Nic Slater posted this excellent three-minute video, produced in Great Britain but with much relevance to the situation with the proposed Massey Bridge. You just can’t build your way out of congestion with roads, and eight out of ten of these massive projects take out vital ecological habitat, and two-thirds of the projects destroy landscapes that were culturally important. Road building also means that people move away from town centres where they can cycle and walk.
Sound familiar?
Author
Reblogged this on Sandy James Planner.
Not true! What drives people away from the city is the high cost of living there. And not having options to access the city is what drives up housing prices. Just look at other, more accessible urban centers that invest in both transit and roads. They are much more affordable and accessible. I’d really like to know why you hate drivers so much? And in case you haven’t noticed… people in the suburbs and even in the country walk and cycle too – it’s not limited to downtown. You should take a trip to Langley or Chilliwack sometime to see for yourself… I’m sure that will be a pleasant trip on your “bicycle” as you would never drive out there (having scorned the rest of us for doing so…)
Places that have freeways into the city core are less desirable so of course they may be more affordable. Dump your car and free up $10k per year and you too can afford the city.
It’s a choice only you make.
Unfortunately, for those of us who choose the city, we still have to subsidize you to come in with your noise and stench and carnage. I don’t go out to the ‘burbs and force my lifestyle on you. Why do you think you should impose yours on me?
Freeways in to the City:
San Francisco’s 405 dumps you right down on Market Street and Octavia. What a dump. Everything is dirt cheap. That whole SoMa area is a steal.
And, with the 405 freeway going right through Seattle’s Capitol Hill it has gone totally down market.
Next time you need a plumber or a roofer Roy…
Hey Erica, are you saying freewaydriver is dead wrong?
Sure Ron, Seattle and Portland are in a major downward spiral, right?
Didn’t think it was an “us vs. them” thing… not a very good neighbour, are you?
You’re very welcome to visit my neighbourhood. Leave your noisy, smelly, dangerous motor vehicle at home.
Imagine how much more desirable Portland, Seattle and San Francisco would be without massive swaths of concrete dividing neighbourhoods, spewing fumes and noise. Apparently some of you think the new Point Grey Road configuration is too much concrete.
“Noise and stench and carnage”, that kind of rhetoric Ron is why urban dwellers get Trumped. And of course you derive absolutely no benefit whatsoever from all those who come into Vancouver to shop, eat and play.
They seem to forget all about this because it is an “inconvenient truth” for them…
As I said, you’re most welcome, Bob. But why would you think to impose your lifestyle on me by spewing fumes, creating unnecessary noise and adding an element of danger to our streets.
I don’t come to your neighbourhood to impose safety, fresh air, quiet, fitness and health.
You see the whole world through your windshield and utterly fail to grasp how much better life is when you can enjoy the urban experience without the dominance of cars and all the negatives that come with them.
I do get to occasionally – when the motorist hoards have gone home and urban dwellers come out in force to enliven our streets. But, like clockwork, the roads choke again with motorists forcing their lifestyle on us.
Once again, we subsidize you to make our lives less enjoyable just so you don’t have to question yourself. Don’t ever look in the mirror. Don’t ask yourself if what you are doing is harmful to others. Because if it is you have no excuse to keep doing it.
There are alternatives to driving into the city. That is the inconvenient truth. If you think those alternatives are inadequate, start pressing your governments to make them adequate instead of making excuses for why you are incapable of change. Stop rallying for more and bigger roads that only make all these problems worse.
100,000 people live downtown. Another 100,000 commute to work there. Traffic has decreased while at the same time the population doubled and the commuting workforce remained stable. The benchmark price on downtown apartments remains slightly above $500K. The commercial, cultural, tourist and entertainment amenities and Vancouver’s public services serve the entire region. The office floor area is the highest in the province. The annual downtown GDP is measured in multiple billions .
I’d say Vancouver continues to Trump all other cities merely with its gravitational pull.
“…. all other local cities ….”
We drove back from Delta today during rush hour. No wonder you’re such a squealer.
How was it?
@ Freeway, there are about 70 shops within a 10-minute walk of my place in the inner city, six of them grocery stores of all sizes. My family has saved close to $250,000 to date in commuting costs since I changed jobs to one a lot closer. I feel I should be paid for not requiring so many layers of hidden road-related subsidies any more.
If our society was truly democratic, then drivers would be paying for the actual public costs of driving fairly based on distance, type of vehicle and impacts on healthcare and cleaning up pollution. As it stands, drivers are getting a freebee way beyond what they actually pay in taxes and insurance.
You clearly want to make amends for the damage and the expense you have caused after many years of long commutes. To set a good example, what payment are you prepared to make?
My “many years of long commutes” add up to two (2), the last year sharing with a colleague. I’d say the car sharing largely cancels out the first year. And being that prior to that I went carless for 10 years, I’d say freeway drivers should be paying me.
And before you further misinterpret what I wrote, the savings mentioned above cover a period of 24 years until I retired.
Now, in fairness to readers let’s hear about your commute so we can calculate how much it costs society.
