Several examples here at CityLab, and an analysis of the disaster that never seems to happen. As with Vancouver’s Burrard Bridge bike lane in early 2009, the doomsday howling about Carmageddon and chaos arrives like clockwork whenever motordom’s asphalt is threatened.
But life goes on, it seems. The dire prophecies are rarely true, and the pundits rarely pilloried for their false prophecies.
Joe Cortright in CityLab looks at Atlanta, where part of I85 (a major freeway) caught fire. Yes, the usual noise filled the airwaves, but Carmageddon and its attendant chaos did not arrive.
So what’s going on here? Arguably, our mental model of traffic is just wrong. We tend to think of traffic volumes, and trip-making generally as inexorable forces of nature. The diurnal flow of 250,000 vehicles a day on an urban freeway like I-85 is just as regular and predictable as the tides. What this misses is that there’s a deep behavioral basis to travel. Human beings will shift their behavior in response to changing circumstances. If road capacity is impaired, many people can decide not to travel, change when they travel, change where they travel, or even change their mode of travel. The fact that Carmageddon almost never comes is powerful evidence of induced demand: people travel on roadways because the capacity is available for their trips, and when the capacity goes away, so does much of the trip making.
I wonder — is there a real Carmageddon? As illustrated below, is it the endless expansion of asphalt-covered land to the benefit of motordom, and to the exclusion of every other mode of transportation?
“fewer-of-tomorrows-freeways-will-be-free.jpg”
Thomas. Eric. Check out that photo!
Salivating?
Jealous?
Don’t miss the point of the post.
Is this where Thomas gives a lecture about “choice” and “we need more of everything”?
It takes about 2 seconds to see a fake. If you look hard enough.
Yes. More fake news.
Here’s the real shot; just hover your mouse over the first picture if you haven’t the time to read the article.
http://www.bricoleurbanism.org/whimsicality/when-photoshop-is-so-good-its-bad/
If you’re using Chrome you can also right-click on the image and see the 25 million results for this Fake Image.
Not the point Eric. This is what you’re aiming for. Not the end result, of course, because when it’s full you’ll need to widen it. Just one more stepping stone on the highway to solve all congestion.
If this is absurd, what is not absurd about the Massey Bridge proposal?
Quite right Ron. The very last thing we want is the truth and actual facts.
Fake News is fine if it sends the right message, eh?
I did ask you not to miss the point of the post but you’ve managed to do that in typical deflective fashion.
If you support replacing the 4 lane tunnel with a 10 lane bridge then we’re on an exact trajectory to replace that with a 25 lane crossing at the end of this century. Should look a lot like that original image.
That is not fake news. That is pointing out the fallacy of building your way out of congestion.
Maybe one day you’ll get it. I’m not holding my breath.
Look at the map Ron. Until Metro and TransLink come up with a plan to run a rail line across that section of the river, to Tsawwassen, North and South Delta, Panorama Ridge, South Surrey, Grandview Heights and White Rock, then the bridge must be built. Running a rail line through New West, North Surrey and Langley is not going anywhere near those areas and is therefore irrelevant. As is running any fast bus from these southern communities to New Westminster. That is not where most of the traffic goes. Neither does pretending that everyone is going to live north of the Fraser.
Why Metro and TransLink?
Why not the province?
If they can fund a mega-bridge they can fund a much more efficient rail line.
Why this ridiculous concept that transit must be funded locally while senior governments can throw heaps of money on pet road projects that are not supported by local planners and governments?
It may not be the most strategic place for a rail line. It is also not the most strategic place for a mega-bridge.
The Alex Fraser was supposed to have two of its lanes for LRT. That would solve the capacity problem. The 4 lane tunnel is more than enough for the populations the hover below it’s south end. More than enough for goods movement.
Give people south of the river some better options. I guarantee they’ll use them.
Or are you already pining for that 25 lane crossing?
TransLink.
“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.”
Now Ron; “Why not the province”, you ask. If you are proposing that the province take back the responsibility of the planning, and perhaps some other areas of jurisdiction, of transit etc., then there may well be a few others that support this. It is worth pursuing.
