Two items for those of you who love transportation policy.
Paul Krueger sends in a fascinating challenge to Level of Service (LOS) standards in San Francisco. (LOS is a way of measuring congestion that practically guarantees more and wider roads.) Here’s Part 1, with clicks to the other sections.
And from the astonishingly fertile mind of Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, his latest missive: Smart Transportation Economic Stimulation, which nicely complements the post below.
These documents don’t seem to provide any ideas for how to deal with the situation that we actually have today. Apart from the standard “cars, suburbs and the people who live in them are evil” tone, and “build high-density inner cities” injunction, there’s nothing in there to help us.
Take metro Vancouver. The inner city is dense, walkable, full of transit options etc. And pretty much built-out (relative to the population of the region). Where are we going to put the new high-density areas that will accommodate all the people that live here?
And what are we going to do with the majority of the population that live in the suburbs? Just tear down the Fraser river bridges, and say, “you’re evil in Surrey, don’t come and mess up our nice city”?
I don’t see how advocating even more transit and development money be thrown at the north-west corner of Vancouver city solves any of the sustainability issues in the region.
I would say that if the advocates of sustainable living were really genuine about getting something done, they would demand a halt to all money flowing into transit in Vancouver, and re-direct it all out to the suburbs. And planners would focus on how to “fix” the suburbs, not deride them and propose shifting even more resources away from them.
Not sure I understand foo’s comments.
A sustainable region is not all about putting all the focus on downtown Vancouver, but putting the focus into a number of town centres throughout the region: Metrotown, New West, Coquitlam, Surrey Centre, Langley City, etc. and allowing them to develop businesses, residential, ammenities, facilities of their own. Most of these centres are also very dense, walkable with lots of ammenities (albeit on a smaller scale than Van.). They do reasonably well given that they must compete more directly with shopping malls and the lure of nearby cul-de-sacs.
I don’t know anyone who is arguing for all the transit money to go into Vancouver. Many are arguing that the money currently being earmarked for bridges and highways in the suburbs should be redirected to first class transit instead… for Surrey town centres, Langley City, Coquitlam, etc. These areas are already ripe for much better transit, but their leaders are demanding more roads???