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Vancouver council 2012 theatre season about to open

January 11th, 2012 · 44 Comments

And the agendas are posted for the first meetings, with new and old players jostling to score a hit.

– New NPA councillor George Affleck is going after water meters because: “Whereas …  It would appear that the net result of universal metering is that all households will pay an extra $80 a year for water,” it should be studied more

– Offensive tackle Geoff Meggs is going after the provincial government for its megawatt billboards around BC Place, threatening that “the City requires a clear action plan by PAVCO to bring the signs
into compliance with City standards and processes, failing which the City will
seek further remedies to reduce neighbourhood impact.” Which is odd, because before Christmas, everyone was saying there was nothing they could do to bring the province to heel.

– Newbie Vision councillor Tony Tang is tackling the perennial problem of city bureaucracy, with a motion asking:

THAT staff be directed to undertake a review of City regulations and permitting
processes, with the goal of supporting local businesses through updated
regulations, improved speed and greater efficiency of processes; and
FURTHER THAT staff specifically review the permitting process related to home
building construction, and provide recommendations for achieving a turnaround
benchmark of six weeks for all home construction permits.

Good luck all, we await the results of your efforts.

Categories: Uncategorized

  • Bill McCreery

    These are 3 instructive motions that should be followed. It’ll be interesting to see if Penny, Quinlen & co. bury any of them. One of last years examples in that vein was Ellen’s attempt to actually get useful planning info from the Planning Department.

  • Agustin

    Offensive tackle Geoff Meggs
    🙂

    Regarding the water meters: I’m not educated enough on the details to have an opinion on the implementation, but the theory behind water meters is sound. Water is a scarce resource – we need to conserve it. Meters allow policy planners to put in better conservation programs.

    At the end of the day we should be paying more for water. (Personally I favour a program that keeps current rates for the first X liters per month and has a very high price for any usage beyond that.)

    I’ll keep my ears open on this subject for sure.

  • nordel

    Water meters : Water is a scarce resource?? In Vancouver? You joking! Water is not like fossil fuels. It rains, water runs into the rivers/ocean, evaporates and cycles repeats. If we collect water in a reservoir and consume it (lawns/car washing/toilets/gardens etc etc) the water still goes to the ocean. Totally different than trying conserve trees/car fuel/oil etc ect

  • Everyman

    Will Geoff Meggs wbe with us that much longer anyway? They haven’t had that NDP nomination for Vancouver-Fairview yet have they? Out of curiosity, is a by-election held if a council seat becomes vacant?

  • Max

    I am confused.

    I thought I read a presser on ….CKNW? (sorry, can’t remember right now) that the city was removing some of the red tape for licensing and going towards an ‘honor system’ of sorts.

    It was posted a week or so ago.

    Today, I traveled into work via West 4th Ave. and the number of ‘For Lease’ signs is growing.

    Newly gone – David’s Teas and Cantebury Tales bookshop.

    Freeman’s shoes has a big sales on and a bigger For Lease sign above it – I expect it will be gone in short order as well.

  • Bill Lee

    @Max // Jan 12, 2012 at 10:36 am

    Canterbury Books had a “closing” sale (50% off listed price) weeks ago, but notice that Tanglewood Books is moving from Broadway at Granville (building teardown) to Broadway at Vine (block west of Arbutus) next to Higher Grounds Coffee.
    CanteRbury was always iffy and was a trade-the-keys business with Bibliophile Books on Commercial Drive.
    Sitka/(later Ardea) bookstore space (previously was Book Warehouse chain store) still empty.
    4 stores up by Arbutus, north side, are empty because of future teardown.

    David’s T was in an odd high-rent place, ex-RoyalBank, ex-Habitat furniture bankruptcy. They are doing much better in heavy foot-traffic malls like Brentwood. See davidstea website for dozens across Canada, centred in Quebec where they appreciate more than “rotgut” teas.

    Freedman’s Shoes iss part of the Sterling Shoe bankruptcy. You don’t read the Globe and Mail!!

