It should be clear by now.
March 28:
Another piece of the plan. Just consider all the commitments – built, proposed and planned – in the last decade: Sea-to-Sky widening, Port Mann Bridge and Highway 1 widening, Upper Levels interchanges, South Fraser Perimeter Road, a widened Highway 17, an overnight announcement of a new Massey Bridge and a widened Highway 99, planning for a Sunshine Coast Connector – more widenings, more bridges, more roads, announced and otherwise. And a begrudging acknowledgement of transit, so long as the region pays more.
It should be clear by now: The provincial government intends to reverse the regional visioning and intentions that go back half a century for a transit-oriented compact metropolitan area, and return to a Gaglardi-era strategy of shaping growth around highways. Metro = Motordom.
It won’t work, it never does, as Sandy’s piece on the Braess Paradox below explains. But all you need to do is look around.
Here are the traffic conditions on Highway 1 as I write this:
Several billion dollars after the new Port Mann Bridge and Highway 1 widening, and we’re back where we started – only with more vehicles and less possibility of solutions.
The least that local leaders and media need to do is to acknowledge what it is in fact happening, and push the Province to articulate its vision for this region. Does it intend to turn the Fraser Valley, from the Strait to Hope, with tentacles up to Powell River, Squamish and beyond, into a vast exurban manifestation of Motordom? Because it’s happening by default.
We now see Google traffic maps the way we see angiograms on medical shows:
OMG look at those arteries! Conventional road design hangs on desperately to the artery analogy, and the failure in that analogy is that there is only one circulatory system. If an artery clogs you ream it out or put in a stent; if a road clogs you put in a new lane or a new bridge. The analogy copes with growth outwards where density decreases but it doesn’t cope with growth inwards where density increases and where trips in from the outer suburbs increase. Every major city experiences this and the only answer that works is to have a second viable circulatory system, and that’s rapid transit.
The cost of the Port Mann (and its two connected freeways), Massey and the Sunshine Coast Highway together will approach $20 billion. The return on the investment will be subsidized, inefficient highway-dependent sprawl crawling up the mountainsides. Annual operating, depreciation and replacement costs will be on top of that with no planned cost recovery mechanism other than local taxes.
We can only hope that an economist will add to the criticism that this is not a viable way to plan the future, especially one where climate change, fossil fuel price volatility and provincial debt will mess with everything.
Compact urbanism and frequent transit networks powered by clean electricity form the only viable path forward to arrive relatively intact at the end of the century. Otherwise, the massive crumbling auto-centric infrastructure would look great as a backdrop in Bladerunner II.
That all sounds a bit dramatic. PMH1 was about $3B. What do you consider to be the second freeway? The NFPR which isn’t actually connected?
$20B isn’t actually all that much money in terms of our economy size. The port has annual GDP of well over that, and handles a couple hundred billion in goods annually. Seattle for instance just passed something like $54B in transit spending, which if they’re lucky will bring them up to a level of service that Metro Van currently enjoys…
I’m not saying we shouldn’t be spending $10-20B on transit around here, but dropped a few billion on roads and bridges isn’t the end of the world that this blog seems to think it is.
I’d say housing costs are a far larger concern for the city than provincial spending and debts, but hey this blog is mostly edited by people who are more secure in their personal finances and housing situation that the median.
Author
It’s not about the roads. It’s about how we shape growth. Transportation is always in the end about land use – and in the absence of a serious commitment to transit, it’s clear that the Province intends to shape growth a la Motordom.
I wouldn’t give them that much credit. They province has two words to live by currently, economic growth and votes. I don’t think they’re really doing much shaping.
Unfortunately, provincial decisions on roads DO shape growth, but in forms that are not sustainable at their chosen Dubai-like scale.
Transportation and the preservation of the ALR, as well as zoning is how we, in this region, shape growth.
My understanding is that honchos at Metro do not really want growth to occur along the North Shore or South of the Fraser, so they do not push for rail or road improvements in these regions.
The growth occurs in those regions nevertheless, so it is incumbent of the province to build roadways and associated infrastructure, like bridges, to accompany this growth.
As stated recently on another PT post, with 11% of the population of the Burrard peninsula, the growth really hasn’t occurred much on the North Shore. In a more equitable world they would negotiate accepting more growth for more transit assets.
