Here’s Pete Meizsner’s take on the new PGR, complete with bafflement about a few residents’ opposition to the changes.
Personally, I do understand commuter motorists’ problems at having their high-speed high-volume arterial turned into a traffic-calmed neighbourhood street. But the remaining arterials on 4th Avenue, Broadway, 12th Avenue, 16th Avenue and 25th Avenue seem to have survived quite nicely and absorbed the 6,000 – 8,000 motor vehicles that formerly used PGR per day. Who knows, maybe a few people have even changed their commute to involve a bike or a bus.Point Grey Road used to be a busy commuter route between downtown Vancouver and UBC, with thousands of cars using the route daily to avoid traffic on West 4th and Broadway. Now it’s a low-traffic street, which improved property values and quality of life.
It begs the question, what are the vocal minority of naysayers really concerned about? Is it really the cost of the upgrades, or is it the hundreds of cyclists and pedestrians now passing by? Would these homeowners prefer a seawall along the waterfront in front of their properties (and their views)?
There’s no shortage of issues city hall deserves criticism for, but an improved cycling and pedestrian route in one of Vancouver’s most spectacular settings isn’t one of them.
I didn’t understand the problems either, until I cycled by one evening and noticed how much city owned land that owners on the north side were using for free were going to lose. Apparently, they didn’t like giving up what was not theirs.
Equally so, one or two critics lambasted the city for “removing green space” to provide a new paved multi-use sidewalk along with new street trees and lawn. This was not a balanced critique because at least a dozen owners in the western most two blocks expropriated and paved big hunks of the boulevard for years for private parking, and hid the stalls with hedges.
Thanks for the shoutout, and the linkback!
Great article
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Haters gonna hate. I may be biased because I use that as a commute route on my bike twice a week, and think it’s wonderful. There are a few well known (vocal) people that will hate anything that has to do with bike infrastructure, they need to get a life. Also, a BIG shout out to the city for paving early so the BMO Marathoners would have an easier time of it. Running through there during the race, it was a nice pleasant surprise!
There will need to be a seawall anyway because of sea-level rise and erosion due to storm surges. Back before PGR ever went on the table I wondered about a bike and walking path along the beach. I love that natural shoreline there, but it doesn’t seem to have a chance even with sea level rises of a metre.
A metre, or perhaps more.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-doomsday-glacier-w481260
Maybe 10 cm .. head for the hills .. http://www.climatedepot.com/2017/05/16/analysis-debunks-absurd-sea-level-rise-claims-about-south-florida/
ClimateDepot.com is the website of Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow employee Marc Morano, a conservative global warming denier who previously served as environmental communications director for a vocal political denier of climate change, Republican Sen. James Inhofe. Launched in spring 2009, Climate Depot claimed it would be “the Senate EPW website on steroids,” and “the most comprehensive information center on climate news and the related issues of environment and energy.”[1]
ClimateDepot.com is being financed by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a nonprofit in Washington that advocates for free-market solutions to environmental issues. Public tax filings for 2003-7 (the last five years for which documents are available) show that the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the ExxonMobil Foundation and foundations associated with the billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, a longtime financier of conservative causes, including being the primary source of money used to fund attacks against Bill Clinton during the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky eras of his presidency [1]. According to a report issued by the Union of Concerned Scientists, from 1998-2005, approximately 23% of the total ExxonMobil funding for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow was directed by ExxonMobil for climate change activities [p. 32].
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Climate_Depot
Marc Morano, who has no climate science expertise, runs the anti-climate-science website ClimateDepot.com for the anti-regulation Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which lists him as Director of Communications.[1]
“Morano was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in McLean, VA. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science at George Mason University.”[2]
Until spring of 2009, Morano served as communications director for the Republicans on the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Morano commenced work with the committee under anti-science Senator James Inhofe, who was majority chairman of the committee until January 2007 and is now minority ranking member. In December 2006 Morano launched a blog on the committee’s website that largely promotes the views of climate change skeptics.
Morano was a journalist with Cybercast News Service (CNS), which is owned by the conservative Media Research Center. CNS and Morano were the first source in May 2004 of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth claims against John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election[3] and in January 2006 of similar smears against Vietnam war veteran John Murtha.
Morano was “previously known as Rush Limbaugh’s ‘Man in Washington,’ as reporter and producer for the Rush Limbaugh Television Show, as well as a former correspondent and producer for American Investigator, the nationally syndicated TV newsmagazine.”[4]
[…]
Timed for release during the 21st United Nations global climate summit in Paris in December, 2015, Marc Morano’s self-featuring movie “Climate Hustle” is intended to distract international negotiators.[17] Arriving at the end of the meeting are climate deniers from Heartland Institute, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), and Competitive Enterprise Institute. According to Republic Report, the release of author Matt Kasper notes, “Staff from the three organizations along with the “Cooler Heads Coalition” (a coalition of other climate denying organizations including 60 Plus Association and the American Legislative Exchange Council) will be presenting the world premiere of Marc Morano’s new movie, Climate Hustle – the latest attempt of promoting climate change denial. – See more at: http://www.republicreport.org/2015/climate-hustle-marc-morano-cfact/#sthash.wGcFhQJB.dpuf
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Marc_Morano
And how did that work out?
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Who are you going to believe on the warming of the ocean and atmosphere and subsequent break up of Western Antarctic glaciers, professional glaciologists and climate scientists who walked on, extensively studied and modeled glaciers and who reported their findings in respected peer-reviewed science journals, or a Republican hack financed by Exxon pulling a report off the low ranking climate denier (David Middleton) pseudo-science shelf?
It looks lovely and we use it a lot.