    Sad that Freedman (with a D) was bought by Sterling Shoes. Freedman was a clever man, having a store on Howe Street, South Granville, Commercial Drive etc. so that he could buy a wide range of stock for his carefully located socio-economic niche stores in the days before malls snuffed the idea district stores. It was a pleasure to be served by him. He was a good fitter and advisor of shoewear and what would be appropriate.

    “Sterling Shoes announces today the proposed future closure of 53 store locations in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario. Stores were selected for closing after extensive analysis and based on parameters established as part of the Company’s business strategy.
    The Company is continuing with 5 Freedman stores, 28 Sterling stores and 72 Shoe Warehouse stores. These remaining stores will continue to operate on a normal basis. Upon completion of the store-closing process, the Company’s total store portfolio will consist of 105 stores.”

    One needs to bike the urban streets, rather than ride the express buses or fast cars to see details. I could go on about biking advantages for urban awareness, appropriate speed for seeing details, and ease of transport and load carrying, but I won’t. 😉

    Look at all the vacancies in Chinatown, and the new non-Chinese merchants coming in to make a style statement with closed doors and slap of paint.
    But the city doesn’t care and all their Tony Tang etc. donaters want towers with no retail so we can have the equivalent of Queens Road in Admiralty in Hong Kong. Or the dead, dead 3100 Cambie west side, designed as a pied-a-terre for Hong Kongers before the Handover.
    Good bye Chinatown. It’s moved to 41st and Victoria, Richmond’s Number 3, Alderbridge, Bridgeport, etc. And the gentrification of Strathcona continues apace.
    Who needs service stores? The la-ti-da people do everything with a touch of the finger on their phones and eat argula and mineral water.

    Lift up the draw bridges?

    @Frances the Plumber.
    With the example of Ward Seven leaving Surrey in 1957, can any district secede from a city these days?
    Can we undo the Township of Hastings Suburban Lands 1910 referendum?

  • A Dave

    “Look at all the vacancies in Chinatown… But the city doesn’t care and all their Tony Tang etc. donaters want towers…”

    Last spring we counted (if memory serves) 12 non-heritage building “closing out” or empty “for lease” stores vs. only 2 heritage designated “closing out” stores in Chinatown.

    Does retail fly better in heritage buildings?

    More to the point: Which would be easier to redevelop?

    The suggestion was made by others during the HAHR hearings last year that at least a portion of these closings were deliberate (forced by the landlord/owners), to bolster the argument for “body heat” (towers). While I would normally dismiss this type of claim, after the heritage vs. non-heritage anomaly we noted, I’m not so sure this was mere coincidence.

    Regardless, now that planning/Vision Council has set the precedent for towers, I have to agree with you, Bill, what’s left of Chinatown will be steamrolled into memory soon…

  • Julia

    with virtually no tax shift this year, assessments increases about the city wide average and a guaranteed city budget increase, coupled with a year of low values coming off the averaging formula, 4th Avenue is going to see even more pain.

  • peterg

    If Meggs thinks that the city cannot do anything about the Pavco signs, he must have the imagination of a gnat. A few canvas sheets or banners stretched across the sightlines, on city property should do the trick. Maybe a couple of searchlights trained on Podmore’s bedroom would work too.

  • brilliant

    @Everyman 4-Interesting question. The Georgia Straight had an article in which someone advanced the horrific idea that Meggs could sit as an MLA and still keep his council seat!

  • Chris Keam

    “Water is a scarce resource”

    While you don’t agree with that statement nordel, would you agree that it’s a finite one?

    What happens to a finite resource when more and more people have to share it? Does it magically grow along with the population? Or would we have to find some way to measure and apportion each person’s consumption as demand grows… employing some kind of gauge, or indicator, or… what’s the word I’m looking for? Ah yes. Meter.

  • Agustin

    Water meters : Water is a scarce resource?? In Vancouver? You joking! Water is not like fossil fuels. It rains, water runs into the rivers/ocean, evaporates and cycles repeats. If we collect water in a reservoir and consume it (lawns/car washing/toilets/gardens etc etc) the water still goes to the ocean. Totally different than trying conserve trees/car fuel/oil etc ect

    No, I’m not joking.

