Tag: Acting Locally

ASK PAT: Front Street trucks.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Brad asks—

During Front Street’s closure over the past couple of months, trucks have been re-routed to Columbia and Royal. This doesn’t seem to have had that bad of an affect on New Westminster’s traffic (at least, to my eye), so what are the thoughts about banning truck traffic from Front Street entirely? Can this be visited when the Pattullo Bridge gets replaced? Front Street isn’t part of TransLink’s Major Road Network, so we shouldn’t have to ask them, right?

Although I agree the “Carmageddon” promised by Front Street closing has not arrived, there has been a shifting of trucks to Columbia Street, and anecdotal increases in trucks on Royal and 10th Ave. The City is collecting data on the traffic during the closure in order to get good numbers on the shift, and that report is not available yet, but preliminary info seems to suggest about a 30% increase in trucks on Royal. There has also been a diversion of trucks to Columbia and 10th Ave, but these three increases do not add up to the number of rucks that used to ply Front Street. It is pretty clear that a large proportion of the tucks that were on Front Street have, indeed, gone away. Presumably most of them have gone to the $5 Billion of freeways we have built for them over the last decade, as the Lord Kevin Falcon intended.

Front Street is not in the Major Road Network, but it is a designated truck route. To change that, we need agreement from the Ministry of Transportation and at least consult with TransLink. The current policy is that trucks routes cannot be removed unless appropriate alternatives are offered. So if closing Front Street to trucks means we need to allow 24/7 access to Columbia Street, then it is probably not a good deal for the City.

Capture2

If the closing of that route means accepting a measured increase in Royal Ave and 10th Ave, then perhaps it is a discussion we should be having as a City. However, to have that discussion, we need some solid numbers to support the cost-benefit, and those numbers are being collected. Of course, this ends up being a political discussion – the people who live on Royal are not going to like it, and it will do nothing to make people feel better about the Qayqayt school transportation situation.

Offsetting these reasons to avoid the discussion, people need to go down to the Front Street right now and look around. I think we can, for just a moment now, have a vision of what could be. I’m not even talking about removing trucks from Front Street, I’m thinking we should explore the possibility of closing Front Street to all but local traffic. Build the Mews, turn the rest into greenway, parkland, open space for any of a thousand public uses we have not yet imagined. I don’t want to close Front Street to traffic, I want to open it for the use of human beings who aren’t dragging tonnes of internally-combusting metal around with them. There is a huge amount of space there, let’s start to dream.front

The primary argument for keeping trucks in Front Street is, of course, “Goods Movement”. The Gateway Council, the Port, the BC Trucking Association, and the Ministry of Transportation make the argument that the regional economy relies on free-flow of trucks along Front – this route is critical. This assertion will not likely be supported by any measureable dip in the regional economy caused by this 6-months closure. But don’t bring facts into this discussion.

Fitting the use of Front Street into the context of the larger Pattullo replacement strategy is important, as is fitting it into the model for the Brunette overpass replacement, which is an ongoing discussion between Coquitlam, New Westminster, and the Ministry. There are well-connected regional voices continuing to reiterate that New Westminster is a through-route, not a community, and are planning with this in mind.

Even as New Westminster aggressively pursues a smart growth strategy reflecting the Regional Growth Strategy; even as we push towards building a compact, mixed-use, transit-oriented community where most commuting and shopping trips are by foot or transit, reducing the need for expanded road capacity; even as we take a leadership role the region in meeting the mode shift goals of the long-term regional transportation vision, those very goals are challenged by our tacit acceptance that our community must play second fiddle to the commuting needs of outlying regions.

We have been leaders in planning and development to reduce our reliance on the traditional transportation models, we are becoming leaders in our transportation policy, but to see the benefit of those changes here at home, we may need to stop leading by example, and start forcing our neighbour’s hands.

Does the region need trucks on Front Street? No. Is there a better way to make use of that 5 acres of public space in New Westminster? Yes.

The rest is politics.

Meta-engage!

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Are you a member of the public? The City could really use your help.

I’m a member of the Mayor’s Public Engagement Taskforce. We are one of the groups tasked by the Mayor to report on strategies to further the key initiatives of this Council Term. Assuring our City is communicating effectively with the public is a keen interest of the Mayor, and an interest of mine.

Part of what got me into this entire being-a-politician thing was an interest in public engagement. As I became more involved in the community I love, I tried to become more aware of what is going at City Hall. This was sometimes enlightening, and sometimes frustrating. I found the people at City hall easy to engage with, open and, for the most part, friendly. The hard information, however, was rarely easy to access.

I attended Council Meetings on topics that were important to me, went to a lot of community events, and got to meet a few City Councillors and senior staff. I even ended up serving on a few advisory committees. I felt very engaged.

However, I also recognized I was in relatively small company. I saw the same members of the public at community events. Like me, they were engaged, interested, and vocal, but they clearly represented a small fraction of the City’s population. Democracy has been described as “decisions by those who show up”, and very few people were showing up.

I started blogging, and started telling other people about what was going on 9through the lens of my opinions, of course). I worked with the NWEP to push sustainability further up the agenda, and to empower more people to get actively engaged. Then I went and got elected.

Now I am still blogging, in the hope that people will read about what is happening at City Hall, and care a little more about the decisions that shape their City *before* those decisions are made, not just complain about them after.

The Public Engagement Task Force is trying to figure out better ways to make that happen. We have been meeting for more than a year, and have spent a lot of time talking about just what “engagement” is. We have explored ideas as far reaching as a City-run 311 system, Pop-Up City Halls, better web tools, creating a City Hall Ambassador, and using our media assets in more innovative ways.

