Archive for September 2013
That new bridge
I apologize for driving you to a paywalled article. Francis Bula is reporting on what Geoff Freer (executive project director for the Massey project) says about replacing the tunnel and why transit won’t meet that “need”
60 per cent of the commuters are travelling to Richmond or Surrey, the U.S. border or the ferries – so are unlikely to use transit anyway.
The chutzpah of this statement takes one’s breath away.
It is not as if the Canada Line was not already changing travel patterns in Richmond. And the introduction of useful inter-regional connections to the transit system (over many years since it was entirely focussed on downtown Vancouver) with direct service to Metrotown and Newton shows that when the transit system actually looks at how people are moving, as opposed to used to move, even ordinary bus services can be successful. When I first arrived in Richmond and had to commute to Gateway in Surrey I initially tried the #410. Then it was infrequent, with a huge one way loop through Richmond wand was always very lightly loaded. Over the years it has become one of the busiest bus services in Richmond and the only one in the Frequent Transit Network.
The other huge change was when Translink backed off the long held belief that it ought not to compete with Pacific Stage Lines and run a direct bus between the ferry at Tsawwassen and downtown Vancouver. The new service they introduced initially required a transfer to the B-Line at Airport Station, and now requires a transfer to the Canada Line at Bridgeport. It coincided with increased vehicle fares on the ferry so that walk-on traffic grew exponentially. (BC Transit had long met ferries with an express bus from Swartz Bay to downtown Victoria). The #620 now requires articulated buses and frequent relief vehicles. Just like the express bus to Horseshoe Bay.
As for cross border services, it would be easy to set up a “walk across the line service” at Peace Arch, with connections to Bellingham. There are just much more pressing priorities – mostly getting students to post secondary institutions thanks to UPass. But bus service across the line has seen significant commercial traffic with both Bolt bus and Quick Shuttle in head to head competition. Some of the casinos down there run their own shuttles too. The best thing that has happened so far on this route has been the introduction of a morning Amtrak train departure for Seattle.
What is actually needed is transportation planning that looks at the future pattern of development in the region, and integrates land use planning to meet population growth and travel needs. Strangely the desire of Port Authority for deeper draft for vessels in the Fraser River is not the first and foremost consideration. Port expansion is not a driver of economic growth. It is path towards calamity, since it is driven by the desires of a few very rich people to export yet more fossil fuel at a time when anyone with any sense recognizes that we as a species have no choice but to leave the carbon in the ground.
I think that one of the great benefits of rail transit development would be protection of the last bits of highly productive agricultural land left after the ruinous performance of the BC Liberals to date. People riding on trains get fast frequent service through areas which see no development at all, because it is concentrated around the stations. What part of Transit Oriented Development do you NOT understand, Mr Freer? Expand the freeway and sprawl follows almost inevitably.
It is perhaps a bit hard for people here to understand the idea of fast frequent electric trains that are not subways or SkyTrain, but they are a feature of most large city regions – even in America. As we saw in yesterday’s post even LA is bringing back the interurban. West Coast Express is not a good model as it only serves commuting to downtown on weekdays. All day every day bi-drectional service demands dedicated track – or at least the ability to confine freight movements to the hours when most people are asleep.
Transit to Delta and South Surrey has to be express bus for now, just because there is so much catch up in the rest of the region. But in the longer term, really good, fast, longer distance electric trains – which can actually climb quite steep grades equivalent to roads over bridges – must be part of planning how this region grows. It requires a bit better understanding of the regional economy than just assuming that somehow coal and LNG exports will secure our future, when they obviously do no such thing.
Running Campaigns, Winning Votes
Carbon Talks organized a forum today with this title to get discussion going on how to win the upcoming Translink funding referendum with contributions from Bill Tieleman – based on his winning experience with the anti HST and anti STV campaigns in BC – and Denny Zane Executive Director of MoveLA based on winning Proposition R on the 2008 Ballot which secured a half cent sales tax to support improved transportation in Los Angeles County. It is important to note that although throughout the discussion both talk about transit improvements – which in LA went mostly to more light rail lines, it also included improvements to existing freeways, but no new ones.
I was at home watching the live webcast while eating lunch, so to make things easy for myself I have put together a storify using the carbon talks designated hashtag #bctranspo – which I have lightly edited as some of the live tweets were a bit fumbled. I have also deleted those which added nothing to reporting the talk but simply commented on the topics.
The whole thing is now on the Carbon Talks youtube channel and runs 1 hour and 24 minutes. Reading this summary might be quicker, but you will probably also miss some stuff.