I wonder how all those goods arrived at the stores ? Did they not use small or medium sized trucks on roads ? Roads = civilization = freedom of mobility = progress = high standard of living !
We could do with less cars on roads and more pedestrian zones in dense parts of Vancouver, but that is not practical further out ie Langley, Delta, Surrey etc .. Not everyone like to bike either, especially in hilly parts of Metrovan or in rainy weather.
We need CHOICES as a society as one solution does not fit all needs !
You’re hallway to the answer, Thomas. Take the unnecessary single-occupant cars off the road and — presto! — there will be lots of room for commercial vehicles. No need to continue to build excessively auto-centric infrastructure.
And Alex if our society was truly democratic transit users would be fully paying the full costs of their trips too?
Well said, Bob!
Absolutely! If everyone paid what it actually cost there would be way more walkers and cyclists. More transit riders too. Way fewer people could afford to drive. We’d have better, more livable cities as a result, and lot less taxes to pay.
Those who claim motorists pay their way make such claims against all evidence.
Sorry Ron, but you seem to be living in an alternate reality. Motorists pay for transit additions and upgrades and they also subsidize transit “users”. If this is not true, how do you explain this… TransLink reported on their website that 150,000 people used the new Evergreen Line service during the first 8 weeks of operation. Based on this fact and at the current fare (which does NOT cover the actual cost of the service or it’s support systems), it would take a long, long time to pay that extension off if transit riders alone covered that cost – you do the math! As you are obviously in some alternate reality where drivers are getting a “free” ride (a reality I would love to be in), you may not have known this. Drivers pay for transit. That is a fact. Face reality.
@ Bob, thanks for bringing up democracy. Would that you backed your comments with some research.
One more time, seeing that you didn’t get it last time. Every transit user pays a toll through the farebox on every trip even though their taxes also helped pay for the transit infrastructure. Their tolls cover about half of the ongoing operating costs. There are very significant benefits that result in a greater return on the investment than the original cost (e.g. development stimulated by rapid transit).
So Bob, being that this is a democracy, what is the comparable return on freeway investments, and how much of the operating costs are recovered compared to transit?
BC Budget linked here. On page 16 (using the top of the page numbering, not the PDF #) it shows about 950M in gasoline revenues and LESS than 900M in the Depart of Transportation and Infrastructure. Plus $1.2B in CO2 taxes .. and perhaps half that from gasoline in cars ?
http://bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/2016/bfp/2016_budget_and_fiscal_plan.pdf
Yup, transit is indeed heavily subsidized. What would we do if all cars are e-cars with zero gasoline taxes and zero CO2 taxes ? Up bus fares ? Up PST ? Up income taxes ? or Lower expenditures.
But Thomas, that’s only for the roads that the province funds. All the municipal roads and those offloaded to regional governments are not funded by gas taxes.
Carbon taxes have nothing to do with subsidizing roads, nor do any of the other taxes, insurance and fees associated with driving.
Ron.
Just for you:
“TransLink is Metro Vancouver’s regional transportation authority. We are responsible for regional transit, cycling and commuting options as well as Intelligent Transportation System programs. Our services are delivered through our operating companies.
We also share responsibility for the Major Road Network (MRN) and regional cycling with municipalities in Metro Vancouver. We are the first North American transportation authority to be responsible for the planning, financing and managing of all public transit in addition to major regional roads and bridges.
Under legislation introduced by the provincial government in 2007, TransLink’s governance structure was changed. We now have the ability to provide services under agreements with municipalities from Pemberton to Hope.
TransLink funds road and transit operations within the Metro Vancouver region, including improvements and expansion, from its share of the motor fuel tax, transit fares, parking tax and a portion of property taxes collected in each region’s 21 municipalities.”
http://www.translink.ca/en/About-Us/
Did you catch that bit about Gas Taxe (Motor Fuel Tax)?
Alex, development, spurred by transit or otherwise, is not a “benefit”. I understand why a Vision Vancouver would think so, seeing as it is developer money that keeps Vision’s wheels greased.
As to moaning that transit users have to pay a fare in addition to taxes, well motorists have to pay those same taxes and additional fees and gas taxes to support those transit users. Do you think Translink and commercial vehicle operators could afford to maintain the road network if they were the sole users?
Eric. Still doesn’t cover municipal roads which are funded out of property taxes.
Thomas, I wish you would stop referring to the Carbon “tax” as a tax It is NOT a tax but simply a levy on burning fossil fuels. All levies get returned as reduced corporate and income taxes Either show me that this is not the case of stop misleading people as to the nature of a carbon “tax”
Also, with respect to driver taxes, there is a huge debt hidden in P3 highway projects which we all pay for. Also, there is way more to driver subsidy than road costs – there are hospital costs, police, emergency services, pollution effects, global warming, noise, urban sprawl, “free” use of large swaths of public space and a general reduction in quality of life. I’m sure that I missed some items.
Also, I maintain that transit and cycling infrastructure costs are actually subsidies to motorists since without transportation choices, driving in Metro Vancouver would be impossible.
levy = tax = fee.
