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Just to let you all know that myself and Karen Fung, the organizers of TransitCamp Vancouver last year, are holding something of a version 2.0, called TransportHero Camp, this Sunday.

We are organizing the open session workshop as part of CUTA’s Youth Summit on Sustainable Transportation and are inviting members of the public and other local transit geeks to come and join in on the discussions :)

Here’s the info:
Sunday, August 24th
UBC, the Isabel MacInnes room at the Gage residence [map]

It’s a short walk form the UBC bus loop. Sorry for the short notice and hope to see some of you there!

I’ve always been of the opinion that as our personal vehicles shift to greener fuels, they will be powered by electricity - not ethanol or hydrogen. Biofuels require more energy to produce than is gained through its usage, not to mention its impact on food production (something the public is only now realizing). Hydrogen as a technology is extremely expensive and has been called a pipe dream, not to mention the overwhelming task of converting all our fueling stations to said new infrastructure. Electric cars, on the other hand, are here right now! 

As the legend goes, when personal vehicles were first being built in the 19th century, there was two technologies available - the petrol based internal combustion engine or the electricity based motor. For various reasons, gas cars won the battle, but as the tide has shifted, it looks quite obvious that they will not be winning the war. 

As people may or may not know, GM created an electric vehicle, the EV, back in the 90’s. This technology is not vapourware! We can build these things today! And that’s why the car companies are making the shift. In the last few days, there’s been a number of announcements by various companies that they are about to produce electric vehicles - this tells me that a critical mass is being hit, and within the next few years, EVs will start showing up everywhere. 

• Chevy Volt - 2010
• Toyota to boost Prius production by 70%
• Smart Car EV - 2010
• Mini EV - 2010
• Tata Nano EV - 2010
• Nissan EV - 2012

The more I learn about public space, sustainable transportation, and climate change, the more I realize, despite Vancouver being a world leader in these matters, we’ve still got a lot of improvement to do. One of the best places on Earth can be found in Downtown Vancouver - that little slice on heaven on the Burrard Peninsula. But for all it’s wonderful aspects, like the seawall, English Bay, Robson St., Gastown, and Yaletown, one of the major parts that it lags behind in is efficient usage of street space. 

Considering how advanced the area is in terms of urban livability, I find that streets Downtown are still primarily designed as car thoroughfares and nothing more. Which is rather retarded considering how car usage in the area has been dropping steadily over the years. 

The fact of the matter is that bicycle has seen a resurgence across the world, that fossil fuel powered vehicles will go the way of the dodo, that walking needs to continue to be encouraged, and it is through this sustainable transportation infrastructure that vibrant economies and communities can develop and flourish. 

With that said, I reimagineered Davie St recently. Davie is one of several main commercial drags Downtown, and the redesign has taken such usage into consideration. Currently,

• the sidewalk is far too narrow for all the pedestrian traffic it handles, 
• the bus route (#6) is overburdened with riders and isn’t the best service possible, 
• the road is unsafe for cyclists and skateboarders (both of which I see along Davie all the time), 
• and there is a lack of amenities like benches and plants/greenery along the route. 

All of this changes with this proposal. 

The proposal removes two car lanes and reallocates this as

• an expanded sidewalk (for a total of 4m wide, which is the width of Burrard),
• a physically separated 2m wide greenway (similar to the new Carrall St. redesign),
• a less obtrusive flex space with more area for plants, bike parking, bus shelters, newspaper bins, and public art.

Furthermore, the redesign includes a streetcar line. As many know, Vancouver grew up around the streetcar, and the cheap rail technology is looking better everyday to cities around the world as a way to combat climate change, encourage economic development, and get people out of their cars. 

I personally hate riding the bus Downtown simply because it’s so stop-and-go. The drivers don’t make the situation any better because they’ll speed or slam on the brakes, rather than providing a smooth ride - this type of transit service won’t be tolerated in a decade with over 1/4 of the population as seniors. Plus, the route is almost always packed with people! And to top it all off, service isn’t all that frequent for such a busy route. 

The streetcar addition addresses this issues as follows:

• Streetcars provide a much smoother ride due to being on rails. With some good training and tough enforcement on the drivers, we could ensure that acceleration and deceleration are smoother than the SkyTrain.
• Streetcars have an economic incentive for development that buses don’t have. This alone could encourage redevelopment and higher densities along the relatively old and low-rise road. This development could also pay for the inclusion of a streetcar. 
• With the inclusion of a greenway along Davie, such a safe and convenient route could encourage people to get off transit and onto to human powered transportation like bikes or rollerblades.

So what do you all think? Is Vancouver ready to take the next step and transform Downtown’s streets like Davie from car-oriented thoroughfares to bustling multi-modal public spaces?