Denny Zane opened by talking about the gridlock that seized LA county prior to the measure being put together. At that time LA Metro had $0 set aside for expansion projects and new capacity even though 3m more people were expected to move to the region in the next thirty years. “It was like Chicago was moving in.” There was Mayoral leadership in the campaign and there was only one place to go for money. In California every revenue source has to be passed by a referendum with a 2/3 majority. This was the “crazy legacy” of Proposition 13, which meant that most people felt that there was no hope of raising taxes for anything. MoveLA is a broad based coalition which includes business, labour and environmental groups which proposed a half cent increase in local sales tax mostly to add rail lines to their transit network. Since the closure of the Pacific Electric Railway in 1961 there are many unused rail corridors and the overall network will reflect much of the old PER interurban system.
While they had strong political leadership it was important to hold the coalition together. They acknowledged that freeways matter – but they were not going to build any more of them. They would make sure that the existing system became safer with improved intersections, for example and also ensure a state of good repair for local boulevards. They also found that once the measure passed they could use the revenue stream to fund bond issues – and persuaded the federal government to become a ‘smart lender’. By converting the federal grants into forgiveness for interest they could fund a thirty year program in ten, achieving faster results and lower costs. They also proposed Measure J which would have extended the program to 60 years which did not pass but did win 66.1% of the vote (not the required 66.6%) This was partly ude to a lower turnout election. Measure R was on the same ballot as the 2008 Presidential Election which saw a win for Barack Obama. LA County is heavily Democratic.
Bill Tieleman was on the winning side of both the fight against the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) and the Single Transferrable Vote (STV) . He stressed the importance of having a strategy – which is focussed on the ends and is an art – that is supported by tactics – the means – which is science. He started with two simple words of advice “Stop Whining!”
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
Sun Tzu The Art of War
Winning this referendum is entirely possible: 70% of transit referendums in the 2008 US general election passed, even though America is largely right wing and anti-tax. Hundreds of thousands of people in Metro Vancouver want to see better transit. They are the people who use the system every day to get to work or school. It will really help if we can get a fair question – and even government support. Both earlier campaigns had surprising cooperation across party lines and sectional interests. “There is room for everyone on this bus.” This is an opportunity to improve transit, improve our lcoal economy and improve air quality. People need to understand the value proposition: there must be tangible results, but it is not a radical idea. It cannot be soft sold to drivers: the hard core of drivers will be opposed as will the Canadian Federation of Taxpayers.
The anti HST was constantly in the news as it has no resources for widespread advertising – unlike the government which outspent them 100 fold. They had to have earned media to explain the problem and the solution.
“However beautiful the strategy you should occasionally look at results” Winston S Churchill
He also cited the Pirate Code for his recommendations – they are guidelines rather than rules. This region needs and deserves better public transit.
Q & A
In answer to the first question about the $4m that had been raised to support prop R, Denny Zame said that while MoveLA is a permanent institution there was a separate, specific committee formed to fight the referendum campaign. They had a few weeks in which to raise that sum.
qs: We have not reached gridlock here and What will the question be?
A If Translink takes the lead we have a huge problem. People are fed up with the inadequacies of the transit system – overcrowding, passups, lack of service in the suburbs etc. Our support will come from transit users who want a better system. It doesn’t have to get as bad as LA was to need improvement. LA Metro had had a period of very low public esteem and lots of trouble with the local electorate but had turned that around by being more responsive. Even so transit mode split in LA county was only 10% at peak periods- which meant support had to come from the 90%! The half cent tax showed that small increments mattered, defining each element clearly on a project by project basis. In Vancouver that means the Broadway subway must be on the ballot – but there has to be something for each part of the region as well. The case was made to drivers: transit would help
- relieve traffic congestion
- promote economic development and job creation
- increase safety (there was genuine cause for concern with falling freeway bridges)
- Increased choices for travel
There was an appeal to their self interest but also highly defined projects for each part of the region and an overall low cost ~25c a day per person
One source of funding was the Art Gallery: access to arts and culture is a big deal for the wealthy funders but with a station planned for the art gallery they got a better ROI from supporting the R campaign than their own capital budget.
Don’t go out and antagonize drivers
Municipal elections have a low turnout. The Mayors are not keen on having the question on the municipal ballot
A mail in question as with the HST referendum is possible
BT was more hopeful than has been suggested since we can have labour and business on the same side. He noted Peter Ladner’s article which raised concern that up to now business has been largely silent on the issue. We need a broad understanding that investing in infrastructure benefits all in the community. This is a unique opportunity to come together.