I have also learned that there are people who study this kind of stuff for a living, and learned about the IAP2 Spectrum of Public Engagement:

IAP2

Inform: make sure people know what’s happening;
Consult: asking people what they think about things happening;
Involve: seek input, and use that input to inform decisions;
Collaborate: Partner with the people in developing options and choosing from them;
Empower: Give the public the decision-making power.

I think (and this is just my opinion, from my experience on both sides of the fence) that New Westminster does an OK job informing, a good job consulting, a good job involving, a no-so-good job collaborating, and is generally resistant to empowering. That varies somewhat between departments and initiatives. I think the current OCP process is demonstrating a new level of collaboration and the results have been great (so far). However, something as technical and far-reaching as an OCP perhaps also demonstrated that empowerment is not appropriate for all decisions – at some point political leadership is required to move such a complex plan forward.

Maybe you disagree with me. Maybe you think the City needs to do a better job connecting, and you have a great example of how another City has done a great job? Wouldn’t it be great if you could be consulted on public consultation?

The City is actually getting meta next weekend and holding Public Engagement on Public Engagement. There are two workshops on Saturday, and you can test our engagement skills, and help improve them. They are free, and anyone can go, but it really helps us pout if you register first so we can properly gauge the number of people we need to prepare for.

People Talking

So go to the website, register, and come out Saturday. Be one of those people who show up and make democracy work, and let us know how we can hear you better!

…on the bike race

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I didn’t want to write this blog post, for a few reasons.

First of all, I hoped that we would be building excitement right now for a bike race in Uptown a month from today, but that is not going to happen. Secondly, I had hoped that the process through which we got here was respectful and transparent enough that I would not have to engage in after-the-fact record straightening, because my doing so will be perceived by some in the community as my being unnecessarily confrontational, accusatory, or “political”. I hope I can demonstrate that is not my intention, as apportioning blame is not my interest, improving the process is.

My disappointment that the race is not going forward in 2016 has been shadowed by my disappointment that withdrawal of support for the road closure is being characterized as an arbitrary and capricious decision by City Hall. The quote

…the City of New Westminster, for unspecified reasons, has unilaterally cancelled the Hyack Grand Prix…”

does not fairly reflect my experience, and I have to address it.

For context, I was pretty excited about this race, and even attended a couple of organizational meetings to see if there were any potential hiccups I could help smooth out at City Hall, and so I could be more in the know in case Council had any questions or concerns. I didn’t have time to join the organizing committee, but hoped there was a way I could (with my limited free time) help out. I was actually looking forward to spending May 28th volunteering at a corner with my FR Fuggitivi friends and enjoying the race.

I should avoid speaking for the City, staff, the rest of Council or the Festivals Committee (I don’t serve on that Committee), but every impression I got from Council and Staff is that they were enthusiastic about this event, that there was good potential ROI for the City, and that there was no reason it should not happen. I never heard anyone at 511 Royal Ave speak against the idea.

It did become clear in early March, however, that some of the groundwork had not been laid to get the race going. Nothing was critical yet, but there were a collection of small issues that were not being addressed in a timely manner, giving staff reasons to be concerned about the organizing committee’s capacity to get them done in time. Most of them looked like details that were a little behind but were not yet on the “critical path”.

There were some negotiations on the course layout and safety issues, where I (frankly) was on the side of the organizers in negotiating with the City, but that was a discussion I felt was going to work out fine when CyclingBC folks were able to provide their professional guidance. There were issues around asphalt that were worked out, etc.

However, the sticking point became the road closures and impacts on the local neighbourhood. Closing several blocks of roads in the middle of the City on a Saturday has the potential to impact residents and businesses in unanticipated ways. Between the parade and the bike race, these closures were stretching to 8+ hours. If you ran a service business that had limited access to its front door on your busiest day of the week, you might be concerned (alternately, if you ran a pub or restaurant with a thousand people outside of your door all day, you might be exited!). If you had no access to the driveway of your house for 8 hours on a Saturday, you may equally be concerned. God forbid if you had a concrete pour on your construction site or a backyard wedding planned that day.

No problem, the City does this type of thing all the time. We have street festivals, we have parades, we do utility work. There are protocols for communicating with residents and businesses, assuring organizers have approval from them (or not) and that those approvals are crystal clear about what the type and duration of the disruption will be. It is clear with the organizations running these events that this is their responsibility, and although the City will provide guidance, the leg-work to get this work done to the satisfaction of the City is up to the organizer. It is simply a resource issue for a small municipality.

There will (almost) always be a small number of people who oppose the closure for whatever reason, valid or not. As the event is something the City and Council supports, staff are ready to deal with that small number. If there are a small number of residents or businesses that oppose it, we will talk to them, try to figure out how to accommodate their needs, make adjustments, or even (at times) tell them to get over it, because this is coming, and your neighbours all want it, so heads-up!

In early March, it was becoming clear that this consultation with the neighbourhood was going slowly, partly because of resource limitations of the organizer, partly because of some communication problems between the organizer and the City, and partly because of some disagreements/negotiations around expectations. This aspect of the organization was becoming the critical path, because if public notice was not completed to a level that made the City comfortable, then the City was not going to dump a bunch of resources into the following steps, knowing that the event may not go on. Again, limited resources require careful governance of those resources. Timing of this consent is also critical because the City needed time to manage those few residents or businesses that may not agree, to be fair to those people.

