Category — Traffic

City engineers have been working closely with Hornby St. businesses during August to identify and mitigate any negative impacts of the proposed Hornby St. bike lanes. (I hope to take a long walk up and down the street myself this week to meet with as many businesses as possible to prepare for a report to council expected later this month.)

Meanwhile, from indefatigable cycling advocate Richard Campbell, this small study from San Francisco suggests that hope, not despair, is in order for those who do business on Hornby. Two-thirds of the merchants interviewed four years after bike lanes were installed report a favorable impact. (Arno Schortinghuis advises that the San Francisco project involved conversion of a traffic lane in each direction to a bike lane. So the street changed from two lanes in each direction with parking to one lane, a bike lane and parking on each side.)

The findings in brief: [Read more →]

The first phase of the city’s study of the Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts will not involve public consultation or consideration of the benefits of removing them, according to a memo from city manager Dr. Penny Ballem.

Ballem makes clear that vehicle trips to the downtown core are dropping steadily. “This trend indicates that as more people shift modes to walking, cycling and transit, less road space is required for vehicles,” she writes. “The question is when can capacity be reduced and by how much?”

The memo is a timely warning to community organizations around Northeast False Creek — many of whom are looking for new ways to create a new sustainable neighbourhood where the viaducts now stand — that they’ll have to be ready to bring forward their concerns when the first phase winds up in February 2011.

Although Ballem says the first phase will produce valuable information on transportation and soils, regardless of the final outcome, “the first phase of the study would not conduct any anlysis of land use, structural costs or review of urban design opportunities.

“It would be a technical study of transportation impact and environmental contamination issues that would inform Council of the some of the major risks associated with alterations to the viaducts, but not the potential benefits resulting from reconfiguration and potential redevelopment.”

Today’s news that Vancouver’s downtown parking is the cheapest in Canada is not news at all, but says a great deal about the region’s successful shift to transit and, to a lesser extent, cycling.

Traffic to the downtown peninsula has been decreasing for the last decade, despite perceptions of gridlock. Why? Undoubtedly more commuters are using transit, as parking operators note. Soon, we hope, more will be cycling.

It’s hard to credit, however, the claim here that the new bike lanes are emptying the lots. Would that it were so.

Here, scientifically validated, is the real reason commuters — whether they travel by car, bus, streetcar or train — lose little sleep about the higher costs of faster, more expensive transit options: they get more personal time.

This was a big issue with the Canada Line, when advocates asked rhetorically how much we’re all prepared to pay to cut travel time by five to seven minutes, one way.

That apparently small shift adds up to hours, then days, then weeks and months of life lost for good, never to be regained. Voters are prepared to see big money spent to cut travel time.

It may come as a shock to business leaders, but commuters do not hate gridlock because they want to get to work earlier. They hate it because they have to leave home earlier. During the black hole of commuting, they can neither earn money nor enjoy life in all its splendor.

Exercise, sleep, spend family time — it all beats commuting or working in the findings of this common sense poll.