Q – Who draws up the plan?
This was directed at Denny Zane, who got into the complexities of Councils of Government. He nailed it with the line “basically a bunch of depressed people who think it isn’t going to happen” (Local municipal staffs)
An unfair question will rebound on the proposer
Treat it as an opportunity.
Expect the best of your leaders
The best decisions are those which afterwards appear to have been inevitable.
REACTION
The last question really annoyed me. We know what the Plan is for this region. It is on Translink’s website and they have been consulting on it for years. The projects are all well known, the only real discussion now is which one goes first. The problem I see is that there is no consensus on which funding mechanism – or combination – is going to be favoured. I suspect that the provincial government might even support a question that suggested some increase in property tax since that has always been their preferred method, even though it makes no sense and will never get the support of the Mayors.
Someone should have been putting this broad based coalition together ever since we knew that there was going to be a referendum.
Businesses which depend on transit expansion – which includes real estate developers – should already be beating the drum for more TOD which will follow the transit expansions. It is not just the bus drivers and the environmentalists who want to see more rapid transit.
There is going to need to be similar sessions in Surrey and further out in the suburbs. Meetings in downtown Vancouver, even though they are webcast, are not going to be enough to get people to support a question – even before we know what the question is and when it is going to be asked.
I also think we need to keep in mind the reality that Translink is not just about transit – nor should it be presented in that light. It is not “soft selling drivers” to point out that Translink owns the Patullo and Knight Street bridges and provides funds for the Major Road Network. Increasing the funds going into Translink will inevitably result in more spending on roads too. You cannot put in a bus lane on a two lane road!
Adrian Dix Leaving Good News for Greens
I must admit I was a bit surprised by the announcement yesterday that he was stepping down – as soon as they can find a new leader. I expected him to soldier on, especially since his caucus had been so quiet. He is speaking at UBCM as I am writing this and the coincidence of a couple of tweets inspired this post
The link on the image won’t work so here it is in working condition Insight West Poll on Fracking
He is also reported to be trying to distinguish NDP on LNG from BC Liberals on LNG, but the point is that LNG is a fossil fuel that has to stay in the ground. For one thing gas extraction always leads to leaks of methane, and that is a far more powerful gas than carbon dioxide. But secondly it is not a “transition fuel” as the industry claims. It is a fuel that locks in existing technologies and thus slows the introduction of renewable sources of energy and also slows the introduction of greater energy efficiency. But the really important linkage is that these LNG plants rely on fracked gas. There is no way that conventional gas wells can produce more – most are in decline, and the new resources being discovered are now nearly all “tight gas” requiring fracking. And the opposition to fracking is based on concerns about local environmental impacts – especially the effect on water supplies – rather than understanding the ghg implications of its development. The gas industry has been very clever to emphasize how “clean” gas is, without making clear what they are comparing it to. Probably coal.
The Green Party on the other hand has made its position clear “economic suicide” and “a pipe dream“. While Dix and the NDP would like to present themselves as defenders of the environment, they cannot do that credibly while supporting expansion of fossil fuel extraction for export.
It has also caught my eye that Thomas Mulcair the leader of the NDP nationally is not in favour of increasing taxes on the super-rich. Which suggests to me that he is really out of touch with the roots of the NDP and the need for far greater equality. Although other NDP members do not agree with him. It reminds me forcefully of the conversation I had with Geoff Meggs just before the provincial election, when he said the NDP if elected would not be raising provincial income tax rates for the wealthy. (Meggs bio on the Vancouver City web site does not mention his NDP link directly but does say “He served as Director of Communications in the Office of the Premier under Premier Glen Clark, and later served as Director of Communications and Executive Director of the BC Federation of Labour.”)
Just in case you have not read them here are our Ten Core Principles, which all Greens adhere to. Sustainability and social justice are numbers 1 and 2 respectively.
One way to do that would be to abandon LNG entirely and embrace progressive taxation policies. I do not expect either – from Dix or the NDP. If you agree we need both then you should join the Green Party.
Engaging with Greenest City Conversations
I do try to get out to the often SFU organized public lectures and similar events, partly just to keep my brain engaged but also because the existence of a blog demands content. And it should not all be pointing to other web pages. Well, not all the time anyway. I usually go in person, but on this occasion there was a webcast. It was a live event and I do not know if at some later stage it will be on the web as a video.
However, I do think that the webcast itself says a lot about the process.
Greenest City Conversations, an innovative, interdisciplinary and wide-scale research project aimed at developing multiple channels for public engagement on municipal sustainability policies. Its two main goals were to facilitate discussion with the public on a variety of sustainability policies, and to provide a comprehensive understanding of the content and impact of different modes of public engagement.
