40 responses so far ↓

• 1 Mary // Jan 7, 2011 at 6:35 pm

  Said it before, say it again: we need to clone him.

• 2 rf // Jan 7, 2011 at 8:58 pm

  at work….sure…
  the rest of his story ain’t something you want to clone.

• 3 Michael Geller // Jan 8, 2011 at 6:32 am

  A very good read about a very interesting and effective guy. For those who want to see just how much the city’s Engineering Dep’t has changed in recent years, just cycle down to Deering Island in Southlands.

  Planned and developed in the late 80′s/early 90′s, it is an example of traditional thinking. After the community rejected the idea of turning the island into a park (they didn’t like the precedent of townhousing on the mainland portion of the property, which was part of the trade-off), the vision was for a narrow, ‘cobblestone’ street meandering down the middle of the island. And then the Engineering Department took over!

  Although the street dead-ended (it is an island after all), and was lined with only 37 houses, we had to have two full driving lanes, and two full parking lanes. Eventually staff did agree to a sidewalk on only one side, and ‘rolled curbs’ which were intended to create a less urban feel.

  But every night when I return home down the unnecessarily wide street, I think of what might have been.

  For those of you interested in seeing a new approach to street design, just head over to the southern end of Crown Street. There you will find the ‘C’ street, with its curved, meandering narrow lanes, swales and ditches, and creative ‘grass-crete- parking areas. It is a ‘demonstration’ project,(and no doubt some flaws) but clearly shows just how we can convert conventional 66′ road rights of way into a more interesting and ‘green’ place.

  While there may not be many opportunities to create such streets in Vancouver, there are many opportunities to create new, narrow, more sustainable streets around the region and province.

  I am hopeful that some of the innovations Peter Judd and his colleagues will introduce in Vancouver will eventually spread outside of the boundaries of the city. After all, engineers, especially the Fire Marshall, really do influence the look of our new communities. It’s all to do with traffic volumes and ‘turning radiuses’!

  Good luck Peter!

• 4 Roger Kemble // Jan 8, 2011 at 7:44 am

  Thanqu Michael,

  And let’s hope Joanne’s Marine Landing group has the perspicuity, the creative sensitivity to follow suite . . .

• 5 julia // Jan 8, 2011 at 9:55 am

  rf#2, I did not realize anything other than his ‘work’ was any of our business.

• 6 Chris // Jan 8, 2011 at 10:37 am

  I really enjoyed your article Frances.

• 7 Bill McCreery // Jan 8, 2011 at 11:05 am

  Peter Judd is an interesting engineer because he does go the next step. Vancouver does need more innovation, flexibility and creativity in its decision-making processes.

  He follows a number of very capable individuals who have constructively contributed to our generally well run, and functioning city. Bill Curtis was a very capable hard working, hard driving man who made things work – his way. We didn’t always agree but, I enjoyed working with him. Dave Rudberg was another capable, strong, though more subtle leader. He also embraced new technologies and worked well with planning. Peter is making his own mould.

  It’s interesting comparing these 3 individuals and their differing, evolving styles and personalities. They do reflect the changes in our society and its values. A good thing.

• 8 Lewis N. Villegas // Jan 9, 2011 at 12:05 am

  Was a time artists were engineers and engineers were artists. Leonardo da Vinci presented himself as an expert in building defensive works; and Eiffel designed a tower that many still feel is among the most beautiful works of architecture in Europe. At some point specialization and professional silo culture took over, and our cities are the worse off for it.

  Consider that up to 33% of the urban footprint is taken up by roads and lanes, and is controlled by engineers. Consider that the speed at which we travel through the landscape alters our sense experience of place. Our values of place shift as speed increases to the point where if you blink… well, ‘place’ no longer matters.

  Too often the modern engineer has been the specialist in charge of shaping places to be safe for cars travelling at 20 and—after 1940—at 30 miles per hour. Of course it wasn’t just the men with the iron rings that were off in a binge of speed and glory, we were all ga-ga over the automobile culture. Right up to the mid 1970′s when everyone could finally afford to drive, congestion hit critical mass, and the Middle East put a squeeze on the supply pipe.

