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.”

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.

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.

Think of it as a forced unpaid vacation, about a month long in terms of working days, spent in a car. That’s worse than Los Angeles, which manages an average daily commute of 57 minutes.

The costs in economic and environmental terms defy calculation.

The Board of Trade report, completed by the Conference Board of Canada, triggered an outcry in Toronto about the lost economic opportunity. It also spurred Canada’s big city mayors, gathered at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, to seek a gridlock-busting summit with Ottawa to discuss public transit investment.

The mayors have been asking  Ottawa to commit $2 billion a year to a national transit strategy since 2007, a relatively modest sum given the needs.

Vancouver ranks much better than Toronto, though not great, at 67 minutes a day. That puts us out of the car about 48 hours earlier. (The board averaged car and transit commute times.)

Vancouver’s commute is about the same as this 2006 report, which suggests travel times were dropping in 1992 but steady since then.

The lucky workers of Barcelona won the contest with an average commute of only 48.4 minutes.

In fact, it sounds exactly like the old “three-year plan, 10-year outlook” system that was in place until former Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon threw a bomb into Translink about three years ago. Under Falcon’s rules, Translink had to do a massive annual consultation and planning process on a 10-year plan, make multiple submissions to a commission and regional mayors, and prepare for massive cuts if any part went on the rocks.

Had the “new” process been in place, it would have been much easier for Translink to prepare a long-term plan that produced funding for the Evergreen in the near term at levels close to the $225 million increase acceptable to the province. Then the province and the municipalities could have worked over a longer time frame to resolve the much larger issues of system expansion and the UBC/Broadway line.

At it was, the Translink Council of Mayors approved a minimal $130 million increase and nothing  was resolved.

Is this the “fix” of Translink promised in the last Throne Speech? Perhaps, but Victoria still must tell the Mayors how it expects them to fund the Evergreen Line.

Can Victoria impose a solution? Given the raging battles over HST and school funding, that seems like a risky proposition.

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.

The main surprise: two options that will consider the possibility of building at least part of the city’s proposed streetcar line, although the city has never suggested the streetcar could be a substitute for rapid transit on Broadway.

The options were unveiled at a stakeholders’ meeting in Vancouver Thursday but do not include cost or ridership estimates. Those will come later. City council, meanwhile, will consider revised principles for its approach to the project on April 22.

Welcome as the Translink process is, there is little likelihood any development will occur soon on the corridor, which has the highest potential ridership of any alignment in Metro Vancouver.

First Translink must build the Evergreen Line to the Tri Cities. Victoria is adamant that Metro municipalities must shoulder the lion’s share of capital and operating costs for the project, but has not yet said how. Rumours of imminent legislation or direction from Victoria have faded as the Campbell Liberals wrestle with HST, cabinet resignations and school board funding.

Premier Campbell, however, made it clear in his pre-election transportation plan that the UBC-Broadway project was a priority as well.

Early feedback from the UBC Broadway consultation indicates that  residents feel strongly that any investment must take long-term needs into account and avoid the dislocation caused by the cut and cover construction used on the Canada Line.

But for now, both council and Translink will be listening more than talking.

For readers now jammed onto the existing Broadway buses, here’s the best bus scenario, essentially an update of the status quo. A combination light rail and rapid rail system might look something like this if it included Skytrain to Arbutus. Here’s the big one: all Skytrain all the way with optional alignments that could include or leave out East False Creek.

This project is the first phase of a two part-plan, which council asked for in February, to  complete a segregated bike route across the downtown core. The second phase could complete the connection along a north-south line (Thurlow, Burrard or Hornby) to the Burrard Bridge.

If it all works out, there will be a much safer cycling route across the downtown core by late autumn.

One concluded that “auto drivers” — solo car drivers commuting to work — declined as a share of traffic to 55.9 per cent in 2008 from 60 per cent in 2004, surely a response to the steady investments in transit during those years. During the same period, transit mode share rose 16 per cent, much faster than the six per cent in population growth.

This evidence, coupled with the massive mode shift achieved during the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, should make clear the benefits available from transit investment, but Translink remains in limbo, paralyzed by the province’s refusal to work with Metro Mayors on a new funding regime.

The latest reports from the Translink Mayor’s Council indicate that Victoria’s threatened legislation to “fix” Translink remains some time in the future. The message seems to be, “drivers, start your engines.”

As expected, the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure budget plan spells out Victoria’s commitment to build the Evergreen Line to connect Coquitlam and Burnaby via Port Moody with new Skytrain service.

The estimated cost of the project is $1.4 billion, with construction slated to begin in 2011 and end four years later. Victoria is kicking in $410 million and Ottawa has pledged $417 million, leaving a hefty $600 million bill for Translink to pick  up starting next year.

The ministry plan helpfully sets out the combined federal and Translink capital contribution requirement on page 30: $568 million by 2013. The problem is, Translink will need a new funding source — or impose major fare, property and gas increases — to meet the goal. (This reality may provide a clue to the meaning of the Throne Speech pledge to “fix Translink.”)

The Evergreen Line is expected to carry only 70,000 riders a day by 2021, six years after opening. The $2 billion Canada Line, by contrast, was expected to achieve twice that number by 2013, three years after opening. It hit that number within 90 days and has surged up to nearly 300,000 a day during the Olympics.

How will Victoria force Metro Vancouver municipalities to fill the funding gap? Time will tell, but today’s budget sets the terms for the debate to come.

Post-secondary students, meanwhile, will search in vain for evidence that the government will deliver on the Premier’s election pledge of a universal transit pass. It’s vanished without a trace.

On the cycling front, advocate Richard Campbell, an expert in these matters, estimates that the Bike BC Budget has been hammered, cut to $3 million from $10 million. That’s before the $10 million cyclists will pay in HST.