Some of those modes involve “social media” – or information technology if you will. And on this occasion new technology was showing both its best and worst sides. Things got started on time with the usual throat clearing and acknowledgements which always seem to me to be protracted but, grudgingly, necessary. A lot of people were involved, and a lot of material was going to be covered. Some of it was already of questionable value as it had “failed to meet its objectives”. It is not clear quite what that was about as the first speaker is already showing that she was unaware that there was a webcast. Instead of the right laptop (there were two) she has her own tablet and she is talking about how much time children already spend with tablets. The people at the Wosk Centre are being shown pictures, but these are not being broadcast despite a split screen arrangement.
Then the whole screen goes blank – for quite a long time – and when the webcast restarts someone else is talking about land use and how to use “stamps” to create Utopia. What she has been dealing with is the standard problem in public consultation. The only people who come out to open houses or public meetings are the people who come out to open houses and public meetings. You feel you are talking to the same five people. The issue is one of engagement – how to reach a more significant number of people. It is also cleat that what we are currently facing is not simply a top down “education” program, where the experts who know what must be done convince the unwashed of the necessity of cooperation in a predetermined solution. They found, unsurprisingly that of they used new media like Facebook, more women wanted to be involved. If they used smart phones more young people got involved. I was especially frustrated to miss much of the talk on the City’s transportation plan which engaged people by asking them if they were happy with their commute and if not what they thought could be done about it. (Exploring Vancouver’s Transportation Future) Apparently there was a “heat map” which answered the question “Is Facebook Useful” but I didn’t get to see that: all I saw was a talking head.
The next presenter had managed to persuade people to be tracked by using their smart phones to study their travel patterns and modes. They tried getting them to answer questions like “paper or plastic?” when they went shopping but – not surprisingly – people seem to be a little tired with that one. I think it would really have helped me stay interested if this presentation had not been mostly him reading great grey slabs of text – and apologizing to the audience for the tiny size of his illustrations which were not visible at all on line.
Then we got into land use. They tried to engage citizens in place based design. In fact the city had already decided to update the Grandview-Woodlands and Marpole neighbourhood plans. We have of course discussed those at length here. They did this by creating a “sandbox” – a generic neighbourhood of as a 2D and 3D board game. They had only three variables – Land Use, Energy and Quality of Life. The City has, of course, already set its goal of a 33% reduction in GHG by 2020 so the only question is what does that do for our quality of life. I cannot tell you the answer as the PhD candidate is still working on his thesis – so watch for more on the next webcast.
The workshop materials are available online at http://gcc.sites.olt.ubc.ca/findings-and-results/exploring-neighbourhood…
The last speaker was actually in Newfoundland and joined in by Skype and managed to illustrate all the the things you should not do during a live webcast – including setting up an infinite feedback loop, and allowing the dial tone to be heard while someone else was speaking. I think that they might be better off giving the professionals at the SFU Creative Centre the evening off and bringing in a bunch of Grade 12 students to handle the technology. He was the presenter who had the enviable task of introducing art into the proceedings. He managed to use the words epistemologies, disingenuous and disenchantment all in the same sentence without creating poetry. Apparently we have to “shift away from linear engagement”. He asked how do we arrive at “truth” and “value” – and to help in that had hired a poet, an architect, a composer and a theatrical troupe. They produced “You Are Very Star” at the Space Centre which I told you about when I covered Northern Voice.
The issue you see is that no-one actually knows what a sustainable community is: what it looks like or what it might be like to live in. One of the things that artists are supposed to be good at is imagining possibilities. What baffled me is why no-one thought of bringing in some science fiction writers. I suppose they thought that might be too depressing for words. Certainly a recent collection of stories about a warmed up planet is not proving to be useful bedtime reading for me.
The final speaker was supposed to have produced “Cross Channel Evaluation” which he characterized as “herding academic cats”. In the end he decided to concentrate on the outreach to various age groups – as long as they were over 19 (something to do with the ethics of market research) which sadly left out all the kids involved in the first project. The people reached by this research were by no means representative of the population of the City but this is apparently not a Big Issue. The – very unsurprising – conclusion – digital channels attract younger people compared to public meetings and web based surveys. He compared processes and not outcomes since those are “emergent” and “contingent”. Because the process is pluralistic and poses open ended questions.