It’s the comparison to transit spending that’s especially galling. If 1/3 of that sum was invested in transit in the Metro it would realize a huge return in development ongoing for decades with all the economic multipliers, and a 41%-50% operating cost recovery (depending on the source). Greater transit density also allows people to give up on a car, or a bit further out, on the second or even third car, and plug a substantial hole that drains family expenses.
This blog has been extraordinarily good at addressing housing affordability. and you should give it credit. Freeway-oriented subdivisions filled with detached homes may give the illusion of affordability until, of course, you run into the ALR and the sea. Some suburbs, to their credit are building townhouses and low rises, but these are in a great vacuum of transit, so the added expense of car ownership and the consumption of valuable personal time spent commuting does tend to make the suburbs less attractive.
This blog has promoted rentals (including a new build out of public rentals with controlled rates), and probably a half dozen alternatives to towers and detached homes on expensive open lots in the Metro. All of them are hundreds of thousands cheaper than a detached home consuming so much land in RS zones. All of these initiatives, based on decades of evidence, would promote mixed use walkable neighbourhoods. If a fee simple rowhouse has a suite, then you’ll attack the affordability problem from both ends by dramatically reducing the waste of expensive land, and increasing the supply of attached housing while increasing family income. Moreover, with more families entering the housing market in Vancouver you’d fill up the schools again and promote expanding the transit service.
I’m not sure where you’ve been when these on-line discussions took place.
The blog has somewhat addressed this but I’d consider the high housing prices to be the biggest failure of Vancouverism, undermining all the livability gains made and then some. If you’re under 50, and were unable to capitalize on housing price gains. Some people may disagree with me, but I put a pretty high value on personal financial security, and I know a lot of people that are financially stressed despite being middle income earners.
Unless you’re especially well off, there isn’t any financial security to be had in the Metro Vancouver for a lot of people. Today’s young people not investing in their own retirements, aren’t saving, are living month to month, and are going to be tomorrows poor, fixed-income seniors requiring subsidy. BC has a negative net savings rate for a reason, and it’s not because our economy is growing faster than the rest of the country.
Why here?
Well, like it or not, this blog has been one of the flag bearers for Vancouverism for quite a while. Even without the cost of cars, Vancouverism has pretty much screwed young people for the last decade. The cost savings of being able to rely primarily on rapid transit don’t go very far in this city.
The principals behind putting a hard boundary on sprawl are great, but I think in actuality it’s screwing a lot of people with greatly inflated land costs. You might see success, but I see a failing policy.
A huge return in development for developers Alex.
Plus ça change…
https://vanalogue.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/realestate-office.jpg
I believe you are wrong at least in part. Vancouverism has been mostly about densifying the downtown with towers on a podium of townhouses, protecting view corridors and reinforcing waterfronts as a public amenity (seawalls, parks). Where the affordability question seems to focus most is on the detached home on an open lot which has escalated in value very dramatically and can no longer be used legitimately as the ideal to aspire to. Apartments have not risen at the same pace or rate, and I believe an adequate supply plays a part in that.
Land planning supply geometry in RS zones is one of the few elements left that has NOT been tinkered with yet while addressing affordability, and that’s because the politicians are afraid of the backlash of more intense infill. That is the only element left after greenfield land is gone (pretty well there now), and foreign ownership / speculation is drubbed down (the effect so far has been quite ineffective).
The value of land in Vancouver is genuine. It has survived a world wide meltdown. Using less of it per household will not bring it down in raw unit value, but families will pay hundreds of thousands less than the now obsolete large lot. Beyond that the only remaining things that will bring the values down is a worldwide deflationary spiral or a giant earthquake.
@ Bob. Subdivisions built solely on freeway access are not built by developers? Subdivisions vs. more compact urban housing with greater transport choice is where the discussion is.
Regarding the densification part, it hasn’t been all that dense generally. They’re point towers with small floor plates. The view cones also keep most of them pretty short on the most valuable land in the City of Van. By census tract, the area around Joyce Skytrain Station is the densest part of Metro Vancouver, which is pretty odd considering the mediocre desirability of the area.
Larger floor plate buildings that are taller are generally cheaper per built sq. ft. than smaller ones to build since the land cost is diluted further. They also have much overhead space per sq. ft. of usable space. If you look at Burnaby, many of the towers coming up have much larger floor plates than those in the City of Vancouver.
Driving down the utility of a single plot of land by nerfing the size of structure you can put on it also has the side effect of increasing the demand for land plots. That drives land prices up.
Most of the characteristics we classify as Vancouverism aren’t cheap built forms.