Author
Oops. Yes, it’s easy to get fooled, isn’t it? About big stuff and small stuff too.
I’ve replaced the photo with a better one. Check its file name. Looks like it came from an interesting article. Perhaps more to come on this.
But thanks for prompting me to look further.
That’s a good shot. By Kevork Djansezian of Getty. That’s the real 405, just outside LAX looking north. The image is being used by many subscribers.
just a touch wider than at the north side of the proposed Steveston interchange but much, much longer. Carmageddon indeed.
That’s all very nice, but the main point of the article is contained in this phrase “Travelers quickly changed their routes and travel times.”.. Note they did not say that travelers changed their travel modes, and in a city like Atlanta one knows they did not. So in reality what you are arguing is there needs to be plenty of road options to avoid traffic congestion when one route fails.
In reality […] is there what you are arguing is there needs to be plenty of road options to avoid traffic congestion when one route fails.
Is that so?
Well, here’s the most viable option for NYC, which is a third larger than greater Atlanta, when a road fails:
http://itapinfo.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/TrainSchedules/.pond/Large_Subway_Map-2.jpg.w560h667.jpg
The transit / walk / bike mode share in NYC is 67%. In Atlanta it’s a pathetic 17%.
Not everyone loves NYC style density. Many do, and many do not. Manhattan has its charm .. for a few days. Then the collection of millions in a tight spot is not for everyone.
Far more people per sq km than MetroVan. 8.5M people over 780 sq km. About 10,000 per sq km. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City MetroVan is a quarter of that and even dense Vancouver half of the entire NYC region ( about 5000 ) and not nearly as dense as Manhattan. Queens, for example has vast green spaces too.
Also, NYC had subways over hundred years ago. What did we have then besides a few stone buildings in a sea of wooden huts and a railway on wooden stilts with 1/100th the NYC population ? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_New_York_City_Subway
So we will get more subway too .. maybe even to ubc in the next hundred years ?
Quite a few bridges, tunnels and highways too in, out and around NYC.
We need both.
The point is, Thomas, that to move that many people on roads would be next to impossible in a place like NYC. They very wisely capitalized on the superior efficacy of a subway system early on. Building more freeways there would require the destruction of thousands and thousands of apartments and townhouses, and a lot of heritage would be paved over. Just read about Robert Moses to see how far he got in trying to do just that.
Homes and offices or blacktop and roaring traffic. That’s the choice in denser cities.
No one disagrees here. As such no one is asking to widen Hwy 1 in W-Van/N-Van but more subways/LRT to downtown as opposed to a third crossing. Of course a 3 lane Lionsgate bridge does need widening, or Oak Street bridge.
We can’t just cram in more and more folks and not build ANY people moving infrastructure as we do now in N-Van, UBC, Jericho lands, Richmond etc ..
If the North Shore had balanced employment & residential zoning. The existing bridge capacity would be enough. There would be no need to work elsewhere if local jobs available . Build more I C I where not enough jobs; Build more housing downtown Vancouver where the job surplus has to be filled by commuters
I have to admit i’ve doctored up traffic photos myself, but for educational purposes to show examples of congestion density. Rather than wait all day to get just the right densities, I took shots that were mostly empty with enough to pick and photoshop into composites to get what I needed. The key is consistent lighting to make it look more realistic and a heavy tripod to keep the images in the same frame. If you want it to look more congested, take the shot at a low angle. From a birds-eye view, it doesn’t look so bad 🙂
An honest mistake and maybe you could have used this, Ken:
https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2015-10/8/10/enhanced/webdr02/enhanced-buzz-wide-16307-1444314137-7.jpg
Most of you have probably seen this go around a few years past, and there’s even a wikipedia page about it. For a congestion event to have it’s own webpage…wow. That may be the indicator Carmageddon is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_National_Highway_110_traffic_jam
I think the story here is fundamentally about human behaviour, from our local psychological actions (that impacts traffic at the micro-level), and regional sociological patterns (such as holidays and typical work hours, to the positive correlation of economic growth and car ownership).
The reports on that China traffic jam explain that the huge number of trucks carrying coal from Inner Mongolia also blocked the highway. I guess old fashioned toll booths do too. The haze from coal burning can be seen. Anyone that has been to Inner Mongolia knows all about the smell of coal in the air.