My friend has just upgraded from publicizing his writing on Facebook Notes to Blogger, and his initial post will blow you away with it’s tongue-in-cheek review of everyone’s dearest automated rail - our lovely SkyTrain. Here’s a few snippets:

The Millennium Line stations can be sorted into three different categories: girly names, excessively long names, and other. The “girly name” group encompasses stations like Sapperton, Braid, Rupert and Renfrew — stations at which no self-respecting man will ever disembark the train, for fear of total emasculation (in the event that this occurs, the revoked manliness can be restored at the hyper-masculinely-named Holdom, a title which evokes images of pure, raw, ball-grabbing maleness). The most egregious of these offenders is Rupert, which in a little known coup was named in tribute to TransLink B.O.D. member David Unruh’s love of the ursine scarf aficionado.

The Canada Line is the nearest it’s been to completion in eons — aeons, even — and I intend to be the first one aboard to soak in the Richmond-bound delight when the cherry pops in 2009. Never again will I be stuck in that all too-common position of thinking “I have twenty minutes to get to Lulu Island before my sugar sculpture collapses, but no means by which to get there.”

Check it out in it’s entirety at Hearts in the Margins!

With all the brouhaha about H&M’s arrival to Pacific Centre on May 22, it’s easy to forget that another highly anticipated retail store is coming to Vancouver - the Apple Store. Now, I hadn’t learned about the official opening date, so it’s news to me, and could very well be news to you as well, that it’s opening two days after H&M: that’s right, May 24! Here’s the email release. Thanks to Peter for the heads up! I expect to see you there in line!

From The Province:

People love their cars and need more roads, so gas taxes should be directed to encourage the car culture, not fund public transit, says Maureen Bader, spokeswoman for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

WOW. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything that could be more *wrong*! It’s like saying, people love to drink, so let’s build a ton of bars! With free drinks for all! 

*shakes head*

At a press conference yesterday to promote the CTF’s 10th Annual Gas Tax Honesty Day, Bader attacked Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s federal Conservatives and Premier Gordon Campbell’s B.C. Liberals as unprincipled tax-grabbers.

“About 30 per cent of the price you’re paying at the pump here in Vancouver is in tax,” said Bader.

“In Vancouver, 20.5 cents of each litre is provincial tax. What’s worse is we’re about to be hit with a carbon tax. Starting July 1st we’re going to be paying an additional 2.4 cents per litre, then we pay GST on top of that.

“This is just wrong.”

Yes, the gas tax is getting high. I would possibly argue a little too high, considering we aren’t seeing very many big improvements to cycling or transit infrastructure. However, market demand isn’t going to suddenly drop - even with people supposedly reducing car usage - so trust me, getting rid of the gas tax will do nothing but provide customers with a short term reduction in gas prices. Ironically enough, if you were to slash the tax tomorrow, demand would spike as people would rush to fill up - causing the price to increase!

She called on Ottawa to transfer five cents per litre of the federal gas tax to municipalities for roads.

Now, this does make a bit of sense, as long as municipalities aren’t forced to use the money for roads. Cities have been demanding a bigger transfer of the gas tax or GST for years, because they just don’t have the means to support the infrastructure they require. It’s the smart cities that would put this money into providing alternatives to the car, not building more roads and highways for the status quo. 

And she questioned the widely accepted opinion of world scientists that human CO2 production is causing dangerous global warming.

“More and more scientists are coming on record and saying that man-made global warming is probably not the cause of the global warming that we have been experiencing over the past few years.

“We’re spending billions of dollars, and really, what we’re doing is allowing politicians to essentially finance their next election campaign,” said Bader.

I’m not even going to touch this one, because we all know how ridiculous her claims are. I thought we got past the point of asking “is this happening” and “did we cause it”, to “how are we going to fix this”.

She sneered at governments’ funding of public transit.

“Taxpayers have got to ask themselves: ‘Do we really need to have a $14-billion Cadillac transit plan when all the government is really expecting to see is maybe a five-per-cent increase in transit use?’ People here want to use their cars.

I agree. $14 billion for such a small increase in usage is a complete waste of money. However, we must look at what we are paying for. Due to the construction of the Millennium Line as SkyTrain, it would be foolhardy to not complete it, with the eastern UBC Line extension, and the western Evergreen Line extension, in a different technology. In a sense, we are locked into the expensive proprietary SkyTrain. But, it must be built - and frankly, we need it ASAP. 

Once we spend the billions for those routes, then we can begin to look at cheaper alternatives that wil increase transit usage such as Light Rail Transit or Bus Rapid Transit. 

And don’t forget about one of the cheapest modes of transport, not just in acquiring the vehicle, but also the construction of infrastructure - cycling!

“Governments cannot pick winners [in business] and they shouldn’t be determining for us what we should be doing with our money and with our time.