Through March and into early April, there was a significant back and forth between staff and the organizers, it was clear that the organizers felt they were doing an adequate job in this outreach, and staff were not as confident. Deadlines, first soft then firm, were set and passed. When the Festivals Committee reviewed the level of preparedness for the event, this critical gap was identified, and the Committee recommended to Council that we consider cancelling the event. Staff felt that this work had dragged on too long, and there was limited time to complete a long list of critical next steps.

The week after that recommendation was challenging for me, for staff, and for the organizers. I personally contacted the organizers in order to better understand the situation form their point of view. I had other concerns about the event (management of timing, parking arrangements for racers, a few course layout concerns, etc.) but I honestly thought they were going to get over this gap with liberal application of shoe leather, elbow grease, and salesmanship. I had enough experience with smaller bike races in my earlier days that I know how things can come together at crunch time.

I met with staff and looked at the public outreach data they were using to make their assessment, and I agreed with them. I was sent data from the organizers, and was challenged to rectify the two datasets and change my opinion about staff’s assessment. I arranged for a meeting with the organizers and representatives of the Festivals Committee to sit down and discuss how the data the organizers provided did not fulfill staff’s expectations about public contacts. following this, there was yet another meeting the between staff and the organizers to further compare notes. I cannot emphasize enough that all of this took place in an effort to make the event happen. We burned a lot of staff time (and overtime), at a level we would not have done for a commercial enterprise, film company, or most other volunteer events. City staff bent over backwards trying to see the situation through the organizers’ lens, and I feel they tried earnestly to get to a place where they could responsibly recommend further support.

Councillor Harper (representing the Festivals Committee) and I took the extra time to set up and attend these meetings, to dig into the data, and to consider the options. In the end, we had to agree with staff that moving ahead in 2016 was not the responsible thing to do. It didn’t serve the City, the organizers, or CyclingBC.

At every step of the way here, we were in communication with the organizers, and the City repeatedly made clear what its expectations were. There was nothing capricious in the decision, nor should it have been surprising to the organizers. I think staff made the right call in a difficult situation, and I support them, even if it means we cannot have an event in 2016 that I was very much looking forward to.

I hope that we can try again in 2017, and through this experience we can tighten up the way we set and address the City’s expectations. It appears we need to start consultations earlier and perhaps the City needs to set firmer deadlines instead of only giving guidance. Lessons were learned through this.

I think the relationship between the City and the organizers, clearly fractious in the past, was in this case business-like and respectful up until the end, and I hope this disappointment does not erode the progress made. That is part of the reason I was reluctant to write this blog post, as I don’t want fuel thrown on a spark. However I equally cannot stand silent while the motives and professionalism of the City’s staff, Committee, and Council are questioned in the social media. I think there are things the City could have done differently, but there are definitely things that the organizers could have done better, and should have done better. I own a bit of this, as I was probably not as proactive as a self-assigned liaison as I could have been, especially earlier in the process. However, both Hyack and the City were pushing the envelope a bit, getting into organizing an event they had little experience with, and I think it was valuable learning experience. I hope it pays off with a great event in 2017.

That will require a continued business-like relationship and respectful communications on both sides.

Community – the rest of March.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

My plan to provide regular Smilin’-Politician-in-the-Community blog posts keeps getting derailed. But let’s see if I can catch up since my last report about two weeks ago, because I have been smiling quite a bit.

We had a meeting of the Mayor’s Public Engagement Taskforce, which has been doing some pretty cool work as of late in figuring out how the City can do a better job engaging with the public (expect to see some reporting coming out this spring). I also had an ACTBiPed meeting, and have been doing some work with the Mayor’s Canada Games Pool Taskforce.

I attended the UNIBUG Forum. The User Network for Insect Biology in the Urban Garden (UNIBUG) is a citizen science initiative at Douglas College that lets people doing urban gardening contribute to research into beneficial insects, while providing a learning network to help them garden better. If you have a garden box, a backyard gardens, or even planter gardens in New West, you should check out UNIBUG and see if understanding your bugs is right for you!

I attended two artist talks at the New Media Gallery, both relating to the recently-closed exhibit OTIC. Jesper Norda spoke about his piece The Centre of Silence, and showed us some of his remarkable earlier works. Then on the closing day of OTIC, composer John Oliver walked a group of us through the exhibition, bringing his interpretations of the works, drawing from his vast experience in composition, avant-garde music and psychoacoustics.

ud2

It was interesting to me, as someone who thinks pretty squarely about topics of science (when they talk about the mass of the air in the room, I can’t help but do a Fermi Estimate: “22 Litres per mol, 30grams per mol, so ~700 grams per cubic metre… etc.”) to be given a completely different viewpoint that connects the actual science to how we interpret sound. It was educational and brought a whole bunch more out of the exhibition I already really enjoyed.

I also wanted to note, after leaving the Norda talk on a Thursday night (I had to rush off to curling), I was riding my bike up Columbia Street and was amazed by the entertainment opportunities. There was an Open Mic going on at Old Crow Coffee, live music at el Santo, live music (and a new menu!) at the Heritage Grill, and a general buzz of activity downtown. I can’t help but feel we are turning a corner here…

Talking about turning corners, the group that tried to put together an electric racing cart series a couple of years ago are back on the scene, and it appears that a series is happening this summer. A few of us were given an opportunity to check the carts out in the City Hall parking lot, with a pro driver going fast around an impromptu circuit, and several of us going quite a bit slower:ud3

The carts are your typical high-performance racing carts, except that they are 100% electric powered, which makes them scary quiet, and scary fast. apparently we have a race coming this July in Downtown New Westminster. Hold on to your hats.