“Events, dear boy”. A famous expression by a wise politician. Last week cyclone Debbie was an event.
MSNBC reports: “China will require more coal, as the Australian outages far outstrip what is immediately available from the United States.
“The minimum impact over the coming weeks we would expect would be in the region of 14 million tonnes of coal (11.5 million metallurgical, and 2.5 million tonnes thermal),” said Rodrigo Echeverri, head of energy coal analysis at commodities trading house Noble Group, adding that the current estimate was for the outages to last around five weeks.
Shipping data in Eikon shows that around 70 ships are waiting to load coal off the Queensland ports of Abbot Point, Mackay, Dalrymple Bay, and Hay Point.
The outages caused Australian coking coal futures on the Singapore Exchange on Monday to spike by over 25 percent to $197 per tonne, the biggest one-day move ever.
China has recently turned to Russia for more coking coal, with imports rising to over 400,000 tonnes in February from 275,000 tonnes in December.
Mongolia and Indonesia are other potential sources of coking coal for China, three coal traders said. Anthracite coal shipments from North Korea to China, also used as coking coal, have dried up after Beijing ordered an import ban following missile tests of its isolated neighbour.”
I wouldn’t mortgage the farm and invest in coal but, like oil, coal is still a major player.
That info is a bit outdated now.
How ironic that China is also manufacturing the most PV panels in the world, and that the price has come down so radically that coal-fired power plants are now on the government’s radar for replacement by solar farms. This is now government policy now that the Party officials have driven through thick coal and auto smog for several years on their way to the office. The last step downward in price occurred only last year was the result of a major retooling of the factory that produces them (yes, robots displacing workers) and the application of their latest R&D products that upped the quality and output.
Anthracite is required for making high-carbon steel. The first company or nation that can make steel with lower emissions will no doubt make themselves very wealthy.
Don’t be surprised if it’s China.
Clark, are you saying New York is poor?
Your last phrase is as shallow as anything you’ve criticized.
Growth is a sign of health. Until it’s not. If you were 20′ tall and weighed 2 tonnes you’d understand. Growth in car ownership might be positively correlated with a strong economy. Until it is not. Imagine if most New Yorkers got around by car.
At some point in growth systems must change or growth just becomes cancer.
Whoa Ron, I don’t know where New York came from. I agree with your last two sentences. I’m unclear as to the first two.
I was referring to studies done on the correlation of the evolution of third world economic progress to the purchase of cars. Even traffic accidents go up. I go to Lima Peru annually and I see more cars, as well as newer cars each year on their roads. And their economic growth paralleled China for some time the past decades. Sure if you consider worldwide over time as economies “mature” or peak, you get a shift to other modes because nothing grows forever and there is the natural “S-curve” that limits exponential growth due to a theoretical system capacity.
But if you notice the picture was in China and I posted the wikipedia link about the story behind the mass congestion event in China. And I was simply trying to hypothesize the “story here” behind it being human nature with a combination of events that led to this situation in China.
If anything I was supporting Ken’s post and suggesting Carmageddon does exist. I do not advocate car ownership, but I do not feel the need to judge people in cars (i.e. you, me, we’re all technically hypocrites). Just because I observed charts of statistical correlation does not mean I agree with them (and correlation does not mean causation!). They are facts, interpret them as you will, and knowing is half the battle.
BTW, the trigger congestion may have been excessive maintenance of roads during that time, as well as it being a time of national holiday but that was anecdotal. I was actually in Beijing for 2 weeks and my hotel room overlooked a freeway that was congested for half the day. I timed backward propagation shockwaves and it reflected the density and aggregate reaction times.
Clark:
I’m unclear as to the first two.
Clark:
“…to the positive correlation of economic growth and car ownership).”
I was merely pointing out that there is no positive correlation between car ownership and economic growth past a certain point. Without that qualifier the phrase is shallow.
That “certain point” is achieved a lot earlier than most people want to admit. Afterward the economic growth become a necessity to support something you’d be better off without – which isn’t positive.
New Yorkers have apparently figured that out.