    Ocean water is not much use as drinking water.

    In the winter it rains a lot, but in the summer it doesn’t. If we don’t conserve water, we will not have enough in the summer.

    Have a look at this web page for more information:

    http://vancouver.ca/engsvcs/watersewers/water/conservation/index.htm

  • Everyman

    @Agustin 12
    The only time I recall in my lifelong tenure as a Vancouver resident that there was a serious threat of a summer water shortage was that year they were working on the reservoir. It is really not an issue.

  • Westender1

    An interesting question on the water meter issue would be how many homes in Vancouver are currently metered (I believe all multi-dwelling residential buildings are?), and how many new households are expected to be added as single family detached dwellings versus how many to be added as multi-family. The motion before Council is a bit vague on differentiating “homes”, “households”, and “houses.” Are we headed toward individual metering of apartments? I didn’t think that was the proposal.
    Councillor Tang’s motion displays the same terminology problem. Is he suggesting a six week turnaround on permits for a 25 story tower of “homes” or is he referring to “houses”?

  • spartikus

    It is really not an issue.

    And as long as Vancouver’s population remains static and summers don’t get drier from climate change and the federal or provincial government doesn’t decide to bulk export water to the United States…you’re right.

  • Agustin

    @ Everyman 13

    What spartikus said, with the addition of the risk of water being diverged for industrial uses as well. (See Alberta for examples, though I recognize their water management system is organized differently.)

    Let’s keep water supply safe by keeping an eye on consumption.

  • Agustin

    @ Westender1, #14

    These are great questions for a journalist to look into. (Hint, hint 😉 )

  • Jeff L.

    I am not too worried about water being a finite resource when it is falling from the sky or filling English Bay, but it is definitely a finite resource when it is filtered, purified, stored for the inevitable dry periods, and then delivered reliably to the property line. It isn’t the water that costs, it is the design capacity and required maintenance of the delivery system. Influencing demand through metering (mainly by the benefits of homeowner awareness of consumption) can delay investment that will be required in increasing the system capacity. And a delay in big investment is a cost savings.

  • Frances Bula

    @Everyman. Although we haven’t seen any serious shortages yet, thanks to good planning, engineers who work in this area tell me that the region will have to build and operate a third reservoir at some point, as population grows, unless people can be convinced to be careful with their water.

    Somehow you don’t strike me as the kind of person who would be enthusiastic about the millions that would have to be spent on such a facility.

  • Joe Just Joe

    Do think we need to build another reservoir soon as we have the Coquitlam one which BC Hydro is using most of the water for power generation but will be transfered to provide water as need.

    “The Coquitlam Reservoir and drinking water facilities provide approximately 20% of the
    drinking water supply for the Lower Mainland, along with Capilano (40%) and Seymour
    (40%) systems. GVRD currently draws a maximum of 14 cubic metres per second (cms)
    from the reservoir and has negotiated an increase to nearly 20 cms to provide reliable
    water supply for 30 years of population growth in the region.
    The water treatment plant at the Coquitlam source uses ozone for primary disinfection,
    soda ash for corrosion control and chlorine for secondary disinfection (see Figure 4). This
    treatment addresses the known risks to microbiological water quality (such as giardia).
    However, this occurs with the awareness that the levels of cryptosporidium in the source
    water are very low and that ozonation is only partially effective in disinfecting for
    cryptosporidium. New research suggests that the primary disinfection treatment of
    Coquitlam source water for cryptosporidium needs to be improved. Therefore, ultraviolet
    treatment is being added to this source”

    Source: http://www.sfu.ca/cstudies/science/resources/water&cities/Coq_FT.pdf

  • Joe Just Joe

    Sorry for the formatting Frances, please feel free to edit my post.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    @ Dave 7; Bill Lee 6

    Chinatown, and the other historic quartiers are teetering on the edge to be sure.