Same thing.
With respect to the “untruth” that drivers get all the freebies… LOL! That’s hilarious! So sorry… YOU have that completely wrong. Drivers pay for it all – our inadequate road system, tolls, the transit systems you use (what are we up to now… three additional transit taxes on our gasoline), all these subsidies from the provincial and federal governments, etc. The driver pays for it all and you don’t even know where the money comes from! Shame on you! Why should we subsidize transit that only works for a very, very small percentage of the population and only over a very limited area? If transit is such a great thing, why don’t YOU pay for it.
Drivers are such ingrates! They’re hugely subsidized and yet still somehow have this idea that they’re paying for others.
They want 100% of the road space. Any tiny reduction, a fraction of a percent used for anything else but for them is referred to as a war.
They will never be happy. They don’t want to be happy.
I want to see how the roads are paid for to be part of drivers education and in the drivers test.
As your hostile comment proves – the “War on the Car” is real!
So wanting people to be aware of their subsidy is considered hostile and proof of a war?
Your reaction demonstrates my point.
Again… what ingrates.
@ freewaydriver
Do you have any research to back up your assertions that without road drivers society would collapse?
@ freewaydriver
Are you a sock puppet for a road lobbying consortium?
Saying we don’t need roads because it’s causing congestion is a bit like saying we don’t need gravity after you trip and scuff up you knee. Careful what you ask for. First principles: roads provide access in a way that is standardized and efficient. Access to get to land uses for residents, goods, and also the pickup of your garbage and recycling (because of course recycling the things you really didn’t need in the first place makes one sustainable. And unless each of us has their own personal land-fill, we need to centralize our waste if we don’t want to live with it).
Also most of the roads are paid by property tax, in that the majority of roads are local roads that function for direct access to land. Now if you argue that we should not build access roads to lands in the suburbs, I would suggest this is a zoning and land planning issue, not so much a sole transportation issue.
Some data on the lane-km of roads* by category (BC DRA dataset, 2015):
-Freeway: 3.5% (provincial, federal)
-Highway: 3.6% (provincial, municipal)
-Arterial: 8.0% (mostly municipal)
-Collector: 11.3% (municipal)
-Local Roads: 57.9% (municipal)
-Other: 15.8% (private, municipal)
[*This is for the Central Okanagan because it’s the most recent time I summarized this, however the shares are similar for most regions in BC. Although lane widths vary, lane-km provides a means of calculating road-surface equivalents without having the actual area (square metres). Note also most roads have additional area for parking and shoulders, but percentage-wise it may be a wash.]
The problem is because about 85% of all driving occur on collector or higher roads, so the vast majority of auto-kms occur on about a quarter of the full supply of the road system. Hence congestion. From a usage perspective (person-km of an area of roadspace over the lifecycle cost of that roadspace), you could argue local roads are much more subsidized than the roads that are the most used.
Just a few facts that can help clarify possible misconceptions.
Thanks you @Clark “you could argue local roads are much more subsidized than the roads that are the most used.”
As such one could argue highways are revenue generators and we should build MORE of them, and not less ?
Thomas, if the purpose of building roads is to generate revenue, that would seem to be the case. However, I would hope we build transport infrastructure for more principled reasons, but that’s probably a political and policy question. I’m not so much “pro-spend” as I am “pro-increase net value to society”. That requires a thorough social-benefit cost analysis where hopefully net benefits out weight the cost or “investment”.
As a parallel, you could argue the subsidy of roads by classification is the same as transit in that the “arterial and highway routes” (e.g. Broadway corridor) produce enough to not need a subsidy, whereas the local and feeder routes do. High-priced road infrastructure, like bridges, are similar to high priced transit infrastructure, like SkyTrain. Simple price-driven supply-demand economics. But not so simple in that although we can get costs correct (ok maybe they usually end up higher), the demand part is the most difficult because it entails understanding human psychology and trying to model this for a whole region of varying type of people over varying economic and affordability scenarios is very difficult. It can be a bit of a dice roll in the end. I just hope the dice are not loaded!
Living in the burbs and whining about traffic is like living in Nunavut and whining about the weather.
The number one way to reduce traffic is to make employers pay for commute time. They will quickly find replacements living much closer.
And we must stop referring to the movement of stuff as the movement of goods. Much of what is being moved around is rubbish – the worst being tobacco; the dumbest, water in plastic bottles.
Maybe we can’t dictate how the “free market” works, but we should at least have a say what goes into community centres. All those horrible corporate caca vending machines should be removed. They set a terrible example for impressionable minds. If patrons and staff were surveyed about these electricity-guzzling buzzing repositories of rubbish, they’d be binned.
It would take some vending trucks off the road. It’s a drop in the bucket that creates a ripple for a higher consciousness and healthier bodies. Every bit counts.
The free market would work a lot better if we didn’t distort it with heavily subsidized transportation. If everyone paid the real cost we’d have denser, mixed use neighbourhoods and a lot less rubbish. We’d be fitter. We’d have a lot more walking and cycling, more people taking transit and, I’d guess, less than half as many cars each driving half as far.