There is enough cheer-leading for motordom in this society without statements that assert that we need more cars to be better off.
Ron, If you read it again it was anything but cheer-leading vehicle ownership, in fact the opposite. As for the qualifier, it was a fairly large picture of congestion (which may not have come through if you read the post via email and don’t have html on), and references and links to China. And I did “qualify” with:
“I think the story here is…”
with emphasis to the word *here* ” meaning in China (the last geographical location I talked about), not New York or anywhere else. I apologize for not adequately qualifying as maybe you’re all used to my walls-of-text responses and that post was much too short. 🙂
I was just finishing up some work making scatterplots and I occurred to me when I said “positive correlation of economic growth and car ownership” it may have been interpreted as suggesting this is a “positive” (i.e. good) thing.
For the sake of clarification and avoiding future misinterpretation, I was referring to the statistical concept as shown here:
http://cdn.pythagorasandthat.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/correlation-1-1024×675.jpg
A positive correlation is one that is slanting upwards as you travel down (from left to right) the x-axis. A negative one starts high, and slants down as you go down the x-axis. Neither are meant as a judgement of “good” or “bad,” but merely due to the coordinate system having values increase as you travel down each x and y-axis from a center (0,0). An example is assuming the relationship of the more you cycle (x-axis), the less sick days you take (y-axis). That would be a negatively correlated relationship. It’s negative due to the way the correlation slants, but it isn’t a “negative” thing to have less sick days. The conclusion one could make is that cycling keeps you healthy.
And it’s (usually) nice to have a high correlation (regardless of the slope direction) which translates to high R-squared values and other useful descriptive stats. The “no correlation” plot can be a researcher’s nightmare, possibly indicating you have bad data.
And a few short articles on the subject showing “positive correlation” of wealth and car ownership:
http://www.sightline.org/2011/11/28/more-money-more-cars/
http://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/china-s-clean-air-challenge-health-impacts-transport-emissions/1018171/
http://www.accessmagazine.org/articles/fall-2010/megacities-megatraffic/
(Note: some graphs may use axes with logarithmic scales)
Got it. Thanks.
I think this needs more study. If you remove a road, people won’t travel as much. That seems too simplistic.
We closed lanes on Cambie Street to build the Canada Line. No Carmegeddon. Instead, people just didn’t go there. And, businesses shut down, and people lost their jobs.
If we cut service on the Broadway B-Line bus, will people just stop travelling on Broadway and will all those businesses go under? Are we inducing demand by running the B-Line? Do we really need the Broadway subway, or will we induce demand by building it and justify its own existence?
Did the Canada Line induce demand for people to travel downtown to go shopping at Nordstroms? I’ve taken several unnecessary rides out to Aberdeen mall and the Richmond night market. If the Canada Line wasn’t there, I wouldn’t have gone at all.
Seems like a fascinating thing to study, but probably hard to do so with any accuracy.
Induced demand and disappearing traffic are not unrelated. There are lots of studies on these phenomena by transportation planners publishing peer-reviewed reports. Said reports can be a bit dry though.
While I agree that the cut and cover method used for tunneling the Canada Line was nothing short of trench warfare and should never be used in urban areas again (Broadway subway engineers take note that the Dark Ages are over), I also see that business has returned to Cambie Village. But some businesses were displaced. The Tomato Café moved to Bayswater off Broadway in Kits after taking a 30% hit on revenues, so a long-time server told us, but they found Kits to be even worse with too much competition and loss of regulars like us from their old location, so they closed. We really miss them.
Conclusions from the 1999 report “Patterns of automobile dependence in cities: an international overview of key physical and economic dimensions with some implications for urban policy” (Jeffrey R. Kenworthy, Felix B. Laube).
(1) The wealth of cities does not alone provide reliable or consistent evidence in explaining the degree of automobile dependence in different cities.
