Category — Traffic

Translink’s 2009 annual report, released with great fanfare yesterday on the brand new Seabus Pacific Breeze, tallies a remarkable list of achievements: new ridership gains, 48 new Skytrain cars, the Golden Ears Bridge, 240 new buses and much more, all capped by the 2010 Winter Games transportation triumph.

But the future holds little promise for riders given the combination of a very tight budget and a deadlock with the BC Liberals over funding for the Evergreen Line. The $130 million annual revenue increase trumpeted in the report simply avoided drastic cuts.

As board chair Dale Parker and CEO Ian Jarvis reported, cuts are under way: three senior executives gone, more than 90 other positions eliminated and a crusade against administrative overhead continues.

More worrisome for riders are the pressures on service levels. Although the Translink fleet now boasts three Seabuses, for example, only two will operate once current refits are completed despite Jarvis’ acknowledgment that demand exists for all three. Why? No funding.

Even more disruptive for some bus riders will be the current “service rationalization initiative,” which will see reallocation of service from low-ridership routes to benefit the main corridors. Some riders will be winners, but those facing limited service on marginal routes could lose service altogether. [Read more →]

The latest proposal to open up New York street space for pedestrians and buses puts Vancouver’s modest efforts to shame.

With the blessing of Mayor Bloomberg, transport commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan proposes to slice 34th Street in half with a huge pedestrian plaza. All traffic on one side would flow west, on the other, it would flow east, and new bus lanes, which would cross the plaza, should improve bus travel times by 35 percent.

Will Vancouver move, in the wake of the Olympics experience, to do something similar? At the moment, there are no specific proposals under development.

As Sadik-Khan notes, most people travel the street on foot, by bus or by taxi. They will all see improvements. Of course, there are detractors.

First the BCCLA hailing the respect for civil rights during the Games, now this Angus Reid poll showing 70 percent of Metro and Sea to Sky residents now believe the event will have a positive impact on Canada, British Columbia and Vancouver. That’s up 10 points in a month.

Perhaps even more significant: 56 percent said the Games were exciting and not inconveniencing them, up six percent in a month. Thirty-nine percent of transit users say it’s taking them longer to get to work, but only 18 percent of drivers have the same complaint.

Motion to make it unanimous?

A CBC interview in which I said once more what I have been saying for months — that it’s time to consider the possibilities of a new north False Creek neighbourhood with good traffic links where the Georgia Viaduct now stands — has provoked an uproar from CBC News readers.

Missing from the debate is the hard information the city needs to gather in the coming months as part of a study of the viaduct’s future. In the meantime, I hear anecdotally that neighbourhoods east of the viaducts are much calmer, as might be expected.