Corey Burger – Page 27 – Musings on Oak Bay and Greater Victoria

East Saanich Rd. bike lane Open House tonight

I will be at the East Saanich Rd. bike lane project Open House tonight. It is being run the Municipality of North Saanich and is being held at the Panorama Rec. Centre and runs from 5pm to 8pm. On hand will be North Saanich engineering staff to discuss the proposed plan.

This project ties into a similar Central Saanich project that was funded by the Federal and Provinicial governments (press release – PDF & LocalMotion projects page). According to this news story, the work on that should start in June and be done by October.

Maddeningly, I couldn’t find any information about Federal gov. money in the North Saanich portion. The above linked LocalMotion page lists $361,284 of Provinical money, which is cost shared 50/50 with the municipality.

Regardless, this is a much needed project. It provides yet another north-south route to complement West Saanich Rd. and the Lochside Trail. Hope to see some familiar faces there!

Wordle on Sunday’s raindrops and rainbows

It is no secret that I like tag clouds. They provide a great way to see what people are saying by popularity. They have really taken off in the past few years. Even the CBC was gotten into the act, with a tag cloud of the platforms of the three major parties in the 2009 election.

Creating them is a bit of an art with funky algorithms and the like. There are quite a few tools out there, but Wordle seems to be the most common. I used it for my announcement of my candidacy in the 2008 municipal elections, for example. So I figured I would run the raindrops and rainbows from the Safer Cycling Oak Bay table at the fair on Sunday and see what I got:

Rainbows

Raindrops

A few things pop out at me: There was a strong current of environment and community running through the likes. Nice to see that bikes not only help the environment, they help everybodies health and help build community as a nice side benefit. The dislikes centred around two themes: respect and lack of infrastructure. People wanted to see more respect between drivers and cyclists, especially with regard to both needing to follow rules of the road. Bike parking and lanes were much talked about, as well as the growing number of potholes in roads.

As I said yesterday, I am very pleased at the amount of feedback we got and that people took the time to think about what they wrote. I am truly looking forward to the next few months. If you wanted to give us feedback in person, the next time to do so will likely be at Bike to Work Week coming up from the 11th to the 17th. When details are worked out, I will post more.

Rainbows & Raindrops from the community fair

At the Community Fair yesterday we put out two piece of bristol board, sticky notes and pens and then we asked people who came by to tell us about biking in Oak Bay, both what they loved and what they would like to see changed or disliked. We got some great feedback, as I have transcribed below:

Liked

Healthier and environmentally better way to travel. Oak Bay is awesome for biking
Riding along the waterfront (Dallas Rd.)
Path along the water
New bike lanes on Henderson
love riding on Oak Bay’s quiet streets
Part of Foul Bay Bike lane
Slow traffic in Oak Bay
Lanes
Quiet bike lanes. Sidelanes and back alleys
Bike lanes
Roads that are generally quiet
Bike lanes. Secure locking ???. beach dr & oak bay avenue
Quiet streets for making long traverses across the community
Fresh air and exercise
New bike parking at municipal hall
close to community, parking easy, fresh air, calories burned

Of course, life is not all roses. Sometimes there are thorns:

Disrespect by cyclists and motorists for each other
bicyclists who ride in the middle of the road instead of the cycle lane! 🙂
cars parked on Beach Drive
No road bike lane by Marina and Glenlyon
Need more bike trails
Roads where there is not enough room for bikes + car (McNeil Ave)
Lack of bike trails and lanes
Access to Galloping Goose from Oak Bay
Cyclists who ignore the rules of the road
Need bike lane on Foul Bay
Oak Bay needs more bike lanes
nervous of traffic
Parking along Cedar Hill X Rd up to Uvic is very dangerous!
Oak Bay needs more bike lane & bike racks
Potholes
traffic calming devices. potholes in street
Not enough bike racks in the village!
Cyclists who don’t follow the rules of the road. Cyclists who don’t have lights.
Foul Bay & Oak Bay intersection
not much bike parking on the avenue
clear glass from bike lanes
–> Please signal –> Wear helmets

Each line is a single note. Where possible I have tried to preserve the formatting/spelling/etc.

We also got a few comments about the pedestrian experience:

Liked

For wheelchair: Good in the village, Foul Bay rather rough
Safe, clean sidewalks that have been redone

Disliked:

More attention to care of sidewalks on non-busy roads
crosswalk at Brighton + Foul Bay to fit with the Brighton Ave Centennial path

Thanks again to Jill Croft and the whole OB Comm. Association for organizing the event, the OB Emergency Preparedness people for being so kind as to share their space and time and to Jane and David who came out and peopled the SCOB booth with me. Here’s looking forward to next years.