In the sum up John Robinson said that his intention was to scale up the process so that it could reach a significant number of “citizens of all stripes” – 200,000 would be good – in an interactive dialogue. The issue is no longer a one way flow outward as “we don’t know the story” that we have to get out to the people. They have to be engaged in creating the story – What Can Sustainability Really Mean?
Q & A
The first question related to the “white coat” (expert) syndrome – apparently participants in the studies did not see the researchers in that light.
The second commenter noted that none of the proposal to reduce GHG emissions seemed to aimed at big business “They got us into this mess”. The response was that people who participated did not share that view and were interested in learning about what they could do.
The City had already established its goal, so that framed the problem which meant the studies were about which levers you can pull. In some respect this created a “sense of security for government folks” concerned about an open ended process.
The distinction has to be made between “persuasive communication” versus an “emergent dialogue”. We do not know what a sustainble community is, and therefore we have to work with people in deciding what kind of community we want.
PICS wanted to encourage questions from those watching on line and suggested they use @PICSCanada as the twitter feed. They did not specify a hashtag. I subscribed to that feed and saw no activity – in fact they still have not said anything since I subscribed and the only commentary on it last night was from @carbontalks. Do you really think these folks know enough about how social media works?
In response to another question the response about the attitude of children was that they did not see “some predetermined world that their parents had messed up.”
A very keen observation was by someone who had seen the “Fantastic Four” movie and the enthusiastic public response to it. He compared that to participation in in local government planning consultation. But conceded the movie cost $100m to make. “Does it take that much to get people involved?”
The response was withering. The people who saw the movie plunked down $12 and gave up two hours of their time to be entertained. The commitment was wide but very shallow. This contrasts with the high level of commitment required in the processes they had been studying – the questions were not so much about cost but motivation and payback. Much of this came from the researcher who had worked on the transportation channel and I wish now that i had been able to hear more of her presentation.
The final question (and by now we were well into overtime) “Will the real and the imaginary use the same arithmetic?”
John Robinson: Getting the real into people’s heads won’t stop but we are looking at something emergent. It is worth noting that in mathematics the elegance of a solution is also an important consideration. We need to wary of the Dragnet theory of truth “Just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.”
The next webcast will be on October 23rd at 6pm check the PICS website.
Container Port Expansion
Apparently I am a ‘stakeholder’. I got the following information in an email today, and thought I would spread it around. Port Metro Vancouver wants to build even more container capacity at Roberts Bank. The “Terminal 2 Project” will they say be subject to “a thorough and independent environmental assessment.” I suppose much of the argument will be that this area has been so developed over the last few years that there is now very little left to be protected, but perhaps I am a cynic. What I do not see – and please somebody of you see it let me know – is any kind of justification for the project. Like the coal terminal expansion, these projects have long been on the wish list, but the world has changed. It seems the people in the Port Boardroom have not noticed that yet. Sea level rise will probably wipe out all this development, but sooner than that the penny is going to drop that importing stuff from China that we do not need is a pretty silly way to run an economy, especially when the only way we can think to pay for it is to dig up ever more fossil fuels for them to burn. Actually China is beginning to reassess how it grows, and in future more of its products will be for home consumption, not export. They are going to wean themselves off imported fossil fuels by becoming leaders in renewables. And the need for West Coast ports is going to decline because of the new Panama Canal and ice free shipping routes through the arctic.
Is it worth going to any of these meetings to repeat this, or do I just cut and paste this into an email? I somehow doubt anyone there reads this blog.
Invitation to participate in Pre-Design Consultation for the proposed Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project
Dear Stakeholder,
Port Metro Vancouver is undertaking Pre-Design Consultation regarding the proposed Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project between October 7 and November 12, 2013.
As part of this consultation, Port Metro Vancouver will present information regarding the conceptual project design, and will seek input regarding elements of the project and developing environmental mitigation plans.
The Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project is a proposed new three-berth container terminal at Roberts Bank in Delta, BC that could provide 2.4 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) of container capacity. The project is part of Port Metro Vancouver’s Container Capacity Improvement Program, a long-term strategy to deliver projects to meet anticipated growth in demand for container capacity to 2030. For more information regarding the project, please visit www.portmetrovancouver.com/RBT2.
You are invited to provide feedback and learn more about the project by:
- · Attending a small group meeting or open house (see schedule below)
- · Reading consultation materials and providing feedback online (consultation materials and an online feedback form will be available at www.portmetrovancouver.com/RBT2 on October 7, 2013)
- · Visiting Port Talk (www.porttalk.ca/RBT2) and participating in a discussion forum
- · Calling 604.665.9337
- · Providing a written submission through:
o Fax: 1.866.284.4271
o Email: container.improvement@portmetrovancouver.com
o Mail: Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project
100 The Pointe, 999 Canada Place
Vancouver, BC V6C 3T4Small Group Meeting & Open House Schedule
*To register for a Small Group Meeting, please email container.improvement@portmetrovancouver.comor call 604-665-9337. Pre-registration for open houses is not required.