Compact urbanism excludes all of the land uses that are required to support the construction and operation of compact urbanism, uses which are widely dispersed across the landscape and connected by roads that support all sorts of motorized traffic. Compact urbanism is not a solution for everywhere.
I wonder why the mayors of Metro and TransLink (the same people) never suggest a rail link to the North Shore.
Mussatto suggested it less than a month ago. Amusingly not long after I was discussing this with a friend of mine running to be an NDP MLA on the North Shore.
The North Shore has less population and less population growth than other areas in Metro Vancouver. I think many North Shore residents love the idea of a train to the North Shore, there’s a letter in the local paper from time to time, but transit need is objectively higher in other areas like Vancouver and Surrey.
If there was more money for transit a train from Burnaby across Second Narrows might make sense, thereby linking the North Shore with Burnaby, New Westminster, Surrey in addition to Vancouver.
The people on the North Shore complain about the bridges and lack of alternatives all the time, but their communities would be radically transformed if they were suddenly well connected instead of semi-isolated like they are today. Complaining about long lineups for the bridges would switch to protests against massive up-zoning. And it would all fall on deaf ears as the big money developers rushed in to get their pieces of the pie.
There are already lots of complaints about upzoning. They’re generally related to traffic.
West Vancouver has pretty much frozen development despite having a net reduction in population in the last census period. The big driver is waiting for their new OCP to be finished and to deal with traffic problems. How daft is that?
True. Train? Yes. More housing and people? No.
The imaginary scenario is to walk 10min from your house near the forest to a SkyTrain station.
Interesting column a while ago about the North Shore as a wilderburb (which will also be a theme in the new North Vancouver museum).
http://www.nsnews.com/opinion/columnists/sullivan-welcome-to-this-great-untamed-wilderburb-1.6400176
The highway also connects the Lower Mainland with the rest of BC and Canada. Unless a high speed passenger train is suddenly built in BC, I support the highway widening to accommodate the growing population in BC. The existing highway doesn’t cope very well anymore with weekend and summer travel. Of course there should be road tolling before any highway expansions.
You can accomplish a lot with slightly less high-speed commuter rail on existing rail rights-of-way. If the railway companies will not allow commuter rail, or greatly limit it on their tracks by prioritizing freight, then many areas in existing r/w can be double or triple-tracked to provide separation. However, drilling through mountain ranges where there isn’t room (e.g. steep mountain slopes) would be very expensive. Maybe it’s worth it through long-term debt financing to consider this on an incremental basis. After all, the price at the pump isn’t going to stay low forever.
The cost of electricity will stay stable for a long time though. The cost of gas is a dying boogeyman at best.
The Saudi Oil minister said that stone age didn’t end due to lack of stones. The oil age is rapidly ending already, and the cost of moving things around is going to fall due to oil replacement and automation.
Also see Tessa’s @ $100,000. Hardly cheap.
Oil demand peak world wide expected after 2040. https://www.wsj.com/articles/iea-seespeak-oil-demand-after-2040-1479283354 Hardly ” .. rapidly ending .. ”
Where’s the BC green ferry to appease all those green islanders .. at likely triple the crossing costs ?
Where are all those green small electric urban cars ? Surely green and expensive Vancouver could afford those ? With 100M new vehicles purchased annually and far less than 1M electric today I do not see this rapid adoption either.
The ” rapidly ending ” oil dependency is fake news, my friend !
Among only 4.5M people in BC the pool of visionary yet tough leaders who can combine fiscal discipline ( especially wage & benefit constraints in a $5B+ annual municipal budgets) with smart urban growth is quite shallow.
A region with high in-migration needs both road expansion, more subways, walkable communities, bike lanes and fiscal restraint. That combination is critical and seems to not exist among the various levels of governments. The money is there but we overpay for other services and as such not enough money is available for proper investments.
As long as overpaying for low risk public sector jobs is not addressed in the same context as more request for transit funding there is no solution. One $ can be only spent once.
More recognition of this simple math is required on all sides.
Simple math? That dollar will be spent by all wage earners, private and public, and will multiply when goods and services are acquired. Lowering wages in any sector will draw money OUT of the economy. Fewer bags of groceries bought, fewer mortgages sought, fewer houses built, and lower labour and safety standards all around.
Why the focus only on unionized public labour with NEGOTIATED contracts? Why not on outrageous private corporate management remuneration, which invariably gets passed on to consumers?
Your published biases need to be countered. But it is very off-topic.