Chris Leinberger – the Shifting Gears speaker at 7 pm on April 25 at the Segal Business School (Granville and Pender) – has penned an article for The Tyee.
The Vancouver metro area has taken huge steps in showing the U.S. a means by which to build a more sustainable future. The proposed investment in transit over the next decade is yet another sign that you will continue to provide a model. However, there is much more to do. Please do not dawdle; the U.S. needs you to help show us the way.
His remark about building walkable communities in the suburbs make so much sense, especially with our affordability problems. Of course, it does mesh with the Livable Region Strategic Plan with its town centres.
It seems we have two urban cultures. One, which is developing “walkable” communities, is north of the Fraser, incorporating much of Vancouver and the nearer suburbs. The other, which is extremely automobile dependent and doing little to change that, is south of the Fraser. It is true that transit has a few station south of the Fraser, in Surrey, and there will be a few transit stops south of the Fraser (its north arm) in Richmond — if one uses transit in those communities it’s to come into central Vancouver, not move about the suburbs. I don’t know what we do about this. The provincial government is not helping, with its expansion of highways and twinning of the Port Mann bridge across the Fraser. What could happen is building a transit spine out the Fraser Valley and linking transit to the spine. But that’s a step that has no immediate political return, is highly unlikely, and might not even work given the helter-skelter development in these suburbs.
I really have to wonder why there’s such a fascination with a one size fits all solution to transportation problems. If the suburbs were connected by a circumfrential freeway, express buses could take people from one suburb to another. For weekend trips to the ferry terminal or the airport, people could drive without having to drive through Vancouver or New Westminster.
The notion that the municipalities north of the Fraser are all marching to a tranist/bike/walk agenda is pure marketing spiel. Burnaby is spending heavily on developing the Big Bend area, where they hope to eventually locate nearly 30,000 jobs. Yes, 30,000 jobs. Even the Burnaby Planning Dept under the leadership of Corrigan, Luksun and Ramsey has to admit in its public utterances that most of the traffic in and out will be auto traffic on Marine Way. If that same development were being constructed in Surrey, we would no doubt be hearing Burnaby’s leadership condemning Surrey for failing to adhere to the doctrines of that much ballyhooed sacred text the LRSP, the same LRSP that identified the NFPR and SFPR as priorities, and exlcuded PMH1 only because local governments did not want to be on the hook for part of the costs.