Urban Vancouver

Maybe I just don't read The Straight often enough, but their articles on Peak Oil and Livable Region matters are really top notch lately. The interesting thing is, I am finding these articles on one of my favorite websites, "The Oil Drum" obviously thinks likewise.

Peak-oil spike reshapes the suburbs

By Carlito Pablo

Perl said that cities with more suburban sprawl are suffering more in terms of depressed prices than denser areas that are less dependent on cars.
“I think that there is an obvious relationship between the way the land is used and the transportation alternatives that are available,” noted Perl, a panelist in a forum on the future of transportation to be held at the SFU Harbour Centre campus next Thursday (May 22) at 7 p.m.
A new study by Oregon-based economist Joe Cortright suggests that spiralling oil prices in the last five years burst the American housing bubble that swelled partly due to relaxed lending practices and speculation.
Properties located in cities and neighbourhoods that require residents to go on lengthy commutes and don’t provide many transportation alternatives have fallen in value more deeply than those in “more central, compact and accessible places”, Cortright wrote in Driven to the Brink: How the Gas Price Spike Popped the Housing Bubble and Devalued the Suburbs.

This is just the type of evidence that will show that the Gateway Program and road expansion by Gordon Campbell's Liberals makes even less sense from a business perspective as the price of transportation (energy/oil) goes up.

"Even if they get their interchange, they are going to wear it around their necks for the rest of their political lives," Blunt said

Crown drops all charges against five Spencer Road protesters

Foes of interchange were arrested during massive February raid

Richard Watts, Times Colonist

Published: Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Protesters arrested for mischief over demonstrations against Langford's Spencer Road interchange have been set free of all charges.

Criminal Justice spokesman Stan Lowe confirmed yesterday that the Crown, after review, decided not to proceed with charges against those arrested during the protest.

Lowe said that decision might change, however, if circumstances become different.

The five, Luke Woodyard, Noah Ross, Ingmar Lee, Nancy Powell and Ben Isitt, were arrested in February after a massive police raid broke up a year-long protest.

People opposed to the interchange had staged a tree-sit and campout to block work crews set to begin clearing ground for the multimillion-dollar traffic project near Spencer Road on the Trans-Canada Highway.

Protesters complained the project encouraged urban sprawl, destroyed diminishing forests and endangered rare caves.

[snip]

Opponents of the project are now talking with bankers asking them to take a second look at Langford's request to borrow money for the project. And the bankers are listening.

"The financing is not a done deal, and the interchange is way behind schedule," Blunt said. She said people in the community are now asking some hard questions of Langford councillors while an election is looming this November.

"Even if they get their interchange, they are going to wear it around their necks for the rest of their political lives," Blunt said.

"We've mobilized thousands," she said. "We have so much support in the community we have really showed people, 'You can fight city hall.'"

Full text:
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=c36c81d7-cc5e-4cc1-9316-19f4113b27d2

See earlier postings on Bear Mountain at:
http://www.livableregion.ca/blog/blogs/index.php?s=bear+mountain&sentence=AND&submit=Search

What do the Gateway Program and Iraqi reconstruction have in common? Show up and find out:

The Vancouver/Burnaby Chapter of the Council of Canadians is hosting a public meeting on privatization, P3s (public private partnerships) and the Gateway Program.

Wed. May 21st at 7:30pm - 1440 W 12th

Please join us to hear more about, and discuss, the GATEWAY PROJECT.

Eric Doherty, researcher and environmental consultant from SPEC (Society Promoting Environmental Conservation) will be discussing the impacts of privatization relating to the Gateway Project and the proposed expansions of the Port Mann bridge and Highway #1.

Roger Emsley from APE ( Against Port Expansion ) will be presenting information on how the port expansion is driving Gateway, why further port expansion is not needed, and the environmental and community impacts for the entire Lower Mainland.

The meeting will take place at the Holy Trinity Church at 1440 W 12th ( 12th and Hemlock ) May 21st, 7:30pm.

To learn more about the Council of Canadians please visit:
www.canadians.org

For more information on SPEC:
www.spec.bc.ca

For more information on APE:
www.againstportexpansion.org

Here's a great article from the Georgia Straight by Charlie Smith about the greenwash politics that goes on between the media, governments, and consultants in the area of carbon credits.

