Vancouver Transit Centre

I had the chance to attend the Connecting Communities: BC Youth Summit for Sustainable Transportation last weekend. It was an amazing time and I’ll be posting more about the conference in the next little while. One of the best parts of the conference, for a transit geek like me, was the tour of the Vancouver Transit Centre which is home to the second largest trolleybus fleeting in North America. I’ve posted picture below and I’ve also added descriptions that you can view on Flickr.

Surrey Rapid Transit Study - Phase Two Results

August seems to be the month for public consultation feedback reports. Last week TransLink released the results of the phase 2 consultation for the Surrey Rapid Transit Study. You can read more about the study on a previous post.

475 people participated in the consultation and not surprising 94% were regular transit users. 2/3rds of the participants felt that the King George Boulevard/104th Avenue and Fraser Highway alignments where bang on. I can imagine that the other 1/3rd were hoping for the use of the Interurban corridor which I think is dead-in-the-water as an alignment in Surrey and Langley now.

Question: Please indicate your priorities for how road space should be shared among uses.

What I am really concerned about is how participants allocated road space when asked “Please indicate your priorities for how road space should be shared among uses.” The priority in order of importance was: rapid transit, sidewalks, traffic lanes, bike lanes, left-turn bays, and finally boulevard plantings. Since the people that participated in the consultation were regular transit uses and therefore a bit more sustainability minded, I would have thought that bike lanes should rate higher than general traffic lanes. I can imagine that the reason that people didn’t rate cycling infrastructure as important is because there isn’t a whole lots of it right now in the South of Fraser. People don’t know what they’re missing out on. This should really be a wake-up call that municipalities need to place a higher priority on cycling infrastructure.

On the matter of the provisioning of rapid transit in the South of Fraser, the following question and answers sum things up nicely:

What advice do you have for decision-makers on what is important to you and what you would like them to consider about this evaluation?
-We need rapid transit solutions now not 30-40 years from now.
-A long term transit system built today (investment), will form future Surrey as a community, reduce pollution, reduce road building, decrease use of automobile, better access for young and old.
-Benefits to Surrey extend beyond transit in Surrey.
-Cost should be less important, urban development is very important, as well as efficient movement of people. This is an investment in the long-term future - it has to be done right, and done once.
-Cost effectiveness and the ability to move and connect as many people and areas as possible.

With September around the corner and with it the fall legislative session, I hope that transit funding finally gets sorted out or the Surrey Rapid Transit study will nothing but an exercise in paper writing.

Urban Design Kills

Our passion for the automobile, wide open roads and the wind through our hair is killing people. A recent review of fatalities and survey by Transportation for America (PDF report here) reveals that Florida is among the most dangerous places for pedestrians. Over the past decade, almost 50,000 people have died in the USA alone because of our love for the open road. 688,000 pedestrian have been injured. That equates to someone being struck by a car or truck every 7 minutes in America.

The "Dangerous by Design" report is a sad commentary on our society and the things we place value in. Recently, some friends of mine complained about the City of Vancouver's elimination of roadway and the building of bike lanes. My response was, what does our society really value?

I was totally surprised to NOT see Los Angeles in the top 10 for the most dangerous cities for pedestrians. LA was ranked 27th on the Pedestrian Danger Index (PDI). I guess LA has lots of catching up to do compared with Florida. Take a look...

Los Angeles is #2 however for the number of accidents involving pedestrians that end in death. New York/New Jersey were #1. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, as this report makes it clear that over the past 10 years, pedestrian conflicts with vehicles has increased. I'm thankful that folks like Dan Burden are out there helping to reduce these conflicts and putting our roads in "diets".

Our bad habits and focus are killing people. Our elderly are most vulnerable to this carnage. We really need to end our obsession with the automobile and find efficient mass transit solutions for our cities. I long for the day that Langley, British Columbia offers choices for mass public transit, walkability and community design that puts the emphasis on people. Read this report and you sense the sober reality of where we have placed our passion and where that has led us.

Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project Consultation Update

Back in June, I attended a pre-consultation about Port Metro Vancouver’s proposed expansion to the Deltaport with the Roberts Bank Terminal 2. The Port recently released the results of the pre-consultation which will be used to define the terms of reference for the full public consultation process on this proposed project.

Some of the topics that people would like to be consulted on is the impacts of the project on wildlife, marine life, and agricultural land. Many of the people also wanted more details on the justification for the project considering the effect of other projects like the improved Panama Canal and Prince Rupert Port.

Of 29 respondents who provided additional comments regarding the proposed Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project, the following are the most commonly mentioned themes. It should be noted that a respondent may have mentioned more than one of the themes below:

-Allow more input during the process, include all stakeholders, and keep the public informed (10 respondents)
-Concerned about the effects of the project on communities in the municipalities of -Delta, Township of Langley and City of Langley (7)
-Concerned about the effects of the project on health and quality of life for residents (6)
-Need to explain justification for the project through economic forecasting (6)
-Need to consider protection of the environment in project development (6)
-Concerned about the impacts of the project on existing road infrastructure and effect of increased traffic on communities and the environment (5)
-Interested in potential job creation from the project (5)
-Concerned about impacts of the project on wildlife (3)
-Concerned about the effects of an increase in rail traffic on existing infrastructure, such as in the Township and City of Langley and the New Westminster Rail Bridge (3)
-Interested in the relationship between ports in British Columbia, including Prince Rupert (3)

Looking over the pre-consultation report, I get the impression that people want to have meaningful input into the proposed port expansion and not just be a part of some whitewash and ultimately meaningless consultation process. It will be interesting to see what the next phase of consultation will looks like.