Gilmore and Brentwood from Rupert Station on the Millennium Line.
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This could be indicative of the Liveable Regions Strategic Plan in action. Maybe it’s worked a little too well, and therein the large lot single family neighbourhoods immediately adjacent to these high-rise nodes are being ignored. The towers really do need to step down to mid and low rise a few blocks out.
And the SkyTrain system needs more trains. The information I once reads is that it’s running at less than 70% capacity from a lack of rolling stock.
I think they built the Skytrain system to handle more rolling stock than they had initially purchased. The Expo Line has a capacity of about 25,000 passengers per hour but they started it with enough trains for about 10,000, and have added trains over the years. There’s a report on Translink’s website that says 2041 is when they plan to add enough 5-car Mark III trains to reach maximum capacity.
Burnaby also has a $1B+ reserve fund as they benefited tremendously from the skytrain http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/what-will-or-should-burnaby-do-with-its-1b-reserve-fund-1.4253774
It shows RAPID transit is the way to go .. not more (wobble, stuck in traffic) buses !
Where’s the train to N-Van, W-Van, along north shore, to UBC, to E-Van and deeper into Richmond ?
This article in The Tyee suggests that “intimate relationship” is a failed one, that benefits only a few speculators at the expense of everyone else:
..But increasingly we lose out as the speculators move in well before the rezoning application process begins, allowing them to claim that the market can’t support a high CAC tax given how much the land cost them. This is going on right now all along Cambie Street where the city’s green light to development has unleashed a speculative torrent of value created by public investment in rapid transit…
..It seems time to admit that depending on the market itself to solve our housing problem will never work. The market is broken and requires intervention. One need only look at the failing Cambie corridor experiment, where a single house lot is on the market for the outrageous price of $11 million dollars, doubling in price in only 18 months. We are enduring a tsunami of international capital which is being used to create speculative real estate values that are robbing us of the community we have collectively created…
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2017/09/01/Vancouver-Fleeing-Middle-Class/
Interesting thoughts by the (landscaping & architecture) professor Patrick Condon. Taxing land is done today and not mentioned. Yes, we could tax it far far higher. And incomes far far less, like Texas. It would be good to see that thought further developed. One of the key ingredients of commerce is access to capital, and the key to that is secure land ownership.
==> Owning land is at the very core of North-America and its very high living standard, and why so many immigrants 300 years, and still today, come here !
Also untrue that there are few winners in Vancouver. There are many winners, namely ALL house and condo owners, so a few hundred thousand in a city of not even a million. That is not few. That is MANY, certainly more than 80% ! Around 50% probably as that is the % of renters vs owners in Vancouver, roughly. That has been the same btw almost 100 years ago. Ownership % has not changed all that much.
And nary a word anywhere about immigration ? Or lack of tax enforcement for those speculators that know that Canada is very weak on commercial crime enforcement ? Or change of culture if too many immigrants in too high concentration arrive in too short a timeframe with oodles of money ?
Nary a word about more and more regulations to build ?
Nary a word about MetroVancoiver where affordable condos in Burnaby, Surrey or Delta can be had ?
I bet a drastic move to tax land to cause prices to fall 20-30% will not have many friends here nor will it be enough for the typical socialist Tyee subscriber that is probably a renter and can’t afford even a 50% reduced house. The socialist whining and handout mentality is well developed among the Tyee readership, rather than perhaps a realization that many cities have the same problem, that ownership is alive and well here and that foreign investors and those that can buy realized the massive opportunity that Vancouver presented them. With proper foreign buyer tax, rigid tax enforcement involving jail time and stiff penalties, more sensible building codes & reduced bureaucracy, higher land taxes coupled with far lower income taxes we can adjust the unhealthy bubble we had the last few years indeed.