“It didn’t work in the Soviet Union, it’s not going to work here either. People are driving more now than they ever have and gasoline prices are the highest that they have ever been.”

Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon couldn’t be reached for comment.

To summarize,

• BC is not Soviet Russia, 
• we need a gas tax to fund alternatives *before* everyone stops driving due to insane fuel prices, 
• climate change is real and needs to be solved, 
• Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation doesn’t speak for all taxpayers, and 
• Maureen Bader is an ignoramus. 

I was rummaging through some statistics this morning about Surrey. Stumbling upon the Transportation graphs, I found something rather bewildering - the stats showed that SOVs, or single occupancy vehicles, were, beating the trend, so to speak, and decreasing in usage in Surrey! 

This is quite amazing, especially considering our options out here in terms of transportation alternatives. 

It’s a spectacular feat and a wonderful trend. Especially since Vancouver won’t get all the attention now!

Private vehicles were the primary mode of transportation in 2006 of those who commute to work.  The share of commuters traveling by vehicle as driver declined from 2001 to 2006.  This was accompanied by a complimentary growth in travel by vehicle as a passenger and by public transit.  Carpooling activity may be captured by either category of vehicle use since this statistic tracks an individual’s most common mode of transportation. 

The primary mode of transportation throughout Metro Vancouver in 2006 is vehicle as driver. This mode is used by a smaller share of the commuting labour force in the inner municipalities of Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster.  The Metro Vancouver average excluding these municipalities is 75.8%.  Surrey is in line with this at 76.1%. 

What the paragraph above tells us is that Surrey residents are doing the best they can to go out of their cars with the resources they have. It is the cities of Vancouver, Burnaby, and New West that have some of the best transit in the region - for this exact reason, they were taken out of the equation. So, in terms of comparing our driving usage with other places that have crap transit - we’re about equal. Just imagine our transit usage if we had viable alternatives - like rail or BRT!

The more I cycle, the more I realize that bikes should become a whole new category in legal and urban planning terms.

Right off the bat, most people would, at least presume, it’s unsafe to cycle on the same road as a car - at least without any good physical separation. This is, all things considered, a huge deterrent to cycling as both a mode of recreation or of transportation.

Now, legally, bikes are considered in the same league as motor vehicles. Thus why they are destined for the road and not the sidewalk.

It’s funny how some laws just become benign though. I could understand why, legally, in a city’s core you wouldn’t want bikes interacting with the people on the sidewalks and would rather them be in the same league as cars. However, the case is completely different in the suburbs. Out here, there’s either not enough population density, or attractions to gather in one specific area, that would require bikes to get off the sidewalks out of the safety of pedestrians.

Frankly, that’s the reason most people I see in the suburbs bike on the sidewalk! There’s nobody to run into! Unlike on the road where they are supposed to be…

Anyways, the problem you get in the city core is, although cars may be driving slower, the deterrent is still there. In this urban space, you essentially require three main infrastructure elements for a complete street - designated, separated space for cars and buses; designated, separated space for bikes; and designated, separated space for pedestrians. Of course, this becomes strenuous in terms of the ultimate amount of space available. However, if you take space away from the cars, and give it to bikes, you’ve created a market based situation and traffic will naturally redistribute.

With the suburbs, it’s a different story. Right now, in Surrey, they’ve adopted a policy of building “complete streets”, which basically amounts to: designated, separated space for trees and plants; designated, separated space for cars and buses; designated space for bikes; and designated, separated space for pedestrians. This means boulevards, car lanes, bike lanes, and sidewalks.

Now as I mentioned, it’s actually quite a waste of space to build sidewalks where pedestrians don’t walk. It’s even stupider to also designate space to bikes which bikes won’t use.

It’s actually a very easy solution. And there’s two steps about it.

1. Allow bikes on all sidewalks that don’t have the pedestrian traffic to necessitate separation due to safety and collision concerns.
2. Stop building sidewalks - start building multi-use pathways with separation from the cars’ road space.

Step 2 is a more long term plan and policy, but it’s an improvement - it gets bumpy after a while from cycling down sidewalks.

Here, instead of using street space for small sidewalks and small bike lanes that nobody uses, you combine the space and end up creating a wider path for both users. Furthermore, it attracts more cyclists due to the separation factor.

What say you? Time to change a little policy?