What kind of a Metro Area do we live in that a former transportation commissioner of New York can sell out a talk in a 700+ seat theatre and be given rock star status while here? There was a serious urban planning and sustainable transportation geek-out at the Vancouver Playhouse when Janette Sadik-Khan arrived on the Vancouver stop of her book tour. And I, of course, was the total fan-boy:ud1Her book “Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution” tells how she re-drew the streetscape of New York City following a motto that “The public realm is the public’s realm”. From strategically reclaiming poorly utilized parking spaces to closing a stretch of Broadway to make Times Square a human space again, he book is a manual of how to take out streets back from those who want to use them only as roads.

It is also full of condensed insight, beautifully concise explanations clearly honed by years of having the same arguments discussions about the same controversial simple ideas to make public space more useful and pedestrian spaces safer. Her page-and-a-half about curb extensions should be required reading for anyone who argues that removing them from Royal Ave will help anything.

So that, a trip over to Saturna to make life difficult for some scotch broom, and the wrap-up of the curling season (Team DeGobbi finished in the semi-finals! Congrats to Team Pierce for winning the Royal City Curling Club’s 50th Club Championships!), have been keeping me busy and smiling.ud4.

Ask Pat: Safety Dictator

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Nicole asks—

Since your wonderful idea of a 30 km/h urban speed limit has drawn some ire, what other controversial things might you do to make our roads safer if you were made Dictator of BC for, say, a year? (I am guessing that photo radar is very high on the list, if not number one.)

Ire!? If an idea doesn’t draw ire from some sector, it is probably not worth even discussing. You may have heard some ire, I heard a lot of people saying its about time. Just this week, there were articles in Price Tags (Vancouver’s best Urbanism portal), there have been great results out of Toronto on their speed reduction program, and Seattle has joined the fray. I even took this photo at the Janette Sadik-Khan talk in Vancouver on Tuesday night:JSK20

Ire be damned, I want our streets to be safer. As JSK herself says: “When you challenge the status quo, it pushes back. Hard.”

I like the tone of your question, however. What would I do if I was Dictator for a year and was able to do whatever I wanted to make roads safer? Not sure I could get it all done in a year, but Dictators have armies to do their bidding, right?

Photo radar has it’s use. The Pattullo Bridge is a perfect example of a 50km/h road where everyone goes 80km/h and the resultant accidents are incredibly dangerous for other bridge users. It also reduces the inferred safety of the bridge, and is used as a primary reason for replacement. With careful application and an emphasis on safety (as opposed to punitive punishment in places where poor road design encourages speeding), photo radar has a role.

Look at this stupid road. Nothing here tells you to go 60km/h, except the sign. Of course everyone goes 80
Look at this stupid road. Nothing here, not the >3.5m lanes, not the generous shoulder and fixed divider, not the wide-open sight lines, nothing tells you to go 60km/h, except the sign. Of course everyone goes 80 or faster. A silly and punitive place to put Photo Radar, but dollars to donuts, the first place it would be installed.

I also think intersection cameras have a role. There are some in New West, and ICBC and the Integrated Road Safety Unit have a program to support them. However, they seem to concentrate on the red-light runners, likely because it is the easiest thing to enforce with a camera. I’m just as concerned about illegal turns, failing to yield to pedestrians, and entering intersections you have no possible way of exiting in order to “beat a light cycle”. With all the talk of distracted pedestrians and dark clothing, it is a pretty important point that the majority of pedestrian fatalities are caused by the driver failing to yield right of way in an intersection.

To make roads safer for cyclists, I would start by implementing (almost all) the recommendations that the Ontario Coroner released a couple of years ago after investigating cycling deaths in the province. I wrote a long piece on this once, but in summary: build safe infrastructure for cyclists, improve education for school students and all drivers, pass a 3-foot rule, and so on. We already have a pretty good idea what works, this isn’t radical or anything surprising. All that is lacking is the politcial will to make it happen.

The next big step would be nothing less than a complete re-writing of the design standards for urban streets. This is major part of Janette Sadik-Khan’s thesis for road safety. The existing standards for road design, paint markings, signs, and other treatments are from a different era, and were developed with the desire to make driving through our cities as efficient as possible, with only a nod to driver safety. That the “efficient movement” of cars makes the environment for all other road users less safe does not seem to be addressed.

JSK points out the American road design bible (“Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices”) has more than 800 pages of diagrams and plans describing the standards, 800 pages in which not a single pedestrian is shown. This book (along with it’s Canadian version) needs to be thrown away.

The good news is that there is already a lot of work being done on a better book to replace it. The National Association of City Transportation Officials has a go-to book called “The Urban Street Design Guide” That needs to become the standard, not the alternative. We can no longer use a 1950s guide book to adapt our 1920s streets for 2015 users. Time to challenge the status quo.

This probably exceeds the authority of the Dictator, but I would also change the laws to make cars safer. This engineering work is being done primarily in Europe, and some of it is becoming mainstream, but we can and should make more changes sooner. This includes a suite of things: better crush zones in front bumpers; softer hood materials with larger energy-absorbing gaps between sheetmetal and hardpoints; use of active cushioning (airbags); injury-reducing body shape geometry; larger windows with smaller pillars to improve driver visibility; active and passive collision avoidance systems.

While we are at it, we can add regular vehicle inspection to assure these systems work, and have not been messed with. There is no place in the urban environment for the suite of modifications that make automobiles unsafe for the people sharing the environment: trucks lifted to ridiculous heights, bull and grill guards, black tinted windows and lights, etc. I know that this is a radical idea in a society where many people consider their car an extension of their personality, and anything that impacts the design of their car would be seen as squelching freedom of expression.

