Archive for the ‘community’ Category
Book Review: “Reimagining Our Tomorrows”
Making Sure Your Future Doesn’t Suck
by Joe Tankersley
Published by Unique Visions Inc ISBN 978 1 7326281 2 0 US$10.99 paperback
“Futurist Joe Tankersley explores a world where technology is used for good and we have the resources to build communities that care.”
I have been doing quite a few book reviews lately but they have not really been particularly relevant to the purpose of this blog. So they have been appearing on my other blog which deals with anything outside of the scope of “Thoughts about the relationships between transport and the urban area it serves.” This blog reaches a wider audience that includes people interested in planning and urbanism, as well as the direction in which we are moving thanks to rapid technological change and the need to change where we get our energy from.
It is also necessary for all of us to take some time out from the terrible news we see every day. Terrible isn’t just the appalling toll of deaths and injuries on our transportation system and our seeming inability – or unwillingness – to take that seriously. Or the choices we still seem to be making at the ballot box that produce very little real change. Or the bleak prospects facing Ontario, the US and the UK thanks to their short sightedness. We need a source of hope. And hopefully some direction. This book is not really intended for me. I cannot claim to be “an experienced changemaker trying to keep up with the pace of disruption”. But I do hope that some of you reading this are “doers and dreamers anxious to ensure our best days are still ahead of us”. And I would not have started writing this blog in the first place if I did not think that we need to change direction and that there are already lots of examples of places that seem to be managing better than we are.
Tankersley used to work for Disney. And he learned a lot there about the value of storytelling and of how to think positively about the future. It doesn’t matter much if he is “right”. What matters is that he offers an alternative view to the “present trends will continue” narrative that seems to dominate our main stream media and professional planners. It is not inevitable that we will remain wedded to fossil fuels, and internal combustion engine cars. It is also not necessary that we keep on doing what we always have done and expecting a better outcome.
Reading this book was not effortful. That seems to me to be a Good Start. It also doesn’t stir in me the need to argue. (Unlike what happens whenever I post something to Twitter or Facebook and get blow back from people I neither know or indeed want to.) Just one small quibble if I may, which I hope gets picked up in the next edition.
the village wasn’t self-reliant when it came to just seafood [the rest of the paragraph is about growing vegetables]
p131 ‘Reimagining sustainability’
What he meant was that the village wasn’t just self-reliant for seafood, it was also better than that for growing food in general and (by the way) energy production.
And the quibble is simply a matter of word sequence affecting meaning. It probably made sense to him when he said it – but on the page the sense is reversed.
I think that is about the only thing I felt the need to quote.
The book also has two pages of book references, and a page of online links – followed by the “Help Me Spread Optimistic Futures” page – from which I learned that the book is self published (linked above) and there is a Facebook page.
I hope that at least some of you will find something inspiring in these pages. The idea of finding new uses for McMansions and suburban malls is indeed not just encouraging but spot on, and something our planners need to embrace wholeheartedly. There is even a paean for a future design of cargobike which I know will appeal to some of you.
Equity, Opportunity and Good Health
A free public lecture from SFU Continuing Studies and The City Program
How Transportation Affects the Essential Qualities of Life In Metro Vancouver
Thursday, 30 April 2015 7:30 PM at SFU Segal School of BusinessTransportation connects us to our community, our place of work and our friends and family. The way transportation infrastructure is designed and the modes of transportation that we have access to impact our lifestyle and our health.
The lecture reviewed some of the evidence from other jurisdictions, but focused primarily on the findings from the My Health My Community project that surveyed 28,000 Metro Vancouver residents in 2013/14.
While there are clear dividends in health for active transportation users, current transit infrastructure does not equally benefit all communities in Metro Vancouver. Access to transportation widens opportunity and is a significant equity issue in Metro Vancouver.This lecture was in collaboration with the 2015 ITE QUAD Conference, May 1-2 at the Pan Pacific Hotel, Vancouver.
It is fortunate that the text and illustrations that were used for this lecture are all available on line. I noticed that several people were trying to photograph the illustrations used, but that turns out to unnecessary too.
The talk was preceded by a presentation by Dale Bracewell, the Manager of Active Transportation at the City of Vancouver. He started by stating that Vancouver now designs its active transportation projects to meet the needs of all ages and abilities. The overarching goals are set by Transportation 2040 but that includes the interim goal of 50% of trips by walk, cycle and transit by 2020. The City has set itself objectives in the fields of Economy, People and Environment. The active transportation program fits within the People category and the Healthy City Strategy, which has a four year Action Plan. Walking and cycling are now the fastest growing transportation mode which reflects Vancouver’s high Walk Score. A panel survey is conducted annually with the City’s Health Partners.
Walking has increased by 19% while the collision rate has fallen by 20%. The collision data also needs to be seen within the context of the City’s Vision Zero. Cycling has increased by 41% while collisions have fallen by 17%. It is clear that the safety in numbers effect is working. Vancouver has installed a series of automated bike counters. He had a set of graphics which I have yet to find but the data is available as a large pdf spreadsheet.
This is the counter at Science World which now has the biggest count – even greater than the Burrard Bridge
The counters show cycle use growing between 7 and 15% over the last year. The Lion’s Gate Bridge now equals Hornby and Dunsmuir, even before the new safety measures for cyclists have been introduced.
Hornby Street still moves as many vehicle now as it did before, simply because the two way separated bike lane replaced on street parking. There are still 14,000 cars a day, but cycle traffic has increased 50% to 2,700 per day. At the same time there are 5,000 people on the sidewalk, with pedestrians showing a clear preference for the side with the cyclists rather than the parked cars. The street is now moving more people overall.
He also added a plug for an upcoming conference in Vancouver next year pro walk pro bike pro place September 12 – 15, 2016
Dr. Jat Sandhu is the regional director of the public health surveillance unit at the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. He stressed that his remarks are his own personal views.
He started by contrasting the experience of driving a car in congested traffic on the Sea to Sky Highway with that of riding a bike on a path next to the North Arm of the Fraser River – the stress of the former versus the relaxation of the latter. He grew up in Hong Kong and described his boyhood commute to school from Stanley to Kowloon: and one and half hour combination of buses and ferry to cover the same distance as the Canada Line from Richmond Brighouse to Waterfront.
He cited the work of Larry Frank at UBC who has published the all embracing literature review on health and transportation, looking at physical activity, air quality, mental health, injuries and equity. “Urban Sprawl and Public Health”. He also pointed to USC study of the Los Angeles to Culver City Exposition LRT which reduced daily vehicle travel by households of between 10 to 12 miles a day which a 30% reduction of CO2 emissions.
It is known that daily physical activity helps maintain a healthy weight, reduces the risk of chronic disease and grants a 40% reduction in the risk of premature mortality. Yet only 40% of the population meet the recommended activity levels. Obesity is now overtaking smoking in the mortality race. Physical inactivity is a large part of the problem as shown by a study of commute time against obesity in Atlanta GA (Am J Prev Med 2004). He also pointed to the lack of transit equity citing the Next Stop Health study in Toronto.
The My Health My Community survey covers the entire area covered by Fraser Health and Vancouver Coastal Health. What makes Canadians sick? 50% of the time “your life”.
The study asked respondents 90 questions about their socio-economic status, health, lifestyle, healthcare access, built environment and community.