[click on the box to make the table larger]
How Input Will Be Used
Input received will be considered, along with technical and economic information, in developing project designs or plans, including engineering and environmental mitigation plans, for the proposed Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project.
Regards,
The Container Capacity Improvement Program Team
The Bicycle Dairies Episode 10
It has been a while since I have written anything under this heading. We just returned from a trip to New York. Given all the press attention it has received, we could hardly ignore the new bike sharing system known there as citibikes after its sponsor. (In London people refer to them as “Boris Bikes” rather than “Barclays Bikes”). I visit New York quite a bit as my son lives there, and have got to know my way about Manhattan. I have also now visited Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island too: the Bronx I am saving for later. As with Paris, my first instinct was to try and get everywhere by subway, but I soon learned its limitations. “The only way to get across town is to be born there.” Like most visitors, there’s a lot of walking – and “flaneuring” – too.
A lot of people got very upset when these stations started appearing. I think they are neat and tidy, but what they seemed to do was take away that precious commodity – on street parking spaces. In fact, very few people can actually use on street spaces, since there are so few of them and much of the curb space is needed for deliveries. All over Manhattan much space is taken by large black limousines and SUVs waiting for passengers (livery cars are an important part of the transportation system but are not taxis). The price of off street parking is of course ridiculous – and much traffic is simply circling looking for an on street spot.
I am writing about my experience and this is not intended as a detailed critique of the system. There is plenty on line about how to use the system, but as usual the PR folks have made the process look a lot easier than it is in practice. It is not just a question of sliding in your credit card. There are a number of screens that you have to go through and on line forms to fill in. One good thing is that the screen accepts CA as the country code in default of a zip code. That is not possible at other terminals, like ticket vending machines at subway stations – or self serve gas pumps. My partner found that after going through the entire process it simply failed – something we also experienced in Paris. I managed to use two different credit cards for two separate bikes: I think you can register more than one bike at a time, but this seemed easier if we wanted to use them at a docking station later.
Getting the bike is simple. Having completed the registration process, you get a five digit code to punch into a dock – the buttons are on the left hand side – and a green light comes on to tell you to take the bike. This is time limited. Returning is equally simple. Push the front wheel into the dock until the green light comes on.
As you might expect, there are times when the stations are full of bikes – which makes it easy to rent hard to return. Equally we would have used the bikes more often but either the station was empty or not co-operating. We saw one man with a citibike key fob that he could put into the dock, but it refused to give up its bke. And that would have left only one for the two of us. I did not feel like using my card in a system that was behaving like that, but maybe the bike had been reported damaged. Yes, you can do that (“notify us by pushing the white wrench button on the top of the dock”) I do not recall seeing that very useful tool in Paris.
I strongly recommend the use of a smart phone or tablet to find bikes and stations. Like car2go it is not exactly essential but makes life a lot easier. I would also, like car2go too, not rely on the system exclusively. You will still need a Metrocard, and do not neglect the ferry system either. The Staten Island ferry is free, and the East River ferry only $4, which is still great value.
Contrary to the instructions, these bikes were simply left while the people who had rented them went and looked at the carousel in Central Park. If they had been stolen while they were in there, it would have cost them plenty. Even citibike say that for protracted periods, conventional bike rentals are a better deal. Since it costs $9.95 for a 24 hour pass, it is actually cheaper to rent if you do not intend to make a large number of trips. The first thirty minutes do not incur an extra fee so you can keep swapping bikes – but then you have t be able to find them when you need them. We would have got much more use out of our membership if bikes had actually been available when and where we needed them.
While we were looking at a bike station near Central Park, we were approached by a sidewalk salesman for one of the bike rental companies, offering a very attractive deal. And, this being New York, you could always try haggling.
DENVER
We also saw bike share in Denver. Interestingly this one is sponsored by Kaiser Pemanente one the larger HMOs
We did not use this. Partly because it was so hot, but also because there is a free bus shuttle through downtown, which we used a lot, and everything we wanted to see in the two days we were there was within walking distance
The weakest component on the Velib bikes in Paris is the seat adjustment. Denver has adopted a much more robust approach
Richmond Bikes Still Lagging Behind
That has been my view for a long time – but the title is taken from a “Friday Feature” in the Richmond News. Although I no longer live there, I still find that I go there quite a lot. The airport, picking up parcels from couriers who did not find me at home, car servicing, the doctor … the list is quite long. I have not tried to get there by bike. Though it would be straightforward enough, and with bike racks on buses, easy to avoid Vancouver’s hilly bits. But if I am going to use transit anyway, why hamper myself with a bike? We also still like walking on the dyke. And at one time we used to put the bikes on the car rack and go further. I am not sure why that has not been happening of late. I feel a Bicycle Diary coming on but I will leave that for later.