Talking about Freedom of Expression, I am a keen follower of the move to change the language of traffic crashes. Read your local newspaper about a pedestrian being killed by a driver, and the headline is usually some form of “Pedestrian killed by car”. The events are always referred to immediately as “accidents”, which makes them sound inevitable, something that just happens, and presumes there is no fault (and, by inference, nothing we can do about it).

We can change how we value public space and our expectation of pedestrian safety by simply changing our language. “Pedestrian hit by driver of car” makes it clear there are two people in the transaction, not a person and an inanimate object. “Collision” and “incident” are both better terms than “accident” until the police and ICBC have an opportunity to determine the cause of the collision (inattentive driving? texting while walking? bad street design? non-functional brakes?). I think words mean something, and the words we use frame the discussion we will have, and we need to have a better discussion, because people are getting killed and we should have no tolerance for it.

Boy, I really sounded like a Dictator there, eh?

on 30km/h

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 5 Comments.

We had an interesting discussion in Council this week about pedestrian safety, a particular concern of mine. And although I have not yet completed my Council Report for this week (its coming…I promise), I wanted to get some words out about this story, as it appears in the newspaper under my photo this week, so I expect some feedback.

The conversation arose out of some good work Vic Leach has been doing in the Sapperton neighbourhood about increasing pedestrian safety through encouraging higher visibility. I support his call for the federal government (through the CSA) to produce standards for reflective products, so that consumers who know when they buy what are essentially safety products, that those products represent an actual increase in safety. This is a great idea.

But I also need to emphasize that I do not think lighting up pedestrians like Christmas trees is the solution to road safety. Putting responsibility for pedestrian safety wholly on the pedestrian is a perverse form of victim-blaming, akin to asking if a cyclist run over by a truck was wearing a helmet, implying that if there was no helmet, the truck driver and crappy roadway infrastructure that made them share space was immediately absolved of blame.

Ultimately, the responsibility for the personal safety of persons sharing space with 1,500kg high-speed metal boxes should fall on the persons operating the 1,500kg high-speed metal boxes and the persons designing the infrastructure where pedestrian and the metal boxes are expected to share space.

As the City, we are responsible for creating those safe spaces, and we are working towards that goal. We have a long way to go, but the emphases in our Master Transportation Plan are on protecting the pedestrian and in making all forms of active transportation easier and safer. We are prioritizing our spending on those aspects, truly putting our money where our mouth is.

However, there is one proven way to improve the safety of the pedestrian realm that is (for the most part) outside of the authority of the City, and that is speed limits in residential and urban areas.

During his presentation to Council, Mr. Leach cited how long it takes a car going 50km/h to stop, how much distance a car going 50km/h covers in 2 seconds. But there is another statistic we need to talk about: a pedestrian struck by a driver going 50km/h has a better than 50% chance of being killed (up to 80% according to some studies)* where a pedestrian struck at 30km/h have a less than 10% chance of being killed. This does not even factor in the fact that the collision is more likely to be avoided if the car is going 30 km/h. The fact that Stockholm, a City similar to Vancouver in weather, size, population, and transportation patterns has such a remarkably lower incidence of pedestrian fatality is a product of many things, including the higher reflectivity standards in Sweden, but it is notable that pedestrian deaths dropped there in 2007, when urban speed limits were reduced to 30km/h.

It is my opinion, backed with a significant amount of accident research, that 50km/h is a dangerous and unsupportable speed for automobiles to be traveling on residential streets. If we want to take the next steps in supporting pedestrian safety, to make a real change to the conditions that cause 400 pedestrian deaths in Canada every year, 60 deaths in BC annually, we need to make changes to how the automobiles operate, not limit ourselves by making the pedestrians – the victims – more visible.

The Province has a “statutory” speed limit of 50km/h for municipal areas. A City like New Westminster may choose to do local speed reductions around schools, parks, or high-pedestrian areas, but there is an onerous requirement for signage to make this enforceable. I would like to see the statutory limit in urban residential areas reduced to 30km/h, and provide the Cities the authority to allow 50km/h on major arterial streets where they see fit.

The potentially most effective way for us to move this forward as a City is to get the Lower Mainland Local Government Association to pass a resolution of support, then take that resolution to the Union of BC Municipalities meeting, where the municipalities can actively lobby the Provincial government to make the change. That is the path we will be hoping to take.

The safety of our citizens is, and should be, the #1 priority for all local governments, and the demonstrated safety benefits of 30km/h make this a no-brainer. I hope we can get it done!

*here is a list of studies, if you don’t want to take my word for it.
A great literature review from the NHTSA in the USA;
A recent published study with slightly different results;
Research from Australia;

Meters and Metres of Water

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Last Council Meeting, the New Westminster Environmental Partners brought a presentation to council on the topic of water conservation. I summarized Council’s resolutions resulting from that discussion in last week’s report, but it is worth expanding on the topic.

Full disclosure: I was actively involved with the NWEP before I was elected to Council, and even served as President for a few years. I have been less involved since I got elected, but am proud of the work we did in this community, and am supportive of the continued work the NWEP does.

The ideas that the NWEP brought first to the City’s Environment Advisory Committee, then to Council with that Committees’ recommendation, were a result of last summer’s unprecedented drought and the Stage 3 water restrictions. Those events saw most lawns in the City turn brown, and had many of us wondering if this was going to be a new reality with the double-whammy of population growth and climate change pushing our reservoirs to the limit.

It was a rainy day in February when Council talked about this topic, but much like it is easier to patch your roof when the sun is shining than when it is leaking, Council sent recommendations back to staff to review and update our water conservation approach in preparation for the next dry season. The approaches could be summed up as the stick, the carrot, and the meter.

