? As you say, We live in Vancouver and this keeps us busy.
36 Roger Kemble // Apr 4, 2012 at 1:50 am
Richard @ #29
““Might money be well spent today on developing local electric vehicle manufacturing capacity for tomorrow?””
Remember the The Bricklin. Beautiful vehicle but it didn’t work out for New Brunswick: not enough critical mass sales, unable to compete with the wily established auto manufactures etc., etc.
We would be smart to scale down our TX expectations and go for more affordable configurations: the walkable village centre, with work and amenities close to home.
Our problem living in beautiful British Columbia is that the PR machine has cranked up expectations way beyond our capacity to deliver.
37 Roger Kemble // Apr 4, 2012 at 9:22 am
Fantasty numero uno . . .
http://members.shaw.ca/urbanismo/fantasy/fantasy.html
38 MB // Apr 4, 2012 at 10:04 am
@ Roger #35: “We would be smart to scale down our TX expectations and go for more affordable configurations: the walkable village centre, with work and amenities close to home.”
Ideally, yes.
But three quartiers of a century of cars and cheap fuel have inexorably altered the urban landscape to the point homes and jobs (and often shopping and schools) are a region apart.
Walkable urbanism may help create / revive quality of life self-containment, but it is transit that will link neighbourhood ‘villages’ together a lot cheaper than to continue placingthe vast majority our transportation tax revenue eggs in the largest basket labelled “roads.”
I’m hoping to find a concise, independent analysis that compares the economics of transit to roads. I haven’t been successful yet, but there are many, many studies that look into the cost of car dependency and its massive energy burden.
By most measures, transit is a worthwhile investment. I’ll take a dozen Canada Lines and its flawed development iniatives over one city-destroying freeway anyday.
39 Roger Kemble // Apr 4, 2012 at 1:32 pm
MB @ #37
“Walkable urbanism may help create / revive quality of life self-containment, but it is transit that will link neighbourhood ‘villages’ together . . .” Absolutely agree with you MB so far as the city is concerned . . .
http://www.theyorkshirelad.ca/1yorkshirelad/vancouver.re-boot/Vancouver.re-boot.html
. . . note semi-autonomous villages. Top down means some one gets left out (i.e. the perennial DTES).
And when it comes to Metro we need to reign in the mayors lest they drive us all into the poor house with their dreams of grandeur.
40 jolson // Apr 4, 2012 at 2:29 pm
Frank@31
It seems to me that we should create a combustion engine conversion industry before we worry about road capacity.
There are 7 billion people on our very little planet and they produce 9 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions every year. Population and industrialization growth will push that number to an estimated 29 billion metric tons by the time known fossil fuel reserves are depleted. Densification is not a sustainable strategy for obvious reasons. Human history is on a catastrophic trajectory. If Darwin were alive today he would not be writing a treatise on “The Origin of Species” but rather I speculate it would be titled “The Extinction of Species”.
Architects, engineers, industrial designers, and planners need to change their world view just as the catholic priesthood had to when Copernicus in 1543 pointed out that the earth is not the centre of the universe. The bottom line for every urban design decision we make today is the carbon emission consequence. There is no doubt about this with-in the scientific community.
41 Rico // Apr 4, 2012 at 3:09 pm
@jolson, a completely renewable electric car would still be way more carbon negative than a clean power mass transit system. Cars would still need to be manufactured, green space/living space/space in general will still be needed to store and move them (roads and parking can take up to 30% of some American Cities). If you want to reduce the carbon foot print encourage mass transit with long lasting vehicles running on clean power. Or better yet as some people here continually point out reduce the number of trips (Of note I agree with this principle but view it as a long term goal as for the near to middle future Vancouver will need regional transportation not just local transportation).
42 jolson // Apr 4, 2012 at 4:59 pm
@Rico
I don’t think we disagree. When you get home to your high density transit oriented development via Skytrain you get into your gas guzzling SUV and you drive to IKEA where you pick up a baby crib, then you take the older child to soccer, you pick up the baby sitter on the way back, and then you go to Silver City with the oldest child and you watch a movie called Cars which depicts our love affair with this machine. Obviously we need to electrify everything with clean energy.
43 Tessa // Apr 5, 2012 at 9:08 am
@Frances Bula: I missed that on first reading it seems. Still, knowing that, the whole detailed forey into comparisons seems rather misplaced.
No worries, it’s out there, people will do what they will with it.
@Roger Kemble, 37: Am I to believe that’s your plan for the entire region by 2050? Good for the West Side but what about Surrey? Gosh Gordon Campbell promised better than that.
44 MB // Apr 5, 2012 at 10:02 am
@ Jolson #40
Densification is not a sustainable strategy for obvious reasons.
There is a lot of literature out there that states the per capita emissions are greater in less dense suburbs than in highly urbanized areas.
Not that 50-storey towers are the answer everywhere, but decreasing our carbon footprint means that people have to live more intelligently which, in part, means living in more compact communities where services, emplyment, schools and amenities are closer.
This is not nuclear physics.
45 Roger Kemble // Apr 6, 2012 at 3:12 am
Tessa @ #43
“Am I to believe that’s your plan for the entire region by 2050?”
Tessa I am not sure what plan you are referring to. I do not have a plan for the entire region by 2050!
