If problems identified by residents and businesses are manageable, the new lane could be in place before the end of the year. Cycling trips, meanwhile, are jumping as a share of overall traffic, rising 24 percent across the Burrard Bridge and up 400 percent to about 2,000 a day on the Dunsmuir route since the downtown Dunsmuir lane opened.

According to staff estimates, the 3,500 cycle commuters are already saving Translink the trouble of finding capacity equivalent to another 65 to 75 full transit buses a day. That saving will only grow.

The land, part of the original site of a Squamish village named Senauq, was recovered by the Squamish more than a decade ago after lengthy litigation. It had been expropriated before the First World War. Squamish villagers were loaded onto a barge and shipped to Burrard Inlet, their homes burned behind them.

But council has learned that the odd-shaped parcel, which once provided a “wye” where trains crossing False Creek could be turned around, will be developed in phases, with the first parcel moving through a planning process in the coming months. That process will be directed by the Squamish First Nation but parallel the city’s usual procedures, a unique arrangement the SFN has already used for projects as complex as Park Royal in West Vancouver.

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.”

Richard Tetrault high above Hastings St. at work on the Orwell Hotel mural.

My post last week about the new mural emerging on the wall of the Orwell Hotel at 456 East Hastings St. was improvised from materials at hand, included some errors, and failed to indicate the broad community roots of this project.

David Eddy, of the Vancouver Native Housing Society, sent me this update today:

The mural was commissioned by Vancouver Native Housing Society (VNHS) at the Orwell Hotel, a renovated SRO which we manage and operate for BC Housing.

The mural is an urban Aboriginal initiative whose major sponsors to date have been BC Housing, and the City of Vancouver’s Great Beginnings program. We have also received significant donations from the Royal Bank, the Strathcona BIA, Britannia Community Services, and General Paint. There was no federal stimulus grant received for the mural. It is all BC money.

We have been very fortunate to have commissioned Richard Tetrault, Vancouver’s pre-eminent muralist, as the project’s artistic coordinator and we engaged members of the DTES community in the design process. The artists involved in the design and application, Jerry Whitehead, Richard Shorty, Haisla Collins, Sharifa Marsden, Don Howell, and Nicola Campbell are all Aboriginal.

The concept is based on VNHS’ plan of developing social enterprise through our social and supportive housing portfolio: to create employment for urban aboriginals and ultimately provide income to VNHS to invest in sustaining and increasing affordable housing.

Another vehicle we will use to achieve this goal is to create a “Fair Trade Art Gallery” in a building we currently have under development at 31 West Pender Street. A project that we entered into with Heritage Canada last year named “Looking Forward/Looking Back” was the entity we used to kick-start this process. Looking Forward/Looking Back was an initiative that looked at life in the DTES through the eyes of Aboriginal artists.

Another purpose of the Orwell mural project, which we call “Through the Eyes of the Raven”, is to highlight, in a very positive way, the downtown eastside community and the people who live and work there, many of whom are tenants of VNHS. The mural, although not completed, has already created a buzz and we see it when completed as a focal point, particularly for urban Aboriginal folks.

We see it heralding the renaissance of aboriginal culture and pride in an area that was the traditional and is the current home of many native people.

At nearly 8,000 square feet we believe it will be the largest piece of public art in Vancouver and one that will be viewed by locals and visitors alike with awe and appreciation.

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.

A new category this year is laneway housing. Eighty have been issued permits, 17 in the last month alone.  Total value of that construction is $7.7 million.

(Warning: this is a big powerpoint file, so it make take time to load.)

You may not agree with Goertz’s opinion of Vancouver’s art, but this collection is remarkable.

The new mural appearing on the Orwell Hotel, 456 East Hastings.

The Orwell Hotel at 456 East Hastings St. is the latest site for a mural co-ordinated by Strathcona artist Richard Tetrault. (Another is nearby inside Bruce Eriksen Place.)

This mural is part of a federal stimulus grant that “involves system, structural, life safety, internal finishes and sustainability initiatives for 55 social housing units.” (UPDATE, July 15: Funding is also provided by the city’s Great Beginnings program, the Strathcona BIA and RBC.)

Tetrault’s crew group is swinging off the swing stage six days a week and will complete the project in August, weather permitting. The mural is the latest in a long series of Tetrault-inspired projects that are making East Vancouver into an open-air gallery.

Waste concrete became a "natural feature" in the Strathcona Community Garden.

Even at 10 a.m., the official opening time for the Strathcona Community Garden’s 25th birthday party, people were lined up 30 deep to buy a container of honey from the garden’s own hives.

Plant sales were booming, the crop is ripening nicely in the espalier heritage orchard and people were walking in from all directions to enjoy the beauty of community project that literally transformed a wasteland.

As someone whose family had one of the original plots in the garden, back when we lived in Strathcona, it’s a near-unbelievable change.

But a picture of those early days posted in one of the garden buildings confirms my recollection: a patch of abandoned land, no water supply, soil riddled with waste concrete and debris.

Initially the Park Board allowed the garden to have only year-to-year access. Then a large piece of the area, including at least half of the original plots, was lost to the Chinese Freemason’s Seniors Home next door. Finally, in 1993, the community achieved a long-term lease.

Irrigation had already been installed, eliminating the tedious trek back and forth to the park fieldhouse and the espalier orchard installed. Today, with more than 200 plots and thousands more in similar gardens across the city, it’s hard to believe how tenuous those first plantings seemed.

The garden owes its success to many organizers, but former neighbourhood resident Muggs Sigurgeirson was among the most critical.

The legacy of all that work is remarkable: food, beauty and a stronger community, a sign of what we can expect in even more abundance from the current city commitment to community gardens.

Bill Picha supervises transfer of swarming bees to their capacious new hive.

(UPDATE, July 11: since this post, Mario Lee has advised that 311’s actions were consistent with the relevant protocols, but he’s not available to assist on weekends.)

My neighbourhood’s encounter with swarming bees this morning suggests the city’s 311 helpline still needs some tuning up.

The humming of the arriving swarm was audible inside the house at about 11 a.m. and pedestrians walking through the neighbourhood were scattering. There was a ball of bees the size of a World Cup soccer ball hanging from a nearby oak.

First call went out to Allen Garr: no answer.

Next we tried 311. Absolutely the city could help, said the affable 311 receptionist. He promptly put us through to the voicemail of Mario Lee, the social planner who wrote the report on city beekeeping. Not likely to find help there.

A quick check on Google turned up Bill Picha, a Delta beekeeper who picks up swarms at no charge when he can. (They’re valuable to him.) His voicemail box was full, but a text message brought him to our door in 30 minutes.

Fifteen minutes later, the swarm was beginning its move to capacious new quarters in Picha’s hive. Once they’re all settled down, he’ll pack them off to earn their keep elsewhere, perhaps a Fraser Valley orchard.

These are hectic days in the bee swarm pick-up business. Picha had 38 calls yesterday alone.

Where did these bees come from? Garr, who called later in the day, speculated they may be a colony that left the new hives on the City Hall roof. If so, they’re in the private sector now.