Vancouver City Councillor

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.

Mayor Gregor Robertson’s push to tackle the problem of housing affordability, a key plank in his victorious re-election campaign, is stirring strong reactions in the construction and development industries, which naturally believe the city itself is mostly to blame for the problem.

Two commentators pursue this argument in today’s real estate section of the Vancouver Sun, where columnist Bob Ransford points to “hidden taxes” in the form of community amenity charges as a key cost driver. But when the public creates value in the form of a rezoning, shouldn’t the public get most of the benefit? [Read more →]

When UK authorities began charging thousands of young people within hours of that country’s widespread August rioting, BC commentators wanted to know why Vancouver’s police had yet to do the same for our June Stanley Cup trouble-makers.

Now the sentences are flowing from those UK arrests and the jail terms are staggering. Young lives are undoubtedly being ruined as punishment for a few moments of stupidity.

One mother of two, who slept through the riots but accepted a looted pair of shorts from a friend, is facing five months in prison. Another young woman who briefly took two left-foot running shoes, then left them behind: ten months.

Then there was the pair of young men who organized a Facebook page urging a riot, which they didn’t attend and which didn’t occur: four years!

It will interesting to see how BC courts respond. Community service, anyone?

Just as the civic election campaign was reaching peak intensity on Nov. 5, World Planning Day, the Planning Institute of BC made former union activist, social housing developer and city councillor Jim Green an honorary member, someone who “shaped the city.”

Former city planner Nathan Edelson did a remarkable job of summarizing Jim’s planning career, one of several major careers he’s had so far, for the audience at the award ceremony. To his credit, Edelson reported the controversies as well as the achievements. His conclusion:

“In my view and that of so many others in the Downtown Eastside, throughout the city of Vancouver and indeed across Canada, Jim Green is seen as an incredible community builder who makes efforts – sometimes extraordinary efforts as with the Woodward public process – to engage local residents in decision making, but who at the end of the day gives  priority to concrete results.”

Read the full text of Edelson’s tribute here.