  I’d like to take this opportunity to pitch the revitalization of one our great streets to the Engineering Department. I have in mind a key gateway into our city with a long history: Hastings Street.

  Consider these three remarkable facts:

  1. Bus 135 has 15 stops between Waterfront Station and SFU Burnaby Mountain. Allocated street right of way as BRT/LRT 135 would deliver higher capacity and frequency of service. It would also rationalize the system by removing the need for other suburban bus lines on Hastings.

  2. Hastings Street functions as an urban spine linking together our historic quartiers. This role should be recognized with new street design, continuous lines of urban tree planting, new regulations for sidewalk uses, pedestrian links to new village squares nearby, etc.

  3.Use residential intensification in the historic quartiers to trigger a resurgence of some of our most under used urban land.

  The combination of street revitalization, transit implementation, and quartier intensification can return social, economic and environmental functioning to the historic quartiers. Some of our best urban land might revert from vacant site status to intense use and vibrancy.

  Along the way we will discover another “win”.

  We will realize that the right place to bring together the city design professions is around the concrete and verifiable facts of “good” urbanism. Such an undertaking will require good science, good art—and quite possibly—a rabbit and a top hat.

• 9 Fred // Jan 9, 2011 at 6:40 am

  Well all this greenie and do-nicey stuff is wonderful but maybe Pete can focus a little attention on the ordinary things like paving the roads that are in terrible shape and making the sewers & drains work.

  Just an idea

• 10 Lewis N. Villegas // Jan 9, 2011 at 12:48 pm

  From Gastown to the PNE, in the land between the Burrard Inlet and Hastings Street, 12 quartiers take shape representing the very cradle of our city.

  On these streets, along gentle slopes washed by sea breezes, the first townsites were laid down for Canada’s new capital on the Pacific. As with other places platted before the automobile age entire neighbourhoods were structured with pedestrian principles foremost in mind. For a new generation trying to break the bad habit of automobile dependence there cannot be a more critical moment in time or meaningful site in our city.

  The first “urban fact” to consider is proximity to the downtown. Here a hop on BRT or LRT will have you downtown in a jiffy. Downtown—the 500 acre CPR land grant situated between False Creek and Burrard Street destined to become the employment and business centre for the entire region—delivered on that promise. After climbing Clarke hill, the trip along Hastings Street is an urban trek without equal in our city. Yet, the route passes block after block of under performing urban land in what is really one of the prime-prime locations in our city.

  The second “urban fact” to consider is that among the 12 quartiers we have some of the most impacted urban land in our city. The freeway plan that never happened did not go away quietly.

  On the one hand, the traffic still got to its destination. Routed on local streets instead, it wreaked havoc all along the way. Engineering facts like the specially created Powell/Cordoba one-way coupling, and increasing volumes of traffic on Hastings, Prior, First Avenue and Broadway, all exceeded volumes of traffic where the neighbourhood fabric is destroyed and the lives of those living on houses fronting is severely impacted. The 66-foot rights of way suffered the most (Powell, Cordoba, Prior and First Avenue). However, the character and functioning of Hastings and Broadway was also severely impacted.

  Everywhere we had gains for automobile traffic we suffered losses in local functioning.

  On the other hand, a kind of disinvestment campaign followed the rejection of the urban renewal project. National and international financial interests that would have backed the freeway, and followed its completion by investing, building and creating jobs simply found other freeway projects to invest in. Included among the receding hoards turning a back on the cradle of our city were our senior levels of government.

  Thus, across our historic neighbourhoods today we see the footprint of a city that we barely understand how to build, much less invest in and manage.

  The legacy of our historic quartiers poses some of the thorniest issues in our society, and some of the most difficult problems in urbanism: providing social housing and supports; finding new ways to live alongside the CPR main trunk; and the redevelopment of the port lands.