The Stick

If I can characterize a common theme at the Environment Advisory Committee, there was frustration expressed about a perceived lack of enforcement in New Westminster during the water use restrictions in the summer of 2015. I think we can all remember noting a lawn or two that was spectacularly green in August, against all odds. On early-morning Sunday FR Fuggitivi bike rides through New West and Burnaby, we saw a lot of sprinklers or tell-tale wet asphalt deep into Stage 3.

For most situations dealing with taxpaying citizens and Bylaws, the City understandably takes an education-first approach. Make sure people violating bylaws understand they are breaking the law, order them to stop, then pull out the fine book if these approaches don’t work. The cost of enforcement Is rarely covered by the fines that can reasonably be applied, social pressure is essentially free, and many more people are obtuse of bylaws than deliberately flaunting them.

However, there are scofflaws, and for them the Bylaws need to be enforced. Council asked staff to report back to us on how the enforcement issues was managed last year, and whether Bylaws Staff had the tools they needed to make enforcement as easy as possible in the event of restrictions in 2016.

The Carrot

Different cities have different levels of water-conservation programming. In New Westminster, rainwater collection barrels are (were?) available from the City’s public works department at a discounted price, so gardeners have a little extra supply around. Other cities have in the past offered “water savings packages” that include things like aerators for your kitchen sink, low-flow shower heads, and spring-loaded outdoor faucets, or rebate programs for those switching to low-flow toilets, in order to incentivize the reduction of water consumption year-round.

I’m actually a bit embarrassed to admit I had very little knowledge of what type of incentive programs like this New Westminster has in place. We asked staff to report back on opportunities for active conservation programs, and to provide a bit of analysis about what works best elsewhere. Hopefully we can high-grade the best ideas from other jurisdictions, and bring them to New West.

The Meter

A basic truth of resource management is that you cannot manage what you don’t count. When it comes to managing our limited resource of clean potable water, water meters are the basic tool of conservation.

In New Westminster, all commercial and industrial users are metered, and pay for their water per cubic metre consumed. Every multi-family residence is also metered, and residents may pay by the cubic metre or a bulk rate to their property manager. Only single-family residences are currently not metered, with all houses paying a “flat fee” for a year of water service. Those with legal secondary suites pay 50% more for their flat rate, to pay for the alleged extra use of their tenant, and some seniors living alone get a discount on the presumption that they use less water.

According to a 2008 report done by staff on this very topic, about 80% of the water hook-ups are not metered, however almost 75% of water use is metered through our existing system. The largest pipes are metered, if not the majority of pipes. It is also reported that New Westminster has one of the lowest rates of water use per capita in the Lower Mainland, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we have the most conservative practices. Compared to most Cities, we have a general lack of large industrial and agricultural users, and have a high proportion of our population living in multi-family dwellings, where water use is typically much lower. These facts point to why we have not been all that motivated in the past to implement a potentially-costly universal metering program, but some things have changed since 2008.

First off, Metro Vancouver (who supplies all of our water) have indicated that they are going to be studying whether mandatory metering is something they may require for their customer municipalities. The 2015 shortage and monumental capital costs required to expand our reservoirs may force their hand, which may in turn force our hand. It serves the City and our rate payers if the City is prepared for this eventuality.

Second, the cost of water per cubic metre from Metro Vancouver has gone up substantially, as will the cost of receiving and treating our liquid waste (which is directly related to the volume of water use). Where the cost of saving water has in the past been overshadowed by the cost of implementing a large-scale metering program, this gap may be closing. Especially as more municipalities move towards metering, and the technology costs come down.

Council asked staff to update the 2008 report, and provide us some models for how a voluntary or mandatory metering system for single family homes might be implemented and operate in New Westminster.

Most of the feedback we have heard so far is positive, and I am reflexively in favour of water meters for all single family homes (including my own). However, I need to emphasize that Council has not made any decisions about this other than to explore the idea, and there is a lot of work for the City to do, including costing, engineering, planning and public consultation, before we have a deliverable program. In the meantime, take shorter showers, ok?

Ask Pat: Crappy Park

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Someone asked—

Hi Pat, I am just inquiring about Sullivan Park on Oliver Street here in the Queen’s Park neighbourhood. It is a lovely park and really close to our home. However, I am noticing that there is a lot of dog dropping being left all around the park. I am not sure if this particular park is monitored but something needs to be done. It is horrible. I refuse to take my 14 month old there anymore as I am worried he is going to fall into it.. or worse. Anything you can do for us?

Shh! I didn’t think we were allowed to talk about Sullivan Park. It’s one of those neighbourhood secrets that we aren’t supposed to let anyone know about.

One general rule about a persistent dog-crap problem in a location is that it is probably just one person. Most dog owners are responsible and don’t want crap lying around any more than the rest of us, but one or two bad apples definitely can result in a lot of… uh… road apples. Unfortunately, catching that one person is probably near impossible.

My first suggestion is to use SeeClickFix when you run into a problem like this, to make sure it gets onto the City operations radar. If you aren’t a smart-phone lover, you can use this on-line form to make sure your issue gets tracked and followed up on. Or call Parks, Culture and Recreation at 604-527-4567.

What can Parks do? That is definitely a small park, and we have limited staff, so 24-hour patrols are not likely in the offing. I am not as familiar with Sullivan Park as my Queens Park neighbours, but having a doggie station with a ready source of collection bags, trash receptacle and signage will usually help most people do the right thing – if the park doesn’t have these at the one or two most common entry point, that may help. Of course, it may also encourage more people to see Sullivan as an unofficial “dog run”, which comes with its own issues.