Jeffrey Simpson, Mark Jaccard, Gordon Campbell, and Peak Oil

By Charlie Smith

This weekend, the Globe and Mail's Jeffrey Simpson wrote yet another column praising Premier Gordon Campbell's carbon tax.
To Simpson, it sometimes seems that B.C.'s premier can do no wrong.
Simpson never demonstrated a great deal of interest in climate change until the past couple of years—most notably, when he hooked up with SFU professor Mark Jaccard and researcher Nic Rivers to coauthor Hot Air: Meeting Canada's Climate Change Challenge.
The authors advocated a carbon tax, long a favourite of Jaccard, a former chairman of the British Columbia Utilities Commission.

This article in the NewYorkTimes shows how we will change or are changing as gas & diesel prices increase our travel costs. Now we just need to change the direction our governments are taking us. There is ample evidence that we need more transit and less roads as fuel prices increase week by week. As well, there is no shortage of articles in the media showing how out of touch our governments really are when it comes to allotting the appropriate funds to our transit systems.

Some cities are seeing spectacular gains. The Charlotte Area Transit System, which has a new light rail line, reported that it logged more than two million trips in February, up more than 34 percent from February 2007.
Caltrain, the commuter rail line that serves the San Francisco Peninsula and the Santa Clara Valley, set a record for average weekday ridership in February of 36,993, a 9.3 increase from 2007, according to its most recent public calculation.
The South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, which operates a commuter rail system from Miami to Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, posted a rise of more than 20 percent in rider numbers this March and April as monthly ridership climbed to 350,000.
“Nobody believed that people would actually give up their cars to ride public transportation,” said Joseph J. Giulietti, executive director of the authority. “But in the last year, and last several months in particular, we have seen exactly that.”

From the Los Angeles Times.

Rising Fuel Prices Are A Driving Force For Change - Away From Autos

But people are cutting back in a million little ways, and even in the Los Angeles area they're cutting back on driving. Interest in cycling is growing, gasoline consumption is down and bus and light-rail ridership is up.

After declining at the end of 2007, L.A. rail and bus ridership started rising in January. From January to March, average weekday boardings were up 16% on the Red Line rail system, 13% on the Blue Line and 17% on the Gold Line, which set a record for highest average weekday boardings in March with 22,231. Bus ridership grew 8% from January to March.

The explanation is in the math. It costs $1.25 to take the train from the North Hollywood Metro station to the stop at Wilshire Boulevard and Vermont Avenue, while driving a car would cost $6.05, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. (The agency uses the AAA formula, which sets the cost of driving at 56.2 cents a mile when gasoline and vehicle wear and tear are taken into account.)

And from the Falls Church News-Press.

The Peak Oil Crisis: Transiting to Transit

With crude oil now above $120 a barrel and threatening to go higher, it is clear that our preferred and convenient means of going places, our car, the airplane and the rental car soon are going to be parked because they will be too expensive to operate.
Like it or not, most of us are going to be riding some form of mass transit or multiple passenger vehicle – trains, buses, trolleys, car pools, van pools etc.- while waiting for our cars to be replaced with electric or higher mileage vehicles. As there are currently about 220 million cars and light trucks registered in the U.S. and 700 million or so elsewhere, the replacement process is going to be lengthy one.

One day soon, it will simply be too expensive for electricians, plumbers and a myriad of other household service providers to drive 50 or 60 miles in large, inefficient vehicles to perform some relatively minor maintenance task. The very nature of such services will have to change, be localized, and planned so that travel is minimized. Someday, your electrician may arrive on a city bus pulling his tools and parts behind.

Vaughan Palmer gets around to last week’s protest, and reruns bits from the Delta Optimist as well as the last provincial election there which Vicki Huntington nearly won. In fact the Liberals got elected in this seat on a minority vote. Which in a fair system would mean they lost.

He also manages to tie it to more than the power lines, which means he is at least more perceptive than his colleagues on the other CanWest paper that publishes on Sunday.

