“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.” – Howard Aiken

- Tear down the Viaducts

Why: Traffic is decreasing, NorthEast False Creek is set to develop in the next decade, the viaducts represent a physical and psychological barrier between False Creek and the DTES, they are the remnant of a never-built freeway project.

Proposal: Remove the viaducts, develop five blocks of prime city land, utilize the funds to build the Downtown Streetcar line as a transport alternative.

- Reimagine Downtown Streets

Why: Traffic is decreasing; while cycling, walking, and transit use is increasing. Sidewalks along the main commercial streets (Robson, Denman, Davie, Granville) need expansion to handle crowds, the streets need more amenities and furniture to become places rather than corridors, the seawall has proven to be a popular facility and there is demand for safe and dedicated cycling space on streets.

Proposal: Reallocate the secondary parking lanes from downtown commercial streets to for space to wider sidewalks; a flexible street furniture space; and dedicated greenway lane for cyclists, rollerbladers, skateboarders, and runners. Potentially run streetcars down the route to stimulate investment and reconstruction of dilapidated buildings along said streets.

- Build a P3 Rapid Bus network in the South Fraser region

Why: Traffic is increasing due to a lack of viable transport alternatives, TransLink does not have the financial resources to support B-Line service or other rapid transit expansion, any new transit service would need to be highly attractive and competitive with the automobile, a P3 is viable if done of a multi-line regional scale, transit is more successful if built as a network, rapid bus systems are cheap investments and highly effective at moving people.

Proposal: South Fraser municipalities enter into a P3 with a private corporation and TransLink, build a multi-line rapid bus network connecting all the major centres in the region, incorporate widespread marketing plan with high quality customer service and experience, eventually replace popular routes with light rail.

- Elect a Metro Vancouver Chairperson

Why: Metro Vancouver is non-responsive, unaccountable, lacking vision and direction. It succeeds at encouraging dialogue among municipal representatives.

Proposal: Separate Metro Vancouver into executive and legislative branches, continue the federation under the legislative branch, regionally elect a Chairperson to the executive branch. In doing so, an election will force regional issues to the forefront and encourage citizen debate on such matters, while giving people a voice at the table. The Chairperson appoints Commissioners to head each department, brining more accountability and transparency to the organization.

- Build a Children’s Museum in Surrey

Why: Surrey has one of the province’s largest population of young people, outside of sport there are few opportunities for informal learning in Surrey, there is an increased commitment to funding literacy and early childhood education initiatives, Surrey needs cultural attractions to attract people to the city.

Proposal: Build a Children’s Museum – a hands on, discovery-based, informal learning centre like Science World – in Holland Park. It will help build the City Centre area, has access to major transport connections, and increase the profile of Holland Park.

Half-baked Ideas

- A wiki based website focused on the history of local communities. Citizens know their backyards; crowdsource that information to build an online local history repository. Such information is normally too long-tail for books to be written. Think Wikipedia meets 43Places, meets local Archives.

- Global garden for Downtown Surrey. The City Centre needs attractions so build a “global garden” to showcase the many ethnic communities in the City. Could partner with existing and future sister cities to make it happen. Think Sun-Yat Sen meets the Taj Mahal.

- Provide a year long subsidized community-based service program for youth in Surrey. Gives them time to experience the world and think about their future, while concurrently building the capacity of the local community. Think AmeriCorps meets Katimavik, but on a local scale.

- Install community bulletin boards at SkyTrain stops to help support the local economy.

- Initiate community boards who become local caretakers for each SkyTrain stop. Give them resources and authority to maintain gardens and plants, and clean up trash and graffiti. Through liaison with TransLink, the community board, if approved, can help create and install community art at each station.