Category Archives: Planning and Development

The Evergreen Line and the future of Skytrain

April 30, 2012 By in Planning and Development, Transit, Skytrain, LRT, Tricities Tags: , 10 Comments

During the recent panic around transportation funding in Metro Vancouver, the authorities assured us that construction of the long-awaited Evergreen rapid transit line will proceed.  Preliminary work — street widenings, electrical ducts — is now underway, and a contractor is to be selected soon for principal construction,  scheduled to begin in autumn 2012.

But while the 11-kilometre line appears to have achieved untouchable status in the  balance of regional politics, there are persistent voices in the blogosphere who say the project is wrong, wrong, wrong, because it’s based on Skytrain — the obtrusive technology previously used in three other Vancouver-area projects, and hardly anywhere else in the world.  In deliberations over the Evergreen Line around 2006, local mayors seemed to be leaning toward light rail transit, until the provincial government declared force majeure and imposed Skytrain.  The same dynamic had played out, less dramatically, with the Millenium and Canada lines earlier on. Continue reading →

Will success transform Commercial Drive?

April 4, 2012 By in Planning and Development, Urban Villages Project, Vancouver, City of Tags: , Leave a comment

Aside from ethnic enclaves, Vancouver’s Commercial Drive area may be the most distinctive urban village in B.C.’s Lower Mainland.  But its funky, quirky nature attracts visitors, and the visitors attract developer interest, and the developer interest may eventually erase the street’s one-of-a-kind character.

Once a largely Italian district, The Drive morphed during the 1980s into a resolutely downmarket ghetto for artists, thinkers and social activists. When the provincial New Democratic Party was ejected from government in 2001 and reduced to two seats in the legislature, Commercial Drive formed the centre line of the NDP’s remaining strength. Continue reading →

Metro Vancouver’s economic growth has bypassed the City

March 9, 2012 By in Metro Vancouver, Planning and Development Tags: , 3 Comments

The City of Vancouver is undoubtedly the business, cultural and touristic heart of the Greater Vancouver region. However, its dominance as an employment centre is slipping steadily.

This is not news. The figures below date from 2006.  But judging by online conversations – relating to the function of the new Port Mann Bridge, for example – there are still  people who believe that all traffic on regional roads is bound for the City. The fact is, however, that increasing numbers of City dwellers  travel to suburban municipalities. To take the extreme case, job growth in the South-of-Fraser subregion has been nine times as rapid as job growth in the City over the past generation. Put another way, the City was home to half the jobs in the region in 1981; by 2006, the figure had dropped to 31 per cent. Continue reading →

Creating cycling routes for the cautious majority

February 1, 2012 By in Cycling, Planning and Development Tags: , , Leave a comment

In the years between 1995 and 2005, governments spent about $100 million creating pathways for cyclists in Metro Vancouver. Census figures show this spending failed to increase cycling’s share of work trips outside Vancouver City; cycling’s slice of the pie held to a near-invisible 1.0 per cent.

Even so, governments have continued to spend — on separated pathways, such as those around the new Golden Ears and Pitt River bridges, and on marked routes along city streets.  Metro Vancouver’s cycle route maps are becoming more and more elaborate.  Continue reading →