Oh yeah. We’d also have a lot more money in our pockets since we wouldn’t be giving it to the government to give it to those transportation options that they favour.
Other distortions. ZONING an Imbalance of jobs & housing in both the suburbs & city (1) CITY has too many jobs & not enough housing (2) SUBURBS have not enough jobs & too much housing . This is why we have rush hour traffic & transit problems
You forget CHOICE.
People like to chose how they live or how they spend THEIR money. They do not want government to tell them to live in highrises or 5 storey midrises if they can afford a house in Langley or a 1/2 duplex in Surrey. CHOICE IS THEIR RIGHT. As such they vote for politicians allowing them this choice. Not everyone buys into the “denser is better” lifestyle, even though it may be healthier and better for them.
Why not disallow alcohol like in the time of prohibition? We all know booze is not good for you. Why not count the number of bottles you buy and after 3 say “stop, that is your limit for the week” ?
Everytime you buy something you vote with your $s. We tax it, some more than others, and then use those $s to fund roads, transit, child care, hospitals, schools etc ..
Without roads (or dirty oil for that matter) modern society could not function.
In the city we have choice. CHOICE!
Walk, cycle, roller-blade, skateboard, transit, ferries, cars, shared cars….
Houses, condos, rental apartments,co-ops, cohousing, secondary suites, laneway houses…
Quiet neighbourhoods, busy neighbourhoods, funky neighbourhoods. old neighbourhoods, new neighbourhoods,
I keep hearing that out in the ‘burbs they have no choice. NO CHOICE!
Choice comes with density. The suburbs comes with huge oversized road projects that offer NO CHOICE.
That isn’t choice.
“Without roads”. There you go again, losing your arguments with absurdities.
I expect a big metroplex like MetroVan to provide housing choices from tiny to large, from rural to urban and from dense to spacious, and everything in between. Like schools or healthcare roads are paid for by taxes. Why do you think roads, benefitting all, should not be paid for by taxes ( or subsidized as you call it) whereas schools and hospitals should be ? Some folks have a healthier life style and thus should pay less for healthcare than over weight, smoking non-walkers, for example. What is the principle difference between a common good called roads vs another common good called schools or hospitals ?
“Why do you think roads, benefitting all, should not be paid for by taxes ( or subsidized as you call it) whereas schools and hospitals should be?”
Because they don’t benefit all equally, that is a fallacy. Because we can’t build unlimited roads, so we need to make decisions on how much capacity to build. Because all road use doesn’t have the same value to society. Because congestion is an inefficient way of rationing a scarce resource. We know how to fix the problem, we are just struggling with a lack of political will. Change is hard. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.
“Because congestion is an inefficient way of rationing a scarce resource.”
What does this mean? Rationing what? How does rationing relate to congestion?
What do you mean, “We know how to fix the problem”? Who is we and what is the problem?
I guess years of discussion on this list have all gone flying way over your head, Eric
Hospitals or schools, like roads or seaside sea walls, are also not used by all or to the same degree.
Why do you single out roads ?
By your logic, should we also charge for every hospital visit, pupil or entry to the sea wall ? Why single out roads ?
Hey Ron; if you know what “scarce resource” Jeff thinks is being rationed then please chirp up.
$
“What does this mean? Rationing what? How does rationing relate to congestion?”
If you are confused, you could go back up to the top and read the subject of the post again. It is in the title. You have previously objected to rationing of this particular commodity via congestion, so you appear to agree that is an inefficient method. You called it a “choke” IIRC.
“What do you mean, “We know how to fix the problem”? Who is we and what is the problem?”
Again, for the problem, read the title of the post again. If you are posting in this thread, it is a good idea to know the subject first. “We” is society. Unlike some posters’ references, this isn’t the royal we. If you don’t know the answer as to how to fix the problem, there are courses available.
This is not slow-growth low in-migration Europe. Europe evolved from a society with cities built around walkers ( and horses ). They had rail before they had roads and freeways. Canada was essentially empty when they built the first subway in Europe, in London in the 1860’s,due to congestion.
We cannot have 300,000+ immigrants per year, who come and pay essentially nothing when they arrive, and then pretend the existing infrastructure is sufficient. We need more infrastructure, be it schools, doctors, hospitals, subways or roads. This debate is missing on pricetags or in political circles. Also see newest teachers settlement in BC, constitutional legal challenge against CanadaHealth Act and ” modest ” deficit creation by provinces and feds alike.
Deleted as per editorial policy. Please read policy.
You still won’t say what you imagine will fix the problem. Yet, you want to build more bike lanes. Is there congestion of bikes somewhere? Probably not but you dismiss the question of the safety of vehicles that have to cross the Fraser River.
Thomas may be right — there is CHOICE!
People choose to drive. But they don’t choose to end up in hospital from a car accident. The human attrition from car accidents alone is said to be like hosting a small war every year.
