Posts from — November 2009

This weekend’s appalling toll of pedestrians, killed or hurt in motor vehicle accidents, dramatizes the absence of an organized voice for this group, which occupies top spot in the city’s transportation planning priorities.

The VPD estimates the average death toll for pedestrians in November and December is two a month. While rain, careless behaviour and dark nights are part of the explanation, they are no excuse. We need safer streets.

This weekend, an elderly couple died crossing Prior at mid-block near Dunlevy. This is a treacherous stretch where traffic is heading to and from the Georgia Viaduct on what was once a quiet residential street. Five others were hurt in other incidents. One may lose a leg.

As Jackie Wong reported last summer in the West Ender, Vancouver’s pedestrians have had some determined advocates, like Bev Ballantyne and former COPE councillor Anne Roberts, but not an organized voice like Portland’s 18-year-old Willamette Pedestrian Coalition. (A comprehensive pedestrian transportation study completed during Roberts’ tenure was shelved after her defeat.)

The city’s new transportation plan should review previous studies, like the one steered through council by Roberts, and take special care to ensure spending priorities reflect transportation priorities — with pedestrians at the top of the list.

Indefatigable cycling advocate Chris Keam, of the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition, has forwarded this analysis of Burrard Bridge traffic numbers, which shows commuter cyclists surprisingly undeterred by bad weather.

Recreational cyclists are understandably more fickle, staying home in droves when the weather turns sour. Fall and winter numbers are down, of course, but weekday cycle traffic on the bridge remains surprisingly strong.

For commuters, whether on foot or cycle, the segregated lanes of the Burrard Bridge are even more important in the wet, dark days of winter.

Significant increases this year on the Central Valley Greenway, now a good protected route linking New Westminster, Burnaby and Vancouver, are further evidence of the benefits of dedicated lanes.

In yesterday’s Tyee, a beautiful report on Jack Nichol’s memorial service by Charles Campbell.

Is this the last Eastside Culture Crawl for the creative colony of artists at 901 Main?

It may be, given Amacon’s decision to raise rents sharply — up to 100 percent — for the dozens of artists who make the building the westside anchor for one of Vancouver’s most important cultural events.

Some of those who fought so hard to keep the building an artists’ centre are preparing to leave the mothership for a new location at 150 McLean, close to Powell, in the heart of the Crawl territory.

Eri Ishii, who is exhibiting this year at 901 Main for the last time, advises that a small new artists’ co-op created during the fight to save the Main location has signed a five-year lease for space above Peregrine Plastics, with great windows and views of the North Shore.

Those remaining at 901 will face rent increases to $2,100 for a full floor of the building, up from about $900 today.

It was the high rents demanded by Amacon that made it impossible for the artists to move to space near Scotia and 7th Ave. approved for Amacon by the last council as part of a rezoning. The future of that space, notionally allocated for cultural purposes, remains unclear.

But creativity will flourish on McLean.