Vancouver now has 84 gas stations, down from 328 in 1970 – with only two left on the downtown peninsula. Brian Hutchinson at the National Post thinks it’s all part of a green conspiracy.
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Your link to Hutchinson is broken, Gordon.
I googled the article and found the comments section predictably full of mindless “socialist left coast hippy envirofascist” insults from people who have never been to Vancouver. It drives some people crazy that Vancouverites are consciously CHOOSING to live a different lifestyle by subsidizing transit a little bit more, and subsidizing cars slightly less. And as always, the subsidies to automobile transportation go unmentioned. Massive government spending on highways, bridges and roads = natural state of things / free market outcome. Subsidized public transit = horrifying social planning? Perhaps Hutchinson would support a policy similar to Florida’s requirement to build roads at a rate that assumes 2% growth per year in car usage – that would certainly up our gas station count! To what end, I have no idea. Hutchinson doesn’t actually make a case for why having more than 2 gas stations downtown would be a good thing. His readers are just supposed to understand that a lack of gas stations means a lack of personal freedom, and a bad environment for business and growth, because it signals fewer car miles driven. Of course neither of these things are true.
One of the best comments was that in 1970 there were many 2 pump gas stations so there was a lot of competition. Now the gas stations that are left have up to 10 pumps. A 2 pump station would have the same amount of labour as a 10 pump station. It is not surprising that there are way less gas stations. It is possible the number of pumps has not dropped that significantly while the number of gas stations have been cut in half.
If I can chime in here, I think the comments in the article by Michael Ervin are probably the most telling. I attended a presentation this weekend at the Western Division of the Canadian Association of Geographers, and one presenter noted that many service stations lay abandoned because the profits are razor thin as Ervin suggests, and it is cheaper to pay property taxes in perpetuity instead of remediating the site. The only exception is when the potential lift in land value exceeds the cost of remediation. I would even go beyond this and suggest that from the perspective of a fuel operator, that selling the remediating the land and selling it probably has a greater potential windfall than maintaining sales over the life cycle of the station. If people are going to own a car, I’m sure there are plenty of options. I don’t hear the big oil companies crowing over the loss of urban gas stations, but then again, I’m not really listening for it either.
It’s good to see The National Post found an image of a Vancouver gas station to illustrate their story. However, it misses the mark a bit because it isn’t actually Downtown, but rather on 2nd Avenue at Main, it isn’t being remediated and it isn’t closed permanently, it’s just getting a makeover and new pumps.
From the article:
“It should come as no surprise that B.C. and Ontario, while boasting more cars than other Canadian provinces, also have the fewest number of gas stations per capita.”
Are both those stats per capita? It’s not clear…and if they aren’t, the point is not made.