I rather wish he had spent as bit more time on the substantive issues. There is a lot more at stake here than a seat in provincial leg. But then that is his beat, so I suppose the fact that it gets raised at all in an opinion piece in what has been the BC Liberal’s mouthpiece news monopoly is something worth noting.

Canadian Press

The evidence given yesterday to the Braidwood Inquiry by Metro Vancouver transit police force deputy chief Ken Allen confirms that fare evaders were being tasered. The language in the instructions issued to officers has now been changed from “non-compliant” to “actively resistant.”

“The concern was that non-compliant could be construed to mean non-payment of fares by the public.”

Allen was not asked to explain what the term “actively resistant” means.

That seems to confirm earlier suggestions that some “noncompliant” passengers were either tasered or threatened with a taser. This is completely unacceptable. There is an ongoing enquiry into taser use on transit but that of course is being conducted by another police force.

There are plenty of places in North America that use the proof of payment fare system. None of them use armed police to check fares. At least part of the problem has been the grossly unrealistic estimations of fare evasion used by critics of proof of payment based on no evidence of any kind. And sadly that perception has been bolstered by the Minister of Transport and the former Chair of Translink, Malcom Brodie. Moreover, the only reason that SkyTrain needs a police force is that it crosses too many police jurisdictions to be effectively policed by local forces. There are many good reasons why Greater Vancouver should have a Metropolitan Police Force, most of which are far more compelling than the need to police SkyTrain.

We also need to look at the role the media has played in creating the urban legends that surround crime and SkyTrain, which has lead to a situation where  dangerous over reaction - armed police checking tickets - seems to be accepted as necessary.

It is to be expected that as a result of the Braidwood enquiry much tougher rules will be imposed on police, who have been far too ready to use a taser first and ask questions afterwards. Armed police deal with situations differently than unarmed police. It might also be worthwhile for Translink to review what police are expected to do on the system. Ticket checking should be done by SkyTrain staff - and police should only be called to deal with situations which call for a police presence. Someone arguing about the validity of a ticket is not such a situation.

John Davis of Burlington Associates introduced himself as a practitioner not an academic. In the small town of Burlington, Vermont he has been one of the pioneers of a way to make home ownership possible for people on low incomes. Through a variety of mechanisms a number of cities in the US have been trying to come up with mechanisms that retain the value of subsidies given to low cost housing, and over the last twenty years the movement has grown rapidly.

He spoke this evening to a small but attentive audience at SFU. He had a lot of slides filled with words and a DVD. Far more than I could take note of. But I hope that this short report will capture the essence of his ideas.

Shared equity ownership is a method used to enable people who would not qualify for a commercial mortgage have a better alternative to renting , which in the US has no security of tenure. There are also tax advantages for home owners in the US. Many municipalities have tried to do something about the provision of affordable housing since the federal government withdrew from public housing in the first Regan administration. Many states have also abrogated their responsibilities in the field of public housing.

The traditional methods of subsidizing home ownership concentrated upon subsidizing poor homeowners. While the source of funding was usually federal or state it was passed through to the home owner as a grant or low cost loan, with the homeowner taking all the risk but also all of the increase in value over time. The devolution to the cities as a result of the federal retreat from housing subsidy meant there were fewer dollars available to the cities, so they turned to regulation. While some used incentives to developers to provide affordable housing - such as bonus density - other required “inclusionary zoning”. That is, of any housing development 10 to 15% of the units would have to be affordable. In other words there is a mandated cross subsidy from market to affordable housing. The private sector in recent years has seen a major collapse in house prices, with rising numbers of foreclosures due to mortgage defaults. Many of these were due to “creative financing” - mortgages with low introductory rates but steep increases to market rates after a year or two.

Most cities are now very concerned about the lack of affordable housing, especially for essential service workers. Mr Davis said there has been “a seismic shift in municipal policy” and most cities now subsidize supply of housing especially through non-profit organizations. The intention is to retain the subsidy even though houses continue to be sold, in order to maintain a stock of affordable housing and provide a social safety net. New forms of tenure have been developed and a new class of “nongovernmental housing”. These are price restricted and are restricted to people excluded from the market. He referred to it as a third sector, which perforce has had to be very innovative.