As it is a unique spot, with a relatively small group of users (until you went and let the secret out!), it might be interesting to see if the neighbourhood has any ideas how to approach the issue. Better signage? Neighbourhood dog-watch? As a non-dog owner, I’m happy to hear suggestions!

Uber

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 4 Comments.

Uber is not coming to New Westminster any time soon, and I’m OK with that. Many of my friends, especially the younger, more tech-savvy and “connected”(ugh) cohort, will not like hearing that, but there are many good reasons to question the Uber model, and how that type of service fits into the existing regulatory environment around ride-sharing services. It may actually challenge many of our assumptions about how business operates in the decade ahead. So we need to proceed with caution, as New Westminster Council discussed at last week’s meeting.

Full disclosure: the closest thing to Uber I have ever used was in San Francisco a couple of years ago. We were visiting a friend, staying in Pot Hill, and needed an early taxi ride to the airport. Our host suggested taxis were notoriously unreliable at that time in that neighbourhood, and suggested we call for a Homobile. This was a “ride sharing” service set up to address a specific problem: the Trans community were regularly being passed by the regular taxi services, especially at night, and that even in the (arguably) most queer-friendly City in America, Public Transit and traditional taxis are often not the safest environment late at night for a demographic that still faces disproportionate threats of abuse and violence. Homobile was started as a volunteer service to make sure that everyone could safely get home, and evolved into a collective not-for-profit that returns its revenue right back into a social enterprise that helps the community. We were, of course, white bread tourists looking for an Airport run, but were told up front it was by donation, whatever we could afford. We paid what would have been the “going rate” for an airport run in a traditional cab (with a tip) and got a ride from the actual Lynn Breedlove (who regaled us with memories of the queer punk scene in Vancouver in the 90’s). It was unregulated, non-traditional, and cash-only, but to us it was revolutionary, and operating as a social enterprise that we could support.

Uber is, unfortunately, few of those things.

First off, Uber is an unregulated provider of a commercial service in a highly regulated market, and that lack of regulation provides them a large economic advantage. There is little revolutionary about that. Sure, they use a smart phone app and on-line rating system to manage their sales and billing, but that is more a distraction than the centre of their business model. If we had an unregulated parcel-delivery service without a business license, whose drivers drove un-inspected and under-insured trucks throughout neighbourhoods with drivers not licenced for those trucks, I suspect our community would be concerned. Would we want an unregulated airline offering door-to-door helicopter rides with uncertain pilot training or vehicle licencing? Of course, this is a ridiculous example, but the fundamental argument is the same.

I started writing this post last weekend, and as is typical in the “tech world” (ugh), the story changes fast, as the provincial government has started hinting towards a shift in thinking in Uber, and to put that in context, you need to know the regulatory landscape as it is.

The Taxi industry is regulated at the provincial level. Some powers under that regulation are delegated to local authorities, but the regulation is 100% provincial. If Uber wants to operate in BC, they will need to comply with the B.C. Passenger Transportation Act, and currently, there is no sign they have ever sought a licence to do so.

In saying I am not positive about Uber, I’m not saying the Taxi industry is perfect. Far from it. However, we need to recognize that many of the flaws of the industry are a direct result of the industry trying to remain compliant with an ever more restrictive regulatory environment. Some of those regulations exist for (what I hope are obviously) good reasons: to assure the fleet is safe and reliable, to assure drivers are trained and safe, and to assure the industry is accessible. There are other regulations that appear to exist in order to protect the viability and sustainability of the industry and/or to protect consumers, including regulated prices/meters, and limits to the number of vehicle licences that can be used in any given region. Some of these regulations make sense only in a government-regulated industry sense, to prevent operators from ripping people off or undercutting each other, which may impact safety.

The cumulative impact of these regulations is an industry that is inflexible and at times horribly inefficient, but for the most part safe and reliable with predictable pricing and a constantly-updated fleet. The workers are not getting rich, but can make a decent predictable living, and the owner of the companies are providing a service, paying their taxes, and mostly succeeding, while the incentives to compromise on safety or service by undercutting your competition are few. Depending on whom you ask, they are doing this in spite of – or because of – the grey-market taxi licence sub-industry that puts 6- or 7-figure values on every licence they own. But that market is (and I cannot stress this enough) a product of the regulatory regime forced on these operators and owners.

Uber, in contrast has ignored these regulations, and have leveraged this lack of a fair playing field into a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Their service has the advantage of being more flexible and (usually) efficient, leveraging a remote “rating” application in an attempt to assure higher levels of customer service, though this process alone creates problematic workplace conditions. They do not have employees, but instead have millions of independent contractors who have no control over the terms of their employment, but bear all of the costs and risks of that employment, which is not in keeping with modern employment practices in a post-industrial society. It is not clear who is paying taxes and where, whether an Uber driver is insured in the event of a crash or other incident, or who is assuring the vehicles are safe for operation. Uber spends a lot of money on lawyers assuring they hold no liability for the actions of their “employees”, fighting the established legal principle of vicarious liability. There are no standards of accessibility for their fleet, and pricing is often unclear. Drivers are not required to have Class 4 drivers licences, may not have criminal record checks, and may not even be legally entitled to work in the jurisdiction.

Now, I’m not saying that none of these issues are impossible to address, nor am I defending the complex regulatory environment that currently makes the Taxi industry as frustrating as it sometimes is. This was made apparent to me back in the spring of 2015 when two taxi companies operating in New Westminster applied for more licences, citing the need to fulfill the expectation of their customers in regards to availability and wait times. The two companies applied for a total of 17 new licences, and were given 4 by the Transportation Safety Board. Council of course rubber-stamped the approval after no negative public comments, but the fact the industry sees the need for 4x the number of new vehicles than the provincially-regulated Board is willing to grant demonstrates that the regulation may be as much of a problem as it is a solution.