Many analyses tend to suggest that it is simply inevitable for automobile dependence to grow in cities as people become more wealthy and as cars become more affordable. Likewise, transit is seen more and more as the weary battler as people develop greater financial capacity to afford private transportation. This whole process of the takeover of urban transportation by the automobile and the decline of transit is seen by some as an “irresistible force” (Lave, 1992). […]
This paper, however, refutes the idea that automobile dependence is simply “inevitable”, since within the developed cities with comparable wealth levels, car use per capita, car ownership and transit use bear little relationship with wealth and even when developing cities are included […]
Quite clearly some wealthy cities, particularly in Europe and Asia, have the automobile much more under control and are achieving good results in transit and its competitive position with respect to the automobile. Public policy in such cities appears to be able to shape the urban system into a much less auto-dependent form (Pucher and Lefevre, 1996).
(2) In contrast to city wealth, urban form, in particular higher urban density, is consistently associated with lower levels of car ownership and car use, higher levels of transit use, and lower total costs of operating urban passenger transportation systems.
(3) The cost of cars in terms of the total fixed and variable costs per kilometre is an important policy factor to consider in any efforts to reduce automobile dependence.
Correlations of car costs with car ownership and use show that as costs increase the former decline. Likewise, transit’s role within the transportation system is higher where car costs are greater. The strength of the relationship between car costs and automobile dependence is, however, not as strong as that between urban form and automobile dependence.
(4) There appear to be no obvious gains in economic performance from developing auto dependence in cities […].
There is no relative gain in GRP per capita and the costs of operating the overall passenger transportation systems assume a higher proportion of a city’s GRP in more auto-dependent cities. Furthermore, trip times to work are roughly the same everywhere, while trip distances to work are significantly longer, recovery of transit operating costs is much worse and road expenditure for construction and maintenance is higher due to greater per capita road provision in auto-dependent cities.
(5) European and wealthy Asian cities appear to have both the most economically cost-effective and sustainable urban transportation systems.
However, in terms of their own local sustainability goals, as well as global sustainability imperatives, they all still need to do better in terms of car use, which is growing in most of these cities, though not at the same rate as in US cities.
(6) Rapidly developing Asian cities have considerably less economically cost-effective and sustainable urban transportation systems than would be expected from their levels of wealth, and especially when compared to their wealthier Asian neighbours.
The main reasons for this appear to relate to a combination of: inferior transit systems based on buses caught in severe traffic congestion rather than rail systems as in Singapore, Tokyo and Hong Kong; a transportation infrastructure programme which emphasises major road building; a rapidly deteriorating situation for non-motorised transportation and a lack of any economic disincentives to car use as in the wealthy Asian cities (Ang, 1996; Phang, 1993; Kenworthy et al., 1994, 1995).
The positive side, however, is that developing Asian cities still have highly transit-oriented urban forms with strong corridors of development which are ideal for high capacity transit systems. The value of mass transit systems in dense urban environments has been demonstrated in the cases of Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo. All the data here would strongly suggest that for future urban growth, developing Asian cities will need to move towards higher quality transit which is competetive with the automobile, if they are to achieve more economic benefits, as well as some obvious environmental and social benefits for their cities. Together with the creation of conditions which are much more amenable to the use of non-motorised transportation, developing Asian cities appear to have the potential to be rapidly transformed into more sustainable patterns.
(7) Cities with a higher level of rail service within their transit systems generally have better utilised transit and lower automobile dependence.
The data in this study on rail service levels and overall transit use make it dicult to ignore the significance which rail systems appear to have in enhancing the role of transit in cities. For example, looking just within the US cities sample at those with and without rail systems, it is found that those with rail systems have some 117 annual transit trips per capita, while those that have only buses have 30 trips per capita. This is not to undermine the critical role which buses play in any transit system, including those with strong rail systems. However, transportation strategies in both developed and developing cities aimed at reducing automobile dependence need to carefully consider the potential of rail to provide a strong, permanent, reliable and highly visible backbone to a transit system which is well-equipped to provide services competitive with the automobile.
Data collected as part of this study show that it is only in the European and wealthy Asian cities, where rail plays the largest role in transit systems, that the overall operating speed of transit exceeds that of general road trac due to the superior speed of the rail systems (Kenworthy et al., 1999).