    I’m beginning to realize that the Modern planning that is threatening their existence has been doing so since about 1929 (and the re-zoning proposed at the time in the Bartholomew Plan). However, as the threats mount, and the stakes get higher the test for ‘good’ architecture, and urbanism recedes in the rear view mirror.

    The real value of the historic quartiers is that they speak of the ‘other’ urbanism, that is—not the Modern urbanism. It is a tradition based on the human experience of place that has roots that go back centuries. Time and again, we come across these places in our vacations and on our travels to other places.

    But, it need not be so.

    We have it right here in Chinatown, Gastown, Japantown, the so-called Downtown Eastside, and Strathcona—a name that first came into use in the 1950’s at the very moment the Modern planning was hatching its most damaging moves.

    The second characteristic of this ‘other’ or timeless urbanism is that it is endlessly walkable, and therefore, the ultimate model for sustainable cities.Thus, the redevelopment of our historic quartiers, Mt. Pleasant, Arbutus Ridge, Marpole, and you name it, hinge on preserving models that show walkable lessons from the time when the auto was not king.

    That is not to deny that there is a solid consensus behind having tower zones in our Central Business Districts. The fact that we can build these huge structures is reason enough not to ban them out right.

    However, we must control them. As we see towers grow in every municipality, the suspicion grows that this is just a different kind of suburban sprawl bringing exactly the same set of problems as the low-density zones next door.

    The lessons of Chinatown and the rest of the historic quartiers have a lot to teach those places that developed almost entirely in the post-1930 period when the private automobile rose to dominance.

    These quartiers are now our collective patrimony—no longer Chinese, Japanese, or White. This is Early Vancouver, and it belongs to all of us, Canada wide.

  • Michelle

    Scare tactics all around on this blog.
    Water is scarce… install Water meters.
    Too many cars in Vancouver… hike the parking fees, kill the free parking, demolish the viaducts, toll the bridges, key all the cars that are not West End affixed.
    What’s next put a tax on the air we breath?
    Oh wait, that goes into the carbon offset purse.
    This is madness.
    Ta da.

  • Morry

    “Water is scarce… install Water meters.
    Too many cars in Vancouver… hike the parking fees, kill the free parking, demolish the viaducts, toll the bridges, key all the cars that are not West End affixed.
    What’s next put a tax on the air we breath?”

    bears repeating.

  • George

    @Michelle 23 Morry 24…

    Well said!!

  • Mary

    The irony is that under Vision’s administration what are called “bureaucratic behaviours”, eg., fear of decision making, ridiculous degrees of risk avoidance, are far, far more prevalent and getting worse as their Ballem admin glories in the renewed mandate. So Saviour Tang will instigate a review which will take people’s time away from actually doing the work and make people even more risk averse and afraid of making a decision. Brilliant.

  • Bill Lee

    @Max // Jan 12, 2012 at 10:36 am

    Aha! Wandering along 4th avenue the other day ( a certain magazine store there keeps back issues on display for some Eurpean magazines), I passed David’s Tea and see that it is NOT closing, but moving across the street to [ Ta-Da!] 2230 West 4th, the site of the present closing out Sterling shoe store.
    Another Point for the view from the slower-speed bicycle. (Average cycle speeds can be from 15 to 35 km/hour, TdF and other sprints are much, much faster. Bikes stop on a dime and “park” anywhere. Walking is about 4 to 5 km/hour, so a day’s march to Mission, 3 days to Hope)

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    @Bill Lee

    If we walk 400m in 5 minutes, then we walk about 5 km/h, or one order of difference from driving speed of 50 km/h. And, what a difference! I attribute a lot of the errors committed in the Modern planning paradigm to values that are supported “in the altered state of consciousness” induced by crossing the city 10x faster.

    The baseline measure for ‘good’ urbanism is the walking experience of place. But, bikes are also welcomed.

