Category — Transportation

Communities up and down the Cascadia corridor from Vancouver, BC, to Eugene, Ore., are humming with the news of record increases in ridership this year on the Amtrak Cascades, the passenger rail system that will see $600 million in improvements as part of Barack Obama’s high-speed rail initiative.

These investments could generate tremendous benefits here in Vancouver in the long term if we can maintain current service between our city and Seattle. Similar interest in north-south rail travel is growing in Montreal, where Quebec officials hope they can secure investment south of the border to slash the 11-hour rail travel time from New York to Montreal with a high-speed train.

Thanks to the addition of a second Cascades train between Vancouver and Seattle before the Winter Olympic Games, city tourism businesses saw an additional 35,000 visitors between September and April, on an annualized basis. This is equivalent to several cruise ship visits and generates an estimated $16 million in additional business, possibly much more. (The numbers come from an Amtrak study.)

But the benefits of the second train — and access to the improved US rail corridor — could be in doubt if Ottawa decides not to continue special arrangements made to secure the additional Amtrak service last year. Those arrangements expire in mid-September. [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.