(8) Non-motorised transportation is significant in both economic and environmental terms in that walking and cycling contribute almost nothing to the cost picture for urban transportation compared to motorised modes and involve almost negligible environmental costs.
http://web.mit.edu/11.951/oldstuff/albacete/Course%20Reader/Transportation/High-Speed%20Tranist%20Literature%20Review/Kenworthy%20and%20Laube%201999.pdf
A bit of a background to what you just posted, Alex. When Jeffrey Kenworthy visited Vancouver I took him up to the roof of Metrotower II so he could take pictures of SkyTrain. He had many stories of travels which was the “burden” of his research.
Being the transport analyst at the GVRD I provided him with the data he needed for his eventual book, and it was difficult given the data definitions need to be somewhat consistent across the world, which is rarely the case–like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle from different sets.
Some data were from travel surveys (“trip diary”), census, and transit system operating stats. Others we needed to run the Emme model to produce modelled or “synthetic data”. I find Prof. Kenworthy’s work significant and use it in my teaching. But now and then I find it interesting when I hear people criticize transport models and on their next breath, quote Kenworthy’s work. Only if they knew some of the information in that book, can only be produced realistically through models. (Also there were some mathematical summation errors so if you use it, do a double check on table totals.)
Again, the overall premise of his thesis is fundamental to how we plan cities and supports things we all aspire for. However, always do your due diligence on the scope, quality, quantity, methodology, and source of any dataset used in the conclusions of even seemingly planning “bibles”.
Thank you Clark for your summary. I was at Kenworthy’s SFU lecture several years ago on the phenomenon of disappearing traffic. A fascinating topic!
I am far from being an expert in this field, but I really enjoy an independent transportation planner’s works when they effectively counter the propaganda issued by some politicians about the long-term relationship between creating additional road space and air pollution. Todd Stone would have us believe it’s an inverse relationship.
As if.
Yes there are many factors for why things appear…and disappear! And it’s very interesting to learn of the interrelations and dynamics, including how other domains interact with the transport domain (i.e. wicked problems).
And I like the approach of collecting data (and it is much harder than one would think) so that we have evidence behind correlations, and additional evidence that supports our hypotheses behind those correlations. The goal is to find causation, but it’s very difficult. Nevertheless, the audacity to take on such a research topic is praiseworthy enough and Kenworthy is a planning “rock-star” (i’m merely the drummer to the local pub house band)….
I do not like propaganda like every other citizen and I try to keep a straight professional face and deal with everything objectively. I respect all politicians, although I may not agree with them on all things. And we tend to settle matters come election time anyways.
I think the crux of learning is how to think critically (I read somewhere a good scientist has a hard time trusting…hopefully about data and not human relations!). And so I try to critique everything, even generally accepted policies such as transit is good, cars are bad. It can be the other way around at times, but overall I support sustainable modes of transportation, and each mode has it’s moment. In the end I think we all want the same thing, but we don’t always agree as to the method. Discussions, debates, and dialogues may help us at least row in time. And you can’t row if you’re pointing fingers.
Royston James writes in the Toronto Star this week about their issues with transit.
” …The political apparatus, once ramped up and placed in the hands of a mayor, becomes a marauding force capable of delivering the vilest conclusions in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Instead of going where the evidence takes him or her, our mayors declare a position on the campaign trail, get elected, claim the mandate of the electorate, marshal the city’s compliant bureaucrats, commission studies that support the prevailing position, ignore evidence to the contrary, trumpet every smidgen of supporting document and bury conflicting findings, repeat the campaign dogma ad nauseam until the very falsities become ingrained as fake truths — and before long the very citizens believe the lies and clamor for the very solution that is destined to destroy the very enjoyment of their city.
Such is the case of transit planning in Toronto. ”
He continues:
“The base principles that should guide transit planning are readily available.
Good transit provides a network of options that moves masses of commuters effectively where they need to go. Most jurisdictions can’t afford a subway to everywhere so the wise course is to provide movement along the essential corridors where citizens connect.
In a tight economy, decision makers do cost-benefit analyses and deliver the best bang for the buck.
And they use universal, tried-and-tested measurements to evaluate options, striving to remove partisan and parochial and political influence from polluting the outcome. …
Unfortunately, most of our transit debates start and end with technology. Streetcars and bus bad, subways good. This prevailing view forgets a key element of successful transit systems: they provide the appropriate transit mode for the appropriate needs, always looking to future demands and growth. …”
Is Metro Vancouver recognizing where growth is or is it ignoring where growth is actually occurring?
