Over at TransLink, Jhenifer Pabillano edits the terrific Buzzer Blog, both informative and entertaining, and another example of TL’s embrace of new media. She’s been putting a lot of historical material on the site recently, including this fascinating Buzzer from 1959:
You can find a link to this item (and a larger version of the Buzzer) here.
What makes this a valuable document are the quotes from the City of Vancouver’s Director of Planning at the time, Gerald Sutton Brown – one of the most important figures behind the scenes in the city’s history. It was Sutton Brown who, with tremendous will and persistence, pushed the vision of a regional freeway system. If he had been able to tap the needed sources of funding soon enough, it would have happened.
In the Buzzer, Sutton Brown is arguing the case for “freeway buses.”
“For our metropolitan area the freeway bus system offers advantages in convenience, travel time and capital cost over a rail system,” Mr. Sutton Brown stated.
In any case, he added, the volume of rapid transit passengers would be insufficient to make a rail system practical.
The buses he had in mind “would require speed and acceleration characteristics similar to automobiles” – buses not yet available but promised by the manufacturers “by the time the freeways are ready for it.”
In other words, transit as conceived by the planners of the day was just another aspect of Motordom. The freeways would shape urban form, and then transit would be adapted to serve them – pretty much the concept for transit on the Gateway Project.
Another insight embedded in the Buzzer story is a list of who was doing the planning: “provincial, civic, municipal and B.C. Electric representatives with special assistance from the Foundation of Canada Engineering Corporation and UBC departments of economics and mathematics.”
Thank God they failed.
But wouldn’t you agree that this looks a lot like a Skytrain line? It’s like Sutton Brown is forward-thinking, but he’s constrained by the technological limitations of the era.
Regardless, thanks for the link to The Buzzer blog. I grew up reading The Buzzer on the way to school and I’m thrilled to see it’s still going strong.
I’ve heard nothing but good things about its editor, and I’ve often thought she has one of the best jobs in Vancouver.
In other words, transit as conceived by the planners of the day was just another aspect of Motordom. The freeways would shape urban form, and then transit would be adapted to serve them
there is nothing different about this from what BRT proponents are advocating today — in theory, with the benefit of hindsight.
and a solid 95%+ of self-described ‘progressive/enlightened/whatever’ urban planners today are BRT proponents.
eventually, someone ‘respectable’ is gonna come out and say that the emperor has no clothes.
The same excuse of not enough ridership is still being trotted out on a regular basis. My bet is that the soon to be released FV transit study will make exactly the same conclusion about the Interurban line, based on 2006 mode-share estimates of 1%. And yet the West Coast Express succeeded in an even less populated area north of the Fraser, and would never have happened without assuming that ridership would grow once the service was in place.
Jim
Glad you found the 1959 Buzzer as fascinating as I did 🙂
And I’m humbled by the kind words. Many thanks!
you could also find interesting
this 1962 rail rapid transit study
http://voony.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/rail-rapid-transit-for-vancouver-in-1962/
and this “balanced approach” we see again in the gateway project was one already denounced in 1970 by harry Rankin
( http://voony.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/the-case-for-rapid-transit-in-1970/ )
It also looks a lot like BRT to me too. The description sounds a lot like the busways in Ottawa – using the busway for common legs of the trip and branching off to serve local areas.
One paragraph that you missed quoting:
The comparison to the Ottawa busways is quite apt, and the only problem with the Ottawa system, from the point of view of “Vancouverism”, is that it works. It delivers the goods to the transit consumer.
That’s a fatal flaw in a region where the transit consumer is not the object of proper transit planning. Rather, it’s landowners and property developers and municipal “leaders”.
Rod, if you actually ask someone from Ottawa you’ll find that the busway doesn’t work so well, since all the buses go through a ridiculous choke point in the middle of the city, making the entire system unreliable and much slower, especially for crosstown trips. That’s why they’re trying to change it and looking at light rail, but that’s been held up through years of political boondoggles (including interference from federal conservative politicians).
But Ottawa is a much different kind of city from Vancouver from the beginnning, in that it’s a sprawling, post-WWII designed city that is about half the size and one that is very centralized in its jobs. That means the busway did make more sense there because it can branch off and go to all those far-flung suburban hideaways, while still converging on one spot, whereas in Vancouver the demand is much different. The two city’s transit problems are really not comparable. Of course, the on-street section downtown ruins the effectiveness of the whole busway.
I hope you’re not saying that you wish this 1957 plan of what Vancouver could have been had come to pass. I think if you ever found a magic genie to grant that wish you would be very regretful.
Also, for the comparisons to Ottawa I should point out the Ottawa busway mostly does not follow highways, but goes on its own route. It’s actually quite different from what’s being proposed here.
Regarding the centralization of jobs in Ottawa – I wouldn’t think that 1957 Vancouver would have been different than that. Those were the days before regional town centres and suburban office parks. The only other “downtown” was probably New Westminster. I think Oakridge ad Park Royal were built at about that time and they were the first of their kind.
I have used the busways and other transit systems in Ottawa, including the O-train:
http://www.octranspo1.com/routes/o-train
I haven’t taken any long look at the 1957 Buzzer scheme, but if it meant a system of connected highways and freeways with provisions for express buses, a pre-cursor to HOV lanes, it would have been a great idea.
That kind of approach, taken at that time, would have lead to a much more democratic pattern of development throughout the Lower Mainland, with more competitive land markets and therefore lower prices/rents for both residential and industrial commerical properties, leading to lower living costs and lower production costs, with the attendant increase in business investment. The higher levels of business investment and the increased daily geogrphic mobility of labour would have led to higher wages. So the average person would have been a big winner, with both lower housing costs and a higher wage and salary income.
That, of course, is why any such scheme was opposed. The establishment wanted the exact opposite, higher land prices and lower wages, and they won as they usually do. They’re still putting out the gospel today, and the amazing thing is they’re still getting an audience of true believers who think it’s all about avoiding Los Angelization or some other equally imaginary goal.