But of course, freedom to drive is too important to pay any attention to these little things.
CHOICE Live where you want but don’t expect others to pay for YOUR choice .My choice would be to live on Point Grey road if only i can get you to pay.
LOL – me too!
To be fair, let’s not forget the fact that living in a city you are living on a plot of land where trees, vegetation and animals once thrived. A place once tended with care by aboriginals we now push into communities based on similar concepts of density.
Look at it another way: turning on your taps and flushing your toilets isn’t magic. There are thousands of kilometers of pipes and sewers that travel under roads, and due to roots finding their way through them, trees have to be removed for your biological convenience. Until we invent teleportation-based toilets and taps, we’re stuck with pipes and access roads (sewer and water engineers see roads as the cover and doorway to their infrastructure). So remember, every time you turn on your taps (because you shouldn’t drink from bottles of course), or when you flush it down when it’s brown, you are an accessory to the murder of trees and displacement of wildlife.
You (as in we all) created and maintain the urban demand that destroyed what was “natural”. Our definition of livability and sustainability is pathetically based on a very concrete reality and is so far removed from the once ecological paradise we have displaced. But we justify ourselves through density and the fact that we can walk to buy goods shipped from around the world. Consider the viewpoint of humans as parasites on this earth, and recall the pictures of how vegetation takes over fairly quickly once “humans are extinct”. We are a mere temporary rash on this earth. From that perspective, all your arguing sounds very petty. You are a hypocrite if you make use of any of our modern civil technology and declare your fellow citizen driving by in a car as a sustainability sinner, while you walk down the paved sidewalk in shoes made somewhere in Asia and browse this blog site on your phone with minerals mined from the killing fields of Congo. Watch where you swing that “log in your eye”.
Did you know: taking one round trip to an international destination can equal all the CO2-eqivalent of an average car driven all year? If you took a trip to Asia, you basically drove a car for a whole year in a matter of hours.
Now i’m not suggesting all road building is justified, as some decisions are horrid from my perspective. But please check your righteousness at the door. And consider carefully your subsidy arguments as it is a much complex web than you may think. Try doing the math based on disaggregated demographics and econometric model of all financial relationships in society (not to mention adjusting for things like tax credits), not just aggregate estimates based on ass-umptions with even wider variances.
I think you will find the problem is not individual choice, but leadership. We need less arguing and more voting.
You’re right of course. But just because we struggle to figure out how to get to sustainability doesn’t mean we should make excuses against those things that are more easily changed today. Some effort is required. If society offers no choice it is hard to lay blame. But “leadership” usually comes from individual choice. Choose wisely (products and services, lifestyles, as well as politicians) and we’ll get better leadership.
I believe true sustainability is possible. (Perhaps not with 8B people on the planet. but long term forecasts suggest we’ll peak and decline in half a century or so.) Indeed, if it’s not possible, by definition, we are doomed by our own hand. But you don’t get to that place by waiting for it come to you.
Don’t get me wrong my view of our collective definition of sustainability. I think this is one of humanities greatest accomplishments: to not destroy this one and only spaceship we are traveling in. I say it’s pathetic given our response to the seriousness of the matter. But we do need it as the spark of inspiration and as a young engineer working at the GVRD, I had the LRSP’s vision statement on my office wall to remind me of what I’m working for because I needed more than a pay cheque to inspire me and this did it (and still does today):
“Greater Vancouver can become the first urban region in the world to
combine in one place the things to which humanity aspires on a global basis:
a place where human activities enhance rather than degrade the natural
environment, where the quality of the built environment approaches that of
the natural setting, where the diversity of origins and religions is a source of
social strength rather than strife, where people control the destiny of their
community, and where the basics of food, clothing, shelter, security and
useful activity are accessible to all.” —Source: ”Creating Our Future“
(Can we require every decision maker to read this before committing to any more projects?)
I like to think we are all leaders, regardless of what “level” we are at. Back then I considered my responsibilities and choices in processing travel data and models had a direct impact to our region’s sustainability. It may be considered the sewer and pipes of regional planning, but I saw data as the ingredients to leadership. One’s leadership is comprised of one’s actions/choices and our aggregate choices make up what we see out there. We do not always make optimal choices and there are days where I’ll drink enough water, and others where i’ll drink too much beer (and there are always studies that back up the benefits of both beverages). I think to limit people’s choices and freedoms is dangerous and should only be limited as per laws allow. And when we act in hypocrisy, a bit of forgiveness helps to put us back on track. The problem is when one group thinks the other group’s choices are infringing on their freedoms. It’s then when we can push for changes to the governing laws, a core benefit of our democracy. However we sometimes over-shoot good intentions and distort choices through subsidies and incentives. It’s here our leaders need to contemplate the consequences (and learn from the unintended consequences) of their decisions.
I think we all agree every dollar spent should be done with the utmost respect and due accountability to those that trust our leaders with it–those people being the citizens and taxpayers. It’s when we see a blatant lack of regard for public money, and when civil servants start to think themselves as entitled rulers, I get a little pissed. And no, i haven’t even begun drinking.