The transportation report on Metro Vancouver released last week is the first of a series of reports from this data, intended to inform the discussion of the transportation plebiscite in this region. It draws from the survey responses from residents of the region – which is a subset of the survey mostly conducted on line, but with supplementary paper surveys to ensure adequate coverage of ethnic minorities. It covers only those over 18 years of age. Its target was a 2% sample which may seem small but is much better than the 0.5% sample of the typical transportation survey. Census data to neighborhood level was used to ensure a representative sample. It was a one year process, and results have been weighted to correct for age, gender, education and geography. Of 34,000 respondents, 28,000 live in Metro Vancouver: 80% of those make daily trips for work or education.
55% car driver or passenger
29% transit
10% walk
4% bike
2% other
Only Vancouver, New Westminster, Burnaby and the City of North Vancouver have over the Metro Vancouver average for active transportation modes.
I think the two maps are perhaps the most useful representations I have seen especially since they also map the Mayors’ Council’s proposals. What I think would be immensely more useful is a map of the non-active modes with the road projects that have been built in this region in the last ten years or so. While Dr Sandhu points to the goodness of fit of the proposals to correct some of the grosser transit inequities of this region, I think a map of “motordom” showing how the widening of Highway #1 (ongoing) the increase of traffic speeds on the Sea to SkyHighway, the impact of the South Fraser Perimeter road and the increase of capacity along Highway #10 through South Surrey, as well as all the various interchange improvements financed by development (200 St and Highway #1 for instance) as well as the Golden Ears Bridge and the new bridge over the CP yards in Port Coquitlam vastly overshadow anything that might happen as a result of the Mayor’s plan. I do not have the technical competence to produce such a map overlay myself, but I do hope one of you does.
By the way, the originals of these maps are huge: click on them to enlarge and see the details.
Among some of the other results he quoted:
The median commute time is 30 minutes: for car users it is 25 minutes and for transit 45 minutes. He said that reducing travel time for transit users should be a target, though absent the data on distance I am not sure that actually tells us much. To some extent, people choose how long they are willing to travel – and for some, such as West Coast Express users – the travel time will be viewed in a positive light. However, as a selling point for the Yes side in the plebiscite “Less time in your car, more time in your community” works well.
The determinants of transit use include age: the two biggest groups are 18 to 29 and those over 70. In both cases there is often a financial incentive for transit use (UPass, concession fares). 14% of transit users have a chronic health condition which he said points to the need for more HandyDART, which is included in the plan. There is a 50% higher transit usage by ethnic minorities – except for South Asians – with the highest usage among recent immigrants – who of course are not eligible to vote. Neither, come to that is Dr Sandhu. Only 75% of respondents are Canadian citizens. Transit use decreases with increases in income.
He also produced a graph showing municipalities by commute mode and the incidence of obesity. He said the correlation coefficient (r²) was 0.99 [which as far as I am concerned is unheard of].
He also showed the WalkScore map of the region – which I wish I could find on line. The web page I link to is not exactly what I was looking for!
The current transit infrastructure does not equitably benefit all communities. This is a social justice issue as it impacts access to education and employment. The proposed investments will be positive in this regard. The greatest health legacy of the Olympic Games was [not the creation of his position] the Canada Line. Metro Vancouver is 4th in transit use in North America, only behind the very much larger populations of New York, Montreal and Toronto. We have a relatively small population of 2.5 million and thus “do not have the same tax base”.
Q & A
1. A question about the aboriginal use of transit which seemed to be explained by lower income and the availability
2. Some people use different modes for the same trip on different days: walking or cycling in good weather for instance. Or more than one mode during one trip. The reply was that the choice of mode had been “collapsed down” and respondents were asked to pick their primary mode
3. A technical discussion of the sample compared to household survey which replaced the long form censu s
4. A question about income which produced the response that the City of Vancouver saw similar levels of active transportation across the city, but immigrants were more economically active than the population in general – a reflection of federal immigration policies.
5. Do people realize how walkable their neighborhood really is? Don’t we need more education?
The study helps the Health Authorities feed information into the OCP and community partners, as well as their interactions with nonprofits and school boards
6. “I have not heard the word Translink used. Is there going to be more bus service?”
7. Eric Doherty pointed out that just increasing bus service shows diminishing returns without a greater commitment to bus priority. He also mentioned feelings of superiority when he rode on a bus to the ferry and passed all those car users stuck in congestion.
I responded that bus priority measures are one of the most cost effective ways of improving the attractiveness of transit, but requires a level of enforcement not so far seen here.
REACTION
Gordon Price was really impressed by the cycling data. There’s nothing like a few good figures to destroy some long held misbeliefs.
The health study simply confirms what we have long known, but seem reluctant to act on. My own views on this were set out in a post in published earlier this year. I want to acknowledge the recent promotion of that post on Twitter by Brent Toderian which has had a very significant impact on my WordPress statistics.
The talk was in a larger room than usual, and was linked to the ITE Quad conference, but was poorly attended. The discussion was really rather muted.
Choosing the happy city
There is a storify based on the #happycity hashtag,which now features many more pictures thanks to the recent Twitter upgrade
At SFU Woodward’s on Wednesday March 26, 2014 the third in the Translink series.
Choosing the Happy City
Charles Montgomery
There were many empty seats even though SFU had “oversold”. If you reserve a seat at one of these events and then find you cannot attend, please remove your reservation as soon as you can. There were people who would have liked to be there. But at least there was also a live stream and the event will be added to the Youtube site in due course.
The introduction was made by one of Fraser Health’s public health officers. Happiness is fundamental to health. We need a system that promotes physical activity. Urban form and transportation determine how people choose to move around, and also affordability of housing and access to green space. People who live in the suburbs of Vancouver walk more than other places. We must improve and maintain choices especially for non urban places. She made the point that some policies which seek to deter car use can adversely affect the mobility of people who live in places where there is no other choice but to drive for many trip purposes. There is an inequity in adopting such deterrents before there are adequate choices fro everyone.
Charles Montgomery started his presentation with two “exercises” – the first to identify Translink staff “the institution we love to hate”. He invited audience members to hug a member of Translink staff if they were near them. The second related to two images of dorms at Harvard University. One was a traditional building, the other a somewhat forbidding modern block. Most people indicated they preferred the traditional building, as did newly arrived students. But a study showed that there was no difference in the happiness of the students after three years. Many factors determine happiness not just the design of the buildings but social environment within them is important.
The idea of idea of increasing happiness is not new. Early economists called it maximizing utility. However often “we get it wrong.I think pursuit of happiness is a good thing. We can measure it. … More pleasure than pain, healthy, in control, meaning, security but strong social connection underlies all of these. Both the GDP and creativity in a city depends on opportunities for social interaction. He showed a three dimensional graph of space time prisms, which showed the people who are more dispersed find it harder to connect. They spend much less time in the spaces and times when they can meet others. The edge of the urban agglomerations are the least likely to be socially active. If you live in the exurbs you do not have the time, energy or willingness to join things or even vote.