Pictures from today’s Community Fair

Despite the beautiful weather, today’s Community Fair and Emergency Services expo was well attended. The community fair had booths from Safer Cycling Oak Bay, the Oak Bay Green Committee, Oak Bay Volunteer Services, the Bowker Creek Initiative, Native Plant Society, Oak Bay Rotary, the Oak Bay Green Map and Oak Bay Kiwanis. Check out the photos below for a quick look at some of the booths, although ironically not the SCOB booth.

Our Safer Cycling Oak Bay booth was a big draw. Nearly everybody that came by gave us some feedback. Our raindrops (dislikes) and rainbows (likes) posters got lots of sticky notes filled with people’s thoughts. I will be posting them in the next day or two once I get them transcribed.

Thanks to Jill Croft and the whole Community Association for organizing such as event. Jill was also kind enough to take the above photos, as I was stuck at the SCOB booth due to the number of people who came by.

Come to the Oak Bay Community Fair today

Safer Cycling Oak Bay will be at the Oak Bay Community Fair today between 11:30am and 1:30pm. The fair, which is co-hosted with the emergency prepardness people, is in the Oak Bay Recreation Centre’s indoor soccer pitch. We will be there to talk about what we are working on, to meet more people from around Oak Bay and learn what they love and want to change about biking in Oak Bay.

Found a blogging councillor

While on a random web search the other day I came across the blog of Cairine Green, one of councillors for the municipality of North Saanich.While this might not be the only councillor in the CRD who is actively blogging, I certainly don’t know of any others. It is sad, really, as the web offers such an immediate way to get feedback and tell residents what is happening in their municipal government.

Here is Oak Bay our website isn’t even that great (I have promised Chris Causton some info on how I think it should be fixed, something I haven’t yet delivered. One of these days..). None of the sitting councillors have active websites and most didn’t even have websites in the first place. The sole exception was Tara Ney, whose site is blank.

Amongst the candidates, Michelle Kirby‘s and Chris Smith‘s sites have nothing more than thank you notices. Michelle can be excused, as she continues to blog at chezkirby.ca.

Beyond our little sleepy neighbourhood, a quick survey of the candidates campaign sites show a mix of blank, no longer registered or simply rotting away with old content. I didn’t spend the several hours it would have taken to google each one of their names, but I can guess the result: nothing.

Even further afield, the Toronto City Clerk has pushed council to enter the 21st century. They not only have a blog but even have a twitter account, TorontoCouncil. Both post near-real time or extremely fast updates on what is happening at council meetings.

Have you found another blogging councillor? Please leave me a comment to let me know so I can add them to the sidebar.

Tidal current vs. paddlers

On my way to a friends place last night, I was treated to the sight of two different boats filled with paddlers do battle with the strong in-rushing tide at the Tillicum Narrows. This part of the Gorge is famous for its fast currents, which used to cause a tidal waterfall until a local citizen dynamited it. For more info, Wikimapia has a decent article on the narrows, also called the Canal of Camosack by the native Songhees people.

First to make the attempt was this group of 6 paddlers in an outrigger canoe. They made two separate attempts while I watched; these photos are actually from their second attempt. Both times they struggled mightly against the current, the boat zigzagging as the current caught first one side of the bow then the other. They almost made it both times, but simply ran out of energy. Frustration was pretty evident as their second attempt ended with the lead paddler telling her fellow crew to give up and the sweep/steerer in the rear attempting to keep them going.

Between the canoeists failed attempts, a large team of dragon boaters showed the clear difference between 5 paddlers and 20. They powered right through the rapids in a matter of a few seconds without thought. Their speed surprised me, causing me to almost miss getting any photos of them.

Fiberglass canoes and replica dragon boats were not the first rowing vessels to ply these waters. Gorge regattas have been held since at least the 1890s, as these images from the BC archives attest to. I love the contrast in the uniforms in the picture on the left from today and the one on the right from then.

I will apologize for the terrible quality of the pictures. I had left my actual camera at home and thus only had my phone, which takes surprisingly good pictures, given I cannot control focus point, exposure or anything else mildly useful.