Pre road people settled everywhere across the landscape, on rivers and along the coastlines of the continents and on the islands of the oceans. Humans are by nature everywhere and in constant motion in their environment creating trails, paths, roads and machines for land, water, air, and space transport. Humans will by nature take up residence in the most beautiful spot that they can find be it a vineyard, a treehouse, a high rise penthouse, or a mountain top and they will in the process create a suitable means of getting there; a trail, a sidewalk, an elevator.
In this region we don’t really do much new road building today in the sense of destroying a virgin landscape. Today our interventions are all about upgrades and improvements in capacity and flow. Yes, we continue to build subdivisions with roads but that is a kind of transportation grid infill process the outer boundaries of which in our region are controlled by things like the ALR, protected water sheds, flood plains and coast lines.
Given that it is in our nature to go where ever we like and live where ever we want it seems to me that the effort ought to be on clean transportation solutions and not on trying to confine as many as possible to the highest densities possible, as if it is appropriate for all of us to move into a new tower of Babel.
Indeed. And I might add, keep in mind we invite more and more folks to come here and many gladly accept, so we need more housing and access means, eg roads, bridges, tunnels, trails, subways, LRTs or elevators.
I begin to see this kind of statement as a common thread among those who fear change: ” and not on trying to confine as many as possible to the highest densities possible, as if it is appropriate for all of us to move into a new tower of Babel.”
Thomas is, of course, the master of conjuring absurd extremes to try to create meaning to his sometimes childish arguments. Where, “let’s evaluate alternatives and ensure we’re making the right decision before we rush to build bigger wider roads” becomes “without roads there would be no civilization…”.
Nobody has ever said that we should “…’confine’ as many people as possible to the highest densities possible”. It is absurd that you should make the statement as if someone did. Nobody is recommending that we tear up our road infrastructure.
If you were paying attention instead of just reacting you’d notice that there is much talk about the benefits that come with mixed use density. These allow those who want to live in walkable neighbourhoods to have more choice. There is no shortage of people buying into the new mixed use town centres sprouting like mushrooms around the region.
If you understood what was being discussed instead of just reacting you’d learn that endless road building is not solving the problem of traffic congestion.
If you were reading carefully instead of just reacting you’d see that some of us are merely asking that those who impose such high costs on society (road/bridges/tunnels, time wasted in congestion, road carnage, pollution of all kinds) begin to pay their way.
Do we need to subsidize roads for purely social purposes – emergency services and general mobility? Of course we should. But I would argue we don’t even need to subsidize our roads for goods movement. It would add to the cost of goods the same amount that would be reduced from the tax load.
But we certainly do not need to subsidize the huge bulk of our road costs that merely encourages motorists to use them at a discount, commuting farther and farther distances while inhibiting their imagination to seek alternatives – including living closer to where you work, shop and play.
Bridge and highway building doesn’t increase traffic. Population growth does.
Mr. & Mrs. Suburban don’t rush out to buy another vehicle just because Christy decides to build a new bridge, that’s an extremely simplistic and naïve way of looking at the issue.
You confuse cause and effect. Mrs. Suburban moved here and then bought a vehicle, THEN the (new) bridge got built. Not the other way around.
More people = more infrastructure requirements. Ditto for schools, hospitals etc. …
btw, my question I posted a while ago why some bloggers here think we need road / per km fees (in addition to existing taxes paid) but not hospital visit fees or school fees remains unanswered. All 3 are public goods are they not, used more by some than others ? Why charge some per use but not others ?
Your question was answered above. Maybe you just didn’t like the answer. You responded, and three people downvoted your response, so it seems they understood the point.
Or were part of the predictable echo chamber.
Both Bob and Thomas ignore that people DO move farther away when it is made easier for them to do so. Especially if their roads are subsidized and all the degradation externalized. Suddenly those urban dwellers that have been sold on the need for a house need a car. They will soon find that they need two cars.
Then they will find that they drive more than they ever could have anticipated because life in the ‘burbs isn’t efficient and evolved like in the city where most things are close to most other things. Nope, Johnny’s piano lessons are a 20 minute drive west but Sally’s soccer practice is 30 minutes south east. Their commutes are about an hour each way (on a good day). The kids’ school is ten minutes north – but when they go to high school it’s 25 minutes south. For two years the kids are attending different schools and Johnny Sr. goes to work too early so Brenda has almost an hour of driving them around before she even starts off to work. (Then there’s the dentists, the doctors and all their friends now scattered across the region. I’m getting dizzy.
(You will note that most of this takes place on the entirely subsidized municipal road network.)
All this could be done on foot in the city. Maybe bike or transit for some trips. Occasionally they might take out a shared car.
Build a bigger, wider bridge and more people will fall into the suburban trap. And it is a trap. There are ginormous industries built on it. Those industries buy governments who feed the vicious cycle. It is a trap that is so powerful that the people who are actually trapped write in blogs about how great it is. (Humans are amazing at adapting to the most horrible conditions.)
