Category — Transportation

Legislation creating a new funding approval process for Translink, announced yesterday by Transportation Minister Shirley Bond, is not new at all.

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.

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.

Translink has quietly posted the six scenarios for  UBC Broadway Corridor rapid transit development — including everything from rapid bus to full-on Skytrain to UBC — that it will take out this summer for a second phase of consultation and detailed evaluation.

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. [Read more →]

Acting city engineer Peter Judd has advised council that businesses on Dunsmuir are being consulted in the coming weeks on the city’s proposed segregated bike lane on that street, which would link to the new Dunsmuir Viaduct bike lane.

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.