September 2009 – Corey Burger

The new CRD Bike/Ped plan

While some poor CRD staff get to deal with sewage, others are much luckier, working on the new Bike and Pedestrian Master Plan. As was reported in our local rag, the public kick-off events for the plan were earlier this week, although some of us were “lucky” enough to get involved a bit earlier. For my sins I have become part of the Citizen’s Advisory Committee, one of two groups to advise the CRD and it’s consultants.

First up Monday night was a short meet and greet of the aforementioned committed, before the public advocacy session. The committee as a whole totals about 20 people, with representatives from many groups the GVCC, Capital Bike and Walk, Roads, Rails and Trails, Bike to Work Society and others I am surely forgetting. Oak Bay is fairly well represented, with myself, Lesley Ewing and Gerald Smeltzer, who wears dual-hats, both the Oak Bay Bicycle Master Plan core team and the Oak Bay Community Association.

The main part of Monday night was actually the public advocacy session, attended by 70+ people from all stripes, although the crowd was heavily tilted toward bicycle advocates, a trend that continued the next day. To start the evening off, Tracy Corbett, Senior Manager of Regional Planning at the CRD, pointed out this isn’t the first bike plan the regiona as a whole has created, showing the 1897 bike route map seen on the right. This is also about the era that bicyclists where leading the fight for paving of roads, something forgotten in the recent celebration of the 100th anniversary of the first concrete road.

But the highlight of the night was a talk by Scott Bricker, Executive Director of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, an Oregon bike advocacy group that has made great strides in making Portland and the rest of Oregon the bicycle-friendly place it is. He stared off by stating the core principles of the BTA:

People like to bike
People don’t like to bike with cars
You need a dense network
The network has to go places (that people want to go)

While obvious on the face it, these core principles evolved to become part of the official Portland Bicycle Master Plan. Beyond core principles, he spoke extensively about to advocate effectively, including such truths that businesses are some of the most effective advocates of bicycling and that you need both the bicyclist in the suit and the more fringe elements some of us would rather go away.

As a wrap up to his talk, he gave a quick top 10 list for what makes a good regional plan:

Engage (the public, businesses, etc.)
Build support from diverse camps
Take the short view (get things done quickly)
Take the long view (think where you want to be 10, 20, 30 years from now)
Take the heat (be out there to support politicians that support you)
Tell the story (stats and stories are both needed)
Be polite and respectful (be thankful)
Be a regional plan (make certain it effects all parts of the region, leave nobody out)
Chase the money (with money, nothing gets built. Be where the money is)
Don’t forget fun

Overall, it was a great night. Thanks to the Road, Rails and Trails people for bringing Scott to Victoria to talk with us. Of course, this was only day one of two for those of us on the citizen’s committee, as well as the Gil Penalosa talk on Tuesday evening at UVic. More on both of those later.

Provincial and Federal governments hand out loot

It is the season for giving, being a recession with Keynes back in and Friedman out, so today the two senior levels of government did just that. Or at least, so says their rather triumphant press release. Sadly (or not, depending on your point of view) there is no money for a new Johnson Street Bridge, but plenty of other things did get money:

Our fine municipality got money for the Uplands sewer upgrade. The joint storm/sewage sewers are the main reason behind our eye-popping $700/yr property increase for the new sewage treatment, so this money, an even matching grant between the municipality, the feds and the provinces, will help all of Oak Bay taxpayers.
The Kinsol Trestle rehabilitation in the Cowichan Valley got almost $6 million to complete this link of the Trans-Canada Trail.
Despite the government cutting library operating funds, two libraries in Surrey and Saltspring Island got funding for new buildings.
The only even remotely transit related project is a Highway 7 Bus Lane in Pitt Meadows. Guess we aren’t going to meet our climate goals after all.
Sidney got some money for a Lochside Waterfront Trail, likely the project mentioned on this website and in these 2006 council minutes (PDF).

All in all, the majority of the funding seems to be for sewers and highways, with a scattering of arts centres, libraries and other bits and pieces.

Canada Line thoughts

Canada Line train on bridge over Fraser River

This is a bit belated, but I did managed to get over to Vancouver for the opening of the Canada Line, the newest addition to the SkyTrain network. First, a little bit of history. The Canada Line is a Public-Private Partnership, something that the BC Gov forced onto Translink as a condition of provincial funding. This means that it is actually operated by ProTrans BC and was built by InTransitBC, both largely owned by SNC Lavelin out of Montreal. The federal government demanding Translink call it the Canada Line as a condition of their funding.

That being said, Vancouver is the first Canadian city to have a direct rail link to the airport, something common in Europe as well as a few US cities like Portland.

Given I was coming from across the pond, I ended up starting at the Marine Drive station, just north of the Fraser. This turned out to be a good decision, because lines for northbound (Waterfront Station-bound) trains were fairly quiet, at least in the morning.

The Marine Drive station is pretty indicative of the elevated stations on the line. Lots of wood and glass. They were attractive, but the platforms were short, as can be seen in the second photo down, coming into one of the underground stations.

The stations also seriously lacked amenities. There were no bathrooms and few chairs in most of the stations. The stairs were narrow, with only escalators going up. Overall, the stations felt quickly built and cheap, as attractive as some of them were.

The cars themselves were fairly spacious, wider than the newer Mark II cars on the Skytrain. The had a single space for a bicycle and another for wheelchairs, both in one of the two cars.

The ride was smooth and fairly fast, especially compared to the old 98 B-line “bus rapid transit” or the even older Expo Line. The Expo Line now has some sections of track cause a lot of noise and sway, especially with the older Mark I SkyTrain cars.

One of the challenges with connections was that the bus lines haven’t yet been adjusted, something is coming with Labour Day. Both the 98 B-line and the 424 to the Airport are going away, while the 620 from Tsawwassen will be routed into Bridgeport Station. This is just some of the large number of bus changes coming, some of which are not making people very happy. Many people are now going to have to take both a bus and the Canada Line to downtown, as opposed to a single seat bus ride.

As can be expected for the opening of a major new transit line, the lines were crazy all day. Waterfront Station was especially bad, with waits running past an hour, from what I understand.

Overall, I am glad the Canada Line exists, but I think there are going to be serious capacity issues in the future. With the short platforms leading to inability to run larger trains, unlike the Skytrain system, expect crush capacity cars of 400 people very shortly. The real test will come this fall, so it should be interesting to see those numbers. To see more pictures, see my Flickr set.