Today is a just a little bit brighter

Why? Yesterday gay and lesbian couples in Iowa finally got to enjoy the many benefits of marriage, something that similar couples here in Canada and a select few other countries (and a few states in the US) can enjoy. It feels like the wind has changed. It is, as NYTimes Frank Rich says, The Bigots Last Hurrah. Vermont will start issuing marriage licenses on the 1st of September of this year. New York and New Hampshire are considering bills. Even the governor of Utah, called the “reddest state in the union” has said he backs civil unions for gay and lesbian couples.

There is a particularly poignant part to Steven Thrasher’s Advocate article I linked to at the beginning: He is a half-black/white gay man. His parents got married in Iowa in 1958, almost a decade before they were allowed to across the US, something the US Supreme Court had to order. It wasn’t until 2000 that Alabama removed the anti-mixed race marriage amendment from their constitution. Gay marriage faces many of the same arguments were raised against mixed-race marriages, something that the historically-black Howard University’s amicus curae to the Iowa court pointed out quite forcefully (PDF). But I think it was this paragraph from Steven’s article that said the most to me:

My parents did move to California to raise their children, believing life would be easier on the West Coast. I’m sorry my parents didn’t get to live to see Iowan Democrats make a zebra the winner of their caucus and send him on his way to the Oval Office. I wish they had lived to see the Iowa supreme court make gay marriage legal. The irony that their gay son — who has spent his whole life living in or near New York or Los Angeles — would be denied a marriage license in those über-liberal cities, but could now get one in Council Bluffs, Iowa, like they did, would not be lost on them.

Why does this issue matter so much to me? I am a single, straight (as far as I know), moderately well educated white man from wealthy neighbourhood in a wealthy city in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. It is because I am these things that I care. I am as unlikely as just about anybody to be discriminated against. Just because I likely won’t experience it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t care passionately about it. Former US Secretary of the Interior Carl Shurz said it best when he said

If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.

So yes, today feels a bit brighter. The course of equality is usually long and often comes with setbacks but in the end will be won.

Entitled Driver Syndrome hits Liberal candidates

Candidate vetting is always a tricky process. It is far, far too easy to miss something that will bite the candidate and the party in the butt when they least expect it. This is partly the reason I duck out of sight whenever somebody brings out a camera at a party. I live in the internet generation. Nearly everything we do goes online, something Ray Lam, the former NDP canadidate for Vancouver-False Creek, discovered last week (CBC).

But there are mistakes and there are mistakes. Getting underwear pulled at a party is not the same as getting behind the wheel of a deadly machine and driving away while drunk. And getting a simple parking ticket is not the same as willfully ignoring traffic laws merely because you are “busy working”. It seems that some of Liberal candidates haven’t yet learnt that (CBC). Even the Solicitor General, the person in charge of ICBC, is getting in on the act (CBC).

The sad reality is that because of Entitled Driver Syndrome or the so-called windshield perspective, these people won’t drop out of the race. Part of the blame for this can be laid at the feet of the journalists. They are often just as guilty (Streetblog), if not more so. It is ultimately a societal flaw. We let people get away with things behind the wheel that they never would be able to do outside a car. We invent cute phrases like “road rage” or explain away blame by using terms like “accident” rather than crash. Maybe somebody that will change. I guess I can only keep hoping.

Sewage experts to Colwood: “Screw you”

The experts have decided: One giant sewage plant in Colwood is a great idea. Except of course, if you live in Colwood. Too bad one giant plant is a terrible idea for local land values, the environment and just about every other reason short of get-it-done-now-itis.

One giant plant is being sold as a way to save money, as the cost estimates* show that lots of little plants have almost double the cost of one big plant. Except of course, one big plant makes certains types of resource recovery such as neighbourhood hot water heating basically impossible. One big plant is also very attractive for a P3, something I know a lot of people are not very keen on, myself included. I wonder how many of those “experts” the CRD have found have worked for the big “environmental” (I use the term loosely) firms that would likely bid on any such project?

All in all, just another report. Sewage treatment studies in the CRD are the new transit studies. Lots of hot air and wasted paper without much done. Too bad small plants have already been proven to work and coexist with residential neighbourhoods right here in Oak Bay…

* A word about capital costs: don’t trust any capital cost estimate done before 2009. The price of materials and the cost of wages have fallen so sharply in the past 6 months that any and all estimates, especially those made around the middle of 2008 are totally suspect. For instance the bid for a piece of the University Link Light Rail in Seattle was 34% under estimates, a bid made in December 2008.