If you refer to Vancouver:Reboot no it is not a plan for the whole region. The graphics made that clear: I purposely left off the West Coast Express because it makes no stops in Vancouver on its way up the valley.
Jolson made the point of encouraging Coquitlam to become sel-contained community of work/living close at hand: I enthusiastically agree and have made that same point before. I am, though, skeptical of his electric car manufacturing plant proposal. How viable such would be on the sparsely populated West Coast, (although that level of economic planning is out of my reach).
An emissions free electric tram manufacturing plant, including all accouterments (rails etc) would be quite different: at least until the region was saturated.
This is all fun to talk about. Tessa however, IMO, incremental development of both the city and the region will become urgent as we awaken to the gargantuan debt loads we are obliviously acquiring.
Evidently Jolson makes his case on behalf of that rapidly wearing thin canard, AGW. Some professional and academics find comfort in the mass argument in favour of such nonsense. I do not.
Reluctance on their part to breach the collective amnesiac comfort zone of an AGW consensus despite the torrent information coming at us every day to the contrary does nothing for the reputations of the various institutions they cling to.
Essentially, neither am I impressed by the gargantuan TX shiny trinket plans proposed by Translink: as I say it is a prescription for massive financial dislocation.
I had fun compiling . . .
http://www.theyorkshirelad.ca/1yorkshirelad/vancouver.re-boot/Vancouver.re-boot.html
. . . take it for what it is worth and share in the fun too!
46 jolson // Apr 6, 2012 at 1:20 pm
45 that Roger
Humans are the biology of the biosphere. Designers and constructors of all things urban need to get off their layout tables, out of their software programs, and expand their tiny little circle of stakeholders to include the natural world. I am calling for a revolution in the way we think about urban design. It is not a profession belonging to the “anointed” or the long suffering “messiahs” as some would have us believe. The design of cities is an emerging biological imperative which will eventually engage all humans.
FB began this blog with a lament about the difficulty of building the Evergreen Line. These types of project proposals are rationalized because we believe that such projects reduce congestion and improve air quality. This is a belief; it is not a proven fact. That is why such proposals are political footballs kicked around for decades at a time.
The notion of the land concession is added to the mix and referred to as Transit Oriented Development around stations, the opportunists’ then jump on the band wagon harping on about density and tall buildings. Mean while there is not a shred of evidence that these proposals reduce vehicle trips because we have no idea about population growth, demographics or the actual movement of humans.
Air quality is improved in the GVRD by AirCare not by urban designers. Building electric vehicles is not a panacea either because there is even less lithium on the planet than there is fossil fuel, but it is still better than producing GHG emissions, and it can create local employment.
We instinctively understand that the agrarian village is a sustainable settlement pattern because such communities are complete with-in themselves and balanced with the natural environment. This is a scalable model of development which we can learn from and apply to city building.
We will not get anywhere if we continue to think that urban design is about pretty things and nice places. That is why we need a revolution in thinking.
47 Roger Kemble // Apr 6, 2012 at 2:50 pm
“We will not get anywhere if we continue to think that urban design is about pretty things and nice places. That is why we need a revolution in thinking.”
Well said Jolson @ #46 . . . . with passion and poetry too . . . well said!
48 Robert in Calgary // Apr 7, 2012 at 1:16 pm
Jolson #40 says ….
“There are 7 billion people on our very little planet and they produce 9 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions every year. ”
So what? CO2 is a phoney issue. More and more folks are tuning into that quiet little fact.
The only potential catastrophe comes from the delusional lefties who want to send us back 300 years.
49 MB // Apr 11, 2012 at 9:15 am
@ Robert 48, please, let’s not get into climate change denial here. ACC is not the only reason to foster better ways of constructing human habitation.
Some of us read reports, you know, from those who have actually done the math based on widely accepted scientific methods and place as much emphasis (if not more) on CO2 and other GHG emissions from burning fossil fuels as they do on oxides of nitrogen and sulphur from the same fires.
The big difference between these is that you can see and smell smog, and it kills people within relatively short time frames. The problem with GHG emissions is they are largely invisible, ordourless and take generations to take effect. What you can’t see doesn’t exist, right?
Smog makes beautiful sunsets the same day it is formed, and ground level ozone, though it affects every age group, it has a noticeable effect on the health of children and seniors in a few short years. Limiting smog through legislation (e.g. better emission controls on cars) has had a profound effect on the jurisdictions where the rules were enforced.
The denialistas wield their 50-cent plastic swords all over the Web with a great clattering over CO2, but they are remarkably silent about NO, SOs, mercury, fine particulates, etc. emmitted by burning oil, gas and coal. Coal alone has killed thousands of times more people over the last century from mining, transport and burning than nuclear power ever will, and that’s before “global warming” is even mentioned. Books have been written about the huge damage cars have wreaked on the landscape.
There is sufficient evidence that the burning of fossil fuels will be ‘brought to ground’ by their own limitations in worldwide supply — even with recent discoveries, which in no way compare to the vast discoveries made 60 years ago — and their escalating prices. Economics speak louder than human health. Why promote their further exploitation to maintain Business As Usual based on in some cases extremely amateurish attempt at refutating science when they have so many other proven deleterious attributes?
But of course. You’re from Alberta.
50 MB // Apr 11, 2012 at 2:38 pm
..arrrggghh. “… refuting science ….”
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