Watching from a safe distance I do pity those whose butts are trapped in the seat of their car.
I think your perspective arises from the fact your “horrendous” commuter experience had you going from the city out to the Valley. Therefore your perception is coloured with the attitude of “those poor suburbanites don’t know what joys of urban living they’re missing”. Had you done the more traditional commute from the suburbs into the city you probably would have realized most suburbanites are perfectly aware of what it’s like to live in the city, and have little interest in doing so. I find that attitude common with those who live in an urban bubble, they just cannot comprehend that most people prefer space and a yard.
Wrong again.
I’ve never done a reverse commute but I have lived in the suburbs for several years and commuted into various parts of the city – both by car and transit.
I couldn’t imagine a situation where I’d put myself through that misery again.
You might like space and a yard and hate vibrancy and variety. You pay an enormous price for it. And I pay part of your price too.
People ought to have a choice. You describe what works for you. Others prefer a house and a yard. Don’t be so condescending on people who chose different priorities in life.
Roads are not subsidized. They are paid for by property taxes or provincial taxes on CO2 or gasoline.
Not everyone likes a European or Asian style dense city. Some move to Canada to have some space.
Choices matter.
You chose to live in the city and that is fine, while others chose to live in a house in the burbs which is fine, too !
It’s fine as long as you delude yourself that roads are not subsidized. Your delusion is great: you even admit they are subsidized while claiming they are not.
Property taxes pay for roads whether you use them or not. This leads to far too many people taking the gift and abusing it.
(Please do not go on about goods movement and bicycles using roads. It is a minute fraction of the demand and wear and tear of SOVs. Same goes for emergency and other public services.)
Carbon taxes have nothing to do with road funding no matter how many times you repeat it. But you do like your delusions. Aren’t you embarrassed? No, I guess that’s the thing about delusions.
If people paid the true cost, there’d be a lot fewer people living in suburban environments. But at least then they could make that choice without burdening others. Then they would have real choice.
Actually roads can handle the light weight of automobiles fairly well. Heavy trucks are the reasons for excessive wear, which is why there is an industry regulating overweight trucks. But yes, they take up less road space given their relative sparse volumes. The electric bike is probably one of the most efficient forms of travel form both a health (less huffing and puffing in all that exhaust), food-chain (less energy needed, less food needed) and emissions perspective. Too bad NYC doesn’t get this.
And for those who choose to live close to work, they are doing society a service regardless of mode they take to work due to the less demand and impact to congestion they impart. But this is not limited to those that live downtown. Many people in Langley live close to work. Also going back to the early 1990’s we saw patterns of suburban-to-suburban travel increasing, and in 2004 results of a screenline survey we saw the increase in residential units in downtown correlated to an increase in reverse commutes from the CBD to all suburbs. So living in dense locations does not always make one sustainable from a commuting perspective.
The reason for this is because in the past while people worked at one place their whole lives, in this new tech-driven world, people change jobs often. I have friends who consider 2 years being a lifer at a job and change very frequently, having worked in almost every municipality because unlike industrial workplaces, which require specific zoning, tech jobs can be located anywhere. And guess what the fastest growing industry currently is.
So the challenge is beyond transportation and you will see more and more how technology is not only changing transportation, but our whole lives from what we do at work (and where we work), but also what we do when we go home. (I’ll give you a hint, it has to do with screens…and eventually AR glasses and contacts).
Ron, how much what you enjoy as a city dweller is subsidized by those in the suburbs? the restaurants that couldn’t survive without traffic coming in for games at BC Place or Rogers Arena? The shopping choices that depend on office workers in addition to locals? Even areas like Main Street depend on customers from other areas. That doesn’t even cover the businesses that wouldn’t exist without relying on workers that cannot afford Vancouver’s ridiculous rents or home prices. Read today’s Globe & Mail about how many office and service workers are effectively priced out of Vancouver:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/rising-housing-costs-may-price-many-out-of-vancouver-report/article34468225/?reqid=7ce9ce92-d862-4f58-b35b-d74de7a54141
“…how much what you enjoy as a city dweller is subsidized by those in the suburbs? the restaurants that couldn’t survive without traffic coming in for games at BC Place or Rogers Arena? The shopping choices that depend on office workers in addition to locals? Even areas like Main Street depend on customers from other areas”
Something similar was claimed by the Commercial Drive Business Society, who stated that they needed on street parking on the Drive because they were primarily a destination zone for shoppers from the suburbs.
Then the City did an intercept study and found out that of shoppers on Commercial Drive, 82% were from Vancouver.
Bet you Main St has an even higher number than that.
Bob, do you mean patronized?
I don’t see anybody subsidizing shops and restaurants. But I do see motorists from the suburbs driving on Vancouver roads and parking (often) for free at Vancouver curbs.
I’d guess that very few, if any, of the paces I go would notice if those suburbanites showed up or not.
What surprises me is the number of young people, most nights of the week, enjoying cafes, restaurants and bars in Gastown or on Main. I thought they’d all been “driven” out of the city. Maybe it just takes the option of not owning a car to make the city a great, yet affordable, place to be.