The Minister of Transportation has spoken out against Uber in the past, even threatening to send in investigators and file charges under the Act if Uber is found to be operating in the province. But as of this week, there appears to be a shift in thinking on this file by the Premier and the Minister, and excuse me for being a little skeptical about the motivations.

This week, the Premier, the Minister, and a candidate in a Coquitlam By-election have come out with announcements showing varying levels of approval of the Uber model. The Minster even saying it was a matter of “When, not if” Uber comes to BC, but there is nothing on the Ministry website suggesting any recent change in ideas about Uber, and their decidedly non-favourable Factsheet on the topic has not been updated in 6 months. So if a conversation in the Ministry is being started about this, it isn’t a public one.

Where the conversation is more “public” is over at the BC Liberal Party, where on-line ads and data-mining pages have already started asking you what flavour of Uber you would like (note the survey includes “yes” and “not sure”, with “no” not an option?):

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Link to Source

You need to submit your name and contact info to take part, and as this is a Liberal Party ad, not a government document, it is simply a method to collect contacts for targeted Get-Out-The-Vote action in May 2017. There is nothing unusual or illegal about this, but it is telling that the Government is (in their official role) telegraphing movement on this at the same time they are (in their political role) collecting the names of people who like the idea of the change.

This tells me that the Liberals anticipate Uber being a wedge issue during the 2017 election, and are assembling their resources for that fight. No doubt the Premier’s former campaign coordinator, who is now paid to lobby the government on behalf of Uber, is part of this planning process, and will know how to leverage the needs of his employer(s) to the utmost political advantage of all.Capture

It already appears that the paid comment-section spammers “digital influencers” of the Liberal Party have been  characterizing the NDP as dinosaurs, old fashioned and “proponents of videos stores” if ever they call on the Government to show some actual leadership on this file with revised regulations,  so that should be fun to watch.

Which makes me suspect that the regulation of “the sharing economy”(ugh) will end up much like the gradual and ultimately irrelevant shifts in liquor laws over the last few years. There will be little useful policy developed and little real change, but a lot of press releases to sell small populist victories at times when the Government needs some good news. And if Uber never arrives in the Lower Mainland, somehow the blame will be shifted to “lefty” cities like Vancouver and New Westminster, despite our lack of regulatory jurisdiction.

But to prove I am skeptical, not cynical, I hope this does not occur. I hope that this forces the Government to take a serious review of the taxi industry and employment standards in the “ride sharing” industry, so that workers and consumers in both industries are protected, and can make clear, informed, choices about their options. And also hope the Government put as much effort into planning and developing those regulatory changes as they clearly are in marketing the political battle to come.

Tree Bylaw

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Now I very much feel like we got something done.

My first year on Council has been busy, with some really important stuff, though we were at times distracted by issues that have less impact on the long-term viability of the City. I wonder, sometimes, if we are just kicking the can down the road, or are we actually getting things done? Intellectually, I know it is the latter, I recognize that we are moving so many things forward (Canada Games Pool, Front Street, OCP, whistle cessation, etc.), and just because we are not cutting ribbons every day, the work we do on them now is as important as the closing date will be.

However, it feels good to get one big box checked off in my personal to do list, and the Tree Protection Bylaw was a big one.

Of course, *I* did not do this. It was the result of a lot of great work by City staff and an excellent consultant team. Council as a whole provided direction and political support, so this is progress for the City of which my part of the team was pretty small. But just like the guy who sets the football for the place kicker, I am happy to be part of the team that did something the City will be proud of in the decades ahead.

A Tree Protection Bylaw is something I have whinged about for several years, and New West is hardly a leader in this front. The Bylaw we have adopted is, in my opinion, well developed and pragmatic, and reflects the best practices of other cities across the region.

Short version (an you should read the Bylaw, not rely on my Coles Notes version here):

•You need a permit to cut a tree down if that tree’s trunk is larger than 20cm in diameter at chest height, or if that tree is otherwise designated as “protected”.

•If the tree is hazardous or its roots are causing damage to buildings or utilities, you can remove it, as long as you can demonstrate it is problematic, get a permit to remove it, and replace it with a less-problematic tree.

•If you cut a tree down without a permit, or damage it to the point where it dies or becomes hazardous, you will get fined, and will be required to replace the tree.

There are devils in the details here (i.e. when does a hedge become a tree?) that are explained in the Bylaw, and you can contact the City to get those details if need be. Lots of information is available here.

The other aspects of the Urban Forest Strategy we adopted on Monday are just as important as the Tree Bylaw. The City is making a commitment to increase the tree canopy over the City from 18% to 27%, which is the North American Standard. To put that in context, the Queen’s Park neighbourhood has about a 33% canopy coverage, where Sapperton and Glenbrook North have about 19% overall. If we imagine every neighbourhood being as leafy as Queens Park, you have an idea how much this will change the livability of our City.

There is no doubt there will be costs to this ambitious strategy, but there are significant opportunities to offset some of those costs, and the long-term cost/benefit of a healthy Urban Forest has been proven to be positive across the country. The aspirational goal of 10,000 more trees in 10 years is going to impact everything from what types of housing we will be able to accommodate in our upcoming Official Community Plan, to how we design and protect our boulevard spaces and parks.

The implementation of this strategy will be over 20 years, which demonstrates that even with the check in the box for a big progress step, there will always be more work to do.

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today”