City of Langley's new wayfinding signage being installed

Local governments often talk about promoting sustainable modes of transportation like walking, cycling, and transit. While local governments love talking about sustainability, sometimes it just remains talk.

Way back in 2011, the City of Langley commissioned a wayfinding strategy. Currently, the City has a hap-hazard assortment of mostly auto-oriented wayfinding. The wayfinding strategy proposed an integrated wayfinding network for all modes of transportation. Wayfinding signage would direct people to and around the City’s downtown core. It would also guide people around the City’s trail network; connecting downtown, local parks, and the Nicomekl floodplain.

Proposed wayfinding signage. Click image to enlarge.

Proposed downtown walk/cycling information signage. Click image to enlarge.

Last year, the City approved funding to get this project started. Last night on my way home from work, I noticed the first of the new pedestrian wayfinding signs and maps installed. I decided to take some pictures this morning.

Road Pricing in Metro Vancouver Report Released

In late October, I attended a workshop called “Moving in Metro: A discussion on mobility pricing.” This series workshops was put on by the SFU Centre for Dialogue. The workshops gave people a brief introduction to the different types of mobility pricing, their benefits, and their drawbacks.

With the government at all level tightening their budgets, the desires to reduce congestion, and the need for improved transit and well-maintained roads, many local politicians and transportation planners are looking at road pricing as a way to meet all these goals.

The SFU Centre for Dialogue recently released a regional dialogue report which outlines the results of the workshops that the organization hosted last year.

The report outlines people’s views about bridge/tunnel tolls, high occupancy/toll lanes, area scheme, and full network pricing. The workshops and the report are not meant to provide guidance on a recommended road pricing scheme, but simply outline likes and dislikes regarding the different options.

According to the report, the majority of participants at the workshops used the auto as their primary mode of transportation. At the workshops, participants were asked to graph their typical journeys. What because apparent is that most people use more than one mode of transportation. This information is often not captured with transportation mode share statistics as information is usually only on the primary mode of transportation when commuting. Clearly people’s travel are more complex than statistics would suggest. These complex travel patterns mean that government really needs to be focused on building a multi-modal transportation network.

While the transit referendum will likely not deal with road pricing, one of the key take-aways from the workshops is that education is key when people have to make a choice about complex issues such as road pricing or paying for transit. For example, after the workshops, 47% of participants increased support for road pricing while only 3% walked away with less support for road pricing.

At the workshops, participants were asked what key principles should guide road pricing in Metro Vancouver.

Two broad principles clearly stood out: there was almost unanimous agreement that a potential road pricing system in Metro Vancouver should be guided by the principles of fairness as well as transparency and accountability.

In more detail, participants thought that all transportation network users should pay user fees for the services they used. Of course affordability was also a concern, and it was noted that the transportation network should allow access for vulnerable groups such as seniors and other people with limited incomes.

Another key point was that there needs to be regional equity. People in Vancouver shouldn’t get a “free lunch” while people in the South of Fraser pay bridge tolls for example.

Participants also wanted to see that money collected from the use of transportation was directly used to fund transportation. They also wanted to ensure that we had a multi-modal transportation system that gives people travel choices.

The key take-away for me is that education is key for any discussion about transportation financing in the region, and will be the key to winning the transit referendum next summer.

TransLink, improv comedy, and the upcoming referendum

This last weekend, I had out-of-town family visiting. We decided to take transit from Langley to see an improv comedy show at Vancouver Theatresports League on Granville Island. These shows usually result in non-stop laughter, and this time was no different.

One of the improv games involved the players incorporating phrases from the audience (that were written down without knowledge of the players) at random points in the scene. The audience also had to suggest a setting for the scene. I didn’t suggested it, but the selected scene was at a SkyTrain platform.

As the scene progressed, the SkyTrain arrived at the platform. As the SkyTrain has an iconic door closing sound, this was the perfect time to replace the sound with the random audience phrase of “I’m Sorry.” One of the players then said, “It sounds like that because it's a Canadian train, but because it’s TransLink, they doesn’t really mean it.” This of course got the audience laughing. It was interesting when one of the players said TransLink as there were lots of boos from the audience. The transit referendum popped into my mind.

The improv scene reinforced two thoughts I have about transit in Metro Vancouver and the upcoming referendum. Transit is a pervasive part of life in Metro Vancouver. Much like New York is associated with its subway system, Vancouver is associated with its automated rail network.

Our system is reliable and safe. Not that improv comedy is the most scientific of indicators, but the improv players could have easily made a joke about the train not showing up or something about crime. In fact, the whole scene played out like SkyTrain was just a normal part of life for a regular person in Metro Vancouver. The major joke was that one of the players didn't know how to use SkyTrain.

It wasn’t all good though. It was interesting to hear the reaction to the joke about TransLink not caring about its customers. It should come as no surprise that many see TransLink as an unaccountable, wasteful organization even if this is not the case.

So what does this have to do with the upcoming referendum?

I believe that the majority of people in our region would approve a new source of funding to expand transit today if it was not for the TransLink brand. I believe people would actually vote no to a new source of funding today, not because they don’t support transit, but because they don’t believe TransLink is an accountable organization. A similar thing happened with the HST referendum in BC. Most people supported the tax, but did not like how the BC Liberals implemented it. This is why it failed at referendum.

With the province’s commitment to reform TransLink governance this year, the agency should become more accountable to the public.

Once the reforms are implemented, the province, local government, and TransLink have to show the public that TransLink is accountable and can be trusted with new revenue to fund transit expansion. As the referendum will now likely occur in the summer of 2015, this should be enough time to change views on TransLink. If this does not occur, I fear that we will not see much needed transit expansion in the region.

Many advocacy group have spent a lot of time focusing on why transit is good for the region. While this information is useful, most people in the region are already convinced that transit is critically important. I think these groups need to focus on the benefits of a regional transportation authority like TransLink which is the model that other regions in the world look to.

City of Langley Council rejects all advisory committee recommendation?

Over the past several meetings of the City of Langley’s Parks and Environment Committee, which I sit on, we reviewed the City’s new Park, Recreation, and Culture Master Plan. We submitted two requested to City Council:

THAT the Parks and Environment Advisory Committee recommends that Council review, consider and receive the recommendations made by the committee with regard to the prioritization and phasing of the Key Recommendations within the Parks, Recreation, and Culture Master Plan.

THAT the Parks and Environment Advisory Committee recommends that Council consider the following items be added to the Key Recommendations within the Parks, Recreation, and Culture Master Plan.

You can read more about our recommendations in a post I wrote last week.

I heard word late last week that while Council did received our recommendations, they decided to not move forward with any of the recommendations of the Parks and Environment Committee at the last Council meeting. Councillor Dave Hall put forward the recommendations of the committee, but no other councillor seconded the motions. They effectively died on the table.

While the City’s advisory committees are just that, advisory, it is very disappointing to see the countless hours of volunteer work that our committee put into giving feedback to the Park, Recreation, and Culture Master Plan simply be ignored. While some of the recommendations we made may result in an increase in the City's budget, may are common sense recommendations that may actually save the City money in the long run.

As last week’s Council meeting also dealt with the proposed budget for this year, I can only hope that the Councillors will be looking over our recommendations. I hope that they will at least bring some of the recommendations forward for adoption at a future Council meeting.