Richmond ought to be great for cyclists as it is as flat as a billiard table. There has long been a cycling committee there – and I am afraid that they have not achieved very much. If you remove the use of the dyke – which is much more about recreation than transportation – then there is actually not much cycling in Richmond. It is still very much a car oriented suburb and what facilities there are, were grudgingly conceded. Or pushed by the availability of funding from Translink or extracted from developers. Few bike lanes – lots of sharrows. And one or two paths shared with pedestrians and unpaved.
There is a pretty fair summation in the News piece. It would not have gone amiss to have pointed out that the No 3 Road lane was separated and raised – for some of its length, but ruined by incompetent paving and never corrected. The best example of arterial road reorganization is still Williams Road. For much of its length the traditional four lanes of traffic has been reduced to two with a centre turn lane and bike lanes each side. This gets altered at intersections, with no priority for bikes, and actually improves traffic flow, just as separated bike lanes have done in Vancouver. It also should stop on street parking – but is not well enforced.
The biggest issue for me is that after twenty years of “demonstration” it has not been replicated and should have been. Critical intersections like Granville at Garden City, or Shell at Hwy 99 remain diabolical for cyclists.
The News does not expect much to change any time soon and I think they are right. The City Council is very secure and is unlikely to face any great challenge at the ballot box, so smugness rules. They will not change and no-one seems likely to make them.
“Doing Enbridge’s homework” by Elizabeth May MP September 12, 2013
This post appears today on Island Tides and her own web site. Because of its significance I am copying it here in its entirety, but closing comments.
The very idea that the federal government, having slashed scientific research into climate change, freshwater science, ozone depletion and contamination of marine mammals (to provide an incomplete list) would be running a gold-plated research project called “the Northern Gateway project” is a stunner. The fact that $78 million is to be spent in 2013-14 on research as to how bitumen mixed with diluent will disperse in the marine environment, as well as better weather forecasting along proposed tanker routes in and out of Kitimat, with $42 million set for next year was shocking. The documents leaked from sources inside the federal government included numbers never made public.
I suppose I should not have been surprised that the response from Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver was to say that somehow Dr Andrew Weaver, Green MLA from Oak Bay–Gordon Head and I had simply missed a public announcement of the funding.
It is marginally better than denying that what we revealed to the press was true. Instead, Oliver said we had not done our homework. He claimed this was all in the public domain, announced on March 18, 2013. I remember that press conference vividly. Natural Resources minister Joe Oliver and then Transport Minister Denis Lebel stood against the background of the Vancouver waterfront to announce their ‘World-Class Tanker Safety System.’ I actually watched their whole press conference on CPAC and had gone through the Natural Resources website to correct errors. It was bizarre to hear Joe Oliver claim that we had simply missed that the federal government was spending over $100 million on something called ‘the Northern Gateway project.’
I went back and reviewed that file. True, the press release said that ‘The government will conduct scientific research on non-conventional petroleum products, such as diluted bitumen, to enhance understanding of these substances and how they behave when spilled in the marine environment.’ In fact, the only substance they are studying is dilbit in the research programme called the Northern Gateway project – no ‘such as’ about it. The research is essentially a disguised subsidy to Enbridge which was supposed to have done this work and presented it to the Joint Review Panel. The key reason that the BC government submitted its objections to the project in the hearings was the failure of Enbridge to provide any evidence of the environmental fate and persistence of dilbit, either in a pipeline (terrestrial) or tanker (marine) spills.
Oliver managed to get a good chunk of media to accept that we were scandalized by something that was well-known. Nothing in the Vancouver event this spring suggested to those of us paying the most attention that the federal government was trying to fill the gaps in Enbridge’s evidence.
Nor was there anything in the announcement to suggest infrastructure investments in better weather forecasting for tanker traffic routes in and out of Kitimat.
We have placed the key documents on the Green Party of Canada website. I hope that people will go to the original documents and decide for themselves if this was something we all knew.