The idea is that the equity in the home from increasing house prices is shared between the owner and the housing trust or co-op. Owner occupation gives a bundle of rights - and shared equity means that some of these rights are relinquished or reduced to reflect the extent of the assistance the owner has been given to acquire the property. When it comes to be sold it has to be offered back to the trust or resold only to a qualified buyer at a price predetermined by a formula in the original deed of ownership.

While there are a wide variety of not for profit associations organizing co-ops, condominiums and housing trusts, one of the most numerous now is the “community land trust”. The trust is set up to acquire and administer land. To do so it has to raise funds either from governments, or these days charitable organisations. (The US has far higher rates of charitable donations than most other countries , partly reflecting the widening disparity between rich and poor but also the more generous tax treatment of charitable donations.) The land is then used for a housing development - which may be carried out by the trust itself, or private developer or a non profit. The homes are sold but not the land under them. This is leased, usually at nominal rents, with the lease documents containing the restrictive covenants. He remarked that it was essential that there be an activist attitude as covenants have been shown not to be self enforcing.

In general, so far these ventures have succeeded in keeping affordable housing available and at the same time allowing the working poor to move up into the housing market. Generally there is the same pride of ownership, and properties are usually well maintained. The owner is also entitled to keep the value of any improvements made to the property itself. In the event of default, the trust usually manges to intervene early in the process to try and renegotiate or find a way to allow the owner to become a tenant. However, if the home has to be sold by the bank (or other mortgage holder) the restrictive covenants are not then binding on the new owner, but they have to pay a market lease rate. Most prospective buyers are happy to accept the restrictive covenants in return for a much lower lease payment.

The statistics he had indicated that while this is still a small segment of housing in the US, in some places it has become quite significant especially when municipal government has been active to try and promote affordable housing (e.g. San Franscisco and Chicago). The current collapse of house prices, and the uncertainties of the credit crisis mean that many of his analytic charts give no guidance as to what may happen next. Up until recently house prices were rising and equity increasing. This may not be true in future.

He emphasized that there is no one size fits all solution. There are a wide range of applications including traditional, single family homes, condominiums, co-ops, trailer parks and mixed use developments. CLTs have also become landlords to other nonprofit service groups as well as running rental housing, homeless shelters and other related activities. He also said that it is not an easy option and requires a dedicated team of people willing to work hard for little or nothing, and significant financial support. However once the land has been secured, CLTs have been successful in retaining affordability as well as allowing homeowners some ability to increase their wealth and pass it along to their heirs.

One key factor has been the structure of the board of the trust. He recommends a tripartite structure so that no one group can dominate the trust and divert its ends. Thus the home owners make up one third of the board, the neighbours (the surrounding community) one third with the rest of the seats filled by appointments made by the two groups acting together to select people will relevant skills and standing, such as local bankers or councillors. In this way no one interest can trump the others, but all decisions require some support from at least one other group.

It is clear that the situation in the US has some parallels here but there are some significant differences. For instance, there are no tax advantages from home ownership here, whereas in the US mortgage interest is tax deductible. Municipalities here have generally not been active in housing supply. While there is a non profit housing sector, it has been shrinking, not growing, mainly as a result of government neglect. And there are also fewer sources of charitable funds.

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Translink's ALRT SkyTrain rapid transit system westbound, in reverse, in the top track of the double decked former CP Rail Dunsmuir Tunnel under downtown Vancouver, departing Granville Station

indyinsane has added a photo to the pool:

Translink's Coast Mountain Bus Company 2000 Orion V 'Express Coach' refelcted in the facade of the CIBC building on Pender at Burrard

indyinsane has added a photo to the pool:

Translink's ALRT SkyTrain rapid transit system westbound, in reverse arriving at the terminus, Waterfront Station

indyinsane has added a photo to the pool:

Translink's ALRT SkyTrain rapid transit system westbound, in reverse, in the top track of the double decked former CP Rail Dunsmuir Tunnel under downtown Vancouver, looking from Burrard Station around the bend back to Granville Station

indyinsane has added a photo to the pool:

Translink's ALRT SkyTrain rapid transit system westbound, in reverse, in the top track of the double decked former CP Rail Dunsmuir Tunnel under downtown Vancouver, looking from near Burrard Station back to Granville Station

indyinsane has added a photo to the pool:

Translink's ALRT SkyTrain rapid transit system looking towards Joyce - Collingwood Station, Patterson Station and the towers of Metrotown in Burnaby while on the way to 29th Ave Station

Silicon Valley MercuryNews

Sorry about the size of that image but that is the “large” version. The red lines indicate congestion and the blobs have numbers indicating rank in the top ten.

Traffic congestion on Bay Area freeways in 2007 hit its highest level since peaking in 2000, transportation officials announced Wednesday, but tie-ups diminished on some of the area’s busiest corridors.

Now higher gas prices and a sliding economy mean that it is not as bad as last year now. But interestingly the response to all this congestion is not to build more freeways

The Bay Area will benefit from $1.3 billion in highway funding from the $20 billion statewide Proposition 1B transportation bond voters approved in 2008.

That funding will mean new car pool lanes on I-580 and major improvements in the way ramp metering, sensors and cameras are used to monitor and control traffic on I-80.

Basically the engineers have decided to go for the TDM tool kit. That’s “Transportation Demand Management” and it has been around for quite a while. It is based on the simple proposition that you should try to get the best out of what you have got before you start building more. So ideas like ramp metering are being applied - and are shown to work. Oddly enough we do have that on the Port Mann Bridge. But not before the Bridge where it would do some good, but after the bridge where it allows the traffic coming off the bridge to keep moving by restricting the rate of cars emerging from the Mary Hill ByPass. I think, and I could be wrong, that is more to do with basic road safety than traffic management.

And the story also has a link to a blog that is new to me that you might enjoy called “The Capricious Commuter”

Times of India

Sometimes I feel the need to find a different source of stories - and so far today not one comes from CanWestGlobal.

Delhi has been getting stick for its new BRT lines (form the Times of India among others) but

French transport minister Dominique Bussecreau, who on Wednesday told chief minister Sheila Dikshit that France too faced much opposition when the first BRT corridor came up in Paris. Pointing out that now “all was well” with the project, the French minister revealed that the corridor in Paris stretched over 44 kilometres.

…

He further offered possible funding assistance to undertake a detailed survey and study for commissioning of tramways in Delhi

…

initiatives being taken by the French government in curbing pollution. The initiatives included free cycle service, electrical cars and hybrid cars.

The point being of course that what is needed is not a one size fits all solution but appropriate technology for the needs of the service. Anyone who tells you that cablecars or aerial tramways will solve all our problems is a snake oil salesman. It is inevitable that many different modes are needed, but the one we currently rely on - a gasoline driven single occupant vehicle that takes up half of the road space needed for a 40 seater bus - is not going to be around for very much longer. And what we will have to concentrate on is

the need to integrate different modes of Public Transport.

That last comes from Delhi “chief minister Sheila Dikshit”. And she is right.

The headline from the All Headlines News is actually “Toronto Transit Commission Discovers Belatedly Hybrid Buses Fuel Savings Dependent On Driving Conditions” which suggests they are not very adept at writing snappy headlines.

It turns out that in New York City hybrid buses work more efficiently because they are stuck in worse traffic conditions - lots of stops and starts and not much opportunity to wind up the speed . So they get 20 to 30% better than conventional buses whereas the TTC only gets 10%.

in cities like Toronto where the routes are characterized by high speed, hybrids use more their traditional diesel engines.

Well the term “high speed” is of course relative. Higher than Manhattan certainly. I was unable to get a clean shot of a hybrid bus there as they were always boxed in by yellow cabs and open top double deckers. But as a regular commuter on the Sheppard East bus, I am not at all sure I would apply the term “high speed” to that service. I suspect that the TTC could also do better by allocating the hybrids to the dense Toronto downtown core - perhaps by choosing some of the old trolleybus routes like the Bay Street run, which to me resembles 34th Street quite nicely.

BigA888 has added a photo to the pool: