22 Sunday Apr 2018
What it was: an abandoned railroad
A few ideas came to me while checking out the Arbutus Greenway plans yesterday and chatting with project staff.
You can see the plans and quiz staff — see HERE — two sessions yet to come. Deliver your opinions online too, if that suits you better.
21 Saturday Apr 2018
Posted in Municipal Campaigns, Politics
Time once again to thank Ian Bushfield (@ibushfield) for keeping an ever-lengthening list of people who have announced (with some certainty) their interest in becoming an elected official in Vancouver.
Focusing on the top job for a minute, there are plenty of potential Mayoral candidates. But I do miss Mr. Peanut. Won’t someone step up?
20 Friday Apr 2018
Posted in Observations, Ohrn Words, Public spaces, Viewpoint
This gallery contains 8 photos.
Much bigger and sort of more diverse, the 420 event continues to be part party, part protest, part display of …
20 Friday Apr 2018
Posted in Annals of Transit, Seattle, TransLink, Transportation, Urban Planning
Last month the Seattle Times sent reporter David Gutman up to Vancouver for a story on the similarities and differences in transportation between the two cities – an unusual commitment in this day of constrained resources. He talked to a lot of people (including Price Tags) and here is a much-abridged version of what he found. (Full story here.)
With three fully-built light-rail lines and an interconnected bus network, Vancouver’s transportation system is like Seattle’s, just a couple of decades in the future. But the Canadian city differs in its rock-solid commitment to building housing right on top of transit.
Metro Vancouver — which comprises Vancouver and 23 surrounding cities and towns — is a region being built, more and more, around its thriving and ever-expanding light-rail system. …
South Lake Union, home of Amazon and the epicenter of Seattle’s construction boom, currently has 15 major projects under construction, about evenly split between apartments and office space.
South Lake Unions are sprouting up at SkyTrain stops all over Metro Vancouver. …
“There’s different attitudes about density than in Seattle, that’s for sure,” said Kevin Desmond, CEO of TransLink, the agency in charge of transit and roads in Metro Vancouver. “But if you’re going to manage congestion, which is getting worse and worse in Seattle, you’ve got to get people nearer to transit.” …
Throughout the region, 146 developments are being built close enough to a SkyTrain station or track that they need special permission from the rail agency.
In 2012, there were only two such developments. …
20 Friday Apr 2018
Posted in Active Transportation, Bicycling, Infrastructure, Politics, TransLink, Transportation, Urban Planning, Whimsy
Most things change, but some never do. It’s time for a (nearly) serious review of the World of *Mageddons™ . We’re happy to do it, so that you don’t have to, and since few others will call this type of failed prediction what it is: failed.
What this *mageddon review does illustrate is the difficulty for anyone in public life who makes decisions. While it’s easy to dream up *mageddon scenarios, it’s much harder to plan, make decisions and commit big resources amid strident choruses of negativity, and amid the usual incomplete information and the fundamentally unknowable nature of the future.
20 Friday Apr 2018
Posted in Urban Design
20 Friday Apr 2018
Posted in New York City, Public Art, Public spaces
Trust New York City to lead the way. In this post from Curbed.com the David Bowie retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum has used its starpower to transform the Broadway-Lafayette subway station in an ode to Bowiedom.
There are also five different transit MetroCards that have been Bowie branded, and those have been released in a limited edition of 250,000 not consecutively but randomly. The Broadway-Lafayette subway station’s walls are full of photos of Bowie’s remarkable performances, images and life. And here’s the coolest part, this subway station was the one closest to Bowie’s New York City home. You have until May to see this unique collaboration of images that have been curated with the co-sponsorship of Spotify. Spotify is also introducing the “David Bowie Stories” series, looking at the musical icon’s life, tales and essays in concert with photos and videos from the David Bowie Archive. This subway artshow/branding has been an effective blend of pop culture history and art. Here is an opportunity for other transit systems pick up the idea of crossmarketing cultural events and exhibitions, making art in transit more accessible to all.
Below is a six-minute YouTube video of a transit walk through the Bowiefied Subway Station.
20 Friday Apr 2018
Posted in Active Transportation, Bicycling, Transportation, Whimsy
We’ve seen Cycling Santa, the Cycling NPA Mayoral Hopeful — and now, the Cycling Realtor, for whom the wheels of commerce are two in number and powered by legs alone. Note TWO (count ’em, TWO) exclamation marks in the header.
Found in the Georgia Straight, April 19, 2018.
19 Thursday Apr 2018
After buying an abandoned, inacessible railroad, taking out the rails and ties, building a temporary set of paths, and holding 25 outreach events involving over 5,000 participants — it’s time to get a gander at some serious plans. Read on, indeed, to a 38-page PDF that’s chock full o’delights.
It still amazes me that there is so much within a 5-minute walk or a short bike ride of the Greenway (check out the nifty map on page 2). And I’m very pleased to see serious thought has gone into connectivity from the Greenway to the bike lanes on the north and the south — and all of them in-between.
It’s not specifically mentioned, but I really do hope that the design will find a way include those celebrated Heritage Blackberries.
19 Thursday Apr 2018
Similar to YVR Airport’s approach, UBC may decide to kick in some money and other inducements and approach senior governments to help pay for running the Broadway subway from Arbutus to UBC. The distance is around 7 km, a longer distance than the currently-underway Broadway Millennium Line extension that stops at Arbutus.
Perhaps the owners and developers of the 92-acre Jericho Lands should get onboard for this ride — making their development transit-oriented, benefitting themselves and benefitting the city as a whole.