I was at the Surrey Archives today, and while going through a *ton* of documents, I came across an old timetable from the BC Electric Railway’s Interurban Line. Here’s a quick rundown of what I found from the 1924 timetable:

• Service ran three times a day in both directions, for a total of six runs both east and westbound, all the way from Chilliwack to New West and back again. There was additional runs leaving from Jardine (in Langley), and from Cloverdale (in Surrey).
• Times were spaced out throughout the day, rather than the rush hour commuter service the West Coast Express provides.
• Westbound from Chilliwack to New West: 8:05A, 1:40P, 6:20P
• Eastbound from New West to Chilliwack: 12:15P, 5:50P, 9:00P
• From New West, it took:
  • 24 mins to Newton
  • 40 mins to Cloverdale
  • 53 mins to Langley City
  • 1 hour and 40 mins to Abbotsford
  • 2 hours and 40 mins to Chilliwack

Nathan Pachal, former writer of the VALTAC blog, started up his own site today. I found some more recent timetable information on his Document Archive. This rundown covers Interurban service in 1950, just before it was shut down:

• Service ran three times a day in both directions, for a total of sux runs both east and westbound all the way from Chilliwack to Vancouver and back again. Service was express from Vancouver to New West - local service on this stretch was provided by the Central Park Line (the equivalent of the Expo Line SkyTrain).
• Westbound from Chilliwack to Vancouver: 8:00A, 1:30P, 6:10P
• Eastbound from Vancouver to Chilliwack: 8:25A, 1:20P, 5:30P
• There was special early runs on Fridays, and late night runs on Saturdays (i.e. leave Vancouver at 11:33P, leave Langley at 1:50A)
• From Vancouver, it took:
  • 45 mins to New West
  • 1 hour and 9 mins to Newton
  • 1 hour and 25 mins to Cloverdale
  • 1 hour and 38 mins to Langley City
  • 2 hours and 25 mins to Abbotsford
  • 3 hours and 25 mins to Chilliwack

I personally find it fascinating that we were able to run a regional rail service, throughout the day, back in the 20’s, compared to our terrible lack of service today. I suppose that’s what happens when your rip up a transportation network - it takes a while to rebuild.

I can hardly imagine how much of a boon restoring service on the Interurban would be, even just for my transportation needs. My main places of travel are Cloverdale, Newton, Whalley, Fleetwood, Langley, Burnaby, and Vancouver - and the Interurban would serve five, possibly six, of them! That’s nearly everywhere I go.

That said, it doesn’t really help the denser areas in North Surrey. However, it would be huge to communities east in the Valley! I can’t even imagine how convenient and enjoyable a rail ride would be, going from Cloverdale to Langley in 13 mins, Cloverdale to Newton in 16 mins. Having a direction connection from downtown Vancouver to Surrey, without all the stops that the SkyTrain necessitates, would be AMAZING!

Please. Bring back the Interurban. I’ll do anything. Just give me my rail service!

Oddly enough, there’s been two articles from the major media recently that are clamouring for improved rail in Canada. This topic is something I actually experienced recently during a trip to Regina.

As everyone knows, rail in Europe is essentially “the” way to get around. Unfortunately, while Europe and parts of Asia were investing in rail, North America put all it’s money into highways. It’s this “road first” mentality that has destroyed John A. MacDonald’s dream of a coast to coast railway for Canada.

Throughout the past 5 decades, the government has refused to properly fund passenger rail, and has handed over complete control of the rail system to private corporations.

To put it into today’s perspective, during my recent trip to Regina, I examined the three ways to get there without a car: Greyhound, Via Rail, and WestJet. Now, as most know, flying in Canada is almost as expensive as our cellular data plans! Course, many will pay the premium to skip the long travel time that a train or bus presents.

Now, due to funding cuts, Via no longer even runs trains through Regina - closest I could get was Saskatoon. This routing has also eliminated any national rail connections through Calgary. All rail from Vancouver is looped north through Jasper and Edmonton, to Saskatoon and Winnipeg, and finally to Toronto.

Beyond that “small” annoyance, the cost comparison of rail to a coach service like Greyhound is unbelievable. For example, it was almost $600 one way for me to get to Saskatoon from Vancouver, whereas a return trip via Greyhound could be obtained for only $400. Not to mention the rail trip took longer!

Same scenario for rail south to Seattle or Portland - two wonderful day trips that could easily be a wonderful experience via rail transport. Unfortunately, the provincial government refuses to cooperate with Amtrak and the federal government of the States, which are trying rather futilely to upgrade the “Cascadian” route to handle high speed rail. BC has chosen to implement the cheapest of the proposed upgrades - a couple of rail passes. Like that will speed things up much!

It’s all a very disappointing state of affairs. With three major corridors ripe for high speed rail, governments across Canada are neglecting our rail system at a time when considerable investment is needed. With the advent of both climate change and peak oil, not only are citizens going to look for rail as a “green” form of transport, corporations are going to shift from trucking to rail for continental shipping.

And we’re still stuck with a 100+ year old rail bridge in New Westminster causing numerous backups and limiting expansion and growth of our rail system - with no plan or funding in place to replace it!

What in the hell is going on here?