Perhaps Clark Lim could comment on as to why the North Shore seems to have been relatively ignored in the recent planning by TransLink, as have parts of both North and South Delta and eastern South Surrey. Nobody can deny these areas are growing fast.
How could tTransLink and the Mayors’ Council win a referendum when the perception held by many of their constituents is that they are to be given a couple more buses but otherwise ignored?
I know defenders will argue this idea is all wrong but remember that the referendum went down to a 2-1 defeat and the perception is there.
Well said.
Citizens with their own minds, moving where mayors prefer them not to move to. Such freedom ought to be constrained …
The issue is that most politicians are narcissists. They think the world’s problems are best solved by them. Look at me, I am so smart. Vote for me and I will solve your problems.
Voters eventually wake up, often 2-4 election periods later, ie 12-16 years and change course. This may happen in MetroVan and likely in Ontario. Lionsgate bridge may yet be widened or a subway built to north shore as overwhelming demand contradicts all the visionary plans.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
Funny that you should say “well said”, Thomas, since much of it completely contradicts most of what you post:
Most jurisdictions can’t afford a subway to everywhere so the wise course is to provide movement along the essential corridors where citizens connect.
In a tight economy, decision makers do cost-benefit analyses and deliver the best bang for the buck.
And they use universal, tried-and-tested measurements to evaluate options, striving to remove partisan and parochial and political influence from polluting the outcome. …
Unfortunately, most of our transit debates start and end with technology. Streetcars and bus bad, subways good.
Eric, i’m going to take the bait, but maybe just a nibble 🙂
From my past life working in government planning departments, I recall discussions about parts of the region given less emphasis on growth due to geological conditions. You have the well known situation of high grades in the North Shore, and the soil conditions in the Richmond and Delta areas. Whether these are realistic enough justifications for limiting growth, I am not able to say. However, I did recall such discussions and reports. A classic example was that the SkyTrain should not be extended to Richmond duo to soil conditions.
Now fast-forward to today, and we have Canada Line and the start of a bridge in Richmond. So i’m not sure if these geological issues matter as much anymore because things are more technically feasible (i’m purposely avoiding socio-economic feasibility here). TransLink did produce a North Shore transit area plan recently and there are plans for more Seabus capacity, so I can’t say the North Shore is being ignored (and I don’t think any part of the region should be). However, one could also argue that the places where there is the most concentration of travel should get more attention, and usually that is in the middle of transport networks and less on the peripheries.
But the article you quote, I have to agree with it in that “politics” (used as a catch-all word) can be the determining factor. As someone who advocates evidence-based decision making, it sadden me if “politics” are in fact used for insincere purposes and people are able to get away with it, given we are quite a ways into the age of enlightenment. And no mode is innocent in that I have observed examples of decisions professionally and academically that were contrary to the technical work whether it be for highways, bridges, transit lines, or public bike systems (I have yet to see any evidence against sidewalks simply due to their safety impact to pedestrians. And safety is usually the most significant part of infrastructure business cases, if not the most difficult to pin down a value).
But on the other hand, proper “politics” is a requisite and I don’t agree all decisions should be blindly made on data and technical work (I don’t think engineers or anyone else should be given that power unless they are elected into that power). This is where “politics” can be good in that it fills the void of limited technical scope and ability. We elect our leaders into power and other than under corruptive or illegal situations (e.g. kick-backs, deleting of evidence, nepotistic contracts, etc.), we elected them into choosing for us. We have no choice but accept those decisions until the next election. An since no technical analysis is 100% complete (not that i’m not trying), they are not obliged to knee-jerk accept its recommendations. I like to think of “political wisdom” filling in for any gaps technical analyses leave. I learned this lesson when I managed the planning of what is now the Evergreen Line back in 2004.
Thank you. Just as I expected. I sincerely appreciate your candour.
Evidence = price points of real estate.
Where is this in the political decision process ?
Facts matter. Real estate prices per sq ft matter A LOT !
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