  However, these lands also hold the last record of the birth and forming of our city. From the engineering side of the picture, friends tell me they find it impossible to dig on Hastings Street without digging up old tram tracks. From the point of view of our community as a whole the historic quartiers present a singular opportunity to build a sustainable future out of our urban and cultural past.

• 11 Roger Kemble // Jan 9, 2011 at 1:31 pm

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

• 12 Sean Bickerton // Jan 9, 2011 at 2:31 pm

  I would like to second Lewis’ suggestion for a revisioning and revitalization of Hastings Street that is long overdue. As he says, this was once one of our grandest avenues in parts and deserves a new look and renewed purpose.

  On a side note, for those unsure about the tripling of slot machines as part of the massive Vegas-casino expansion in our downtown, please watch 60 minutes tonight, which details the problems associated with slots designed purposely to be addictive.

  This huge expansion of gambling has no place in our culture or the green Vancouver of the future. Just say “no!”

  For more information, please check out:
  http://dontgamblevancouver.wordpress.com/

• 13 Lewis N. Villegas // Jan 9, 2011 at 7:23 pm

  I would like to second Sean’s suggestion about a huge expansion of slot machines having no place in our culture.

• 14 Bill McCreery // Jan 9, 2011 at 7:35 pm

  @ Sean and Lewis.

  Ditto! We are better than that. Vancouver is not a barren desert wasteland like Las Vegas and Reno. Are we?

• 15 Richard // Jan 9, 2011 at 8:20 pm

  Agreed Hastings does need some love but don’t forget bicycles on the redesigned Hastings. There currently is no bicycle route north of Union/Adanac and one is badly need. Even without great facilities, the commuting bike mode share is up to 10% for communities within 5km of downtown. It is much less expensive to provide good bike facilities than try and cram these people on transit for short commutes.

  An LRT with stops every km or so outside of downtown would be a good idea. Lets give people with longer commutes a practical alternative to driving. People with shorter commutes are more likely to walk or cycle.

• 16 Lewis N. Villegas // Jan 9, 2011 at 9:29 pm

  Richard, we only have 99-feet on some stretches of Hastings. Could we look at putting bikes on a reworked Powell or Cordoba street once the one way coupling is removed?

• 17 Bill McCreery // Jan 9, 2011 at 11:14 pm

  @ Richard 14.

  Good appraisal, ideas.

  One of the things that continues to amaze me is the wealth of talent and ideas which are continually displayed on this and other civic blogs.

• 18 Bill McCreery // Jan 9, 2011 at 11:32 pm

  @ Lewis 9.

  You sound pessimistic. Tell me I’m wrong.

  I’ve always found that the greatest obstacles yield the most wonderful surprises and splendid opportunities for truly creative solutions.

  We didn’t build the freeway did we? Jus tthink…

• 19 Richard // Jan 9, 2011 at 11:51 pm

  @Lewis N. Villegas

  Hastings is one of the widest streets in the city. There is plenty of room for peds, transit and cycling. It is 30metres wide east of Carrall and 24 metres west of Carrall. From Hornby to Burrard there is already a separated bike lane and from Hornby to Howe, two lanes are closed for construction and this doesn’t seem to be a big problem.

  Why on earth would you want to remove the one-way coupling on Powell and Cordoba? One-way streets allow for the efficient flow of traffic in less space allowing street space to be put to better use. The separated bike lanes on Dunsmuir and Hornby are a perfect example of this. Two-way streets have left hand turns across lane(s) of on-coming traffic. These left hand turns are the most dangerous for cyclists, pedestrians and drivers.

  One-way streets are also easier for peds to cross mid-block as they only have to look one way.

  The key to safe one-way streets is to have two or less lanes of moving traffic and to ensure that traffic is not going that fast.

• 20 Roger Kemble // Jan 10, 2011 at 2:21 am

  Well Sean, “This huge expansion of gambling has no place in our culture or the green Vancouver of the future. Just say “no!”” is a very noble gesture but the dilemma goes much deeper than NO! What else is there?

  Gambling? I thought we were celebrating the new chief engineer!

  Gambling is an entrenched source of government revenues. It ain’t going away.