@Ron So your advocating for school fees, no public healthcare and no OAS either ? If roads are allegedly subsidized ( but are not actually due to the enormous taxes collected off automobiles incl CO2 taxes ) and as such you advocate for higher per km or per l gasoline taxes I presume, then by the same token why not call schools, healthcare or old age security subsidized too ? Some use it more than others, and some benefit little, if any, yet pay a lot. Why is that fair, yet roads are singled out ? Why not charge per doctor visit or per hospital visit and force all, or offer all an option, to get healthcare insurance if they want ?
Isn’t that why we pay taxes so I get free road use, and you get free healthcare, free bike paths and free seawall around Stanley Park ? Or shall we collect $5 from every jogger or biker in Stanley Park, too ?
Btw: before they had cars in London or Paris or Berlin or Madrid or the hundreds of European cities around a few hundred years, they had urban roads with the same rough dimensions as today to accommodate horse, carriage and pedestrian traffic.
Thomas, why do you take everything to such extremes?
Roads provide a common good. When they are oversubscribed to the point that we have to keep making them wider, so that some individuals can save on other household costs, then it may be time to consider a better way of allocating road space, and deciding at the same time how much more road space we need or want. We don’t have sufficient land to build unlimited roads, let alone government capacity for debt to do so.
All of your examples have built in limits, rightly or wrongly.
Education is free K-12, but not post secondary.
We provide public health care, but not free on demand cosmetic surgery.
We provide OAS, but only to an income cap.
We could pave all of Stanley Park to provide more paths, but I don’t see that getting much support.
We need to make choices as a society, to prioritize. This argument seems to be about some recognizing that simple fact, and some not.
@Jeff: correct. And looking at Lionsgate bridge, as one failed example of far too many in the region, it was built in the 1930s .. 80+ years ago for a population probably not even 1/10th the population on the north shore today. Isn’t it time to upgrade that aging bridge, for example ? To me that bridge deserves a higher priority than say Massey Bridge, and a UBC subway is also higher on that list, with now UEL’s Block F and soon, Jericho land going ahead with massive redevelopments.
We bring in more and more people into the Lower Mainland (or GTA for that matter) and then wonder, oops, we have traffic jams AND crowded subways or buses on jammed roads with no priority signalling for buses carrying 120+ people each. It is indeed about priorities, and to me we allocate far too big a slice of the limited government $s to salaries and cushy benefits of too many civil servants, and not enough to roads, bridges or subways ! With a modest cut of 20% to bring civil servants salaries to private sector norms we’d have all the money we needed in the region to build new subways, bike paths, road widening and bridges !
Where is this prioritization discussed ?
If we tolled bridge or roads more, many (incl me) would actually applaud that as we’d get better throughput and less road traffic. But I have a hard time paying for even higher BC Ferries fares when the toll booth operator or cafeteria worker makes $60,000+ a year for a low level job that would pay $40,000 in the private sector. Many of these jobs are 50% overpaid .. and many only 20-25% ! That’s where we ought to start.
@ Bob
As a Vancouverite I’d cheer long and hard to see the stadium and arena moved to the burbs. We’ve already hosted two Stanley Cup riots perpetrated mostly by suburban youth at great cost to the city. They can also take the so-called “entertainment” strip filled with drunken suburban youth every weekend and give our police and paramedics a break.
Vancouver hosts so many regional events and houses practically all the regional facilities that it has been taken for granted for decades. When Vancouver complains about the costs of local public services associated with regional amenities or even cleaning up after events like the fireworks or the smoke-in, it’s unfairly labeled a “no fun” city.
It’s time the suburbs started to host their own drunken entertainment and worry about the traffic and public costs of housing regional amenities, or at least pay for the impact their residents lay on the city.
@ Thomas
You’re all over the map — again. When one point is countered, you pull several more out of your grab bag and dump them on the table to cloud the response to first one. This sleigh-of-hand is tiresome, and it may be best for you to start your own blog with like-minded libertarians disseminating unfounded conjecture.
One question: How many injured or dead people do emergency room doctors and nurses see in an average week due to road accidents?
The answer to that question would cancel out at least two of your misleading comments above.
Ron, you comment “I’d guess that very few, if any, of the paces I go would notice if those suburbanites showed up or not.” really says it all. The condescension is almost palpable. Ditto with Alex’s wish that suburbanites and their pesky love of sporting events etc. would just disappear.
It’s perfectly easy to see why you are both in sync with Vision’s turning Vancouver into a resort for the wealthy, with a little space for bike riding for those boomers and Gen Xers lucky enough to have got on the property ladder in time.
If we build a new bridge or widen a freeway without improving transit or cycling, then more people will be encouraged to live farther away and use a car for transportation. This will soon create even more congestion. If, however, we build rail and improve transit, then people will be encouraged to use transit. It is our choice. Unfortunately, the 1960’s vision of motordom still rules in BC while even the motordom capitals of North America (LA and Atlanta) are finally realizing the error of their ways.