Category — Transportation

With Vancouver city planning staff expecting to bring a report to council before summer on options for the Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts, Seattle is well into the $3 billion project to replace its tottering Alaska Way Viaduct with a bored tunnel.

One mile of the Seattle Viaduct came down in nine days last October, without the chaos drivers always anticipate on such occasions. Latest updates from Seattle show the city is moving ahead with new traffic patterns to clear the way for the tunnel, which will ensure good connections remain to the port and other arterials.

But city after city is putting a freeway on death row.

The Seattle project is just one of a wave of removals right across America, homeland of the car. According to this update in Atlantic Cities, the battle is moving to the neighbourhood level, where more and more communities are debating the shape of their future. If a freeway can come down, why not an overpass? Well, in fact, it can.

Vancouver taxi customers should experience quicker, cheaper trips on congested routes, says the Vancouver Taxi Association, now that city council has approved a one-year trial to allow taxis to travel in bus lanes.

The pilot program  was an election commitment by Mayor Gregor Robertson, who was responding to a long-standing call for such action from taxi owners, who point out that similar rules are in place all over the world.

Here in Vancouver, however, riders would sit fuming in traffic while the bus lane next to them sat empty. Robertson secured a green light from provincial transport minister Blair Lekstrom and Translink is on board.

With more than 700,000 taxi trips a year in Vancouver, the impact could be significant. Where congestion is heavy, particularly downtown, taxis will be able to move into bus lanes, reducing travel times and trip costs.

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.

The Beyond the Border deal signed between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper last week should provide a major boost to the Amtrak Cascades service between Vancouver and Seattle by allowing pre-boarding customs clearance for passengers at both ends.

The new policy will cut 20 to 30 minutes from the trip to Seattle. Trains now sit at a siding in Blaine for at least this long while US customs officials do their duty.

Seattle’s Bruce Agnew, of the Cascadia Institute, hailed the agreement in a briefing note to many of the political and transportation leaders who have worked to build the Cascades service on both sides of the border. The Beyond the Border gains follow on the heels of Ottawa’s decision to waive customs inspection fees on the Seattle train that were putting the entire service in jeopardy.

Agnew noted that the agreement specifically provided that both sides “will conduct full pre-clearance of travelers and accompanying goods at Vancouver, BC, for passenger rail and cruise ship traffic destined to the United States. Negotiations to this end will be completed by the end of 2012.”

The Cascades gains are a rare bright light on the US rail scene. Just a few years after Barack Obama promised major investments in high speed rail to boost the economy, the rail modernization program is stalled by budget cuts and partisan wrangling.