The shortness of the the commute time is the best indicator of satisfaction. “How we move is how we feel”, and even only five minutes of walking or cycling improves mood and regularly moving under our own power also improves health. Equally driving a nice car on an open road also improves our mood. The trouble is that open roads are rare – and impossible to find at commute times. Driving even a nice car in a congested city is like piloting a fighter jet in terms of the stress experienced. People rate the experience of using transit lowest of all mostly due to the loss of control and that the trips on transit tend to be the longest.
In Greater Vancouver 40% of all trips could be done in 20 minute bike ride. In cities the design of the built environment determines both our behaviour and our bodies. If we build infrastructure for cycling – making it safer – more people will cycle. People will walk 800m to shop in a good urban environment but less than 200m in the typical suburban big box centre. The huge parking lots are a deterrent to walking even short distances.
He cited Larry Frank’s work in Atlanta showing maps of destinations available within a 10 minute walk of home. While there are many in the traditional city centre in the suburbs there are none. It is not surprising then that people who live in the suburbs on average have 10 pounds more in weight
Status interventions
– Equity
Having low social status is bad for health. When transit viewed as a “hand out for the undeserving” – he used the notorious ads in the Georgia Strait some years ago for a GM car dealer which had a bus with the words “creeps & weirdos” as the destination sign – it is unsurprising that it is difficult to persuade people to change modes. Enrique Penalosa redesigned the city of Bogota and it was all about equity. He cancelled a new freeway but built the Transmilenio BRT based on the Curitiba example.
– Freedom
This is represented by our having mastery of our movement. In one experiment they used skin conductance cuffs on people in a mockup of a subway car. Even though this was staged at a party, as the space available to the group in the car became more restricted so their stress levels rose. He showed a picture of the Navigo card in Paris which is much more than a transit ticket. It also gives access to Velib bike sharing – and (he claimed) car sharing (which if so is a change since I was in Paris). “It also gets you cookies” But mostly it gives people the freedom to live with less stuff. they do not need to own a car or a bike [and can get around without worrying about either being stolen]
He then showed picture of the land the province has recently put up for sale in Coquitlam. This “swathe of Burke Mountain will not be well connected”. But families can save $10k a year by not owning a car. He cited Daniel Kahneman’s Book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” We are rightly fearful of house fires and build new suburbs to allow access to big fire trucks, with wide roads and sweeping curves – like a race track. Streets aren’t safe enough for kids to play on – but we somehow think that we have made them “safer” and the areas they serve. There was a notorious experiment on children with Oreos. They could take one immediately or wait awhile and then get two. He says that the problems we require that we slow down and consider their complexity.
The challenge is the cost of congestion, but we attempt to solve it by designing disconnection. He illustrated this with a picture of the new Port Mann Bridge construction and remarked that we only realized that the new bridge was not needed until after it opened. All the traffic and people that now use it could have been accommodated if the old bridge had been tolled and a rapid bus service along Highway #1 introduced. [This was actually something that the Livable Region Coalition pointed out at the time, by the way. No-one believed us.]
“We did it before” He showed a slide of the Livable Region plan from the 1970s. And he also showed the “Leap Ahead” transit plan which its authors (Nathan Pachel and Paul Hillsdon) estimated would cost $6.5 bn but could be paid for with a $0.05 sales tax.
Referendum = fast brain disaster
“The best thing to do is cancel the referendum.” However since that is unlikely we can save ourselves by adopting the recommendations that Roger Sherman used to win the second Denver referendum. Their program was called “Fast tracks” It was a clear plan and fully costed designed to appeal to the core values of the voters. Most of them drive so it has to show how improving transit improves life for drivers
It is not enough to present a clear picture – it has to have a champion, preferably a celebrity and since Brad Pitt is unlikely to be available he suggested Diane Watts
Bring it back to happiness
Working together is good for us build more resilient community
Q&A
The first question pointed out that the Leap Ahead plan did not seem to have much for the North Shore
“Now is not the time” to determine the details – though it does have a fast bus, and I suggested adding another SeaBus
The second noted that he used an illustration of Disneyland. Expectation of good time in built form
Tests in Disneyland show that architecture that speaks to us is good for well being
Technology in design of transportation
Vehicle sharing systems, driverless cars, use of Car2Go in East Vancouver shows that is a bedroom community. there are plenty of cars there overnight but none during the day. We have to have more activity in our residential areas – this is not a technology problem.
Eric Doherty pointed out that he had not mentioned climate change
“While it feels good to do the right thing but not everybody agrees on what that is. Trying to convince people to think like us does not work”. Gateway sucks did not work – it did nothing to convince people who had to drive that there was any concern over their needs.
How do we overcome this mindset of entitlement?
Golden (referring to the first presentation in this series) got all the players in the room and respecting others point of view. sophisticated comm??
Q from twitter on codes
Self reports on happiness higher in small towns
Rural areas
Everybody can benefit from a village
Codes for rural community Gordon Price commented “The City is not shaped by market forces”
Nathan Woods (Unifor) said: We need $3m and Brad Pitt. How do we get that?
Developers stand to benefit – they have the resources. The Surrey BoT strongly supports transit
Can you supply examples of success of postwar planning
Lewis Mumford
False Creek
New Urbanists
Seaside FL
Lean urbanism
Forest Hills Gardens NY (GP again)
Is a dense urban environment enough?
Towers are as bad for lack of trust as exurbs
Just pushing us together is not enough
“Lazy tower style in Vancouver”
Town houses, courtyards, green space
Example of Copenhagen – can we transfer that here?
The answer would be Long and complex. But in one word- Experiment – just line Janette Sadik Kahn did with bike lanes in New York
Gordon Price pointed out how really emotional the fight over bike lanes here had become
Change is very difficult. Regarded as intrusive
One action for individuals?
Started out as a journalist feeling I had no right. We can all change a bit of the city. Those of us who live here have the right to change where we live
What has surprised you in the reactions since the book came out
Jarret Walker told me that on these examples its not the planners who are the problem. “We know that. You have to convince the politicians … and the people.”
Try not to scare people
Someone from modo talked about Share Vancouver and its implication for resilience, during disasters for instance
Life changed in New York with Sandy. How can we create that sense of urgency?
Experiment Granville St what are we learning?
The questioner felt that all the changes we have seen have been controlled by the business community
Times Sq occurred with support from the BIA – who have benefitted as rents are now going up. The police closure of Granville St at weekends was a response to violence. It gave more space for people to move around and thus reduced conflicts
Councillor Susan Chappelle from Squamish said that they were trying to get a regional transportation dialogue going – they are outside the Translink area with a small transit system provide by BC Transit. They remain “disengaged”. The immense changes he talked about are not translated into budget of small town. In the current situation “Words are used, with no change happening.” Squamish is left disconnected
The measures are the same for reducing GHG and increasing happiness. Should we encourage commuting [between Squmish and Vancouver]? The industrial zoning is out of date.
Can design offset crime? Social justice?
Some people assert “None of this is going to work until we overthrow the 1%” But his work shows that the way we design cities has an immediate impact. It’s an equity issue. Many people complain that they can’t afford to live here but then they oppose the density increase essential [to get reduced housing/transportation combination cost reduced]
Some who was arranging a summit of cultural planners pointed out how hard it was to get a large meeting to places which did not have good connections. Change the way transit works to support the summit
BC Transit should take cue from TransLink interagency approach We can crowd source all kinds of stuff
btw People actually talk on the #20 bus
Big issue is transit funding. A city has found solution?