  Free trade essentially decimated govt tax base, across the continent: not just Vancouver.

  In the early seventies Vancouver was declared an executive city almost a prelude to the FTA.

  But suits, sitting in their corner offices, talking on the phone, admiring the view is a very limited source of wealth creation: and hence tax revenue.

  I see from your web page, Sean, you and your husband are impresarios. Impressarios, Terrance Rattigan, London, and Sergei Diaghilev of Ballettes Russes de Monte Carlo were a big part in making their base cities wealthy.

  Entertainment in its purest form is, and historically has been, a real, and essentially clean, wealth and job generator: London, Berlin, New York, Hollywood.

  Would that you can pull that off here. We need much, much more however . . .

  Granted Richard, “. . . Hastings does need some love” but then so does the whole city and our priorities are not shared by many especially the city looking for revenue enhancement rather that pretty streets.

  Some of us would like to see the city developed into “quartiers“, walkable villages, (autonomous IMO) net-work connected by no emissions trams.

  Such a concept is quite do-able now. The city’s early antecedents: i.e. Point Gray, Kerrisdale was an independent municipality way back.

  Some of us are all entitled to our opinions. The rub comes when we expect to be heard!

  Hastings is just one Neigbourhood, though always in the spotlight because of the DTES. We up-scale professionals love slumming!

  HAHR, though, makes light of siting the towers to accommodate the view from the North Shore and the concept has the disadvantage of potentially decimating the area’s heritage attraction.

  On the other hand the area is dilapidated and needs renewal. Nostalgia and sentimentalism are fine but . . .

  Towers, 70/100 feet, could work if the figure ground is sensitively handled.

  Gossiping over the width of Hastings Street sort of trivializing a massive problem in which gambling is like the small detonator in a huge bomb: the detonator being the charge, when activated, let’s off the big bang.

  If the city is to go anywhere a powerful grass roots lobby is one way to be heard but that needs numbers.

  The freeway debate had numbers. We stopped the free way but we did not stop the traffic!

  So, at our present rate, we will just sort of meander along gossiping on line and being nice and polite to everyone.

  A recipe for just more of the same . . .

• 21 PeterG // Jan 10, 2011 at 6:37 am

  Judd is as effective as his predecessor at keeping the sidewalks open for pedestrians. As always, the needs of the construction industry rule. I think that the city motto should be “Sidewalk Closed”.

• 22 Michelle // Jan 10, 2011 at 11:58 am

  Interesting. Another Bulagraphy on another city manager. The last melodious one that I remember was that one for the Director of Planning. That one was a blast of joyous worship! Most definitely Frances, you are the unsung city hall Court hero. A really one woman band.
  What’s unexplainable to me is how come, two (at least two) intelligent, professional, and capable individuals can report up to people like Ballem and Johnston. The only rational explanation could be that…the money is too good to pass. I would like to see bios and stories from people that wear fancy cuff-links only once a month instead. You know, the ones that make this city really, really work, take your pick, from the ones making sandwiches, cleaning the halls, answering phones, maintaining computers, digging trenches or directing traffic. But they don’t open the doors to the ‘un-politicized’ quarters of the third floor now , do they? Just an opinion. Till then, ta da.

• 23 Frances Bula // Jan 10, 2011 at 8:16 pm

  @ Michelle. Strange you think that I write only odes to city hall staff in high places. Don’t think the planning director felt that way about the profile on him.

• 24 Lewis N. Villegas // Jan 10, 2011 at 11:09 pm

  “Why on earth would you want to remove the one-way coupling on Powell and Cordoba? … The key to safe one-way streets is to have two or less lanes of moving traffic and to ensure that traffic is not going that fast.”

  Richard 19

  On Powell and Cordoba, the one-way coupling is ripping through a neighbourhood. If it was a freeway, no problem. But, in a neighbourhood setting, the one-way couplings are a problem.

  The reason to remove one-way coupling is to return neighbourhood functioning.

