Providing straightforward information to the public about small changes should be, well, straightforward. It’s not.
Example: a temporary parking change on Nelson Street.
So, let’s go to back of meter. (Click on post to see rest of images.)
Read more »TransLink is hosting regional conversations on Transport 2050, the latest version of its strategic plan. Last week at a packed Robson Square theatre, it began with “The Future of Mobility” – lots of thought nuggets from TL’s strategic planner, Andrew McCurran and a panel of those in what we used to call alternative transport (not any longer) – ride-hailing, car-sharing, bike-sharing, electric mobility, and scooters!
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Here are a few tasty items:
Say good-bye to the ‘bike lane’; hail the ‘mobility lane.’ Since it’s illegal for electric scooters to use the sidewalk (yeah, right) and it’s obvious already that electrification is leading to new kinds of vehicles faster than self-powered two-wheelers, they will all use the bike lanes or demand their own right-of-way. Expect conflict.
(By the way, in cities with both bike- and scooter-share, the latter outperforms the former.)
Will there be space available on a reconfigured road as the number of traditional vehicles (you know, cars) diminishes? Assuming, of course, that the number of cars really does drop. Data from the use of Uber and Lyft in American cities indicates just the opposite: more cars and more congestion.
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As TransLink prepares to update Metro Vancouver’s transportation plan through to 2050, it will be convening discussions with the public around the future of how we’ll move.
Technological advances in electrification, automation and the sharing economy are converging to reshape the transportation sector. Shared micromobility is already taking many cities by storm with the rise of electric scooters and dockless bikes. How will Metro Vancouver adopt these technologies in a way that supports our quality of life?
You’ll also have an opportunity to demo an electric scooter or e-assist bike following the event.
Emcee: Bowinn Ma, MLA for North Vancouver-Lonsdale and Parliamentary Secretary for TransLink
Read more »Kudos to TransLink, for making some space for Indigenous art that doesn’t shy away from engaging people on social and even political themes.
Marianne Nicolson is a member of the Musgamakw Dzawada’enuxw of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nations, an artist, and the creator of “The Sea Captain”, the new public installation at the recently upgraded Surrey Central Skytrain.
As she explains in the following short video, she’s interested in interactions between peoples, particularly related to colonial encounters, and bringing something different to the public realm.
Read more »Vancouver is getting a major Skytrain extension, a rapid transit line through the second-largest employment corridor in the Province of BC. It’s the Broadway corridor.
In preparation, the City of Vancouver is working on a plan for this corridor, and you can get in on the process. Remember, you’ll get your say, but not a veto. Not, that is, until you elect Ken Sim (or his replacement) and the NPA into control of council, provided, of course, that you live somewhere in the vicinity of the area.
Read more »Vancouver’s new City Council showed it’s stripes today, in a long discussion around extending rapid transit to UBC.
UBC has launched a campaign aimed at getting Canada’s Federal Gov’t and the Provincial Gov’t of BC to throw in a few billions of funding to build the currently-funded Millennium Skytrain extension all the way to UBC. It’s good pre-election timing.
Read more »That good old new transportation paradigm is getting an elevation in profile.
TransLink, Modo, Evo and Mobi have formed a partnership around providing easier management of a multi-modal life.
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A fixture in Port Coquitlam politics for the past 16 years — two terms as councillor, three as mayor — Greg Moore has also been a figurehead and ardent champion for the entire region.
As chair of the Metro Vancouver board for seven years, and chair of the Mayors Ten Year Vision Committee in the midst of his decade-long tenure on the TransLink Mayors Council, Moore rolled up his sleeves and left indelible marks of leadership and organizational effectiveness on both organizations, while helping steer his community through a time of change.
In this episode, Gordon Price and the newly-retired-from-politics (***so he says***) ex-mayor talk about the new culture of incivility in civic affairs, the concentric circles of influence that ebb out of Vancouver to the suburbs, what makes for a mayoral mandate, and why planners could perhaps be considered ideal political leaders.
Read more »Yesterday’s post about the Vancouver Sun op-ed by Alex Boston scraped the surface of what could comprise an effective business case for Skytrain south of the Fraser, let alone what numbers may (or may not) have been used to justify LRT in the first place.
Did Translink miss some data? As I hinted in Part I, perhaps they simply missed communicating the most relevant, top-line numbers the public have an appetite — and capacity — to understand (no offence to all of us).
But let’s assume they made a whole raft of calculations, such as those that can be found in “Regional Transportation Investments: A Vision for Metro Vancouver (Appendices)“, pointed to me by Boston’s colleague Keane Gruending from the Centre for Dialogue. The Centre’s own analysis on this file is reminiscent of their Moving in a Livable Region program around the time of the 2015 transit plebiscite, which attempted to hold our leaders accountable (and the politics in check), using a facts-first approach.
Boston’s deeper piece on the Renewable Cities website also reminded me that a lot of the debate on whether to pause Phase 2 and 3 of the Mayors Plan to once again deal with the Skytrain question often fails to deal with two important metrics tied to land use: jobs density, and CO2 emissions.
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