    I will only add anecdotally that my experience of running in Rome, Florence, Paris and Venice also altered my experience of place. In Venice, the dirty looks I got from the locals (running very early in the a.m.) told me I was doing the equivalent of running inside someone’s living room.

    The missions in California are 20 miles apart (it may be 25 miles), or one walking day’s journey for their founder Father Julipeño Serra.

    In our own Gold Country (the Cariboo Wagon Road) the 5 Mile, 20 Mile, and 100 Mile Houses performed a similar duty. Traveling by foot with a donkey; or on a wagon pulled by oxen would get one about 20 to 25 miles down the road in one day with rest stops required along the way.

    We have heard here from Voony and others, that 20 minutes is just about the optimum time for a transit trip.

    Human measures of place all.

  • Bill McCreery

    @ Lewis 28.

    And on the 19th century prairie towns were spaced +/- 7 – 8 miles apart for 2 reasons:

    1) to water and refuel the trains, and

    2) an acceptable distance to travel to town by horse and buggy, wagon, etc.

    I don’t remember the distance for 1), I think it was 2 or 3 stops, but the 7 -8 miles by horse power was 20 minutes.

    Interestingly, in the 20th century gas powered transportation has spaced the surviving towns +/-25 miles apart, which works out to 20 minutes travel time.

    I’ve also related the above comfort level time to the perception of the time that it is no longer OK to have to wait for someone who is late. For me that is 20 minutes. After that I get cranky.

  • Chris Keam

    “7 -8 miles by horse power was 20 minutes”

    I totally agree about the difference between human scale and motorized scale when building good urban spaces, so I feel a bit bad for nitpicking, but 20 minutes sounds pretty fast for a horse to cover 7-8 miles. It would have to be at least a canter or even a gallop, and I note that the online Encyclopedia Brittanica suggests an average speed of 10mph for English stagecoaches, while a history blog entry about Wells-Fargo says 5mph was the average speed in the ‘Old West’ (link in next post).

    http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/562465/stagecoach

  • Chris Keam

    http://blog.wellsfargo.com/GuidedByHistory/2006/09/tips_for_travelers_1860s_style.html

    “Skilled drivers guided teams of four or six horses at an average speed of five miles per hour. The driver was the undisputed captain, the master of the road. Sitting next to the driver was a rare privilege, by invitation only.

    For passengers, all seats cost the same price, and none was reserved. Leather seats inside the coach seated up to nine passengers. Nine more could perch on the roof, hanging on for dear life. Each traveler on an overland stagecoach was allowed only twenty-five pounds of baggage.

    While exciting, travel by stage became a test of endurance. Stagecoaches were on the move night and day and stopped only to change horses every twelve miles. Every forty-five miles or so, driver and passengers could get a quick meal at “home” stations. “

  • The Other David

    @Brilliant. There is precident… Frank Ney was both MLA and mayor of Nanaimo (and a dress up pirate) in the early 70s

    @Agustin “At the end of the day we should be paying more for water”

    2006 Burnaby Water for a single family dwelling– $281.53
    2011 Burnaby Water for a single family dwelling –$483.85

    We already are paying more; probably will be over $525 in 2012, over $1000 total ($576 in 2006)
    Sewer sold separetly; multiply above figures by two.

    Water meters? OK, as long at they’re not “smart”
    http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/03/01/water.bills.war/index.html
    http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-to-check-all-875002.html

  • The Other David

    d’oh… *precedent*

  • Max

    @Bill Lee #27

    Regardless of David’s Teas hopping across the street, it still leaves another empty shop on West 4th.

    Ta-da!

  • Julia

    Max, I am hearing that most of the shops along 4th are being snapped up pretty quickly. 6% vacancy is healthy. Less than that… the rents tend to go silly. More than 10-12% it is a renter’s market. 5-6% change in a year is pretty typical.

    Think of the businesses that were around 15 years ago and how many are around today – 20%? Business models change or don’t work any more, tastes change, owners retire, neighbourhoods evolve, waterbeds become passe, video rental shops become obsolete. 15 years ago there was no online shopping to siphon off customers. 15 years ago there was no Amazon.