  Dunsmuir Street, for all of its notable characteristics, has never felt like a neighbourhood to me. It is the artery into the downtown off the mini-freeway (i.e. the Georgia Viaduct). That’s good if you’re selling $1.50 pizza slices, but even Holy Rosary Cathedral is diminished (and sooted) for fronting onto Dunsmuir.

  One way streets feel artificial. When I’m in Paris, or Rome, I look both ways before I cross regardless of where I am. It’s strictly from a sense of self preservation. For pedestrians one-way streets encourage lazy & dangerous habits. For drivers they can be down right frustrating.

  My real concern is that they encourage fast driving and in so doing destroy neighbourhood functioning. When everything’s going my way, before I know it, I’m driving faster. All those dangerous left turns that you highlight make me drive more carefully. In a neighbourhood environment, that’s a good thing.

  So, if we are trying to return neighbourhood function, remove the one-way couplings, I say. Do you agree?

• 25 Lewis N. Villegas // Jan 10, 2011 at 11:28 pm

  “You sound pessimistic. Tell me I’m wrong… We didn’t build the freeway did we? Just think…”

  McCreery 18

  You’re wrong, Bill. If I was a betting man, I would wager that the next 40 years for our city will be more constructive than the last 40. I’m not trying to pick winners and losers, but it just seems to me that’s the way the history is unfolding. We are looking at Modernism in the rear view mirror now, and putting the lie to some of the old ideas may help propel us along.

  That’s why I was focusing on the Freeway Fight, always hailed as a great triumph. Unless, of course, you happen to live on Powell, Cordoba, Hastings, Prior, First, Broadway or 12th Avenue. The fight was won, but the residents on these streets most surely lost.

  This is a thread about engineers. Their job was to find a way without a freeway. What I am pointing to is the obvious imbalance between who got the right of way, and what happened to residential properties fronting that right of way. It is a story that repeats on every one of our arterials where we still find residential uses fronting. The new plans (i.e. Mount Pleasant) don’t seem to notice.

  Yet, we can read the grim facts without being infected by pessimism. Cold, hard data are our best beacon forward.

• 26 gmgw // Jan 11, 2011 at 4:50 am

  @Lewis NV:
  Just to niggle a bit about one of the oldest street names in the city: It’s “Cordova”, not Cordoba”, for godsake.

  Unless, of course, you have a bad cold?
  gmgw

• 27 Roger Kemble // Jan 11, 2011 at 7:02 am

  “When I’m in Paris, or Rome . . . ” Lewis # 24

  Errrrrr . . . ummmm . . . you can take Lewis out of Coquitlam but you cannot take Coquitlam out of Lewis!

• 28 Lewis N. Villegas // Jan 11, 2011 at 12:29 pm

  Bad habits, gmgw. I’m channeling Córdoba, in Argentina. Any info on where that name comes from in its Vancovuer application?

  Wikipedia gives both spellings for the spanish town in Andalusia (Córdoba, Cordova) and the name in Roman times as Corduba.

  The other Vancouver street that wreaks havoc with a spanish speaker is Carrall.

  My spanish dictionary has it as a kind of archaic word for a carriage or wagon of a special sort. We’re not far from the French term “charrette”.

  Followers of cowboy lore know the word Corral which is, well a fenced off pen. But Carrall Street has always put me in limbo.

  The pronunciation as “Carol” is anathema to the Spanish tongue, where are good roll of the tongue for the double-r reminds us of the close association between Iberian and Muslim cultures… it’s physiological effects are about as good as a trip to the dental hygienist.

• 29 Chris Keam // Jan 11, 2011 at 12:56 pm

  Carrall was a person

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_William_Weir_Carrall

  A search on Cordova says the spelling means from or of ‘Cordoba’ but my Spanish skills are nil, so I don’t know if that’s true. The name Cordova first appears on the coast in 1790, as the name for Esquimalt harbour, bestowed by sub-lt Quimper of the Spanish navy sloop Princess Royal. (Thank you Cpt. John T. Walbran for your inimitable book ‘British Columbia Coast Names’ for that piece of local history!).

