Posts from — February 2011

The stunning reversal of Susan Heyes’ $600,000 judgement against Translink for business lost during Canada Line construction highlights how Victoria’s insistence on public-private partnerships continues to shape regional transit finances.

This is a problem that affects transit riders directly. The costs of private finance are eating resources that could be used for more service, like the Evergreen Line, Surrey Rapid Bus expansion or rapid transit on Broadway.

When the Campbell government put a priority on the Canada Line in 2003, it insisted the project include private financing. This is money Translink must recover and pay back, with interest, from its own revenues.

During the tumultuous debate on the project, the proponents proposed a tunnel all the way from False Creek to Queen Elizabeth Park. Even when the prospect of cut and cover along Cambie emerged, engineers claimed the tube would be laid in the ground during a 14-week construction period that would roll down Cambie.

Once the “fixed-price” RAV project was under way, however, the SNC-Lavalin consortium made a host of changes to cut costs, including the decision to open up the entire Cambie trench at once rather than do a rolling excavation. This added years to the disruption faced by Cambie businesses.

(Similar cost considerations no doubt resulted in the miniscule two-car platforms accessible from a single entrance, rather than both sides of the street.)

Now that the line is built, and very successful, politicians like Raymond Louie, who voted for the project despite the P3 financing, have the satisfaction of seeing a difficult trade-off produce significant transit benefits. (I would have done the same.)

But the P3 issue has not gone away. [Read more →]

As members of the Strathcona Community Garden headed to their monthly meeting Feb. 7,  they were stunned to discover that the line of 23-year-old pine trees along Prior St. on the garden’s north side had been brutally trimmed.

The 20-foot trees, planted on a berm to provide a noise and privacy screen from busy traffic on Prior St., had been limbed to the 10-foot level. Blackberries at their bases had also been completely removed.

Yet the Garden society, which leases the land and cares for it at almost no cost to the city, had not been consulted and was not even sure who had authorized the destruction.

Understandably outraged, the Garden executive asked corresponding secretary Joanne Hochu to protest to the city.

What happened next laid bare the yawning gap between the city and its neighbourhoods, a gap I trace back to the “at large” system of representation in place since the 1930s. [Read more →]

The first round of Hornby bike lane statistics is in and the results give grounds for optimism: traffic travel times remain the same in the morning, are about 60 seconds longer in the afternoon, and bike trips are a solid 600 a day, even in miserable January weather.

The story in brief:.

• Based on preliminary findings, cyclists are using the separated bike lane on Hornby Street regularly;
• Usage is growing, and the latest mid-week average ridership was 600 bikes per day in January, with numbers expected to rise heading into the spring and summer;
• vehicle travel times along Hornby Street are unchanged on weekday mornings; and
• travel times have increased by one minute (from 5½ to 6½ minutes) on weekday afternoons . . . equivalent to one traffic signal cycle. 

The city has also installed new digital parkade signs at EasyPark lots at Pacific Centre and another at 900 West Cordova. The signs, connected to on site parking-space monitoring equipment, indicate how many parking spaces are currently available inside each parkade.

Count me as one of those who is disappointed that Gordon Campbell has no plans to write his memoirs. This, of course, may be one of the occasions — there have been a few — when he finds reasons to change his mind.

Say what you like about Campbell, and many have, he has triggered enormous changes in the history of the province, especially since his election as Premier in 2001. (He also left a mark on the history of Vancouver and the Metro Vancouver region with his leadership on planning and development.)

First there was the 90-day agenda, the election program that he posted on the cabinet room wall to monitor progress. Cuts he made then to the minimum wage remain in place today.

That was followed by one change initiative after another, all aiming to make BC the Canadian leader on 10 key indicators by 2011.

The BC Progress Board was created to monitor progress on each of these benchmarks, but some of the dials stubbornly refused to move. A decade later, BC still trails the country with an abysmal toll of child poverty.

Equally notable: on economic growth and standard of living, two of Campbell’s obsessions, BC still ranks almost exactly where it did a decade ago. BC is fourth among the provinces in economic growth and fourth in real disposal income per person, a slip from the third-place ranking Campbell inherited from the NDP.

As the years went by, the goals and the rhetoric became more grandiose. We had Five Great Goals for a Golden Decade, a strangely Maoist 2005 formula that also produced mixed results. (This marked a reboot of the counting process, with the decade ending in 2015.)

Ultimately, Campbell simply claimed victory with the straightforward declaration that BC is the Best Place on Earth. [Read more →]