    Retail has always been a great example of Darwin’s survival of the fittest.

    I hate to see my favourite stores close or move. I am sad when the familiar streetscape changes. There is no opportunity for a community to remain frozen in time. We either move forward or we move backwards. I know which I would prefer.

    What concerns me more is the barriers for entry level retail – those brilliant upstart entrepreneurs that created Lululemon or Freedman shoes back in the 50’s or Purdy’s back in 1907 or Plum Clothing in the 70’s.

    Is there a place for the young and the brave to get a foothold in the market place and flourish over decades in our city or has the cost to do so and the changing face of retail made it simply too difficult.

    Our struggle is not unique to Vancouver. International media makes the world our store. Retailers don’t just compete any more with the guy down the street… they have to take on the big corporations with slick ads and massive marketing departments that count on volume for profit.

    I think we are going to see more changes rather than less. Some might not be so nice.

  • Bill McCreery

    @ Chris 30, 31.

    My comments were not in defence of the car Chris, I just found my figures interesting when taken with Lewis’ California Missions spatial separations based on a days walking and voony’s “20 minutes is just about the optimum time for a transit trip”.

    My figures came from a reliable academic source I came across when doing some research on decaying prairie towns at university. I don’t have the exact source any longer.

    I also point out that the travel distance from your farm to a nearby town is half the distance between them (3.5 to 4 miles @ 10 mph = 21 to 24 minutes; @ 5 mph = 42 to 48). The Canadian prairies in the late 1800s and early 1900s had gravel roads as they did in England, the wild west had trails. Perhaps that’s the difference. In addition, presumably (I’m not a horse) there’s a difference between travelling 12 miles and 4 miles and the speed at which is possible. I recall from my youth seeing horse and buggies and I recall they moved at a better than a walk clip.

    You might be interested to know Chris that there are 6 Mile and 17 Mile pubs along the Sooke Road going west from Victoria that date back to the 1800s.

  • Bill McCreery

    @ Julia 35, your:

    “Retailers don’t just compete any more with the guy down the street… they have to take on the big corporations…”

    raises an important perspective that needs watching and thinking about. What will become of the Drive, 4th Ave and 41st high streets that are an important part of our perception of urban life in Vancouver with the evolving changes in retailing?

    Coffee houses, multi-national or local, seem to be our current neighbourhood gathering places. I can see community markets selling local produce becoming more commonplace, but are such ventures combined with a Safeway or London Drugs sufficient to create that difficult to define ambience of neighbourhood identity where people will want to be?

    At present Vancouver planners are requiring retail continuity at the ground plane for many 4 t0 6 story redevelopments along 4th, Fraser, Main, etc. Will future business patterns need that much space? If not, what happens to the all important retail continuity? Will we continue to have high streets? What will neighbourhood centres look like in 20 years?

  • Julia

    Bill I had this very conversation over the weekend with 2 -50 something successful entrepreneurs that got into the electronics industry pre-Future Shop and pre-Amazon.

    They were telling me that people come in to their businesses to get expert information and perhaps a quote and then they go home and order stuff online. Some customers have the balls to google Amazon while their still in the store. Retailers are becoming showrooms for online suppliers. Customers don’t quite realize that one day those ‘showrooms’ will be gone along with the jobs. More often than not, those same retailers would have made every attempt to match the online price if given the chance.

    What will retail look like in 20 years – we will still need/want restaurants and services such as hair stylists. We will still need to buy food but perhaps that will evolve too and we may go back to the home delivery model. I saw an item on Mashable where there was a virtual grocery store on a wall next to a transit station in Hong Kong (?). You scan the items with your smart phone while you are waiting and the order gets delivered to your home. I could handle that!

  • Chris Keam

    @ Bill McCreery

    “I also point out that the travel distance from your farm to a nearby town is half the distance between them (3.5 to 4 miles @ 10 mph = 21 to 24 minutes; @ 5 mph = 42 to 48).”

