Category — Traffic

Translink’s skyrocketing ridership, now five percent higher than the 2010 Olympics surge, is pushing up fare revenue even as fuel tax revenue declines.

But it’s a two cents a litre lift in fuel tax which is the key to funding transit expansion, including construction of the Evergreen Line. Will fuel tax deliver the cash, or will drivers shift to cheaper and greener alternatives — like moving downtown — that don’t produce tax revenues to build transit?

Victoria transit analyst Todd Littman argues that assumptions about fuel tax, tolls and the like  need to be challenged. As incomes stagnate and demographics shift, small increases in fuel tax can produce larger shifts in consumption.

So a new tax may be very effective in reducing congestion, he argues, but not produce sufficient income to fund new roads . . . or transit.

Vancouver planning director Brent Toderian has provided this useful review of the re:CONNECT winners – and the judges’ comments — in the city’s recent contest to reimagine the Georgia Viaducts and the East False Creek flats.

Work is continuing at the city to integrate the contest proposals with in-house work that will inform public consultation on a new transportation, scheduled for release in the spring.

In the perennial debate between “really fast” rapid transit advocates — the Skytrain people here in BC — and the “fast enough but much cheaper” light rail crowd, I’ve tended to lean to the fastest options for a simple reason: it puts more personal time into the lives of working families.

Saving six minutes each way on a daily commute may not sound like much, but it adds up to an hour a week or four hours a month to be spent as you wish, but probably relaxing with your family. Is this so bad?

Yes, the cost of the infrastructure may be $1 billion more. To many, however, the benefit would be priceless. This social gain is not factored into transit purchase decisions.

Now a new study shows that “inequality of well-being” is even more badly distributed than income. Basically, the study examines how much time and money families have at various places on the economic scale.

No matter how hard young families work, their incomes are stagnating and their personal time is declining. Not so for those at the top of the scale, who have both more money and more time. [Read more →]

With city council again considering the future of Northeast False Creek — where a proposed park reconfiguration butts up against the Georgia Viaduct — the current ideas contest for a new vision for the area takes on added urgency.

Freeway removal is becoming so commonplace in the United States that the Urban Land Institute has created a “top 10 list” of Metro Highway Removal Projects.

It’s increasingly clear that elimination of one or both of Vancouver’s viaducts is not only possible, it’s consistent with what many cities have done with great success. This Seattle study of a range of removals concluded traffic can be absorbed and city benefits can be significant, provided careful planning comes first.

That’s the premise of Vancouver’s Viaducts and Eastern Core Strategy.