• 30 gmgw // Jan 11, 2011 at 2:46 pm

  I understand very little Spanish, but I suspect “Cordova” is a variant spelling– perhaps an Anglicization– of “Cordoba”. Be that as it may, the street in question has always been known as “Cordova”, since Lauchlan Hamilton laid out the original Granville townsite and named its streets in the 1880s.
  Francisco Fernandez de Cordova was a Spanish explorer (and slave trader) who, among other things, was the first European to explore the Yucatan peninsula, early in the 16th century. Cordova Bay, in Saanich, was named by Jacinto Camano on his voyage to this area in 1792, during which he encountered George Vancouver and shared his charts with him. Vancouver adopted some of Camaano’s place names (Camaano’s name survives in Camano Island, near Bellingham). Similarly, the town of Cordova, in Prince William Sound, Alaska, was named in 1790 (as “Puerto Cordova”) by Salvador Fidalgo (=Fidalgo Island, just north of Whidbey Island), who like his colleague Camaano, evidently wished to honour an illustrious predecessor in the exploring profession.

  Pardon my hasty pedantry. My copy of Walbran and my small collection of other BC historical titles is not at hand, thus I had to do some quick online research and furtive typing. My supervisor probably thinks I’m working (at least I hope so). Ha!
  gmgw

• 31 spartikus // Jan 11, 2011 at 2:56 pm

  And according to the the 3rd ed. of “BC Place Names” Sub-Lt Quimper chose “Cordova” to honour the 42nd Viceroy of New Spain…

  

• 32 spartikus // Jan 11, 2011 at 3:13 pm

  Although this sound like a more likely candidate – Córdova y Córdova, Captain General of the Spanish Royal Navy who seems to have had tangles with a certain Admiral Howe of Howe Sound fame…

• 33 Roger Kemble // Jan 11, 2011 at 3:21 pm

  Lewis es un mentiroso.

  Dejó Montevideo cuando tenía nueve años y ha vivido en Coquitlam desde entonces.

  Él pudo haber visitado París y Roma en su luna de miel, hace diez años, pero no ha vuelto desde entonces.

  Que necesita para controlar la conversación mal. Él pudo haber visitado París y Roma en su luna de miel, hace diez años, pero no ha vuelto desde entonces. Que necesita para controlar la conversación mal.

  Carece de su gran experiencia de hablar, las calificaciones y credibilidad

  Él es un cagadero toro. Él desesperadamente chovas adoradores!

  ¡No crea una palabra de lo que dice!

  Se pierden . . .

• 34 gmgw // Jan 11, 2011 at 4:12 pm

  I defer to your pronouncement, Spartikus. I’d forgotten about Sr. Cordova X 2. Like I said, I was in a hurry.
  gmgw

• 35 Richard // Jan 11, 2011 at 5:58 pm

  @Lewis N. Villegas

  There are plenty of neighbourhood friendly one-way streets in cities throughout the world just as there are plenty of and as you have mentioned, there are plenty of two-way streets such as 1st, 12th, Hastings, Prior that are traffic neighbourhood unfriendly traffic sewers as well.

  The neighbourhood friendliness of streets has nothing to do whether it is one-way or two-way. Again, the advantage of one-way streets is that you only need one lane instead of two lanes so that space can be put to other uses such as wider sidewalks, green space, bicycle facilities, etc. Especially when there are low levels of car traffic and thus not the demand to justify two lanes of traffic on the street, why have the street space reserved for car traffic.

  Even when there aren’t reserved bike facilities on low traffic one-way streets, many cities allow counterflow bike traffic.

  With accommodation for two-way bike traffic, one-way streets offer a greater degree of access for walking and biking thus making it more convenient to walk and bike than drive. This and other ways of providing better access for bikes and peds has proven to be a very effective strategy for encouraging walking and cycling especially for short trips.

• 36 Lewis N. Villegas // Jan 11, 2011 at 11:01 pm

  My spanish is skills are not nil, so I can contribute something. In the brand of Spanish spoken in the River Plate (Río de la Plata), and at least in one region in Spain whence the settlers originated, the pronunciation between the ‘v’ and the ‘b’ is glossed over in speech. Thus, my family name could just as well be written ‘Billegas’ for all the difference it would make to the way the tongue is spoken.