    Yep, good point. Certainly possible for a horse at a trot, which they can maintain for quite some time. It was this point you made Bill:

    “7 -8 miles by horse power was 20 minutes” that seems unlikely, as horses can’t gallop for more than a couple miles. Perhaps it was just a simple error in the writing?

    “My comments were not in defence of the car Chris”

    I don’t think anyone was suggesting such.

    cheers,

    CK

  • Chris Keam

    “They were telling me that people come in to their businesses to get expert information and perhaps a quote and then they go home and order stuff online. ”

    Exact same problem and discussion of how to deal with it is taking place in the bicycle industry, particularly in Europe where a couple of big online retailers are gobbling up customers. In the bike industry, the retail shops can at least offer servicing and repairs, not so much for the electronics retailer, where most things are pretty much disposable if they break.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    @Chris & @ Bill

    Horse and buggy on gravel roads could probably go 6 to 8 miles in 20 minutes, and we don’t have to go back to the 1860’s. I wonder how long horse and buggy was around in some Prarie towns, Vancouver Island, or the interior? 1950’s?

    Stagecoaches, and our Cariboo Wagon Road, must have been horrors to ride sitting down. That must have been the great advantage about the train—the ride. Time would have also been a great improvement. If walking in the city is had at 3 mph, stage coaches at 5 mph are not much of an improvement.

    That 25 mi distance is pretty much bang-on travelling south to Seattle: Bellingham, Mt. Vernon, Marysville, Everett, Seattle.

    My favorite story about waiting around is Arthur Conan Doyle having Sherlock Holmes get an appointment to see some important Lord out on his manor with deplorable train service from London. He arrives in the morning for an afternoon meeting, and to the butler’s dismay announces that punctuality sometimes comes at the price of being early, then sits in the foyer for four or five hours to wait for his appointment time.

  • Chris Keam

    6 miles in 20 minutes is 18mph. 8 miles equals 24 mph. A modern ‘trotter’ race horse covers a mile in just under two minutes (slightly better than 30 mph) with a small driver and a very lightweight sulky with modern steel wheels and rubber tires, on a groomed track. I think it’s unlikely that people were regularly traveling at roughly 20mph with heavier farm wagons, or even buckboards, mostly because it would be a pretty rough ride on the roads of those times as noted, (although Twain said a stagecoach was like being rocked in a cradle) and there would be the danger of breaking the rigid wheels of the time, which would be a major hassle. Also, people were probably often carrying goods to or from their farm and/or more than one occupant. It’s important to remember that horses lack stamina at high speed, which is one reason why bikes became popular at the turn of the century in places such as the Australian bush.

    “In the outback it was quickly and widely adopted as a form of transport, because it required no food or water, was two or three times as fast as a horse or camel, and did not drop dead from eating poisonous plants. It was particularly important in opening up lines of rapid communication on the Western Australian goldfields.”

    http://www.bookworm.com.au/Book/The-Bicycle-and-the-Bush-Man-and-Machine-in-Rural-Australia-9780859052504.aspx

  • Bill McCreery

    You did it Chris! You’ve brought bikes to the rescue.

    Seriously, if bikes are an appropriate solution and they work, let’s use them.

    You’re right, my wording was misleading. My apology.

    I suggest the distances and times Lewis and I have been discussing are approximations, as they must be for this kind of thing. There is little value in suggesting all the variations of modes of transportation and their attendant cartages must meet the 20 minute limit. 20 minutes appears to be based on the normal typical reasonably nibble modes such as the horse and buggy and passenger car. You can also look at the actual spacings of prairie towns along rail lines. Although there are exceptions, these 7 – 8 mile separations are often there.

  • Chris Keam

    My guess Bill is that people simply took a bit longer than you suggest. The pace of life was slower and taking between a half-hour and an hour to get to town probably didn’t seem as onerous as it does to us in these times, esp as it was unlikely to be a daily chore. It would still be a reasonable time frame and would fit what we do know about the speed of various transportation modes of the day. Certainly not disputing the locations of those settlements.