Traffic congestion on Georgia and Pender last night. What could we possibly do about it? Scott de Lange Boom provided a perspective.
Lets assume each car has one person and the congestion extends all the way to the viaducts. That is 1.9 km, lets assume 15 percent of that is intersections. Assuming each car occupies about five metres, each lane would have 323 cars. With five lanes of traffic, that is 1,615 people. An articulated bus can carry 104 people. That is about 16 buses worth of people.
Those 16 buses would occupy one lane for two blocks.
But here’s the thing: it wouldn’t take 16 buses full of passengers who shifted from driving to get the traffic moving – maybe only two or three, depending on the latent demand.
Traffic congestion like this is a consequence of the marginal increase when most of the capacity is being used. In other words, a few additional cars is all it takes to bring traffic to a halt when it gets close to saturation – rather like a very small change in temperature can shift water to ice.
The same, I’d argue, for the housing market when prices are high and supply is low. A small shift in the parameters may be all it takes to shift the market. In fact, that’s what has happened.
Even the threat of a new tax has created a new dynamic: “There is ‘additional nervousness in the (B.C.) market,’ said Sotheby’s CEO Brad Henderson, who blames the controversy over the provincial speculation tax.” (“blames”?)
… the new provincial speculation tax “that has created additional nervousness in the market.” Housing sales across Metro Vancouver north of the Fraser River fell by more than one-third in August, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, with 1,929 units selling compared with 3,043 in August 2017.
Prices declined in all property types, including condominiums and townhouses.
Whether talking about transportation or housing, the conclusion is the same: we need only address a small portion of the problem under the right conditions to address what otherwise seems to be an intractable problem. We don’t have to shift most people out of their cars to ‘get the traffic moving.’ A small amount of additional transit may be sufficient. We don’t have to ‘rezone the city’ to address speculation. Some new supply, some incremental taxation be sufficient.
To those who argue, for instance, that allowing duplexes in single-family zones will only increase land values or won’t itself provide affordable housing are missing the point. Rather like those who say the picture above calls for more lanes or a new bridge.
Well said. What strikes me is the simple yet powerful geometry borne by these examples.
I would add one more detail that is crucial to understanding the housing / land price challenge: housing sales decreased radically, but the housing prices have only dipped, primarily in the single-detached-big lot market. Sales and prices are not in lock-step. This after more than three years of targeting foreign money, corruption and speculation.
Meanwhile, interest rates are now creeping upward. However, economists are saying that the increase in rates will become steeper as quantitative easing (trillions in public money pumped into financial markets after the 2008-09 meltdown) in the US, EU and Asia is banked off. I believe that higher interest rates, a continuing short-term shortage of appropriate forms of housing until the Making Room build-out is well underway (increases supply), and the lingering inexcusable inefficiencies of 70 years exclusionary land use practices on a constrained land base will dampen demand and therein prices for a while yet.
Urbanists will likely agree that transit and city planning need to be considered over a longer term than currently practiced. Adding a few B-Lines now to Georgia Street will have an immediate, positive but short-term effect on traffic, but this is not a thoroughly-thought through solution. Designing a city around transit and walking and mixed uses over the next century (at least in principle, i.e. allowing for flexibility as circumstances change) will no doubt result in a high quality of life for citizens where the notion of adding or protecting road space loses its supremacy.
” … will dampen demand but not so much prices … “
Yes I agree the comparison is too simplistic. Vancouver needs a drastic reduction in prices to fix the affordability problem. Thus drastic increases in supply and drastic reductions in demand are needed.
To clarify, my estimate was of the transit required to move the equivalent number of commuters, not the transit required to eliminate congestion.
So, in conclusion, single people are at fault? More people should get married and have kids and live in downtown apartments?
I agree! I am European.
A lot already have. So much so that the downtown elementary schools are packed, and the newest ones have a substantial waiting list on opening day.
(1) Not enough housing & too many cars. . ——– Zoning restrictions discourage more housing supply & encourage more car ownership by requiring a parking stall with most new units. —— This adds $50 k to the units cost. —- With cheap cars & unlimited mileage ICBC premiums, The outcome is no surprise.—- (2) Car pooling could solve the problem at no public cost. — More people would car pool if there was HOV priority at choke points.
When I count all the lanes I see a half-full roadway even by the generous estimates used by motoring advocates.
What if we assume that all the West Vancouver and North Vancouver residents who live in denser quarters near Marine Drive are already on the buses (there’s one in the pic on Georgia), and all those cars are occupied by those who live on the twisty windy streets with magnificent views of English Bay and Georgia Strait?
Then they should take their great wealth and high incomes and hire themselves a fancy minibus?
Half full most of the time — -At other times the bus (& cars) travel at walking speed. The closing of Robson street made it worse. People would not want to drive downtown if there was no affordable parking
A Georgia street B line would be useless without bus lanes