  I agree with gmgw, however, whatever the variances there has never been a variant spelling for the street in our city. So, getting that wrong is just getting that wrong.

  I will share one other personal insight that may throw some light into the fact that so many Spaniards (my favourite, Juan de Fuca… best translated as “…What d’—” roamed about these places and never settled.

  On my first visit to San Agustin, Florida, I was disappointed with the historic area—too much tourism, not enough history. But then I went to the beach. White sandy beaches just like in my home town of Montevideo.

  My knee jerk reaction…. Spaniards looked around B.C. Found no white sandy beaches (Tofino doesn’t count because the weather is too severe), crossed themselves, and got the hell out.

  On to Williamm Weir Carrall… “Carrall’s Grove, near Woodstock, Upper Canada, the son of James and Jane Carrall,” [from Kean's link to the Wikipedia].

  A fascinating Canadian, but we are still floundering about for the source of that name. The family originates from a place called Carrall’s Grove, near Woodstock.

• 37 Lewis N. Villegas // Jan 11, 2011 at 11:27 pm

  Richard 35

  I hear what you are saying, but here’s the rub—I experience one-way streets as being counter-intuitive and therefore bad things to foist on neighbourhoods outside of very special, and very local conditions.

  My favourite example comes from exiting Rome one afternoon during rush hour travelling the historic street that links Sta. Maria Maggiore with the Laterano (the Renaissance Pope that built it jumped out of his carriage and walked the distance in an exuberant gesture that would be repeated on Pennsylvania Avenue by JFK during his inauguration centuries later).

  My experience was something different. The number of lanes of cars and vespas using the road seemed to be one more than the number of lanes painted on the pavement.

  Un-Canadian conclusion? Put the traffic “rules” where your Juan de Fuca doesn’t shine. If we can safely fit one more lane in the curb to curb distance than the authorities thought to do, we will do so!

  It wasn’t that Roman drivers were reckless, rather it was that contrasted to Canadians their rules of the road were “common sense”. They would not hold to what some governing authority decided was right if it didn’t make plain common sense.

  This all got its ultimate test as I unhappily found myself navigating the traffic circle that makes a vortex around the famous obelisk in front of S. Giovanni Laterano. Lanes? Goodness no, it was more like a skating party for cars on an ice rink of unimaginable dimensions.

  But… no one hit anybody else (I surmised the car insurance must be astronomical).

  Thus, the fact remains that in the maddest of all imaginable places to drive, vespa, cycle or walk, the rules of the road are just plain common sense.

  And, I propose, streets where you can only go one way are just too damn contrived to make common sense. Sooner or later, someone is going to go in the other direction, and we are going to have a bad result.

  As regards the Powell/Cordova couplet, the effects on the neighbourhood are plain for everyone to see. The traffic streams that I have been part of in the morning on Powell, and in the afternoon rush on Cordova are neighbourhood blighting.

  They have been that way since the freeway wasn’t built. The evidence is strewn about.

• 38 Everyman // Jan 11, 2011 at 11:35 pm

  @Lewis N. Villegas: “On Powell and Cordoba, the one-way coupling is ripping through a neighbourhood. If it was a freeway, no problem. But, in a neighbourhood setting, the one-way couplings are a problem.

  The reason to remove one-way coupling is to return neighbourhood functioning. ”

  I disagree. As Richard points out, there are plenty of cities with great neighbourhoods and one-way streets. New York comes to mind.

• 39 Richard // Jan 12, 2011 at 12:32 am

  @Lewis N. Villegas

  There are likely a whole variety of solutions on streets like Powell and Cordova to make them more community friendly. Lets look at them all and not assume at the start without any details, that one, such as converting them to two-way is the best solution.

• 40 Chris Keam // Jan 12, 2011 at 7:34 am

  Hey Lewis, if we’re riffing on name spellings get mine right!

  /jk

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