Richmond is the only place where car ownership has fallen – obviously a response to the Canada Line
See the example of the Los Angeles referendum which was not just about transit – it paid for everything with something for everyone
REACTION
This was by far the best presentation in the series so far, in large part because it was not read from a script. He was speaking to the slides he was showing but clearly enjoyed interacting with the audience. It was indeed a performance – and a good one at that. On the other hand there did not seem to be a great deal that was new or remarkable in the content. Working in this field for forty years means that I have actually witnessed exactly the same set of prescriptions proffered for a what at the time seemed like different problems – congestion, growth, inequity, sustainability, bad air quality, global warming. And now happiness – or its absence.
I have got into a lot of trouble for stating unequivocally “transit sucks” to transit management. They of course would rather boast of their accomplishments, how well they do under difficult circumstances, and how resistant politicians are to pleas for more money. But the fact remains that despite increasing expenditures, the overall transit mode share is very difficult to change. We know what the solutions are – we always have done – but we seem reluctant to embrace the changes necessary. And he is probably right that we have an elite stuck in fast brain mode whenever they deal with these situations. He actually cited Kevin Falcon – more than once – and it seems to me he is right. The Jordon Batemans of course simply play to that preference. It is a lot easier than actually thinking clearly (slowly) and then acting.
Sex, Neuroscience and Walkable Urbanism
Jeffrey Tumlin at SFU City Program
Eight simple, free transport solutions for healthier, wealthier cities
This talk was made possible financially by a contribution from Translink. The blog post was updated on February 15 to include two videos, one of the talk and one of the Q&A session.
It is worth stating out the outset that Tumlin sees Vancouver as the future for the rest of North America. The talk he gave was clearly one designed for the average American city. He stated that he felt he was “visiting the future” by what has been done in the City of Vancouver. The problem for most places is that they bought into the lie that having a car will bring you more and better sex. “Where have you been told lies?” And, how can we use their methods against them.
The first series of slides illustrated the startling growth of obesity by state in the last thirty years. The Centers for Disease Control have data that shows how this problem has grown
The animated map below shows the history of United States obesity prevalence from 1985 through 2010. Unfortunately the way WordPress has imported this graphic has lost the animation but it is well worth following the link above to see the trend.
Americans are no longer able to have a significant amount of walking in the daily lives. This is due to civic policies – the rules, metrics and performance standards – that make it illegal to build anything but auto oriented suburbs.The statistics for traffic fatalities per 100,000 residents show that sprawl = death.
“Road rage is a clinical condition”. When you observe a crowded sidewalk you notice that pedestrians do not run into each other. We learned a large number of essential social signals in order to hunt in packs. In cars these social signals are blocked and the brain chemistry shuts down social behaviour, because instead of co-operating the way pedestrians do, the fight or flight instincts have been triggered [by andrenaline]. Traffic is literally driving us crazy and leading to permanent changes in the brain. We are less able to think, to predict the consequences of aggression and therefore become more antisocial. Tea Party membership is positively correlated to the absence of sidewalks.
Policy ought to recognize the limitations of humanity and what makes us happy. That translates in urbanity to the sidewalk suburbs of two to three story buildings. The suburbs we built in the 1920s and ’30s were leafy, walkable and auto optional. We have to increase the number of walkers and cyclists, not just build things for the “hard core lifer crowd”. See D Appleyard “Liveable Streets” [the link goes to Amazon, but this book is very expensive – look in your local library first].
The speed and volume of traffic on residential streets determines who you know and how well you know them. If the traffic is fast and heavy, there will be far fewer people who you are likely to give your keys to, for use in emergencies. Social cohesion and participation in democracy increases when residential streets have less and slower traffic, making it safe and easy to cross the street.
There is a direct casual relationship between mental health and outdoor exercise. Oxytocin “the cuddle chemical” that is released during breast feeding and orgasm is also released by human eye contact and outdoor exercise. It is different to dopamine, endorphins and morphines as it lasts longer.
So now we have has established that driving makes us fat and angry, while walking and cycling makes us happy and sociable, what can we do?
1 Measure What Matters
We need to “measure transportation success in a less stupid way.” Transportation is not an end in itself but allows other things to happen – and it is those activities that we need to facilitate – the benefits come from accessibility not mobility. Movement of itself doesn’t serve a purpose. Instead of measuring Level of Service on shopping streets we should look at retail sales per square foot. We are obsessed by congestion, which means currently we aim to reduce vehicle delay when what we should be looking at is quality of service. A busy shopping street (he cited Market St in San Francisco but Robson Street would be our best case) looks “bad” from the point of view of the traffic engineer (LoS F) but successful to the economist – lots of people spending money.
Make walking a pleasure for all types of people at all times of day.
2 Make traffic analysis smart
[Four step transportation] “Models are no better than tarot cards at predicting the future.” Traffic forecasting is much better seen as a branch of economics than of engineering. What we see all around us are the unintended consequences of model based planning. Making it easier to drive makes it difficult to do anything else. The “solutions” (more road) create the problem they predicted.
We should fix the four step model as it fails to incorporate induced and latent demand. We also need to better understand how land use affects travel – not simply import data from observations of trip generation made in Florida in the 1970s.
Fortunately, only small changes in traffic demand are need to release it from congestion. You will frequently hear people saying “You can’t expect everyone to take transit” but you do not need to. All you need to do is persuade 10% to change mode – and you can persuade 10% of the people to do anything!
3 The best transportation plan is a good land use plan.
4 Adopt the right street design manual
Much of current traffic engineering practice comes from rural highways. Wider roads, better sight lines wider turns accommodate driver error – but this only improves safety in rural areas. In urban areas instead of speeding traffic, drivers must be made to slow down and pay attention. Do not give them a false sense of security. And there is now plenty of data that shows what people predict (“you’re gonna kill people”) doesn’t happen. see nacto.org
5 Plant trees
But note that the costs cannot accrue to the traffic department but the property owners along the street if the trees are to be cared for properly
6 Price it right
Congestion pricing in Stockholm
“Poor people place a high value on their time”. The price elasticity of demand means that it is actually very easy to get enough [vehicle] trips off the road to produce free flow. The right price is always the lowest price that equates demand with supply.
7 Manage parking
Read Donald Shoup “The High Cost of Free Parking” (free pdf).
In urban centres, 30% of the traffic is looking for a parking spot.
The price for parking has to vary by location and time of day – popular places at peak times must cost more. The target price is that which produces enough free spaces to reduce driving. The reason for charging for parking is not to raise money. Invest the parking revenues in making the place better – give it to the Downtown Improvement Association!
Unbundle and share parking, and separate the cost of parking from the cost of other things. Don’t force people to buy more parking than they need and create “park once districts” – rearrange the land use to facilitate walking. So for a series of trips drivers can pay, park and leave the car but visit several different types of activity (work, school, play, shopping).
8 Create a better vision of the future
We are still trying to live in the future that GM displayed in Futurama. Disneyland is an orgy of transportation. The imagineers have yet to come up with a new vision of the city of the future. We are still stuck with the Jetsons.