Hansard: June 6th, 2013
To the contrary, I asked very directly in the House if the Prime Minister planned to push the Enbridge project through:
Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP): Mr. Speaker, in 2001, the Prime Minister wrote a famous letter to the former premier of Alberta in which he urged him to act “to limit the extent to which an aggressive and hostile federal government can encroach upon legitimate provincial jurisdiction”. Six days ago, the provincial government of British Columbia said no to the Enbridge project. It said that Enbridge had completely failed to demonstrate any evidence that it knew how to clean up a spill or even knew what would happen with the bitumen and diluent.
Will the Prime Minister confirm that under no circumstances will the federal government become the aggressive and hostile government that approves a project as long British Columbians say no?
Right Hon. Stephen Harper (Prime Minister, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the project in question, of course, is subject to a joint review panel process. Obviously, we believe in the rule of law and in adjudicating these things based on scientific and policy concerns. The government will obviously withhold its decision on the matter until we see the results of the panel and its work.
Many may conclude it was only prudent of the federal government to spend over $100 million on ‘world class’ work in support of a project which is subject to a review process not yet completed. On the other hand, I think Stephen Harper’s claim that (as he said twice) “obviously” he will wait for the panel recommendation before deciding about Enbridge is undermined by this spending. When one follows the money, it all leads to supporting Enbridge.
Daily life shapes sustainable transportation
I would like to start by acknowledging Pamela Zevit as my link to this story. She put a link to it on Facebook. I would not normally see phys.org – but I found this article very heartening.
I have been very critical here, and elsewhere, of our reliance on the very limited four-step transportation model, and especially the paucity of data we rely on for some very important decisions. It could be that since 2004 things have improved, but I see no evidence of that. Land use is still treated as an exogenous variable, there is no feedback loop and no ability to predict induced travel making. We still seem to be obsessed by the false analogy that traffic flows like water which must be accommodated. The reduction in driving seen across North America does not seem to apply here, even though there is clear evidence from Vancouver that it is happening here too. And we also have a government that prefers not to pay any attention to science and data, since that deals in facts which disprove most of its preferred political dogmas and ideologies.
In Southern California they have been tracking the movements of 18 million people. Not a small sample, and not just journeys to work or journeys by vehicles. All their trips, for all purposes all day and every day.
this is a new method to reflect the activities, and show how those activities change, in the everyday life of people—how their behavior changes, and how a change in land use is going to provide more incentives for people to walk and bike and not use their car
All of that data goes into the model – and “the researchers were able to map and predict movements and activities down to the mile, land parcel and minute.”
What it means is that instead of the stumbles made here – like Translink’s inability to forecast usage of the Golden Ears Bridge, which means that the company that builds and runs it gets paid so that there is less money for much more essential transit service – the model can actually deal with what happens in real life. Such as the impact of the 405 toll road which put more traffic on parallel streets in stop and go traffic, and creates more emissions.
I would like to think that we are going to emulate that model here, but we will have to continue to deal with the paucity of data, not the least of which is the absence of the long form census, one of the few reliable sources of long term trend data on journeys to work.
Portland’s new ticketing system
I do hope that as a regular reader of this blog you follow Human Transit on twitter (@humantransit). If you do, you’ve already seen this. But I think this deserves a wider audience, and I especially hope that my followers at Translink read it. Not because of what it is, but how it was done.
Before you roll your eyes, I am not going to take the line that just because it is done somewhere else it is necessarily superior to what is done here. Nor is it something that we could now adopt. Unless there is someway a smartphone can communicate with a proximity reader. But it does seem to me from reading the following two blog posts that there is something happening in Portland that seems better suited to systems our size than the big system, Cubic engineered gates and readers we have imported.
The first article “Joseph Rose: GlobeSherpa’s TriMet Tickets app rescues riders from the machines” explains why TriMet were looking for a new system – and how the beta testers found the new app working. The second “TriMet’s highly anticipated Tickets app ready for download (a day early)” looks at its roll out.
I look forward to reading in the comments section below a comparison with the experience of the beta testers of Compass. And no, I do not know if the TriMet system would allow for conversion of or three zone fares to fare-by-distance at some later date, which does seem to be the USP for Translink.
And I found some pictures of TriMet light rail cars from a visit I made there in 1998 – when the technology available for web pictures was considerably less advanced
Obviously it is well past time for me to go to Portland again, soon
UPDATE September 4
The Portland system official site
Compass/faregate introduction delayed or maybe not , but it is over budget. And although Compass may not be available to everyone by then, FareSavers will still be gone by 1 January. All of this and more from Jeff Nagel in the Surrey Leader and other local press from the same stable
Stephen Rees's blog 