Posts from — December 2010

How expensive is the Hornby bike lane? At $3.4 million, it is almost exactly the same price as two left turn lanes approved by council today on 33rd at Knight. Last year, left turn bays were approved on Knight at the same intersection.

Everybody wins: easier turns for drivers, more room for cyclists, more safety for pedestrians, good news all around.

A complete restructuring of BC’s employment service centres now being imposed by Victoria could have a devastating impact on Vancouver residents, according to the leaders of the city’s immigrant service agencies.

But these agencies are reluctant to speak out because of an apparent gag order from Victoria.

I summarized the impact these changes could have in this column for Philippine News Today.

Anyone seeking a job — a recent immigrant, a person with disabilities or someone on income assistance — will be impacted by the proposed program, which would see Vancouver’s employment centres cut to seven from 18.

Province-wide, Victoria hopes to cut the number of agencies offering employment assistance to 73 from 400, a change that is sure to reduce access and quality of service.

Mayor Gregor Robertson has already intervened to seek a delay in implementation of the new system. Current service providers have until Jan. 7 to express interest in working under the new regime.

But with many service agencies expressing grave doubts about the new program’s delivery model and funding formula, more public pressure will be required, gag order or not.

Three newly-elected Republican governors in the US have rejected federal high speed rail funding for their states — don’t ask me why — triggering turmoil along the Cascadia rail corridor that ends here in Vancouver.

So far, the cancellations elsewhere have meant $161 million additional dollars for Washington State, money that has been waved away by the new leaders of Wisconsin and Ohio. But none of the more than $782 million awarded to Washington this year has been nailed down and House Republicans could wipe it all out in 2011.

Many of the US political leaders and rail advocates who worked so hard to ensure that Canada supported a second Amtrak train from Seattle to Vancouver are meeting there next week to develop strategies. Their goal: to protect Washington State’s rail funding.

So far, Washington’s offer to take any rail funds that other states have rejected is bearing fruit.

But according this analysis in a Seattle transportation blog, House Republicans may not only seek to roll back high speed rail funding across the board next year, they may seek to force state governments to increase their rail subsidies.

The news from the US aligns all too well with the news from Toronto, where newly-elected Mayor Rob Ford, declaring the “war on the car is over,” has cancelled an $8 billion light rail plan after more than $100 million has been spent. Ford will now demand that all new construction be underground.

Clearly, the battle for sustainable transportation investment has just begun.

Vancouver’s buoyant film industry — which is overwhelmingly unionized — is building another driver of future economic growth with the expansion of the city’s booming digital special effects sector. These small, nimble companies, along with Hollywood giants like Pixar, generate the crashes, fires and other digital effects that are so much a part of current media and gaming production.

To be successful, these VFX firms need platoons of highly-trained digital artists. These are exactly the kinds of skilled, green jobs our city needs. But low pay and unpaid overtime, combined with the high cost of housing, are creating anger among VFX artists who do not enjoy the wages and working conditions of their unionized counterparts.

I explored this issue in this column for Business in Vancouver, published Dec. 7:

[Read more →]