The new vision has to be based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
1 Walking is a pleasure for everyone, everywhere, all the time
2 Cycling is comfortable for people of all ages – that means separated cycle facilities
3 The needs of daily life are a walk away
4 Transit is fast, frequent, reliable and – above all – dignified.
Everyone knows and loves their neighbourhood whereas the big region is impersonal. We need a sense of belonging. Food and energy are local and precious, and social networks are fostered.
“On a bus I can use my smart phone. I can’t do that while driving”
“Young people move to cities to get laid.”
Flirtation is actually more valuable than the activity it is aimed at getting. Informal lingering and eye contact is what makes this possible. We should apply the same factors that retailers do in the shops to the pubic realm. Beauty is ubiquitous. The brain is hard wired to appreciate beauty [insert slide of Brockton Point view of downtown]
He also has a [very expensive] book Sustainable Transportation Planning
Q & A
Use of malls to encourage walking by seniors in poor weather? – fantastic
Use fruit trees in urban areas? – city concerns are fallen fruit mess and risk of slipping
Can’t we just use nostalgia instead of a powerful vision of the future? – no humans crave novelty, nostalgia is not enough
Buildings without Parking? – The cities fear that someone will park in front of someone else’s building, and impose minimum parking standards that are excessive. There is an over provision of space = huge subsidy to motordom. Abolish the minimum parking standards. Impose very low maximum parking standards but provide shared cars everywhere.
How do we address the concerns of the Fire Chief? – respectfully. Emergency response time matters but we need to focus on net public safety. There are more ways than one to cut response times, including more stations, smaller trucks, traffic signal priority, grid of streets to provide more routes to the fire. Over professionalism is a widespread issue and we all need to care more about what matters to other people
“I saw you” ads seem always to refer to transit. Can we capitalize on that? – Leave it to the French. look at Strasbourg trams – no wraps, low windows. In the US there is a prevailing attitude that transit is the mode of last resort. Transit is like the dole – you have to be made to suffer to use it.
“Dignify transit” How do you do that on a bus? – provide a comparable level of investment as you would for rail. Very hard for financially strapped transit agencies faced with the “Sophie’s choice” between better buses or more service. There is now a program of providing basic mobility for those who have no choice. To move beyond that we have to ensure that the benefits of better transit accrue to the system provider not the adjacent land owners. Benefit capture pays for more transit [and creates a beneficent spiral]
To make bus transit more comfortable you need more transit priority measures – bus stop bump outs, bus lanes, signal priority
Zurich – all surface transit since local funding requirements meant that subway building was not feasible. Streets are narrow – treasured ancient urban fabric – so very little road space allowed for cars despite extremely wealthy population 80% of whom use transit simply because it is more convenient than the car – no hassle of parking.
Orange Line BRT in LA exceeds all ridership forecasts because there are no forced transfers. And service quality offers “basic level of dignity”.
Boulder CO has very high rates of transit use – all bus service, all low density development – very high service standards
REACTION
None of this should be of any surprise to readers of this blog. I have been saying the same things here – and for many years previously. I just have not had the fortune to be able to say it with such charm and charisma – and often with less supporting data.
For instance, when BC Transit (as it was then) was designing what became the 98 B-Line Glen Leicester (then head of planning) insisted on the forced transfer from local service (“It’s just like SkyTrain”) despite the very convincing data from the Ottawa transitway that this was the wrong thing to do. The service had to be redesigned three months after it started.
I have been banging on about Richmond’s use of private parking provision in the town centre for years. And only the “hard core lifer crowd” would think Richmond’s cycle network was adequate. The dyke is for recreation not transportation. Only No 3 Road has separation – and that is far from satisfactory.
I felt, when listening to him talk about parking, or pricing, as though I was hearing myself. The good news is that he does it so well that more people listen.
The talk was oversubscribed – and there was a wait list for seats. But even so there were plenty of empty seats when the talk started and no-one moved to the front. Please, if you reserve a seat, but realize you won’t be going, cancel your reservation so someone else can go.
ASIDE
I am now aware of some Car2Go issues – and for two of them, users can do something. Do not leave the car open but keep the key with you. Seems obvious, may just be absent mindedness, but is truly annoying. Just like the lady who takes the car2go to her gym, parks the car in a private locked underground garage (gym members have access, the public doesn’t) and ends the rental. This saves her money but makes the system show it as “available” when it isn’t. She also has her ride home guaranteed.
It was that thing about not unreserving your seat for a City Program talk that reminded me.
Don’t be thoughtless – or selfish.
And while we were waiting for the #16 on Granville St I used my smart phone to find the nearest Car2Go. By the time it had done that, the bus came. This may be more useful than real time next bus information.
Dan Burden – Active in Action
SFU City Program – free public lecture at SFU downtown April 22, 2010
Dan Burden
Dan Burden spoke last night summarizing his extensive experience in remaking places for people instead of cars. He used a lot of illustrations which I have not been able to locate on line. He does have a collection of images on flickr using the identity walkablecommunties some of which I have used below as well as one of my own (Bryant Park) and some others I have found on the web. SFU were making a video of the presentation as well, which will be on their web page eventually.
He opened by saying that Vancouver is the lead city for bringing about change for what we need. He intended to “validate that you are in the right field”. There is going to be a profound change for North America which for the last sixty years has been designed around the car. His job has been taming the urban highway. This mean dealing with both building form and street form – to make them relate to the human being – and do a better job of moving cars.
Bryant Park New York City – the only activities here in the 1960s were drug deals. But only little things needed to be tweaked. “We needed to find the right height for the wall around the park so that people could see in”. It has become a social gathering place – we changed the wall and put in over 3,000 chairs which are portable, and only 30 a year get stolen.
Victoria BC
Victoria BC
We are going to measure everything by the foot. All areas are going to transition as we return to health and social equity. There will be bigger and more massive storms (illustrated by the picture of the Fallen tree in Stanley Park) and this will effect every waterfront.
Density does not generate traffic – it generates pedestrians and cyclists. By maximizing sight lines we create public realm. All over America there are places were the streets have been laid and the sewers put in, but no houses will ever be built. This suburban expansion was the wrong concept at the wrong time – all the housing stock in Florida will not be sold in ten years.
We now see places like Calgary, Vernon, Edmonton where the spillover of knowledge and technologies in making human places has happened. But it must also be acknowledged that overcoming change in order to not have the worst possible change takes courage “Just ask Fred Bass” – Burrard Bridge.
In Seattle they are taking out the McDonalds and Burger Kings and putting in coffee houses as part of mixed use developments.
“Our cars matter. I am not anti-car but I am pro people”
There is a serious problem with SOVs. The traffic system will always break down. Car buyers are very fickle. Just two years ago fuel efficiency was 17th on list of what people look for in a new car. A long way behind cup holders. That changed, but gas prices have not come down as far as they were, and will not again.
West Lafayette Indiana – in showing how the narrowing of streets worked he remarked, “It’s the intersection that mediates traffic” not the width of the street.
After WWII we designed cities for cars. It was the federal housing administration that discouraged through traffic and mandated cul-de-sacs. It was not one class that was responsible. He showed a picture of 11 Mile Road in Detroit, Michigan. “That is now a scary place. Not exactly of what the modernists predicted.”
As recently as 1972 a traffic engineer in Los Angeles was quoted as saying “If it weren’t for the damn pedestrians there wouldn’t be a traffic problem.”
Tennessee Ave in Tallahassee – an arterial road 7 lanes wide that kills one pedestrian a year. It will be narrowed to 4 lanes and will move more traffic.
Today people are returning to cities for their health. He told the Cherokee 2 wolves story to illustrate how we can no chose which way to go.
Using a picture of the inner harbour in Victoria be highlighted several people who were “loitering” – change that to “lingering” and it becomes a good not an evil.
“How do we count the capacity of streets?”
For a long time we simply looked at vehicle capacity. We now need to look for other indicators such as the number of weddings on a bicycle.
He compared two roads and said that “the one that is safer makes more money”
Marine Drive, Dundarave, West Vancouver
Marine Drive, Dundarave, West Vancouver
Vancouver, West Broadway
West Broadway, Vancouver – tripled density along the street
Robson Street, Vancouver “streets that are full of life”
Many cities have the original “bone structure” – the street system that predated the car and that can be revived. Seaside Florida was based on drawings from 1928, and simply designed to recreate the sort of place people had known int heir childhood.
“We will make more meaningful all spaces”
Sustainable places
Examples of sustainable places he illustrated included
High Point, Seattle
Seattle – High Point – were there is a wide mix of housing types and a strong emphasis on water retention
The most unsustainable – Abu Dhabi – where there were no pedestrians or cyclists – but it will become the most sustainable – they have the will and the resources.
Bogota – example of public transport/ bicycle integration
West Palm Beach – rebuilding city that had fallen into ruin – Espanola Way – south beach
Monterey CA – mixed use “jewel box” devt on one third of an acre
30th Street in Vernon
Vernon BC – “off the charts on aging in place”. It also shows the importance of scale and edges in bringing back people into cities. He used a graph that showed how pedestrain use increases and traffic declines based on the work of John Holtzclaw of the Sierra Club. As density increases from 3 to 4 units/acre to 20 units/acre, the number of car trips fall and the number of pedestrian and cycle trips increase.
“There is a difference between densirty and form. It is important to grasp that. It is not about sidewalks and crossings. It’s about the buildings.” They have recently rediscovered the importance of smaller scale grocers in urban places.
Michael Freedman – clustering to promote walkability – Highgate Village Burnaby
Burnaby, HighGate Village
Complete Streets
Dundarave shows how managing traffic better made a better, more vibrant place.
Hamburg NY – street narrowing
La Hoya Blvd Birdrock San Diego – reducing 5 lanes to 2 got speeds down to 20mph and people got home sooner. That is because they replaced the traffic lights with roundabouts. All of the shops are doing better.
Rubber band planning
Rubber band planning
Just by using pins and flexible string to determine routes, a six year old can do a better job of planning streets. The pins indicate where people are located and where they want to be. The string between them shows the shortest route. The flexibility of the string shows where these desire lines can be grouped showing where the pedestrian crossings and pathways need to be. You then just replace the string with pen lines.
“Transportation is too important to be left to transportation planners”
He showed a number of examples of people power, citing the founder fathers, and the need to inform people. It is essential that the process involve people. [Quite unlike the present practice here of “public consultation”] He spoke of “turning back planning”. Robert Davis the inventor of Seaside simply wanted to make a place like he remembered from his childhood. Many of his examples showed that it only takes on person to start
The Cycle of Strip Development
Land Use Planners set out what was needed to accommodate people and their activities which produced growth. This required the attention of transportation planners who expanded the system and encouraged further growth, which called for the land use planners to examine how to accommodate growth and so on. The only way of breaking the Cycle is to put the land use planners and transportation planners together with community planners.
Q & A
Q As a result of making cities more desirable we also make the city more expensive
A In Seattle they require developers to build workforce housing – a percentage of each development must be affordable. Or they pay for extra density to the city which the uses those funds to buy land for affordable housing.
Q In Vancouver we have the downtown East Side which is bisected by the 6 lane Hastings Street. There are a lot of low income income people and also problems of drugs and theft. Do you have experience of similar low income high risk areas?
A Yes. All parts of the community have to be brought back. The social services have to work. Division St, Grand Rapids, Michigan was the same. The problem is how to get people to come and take part in the process. We had a design charrette for 118th St Edmonton which is now one of the most beautiful streets in the city. Initially one six people came – five of whom were simply seeking shelter. But one of them was inspired and cleaned up – and then became a very effective change agent. “It is the wealthy who will get the first fruits – the are the first to come back – but everybody must get cared for”
Q Are mandatory parking minimums part of the problem?
A Yes. See Donald Shoup – The High Cost of Free Parking – minimum parking requirement is the problem
Q second part – what is it going to take to get rid of minimum parking requirements? Is anybody here going to make that commitment?
[laughter]
Q You spoke about the health improvements brought by these projects. For instance you said that Marine Drive in West Vancouver “lowered blood pressure”. Have you empirical evidence?
Walter Kulash has noted that road rage is worst on suburban streets that have higher speeds. “We should probably have in car BP monitoring”
Q Returning to parking minimums – parts of Burnaby are walkable but they are surrounded by single family areas and that’s where the demand comes from for on street parking.
Public streets are public. Having your own spot on the street in front of your house is not a right. We have to come up with right way to charge for parking. Look at the example of Cambridge where residents have to have parking passes. We also tried to get high school students paid for parking on streets which would then become a fund for street improvements. There should be a premium for priority on parking to increase turn over that then provides money to neighborhoods. “No one has taken me up on that yet.” But we also need to ask “Are we really using the street properly”. Many suburban streets are too wide and could easily accommodate angle parking.
Q How do we work with the “suburban mess”?
A I am currently staying in Richmond, which has lots of “super blocks” and hence broken connectivity. We need to remove the barriers but we are a conflicted society. 80% of N America is suburbs. Deciding where and how you stitch is a very big task. “It is not easy but it”s going to be fun!”
Q GVRD vs Translink – two authorities – one for land use one for transportation
See New Zealand. They reinvented transportation and land use planning to make it into one team. They then sent teams to cities like Vancouver and stole their best ideas
Q I am wondering about how long these streets are? How far before energy peters out?
A There is a need to change character of the street to reflect their neighborhoods: we tend to work in half mile sections.
Ned Jacobs: Citizens’ summits do not compensate for Vision’s abandoned promises
This post is really just to let you know I have updated my recent post on Gregor Robertson’s “Greenest City” plan.
Ned Jacobs has written a trenchant opinion column for the Georgia Straight which draws the links between Vision and the people who pay Vision’s bills – the developers.
It has also been revealed that Vision is deeply indebted to developers, realtors, and others whose interests depend on municipal policies. Vision councillors insist that campaign contributions would never affect their decisions. The donors (whose gifts are not tax deductible) think otherwise. Some have even boasted about their influence on council, and Vision councillors now refer to the development industry as “our partners”. The Coalition of Progressive Electors does not accept contributions from developers
He also traces the recent decision making processes which seem to show that what Vision say they want and what they actually do are some distance apart.
Sustainable Mobility & Cycling in New York
Janette Sadik-Khan
“Learning from New York”
Shifting Gears II series SFU City Program at the Convention Centre, October 19
This was probably the largest audience for one of these lectures that I have seen: somehow everyone managed to get in although that meant a late start at 7:25 due to the length of line up.
Gordon Price opened with his memory of New York in the late seventies when everything looked bleak and dangerous. But New York has now surely earned the title of The Resilient City. No matter how bad things look cities can come back faster and in ways you could never imagine. At the same time as this meeting, the convention centre was also hosting a conference called “Gaining Ground: Resilient Cities”.
Larry Frank introduced the speaker Janette Sadik-Khan
Janette Sadik-Khan
What most impressed her on her first visit here was that we have an integrated transit system, where one ticket allows one to ride on a bus, ferry or SkyTrain. “For ten years I have longed for your “golden ticket””
She said that much of success had depended on her ability to borrow best practices from other places. “We have to do a better job: to restructure our cities [to serve people better]. Cycling is just one component.”
Mayor Bloomberg started with a planning exercise – PlanNYC – a systematic examination to reduce the environmental impact of urban systems. The transportation area is the one that has the most profound impact, and the plan calls for transit expansion as well as cycling and congestion pricing. A plan to introduce a charge of $8 per car entering Manhattan had majority support in the city but was defeated by the state legislators, who did not even vote on it . Only 5% of people drive in NYC. Sustainable streets 2009 is the strategic plan – with benchmarks so that NYC DOT will be held accountable for major goals. The basis is that streets are for people. NYC has 6,000 miles of streets which are valuable public spaces, not just for making cars go as fast as possible. They will become green corridors and are part of a social and economic plan. She noted that people quickly take over these spaces “once the orange barrels are rolled out.” Times Square and Herald Square (both on Broadway) were the first part of a rapid implementation program. The World Class Streets Report was commissioned from Jan Gehl which found that 30% of Broadway [sidewalks] were covered in scaffolding with only 3 outdoor cafes and no seats. “We want to provide seats for New Yorkers.”
Roads are now much safer with the lowest traffic casualty figures since 1910. Children and seniors are over represented in the statistics of fatalities, so NYC is looking at both safer routes to school and for seniors. They targetted 25 focus areas: senior traffic fatalities are down 43% in one year.
The new mobility network is based on selected bus services which now get bus priority lanes with camera enforcement. 98% of riders were satisfied (“This never happens!”) Bus Rapid Transit is much cheaper and faster to deploy than rail. NYC has the largest bus fleet in North America and the slowest bus speeds. “The only way to get across town was to be born there.” [Most subway lines in Manhattan run north-south]
Infrastructure repair has been taken care of and now all of the bridges and most of the roads are in a state of good repair. They have created a network of cycling “backbones” – bike lanes on the four East River bridges and a bike highway on the West Side. There are now 200 miles of bike lanes and they starting to fill in the network. Some of these are innovative such as the bike lanes on the centre median of the Manhattan Bridge, use of advanced boxes at traffic signals and protected bike lanes, an idea imported from Copenhagen where bikes are put inside the parking lane. This uses the parked cars to protect cyclists and reduces collisions with drivers opening doors, but also preserves parking and truck loading/unloading. Crashes are down 50% and cycling is up 50%.
New York City has to accommodate 1m more people by 2030. But she also noted that the average New Yorker has one third of the carbon footprint of the average American – simply because they do not drive so much.
She showed an image of a family on bikes on a new lane that had not been completed. “Families are the indicator species: if you are 7 or 70, you should feel safe on the street.”
These changes are good for business. Bryant Park 20 years ago was an open drug exchange, now is now surrounded by some of the most desirable real estate in the city. They recently completed the “park in the sky” – the High Line – a former elevated railway which has stimulated $50m of investment along its route.
The linear plazas on Broadway mix pedestrians and cyclists but the bike lanes are not for racing at top speed. Cycling is not an extreme sport, which is what it used to be. “It is not alternative, it is fundamental”. The pedestrian space was achieved through lane re-allocation. Broadway is no longer a through street. Broadway is the only diagonal in a the grid, and was always a nightmare for traffic engineers. They have now reconnected the grid and restored the space needed to accommodate the 300,000 or more pedestrians who use it every day. Now that there is enough space, even New Yorkers are enjoying Times Square.
From this experience a new street design manual has emerged through the partnership of 11 agencies, to ensure that the approach continues. NACTO is to develop guidelines to become an alternative to MUTCD.
NYC is also adding bike parking with new designs of bike racks and they have tripled the number of bike racks in the city. David Byrne, author of “Bike Diaries” has been responsible for some of the more innovative designs. The demand for bicycle parking at bus stops has been so great that NYC is now creating bike parking on street at transit stops. Indoor parking for bicycles has also been a huge issue because of the fear of bike theft. They are now creating indoor parking in government buildings and bike access is being legislated for private buildings. All new buildings have to provide bike parking.
Bicycle use increased by 35% in 2008 and is expected to double by 2013. Casualties are declining: there is safety in numbers but also due to an awareness program LOOK
America faces a crisis of obesity and diabetes. New York started summer street closures – 7 miles of Park Ave. “I want to see many yellow checkered bikes” she said that they have been looking at the Montreal bixi system.
All the information she referred to is available on line
Q & A
Gordon Price pointed out that Translink had paid to bring Janette here.
1. What can we most teach each other?
New York should adopt Vancouver’s use of the bike symbol on signs. Vancouver should adopt protected bike lanes
2. There seems to be a cultural debate: The Netherlands uses unregulated shared space to encourage social interaction. We tend to use signs and separation.
But Paris has seen great success with bike lanes and advanced boxes as well as its Velib program. Different cities need different approaches. An unregulated space in a city like New York would become a scrum. “It’s a war out there!” We want to engineer safe streets. She referred to their approach as “urban acupuncture”, applying pointed approaches to specific critical locations and this has been driving down fatalities to a third of what they were.
Q follow up on the scale and speed of changes in NY: what made that possible?
Firstly the umbrella of PlanNYC. There was tremendous buy in, with the recognition of the need for more effective solutions. New York was tired of plans that take 25 years to happen. The rapid implementation was literally painting the outlines. There was not much digging [in sharp contrast, I thought, to what is still not yet complete on Granville Street]. Once we rolled out the orange barrels, people took over. Since Robert Moses paved a lot of NYC we had a lot to play with!
4 You said that your plan was better for business with lots of pedestrians and you referred to property values. That would not be the same for muffler shops. Are you prepared to purchase the businesses that are car dependent?
No
5 Please tell us more about “creative financing” as referred to by Larry Frank
The 7 line extension is using tax increment financing: the increase in property values due to the new facility should go to the agency that provides it. PPPs make sense if the terms are good, but the public sector needs to up its game: the private sector has been better at securing its own interests. They could apply to both port and rail expansions. TIF is a simple idea: zone around the project to identify properties that will benefit (our whole city is TOD) and capture that incremental value. Increases in property tax revenues are then used to service a bond issue.
6 How much is the change in mode share worth in terms of reducing pressure on infrastructure?
We don’t have that data yet: it is a ripe area for research and is an effective way to make the case. We can make the case for transit in terms of the roads and bridges not built.
While there are doubtless significant savings in infrastructure, there are also on major benefits to health side. The lack of active transportation is a public health crisis.
7 – How does this work outside of Manhattan?
There is a huge program in all five boroughs – e.g Bronx hub and extensive BRT. “People can’t be wished onto buses” we have to increase capacity so that the buses are seen as “surface subways”. The population of New York is 8.2m – which effectively means there are 8.2m traffic engineers. We hold 200 meetings a month to listen to the concerns and suggestions. There is a strong appetite for transit and we plan “8 to 10 BRT networks” in the next few years
8 The questioner spoke at length about China and how the use of bikes has declined due to “market forces”. In fact driving is promoted by vested interests who will undermine your program just as they conspired to kill the streetcar. Most of the federal stimulus funds are going to roads and freeways. He also suggested that urban communities should be limited to a maximum of 5,ooo population max . He cited Plato who pointed to the complexity of problems of large cities. In Canada 80% of the population is now in cities and we need to read Lewis Mumford again to deal with this problem.
China is investing heavily in transit – for example in Shanghai. This is a strong sign. We are going back to the cities in the US. There are now over 100 streetcar city projects and an increase in the role of ferries. The world is increasingly urban. People moving back into NYC “We kinda like hanging out”. We can save the planet with cities and make cities work much better by sharing what works.
9 – The questioner liked the idea of changing streets as a better use of resources but said that “in the turf war for asphalt, bikes are getting squeezed out.” He asked are painted curbs safe? New Westminster uses concrete curbs which tend to reduce the overall amount of usable space.
Times Square shared the streets and is curbless, but we had to tread carefully so that bikes don’t race through. We are not at a “cultural tipping point” [I think she was referring to earlier remarks about Dutch “naked streets“.]
10 – Referring to her comment on how congestion pricing was defeated, “we no longer control Translink”. How would you have transportation funded, planned and implemented in an ideal world?
Look at Portland: the regional growth boundary has teeth. The region has therefore a robust transit system with incredible perform of the network. They extended MAX to the airport using a P3.
She also noted that there are three different entities in New York and they don’t have common fare system.
11 – The questioner came from Ladysmith where, he said, no-one rides – they are afraid. How do we get the sceptics to use bikes
The NYC Summer Streets program includes bike teaching and gave away 25,000 helmets. They introduced weekend walks programs. However it is recognized that “etiquette” and “New Yorkers” are not often in the same sentence and traffic signals are treated as suggestions.
12 . Can you speak more about metrics and agencies – 3 Es [effectiveness, efficiency – there seems to be many suggestions for the third] pedestrian safety
“I’m big fan of pilot” – communities know their streets better than anyone else. You can use paint to produce some sidewalk extensions and use potted plants to impose a quick traffic calming scheme. In 1990 it was 365 pedestrian deaths a year. We now make more interesting places which send different cues to drivers that slows them down.
15 – Tell us more about covered bike shelters
The rain in Vancouver is a myth – just like in Portland. It is something you tell people to try and stem the influx. More is better. But also you need to look at connectivity – fill in the network , and protected bike lanes. We both need a bike share program. Each city has to make strategic choices and in our case the is now increasing bike parking in buildings.
Book Review: Plan C
“Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for peak Oil and Climate Change” by Pat Murphy published by New Society Publishers
First Printing May 2008 Paperback ISBN 978-0-86571-607-0 $19.95
I was sent this by the publishers but only in the last month. I was quite surprised to see that it was now a year old – and it becomes apparent early on that this was written long before the advent of Obama – let alone his election. Because it is written by an American for a US audience.
Pat Murphy is the Executiuve Director of Community Solutions, a nonprofit organization which focuses on achieving sustainability by reducing energy consumption in the household sectors of food, housing and transportation. … Community Solutions has hosted annual Peak Oil and Solutions conferences since 2003 in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
I was hoping when I picked up the book that I would actually discover an alternative to plan A (Business as usual) and Plan B (New technology). And while there is certainly a well argued case for such an approach there is not nearly enough in my view about how one goes about creating communities in places which have to a large extent lost them. There is of course a great deal of explanation about how we lost our sense of community – and who is responsible for that – but not nearly enough about what we can do to recreate that.
In fact this evening – because the CBC is taken over by hockey – I was watching Global TV news and they had a short bit on community gardens in Vancouver (for Earth Day, of course). The demand for these gardens is greater than ever before – and the recession seems to have stimulated even more people to grow their own food. But what got the City of Vancouver really interested was how the establishment of these gardens improved neighborhoods. They made them safer because people started to get to know who their neighbours are. People who had lived in the same apartment building for years actaully found out who the people were on the other floors! We really have very little contact with the people who live closest to us – and gardens do build communities. This simple idea is not referenced at all in the index to this substantial (300 page) volume. How to start building a community seems to me to be the key to getting Plan C working.
There is a lot in the first third of the book which makes it a useful reference source – the whole thing is annotated in endnotes – but much of it will be reasonably familiar to people who have been concerned enough about the problem to pick up this book in the first place. Since it is American it has to deal with the widespread misconceptions about climate change and peak oil – but if you do not need to be convinced you may skip that part. It will also mean you can avoid a long and quite vitriolic condemnation of the history of imperialism – which to some extent explains why the third world is so angry that the first world seems so determined to hold back their achieving our lifestyle. But there are odd gaps – for instance the very short section on electric cars omits the current organizational developments in Israel around leasing batteries which may well overcome the serious issue of lack of range. And unfortunately the book misnames “the father of the fuel cell” George Ballard (he was actually Geoffrey Ballard) – and also neglects to point out that Ballard Power Systems themselves have abandoned the idea of developing a fuel cell powered car.
I naturally turned to the transportation section hoping for better. But nearly all of it is devoted to the idea of the “smart jitney”. Now this is an idea that I have also thought would be very useful in civilizing suburbia, and technically I think it would be reasonably easy to do. The problem is the very real legal and social barriers. In my own view, this is going to be a very hard sell to politicians – and against the considerable and well entrenched opposition of people who currently operate both taxis and transit. We do need something that is smaller than a bus and cheaper than a taxi – but I think that self drive vehicles are still going to be the answer (through car co-ops) long before we resolve the issue of getting into a car with a stranger driving. Since the book is about community organizing most of the obvious ways of improving local transportation through better transit are simply ignored. About the only extensive reference is to what Cuba cobbled together when it lost access to Soviet oil.
Apparently one of the essential things we must do is “kick the media habit”. And, yes, I can see why that would be a good way to reclaim some time and get away from the very narrow world view presented by the mainstream media. But it also seems to me that is a very patrician view: that most of us are incapable of seeing through the spin and sorting out our own alternative sources of news. For people who can find their way around the internet there are many other ways of getting news and information. But according to Pat Murphy you have to get away not just from the tv but your computer as well. As a blogger I cannot recommend that approach.
And as an activist, and now an aspiring politician, I am also not ready to give upon the political process. Much of the change we need to bring about needs to be at the various levels of government. Much of the first Greenhouse Gas Action Plan for BC that I worked dealt with regulatory issues – and many of those still need to be dealt with. For instance rules that prevent people from taking simple effective steps to cut energy use like using a clothes line or installing a solar panel. But also of course stopping governments doing stupid things like widening freeways and getting them to do sensible things like converting more of our streets to bus lanes.
I think there may well be a Plan C – and it does have a lot to do with people discovering the power that they still possess when they get together to do things. Stopping a P3 in a provincial park for instance – but also positive things like organizing car pools and community gardens. There does need to be a handbook to help that along. This is not it.
Stephen Rees's blog 