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Originally Posted by Stingray2004
Today we have Jerry Dobrovolny in that same position, who is now involving the CoV in "social engineering".
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Ah, the good old social engineering trope. You do realize that by definition every decision which affects society is social engineering? Maintaining the status quo is certainly social engineering, while pursing change is also definitely social engineering. Council has given Engineering and Planning a directive to investigate the removal of the Viaducts. That's a political decision and it required a majority vote to initiate. Vision has the majority on Council and can move through whatever they wish. This is no different than the Liberal's majority in the Legislature and the Conservatives' majority in Parliament. Once the political decision has been made it is up to the expertise of Engineers and Planners to come up with a plan that, in their professional opinions, strikes the right balance in the broadest sense between benefit and cost.
It should come as no surprise that existing Council-approved policies are applied to the decision making process regarding an alternative to the Viaducts. The most salient of these policies is application of the modal hierarchy established in the 1997 Transportation Plan, which prioritizes Walking, Cycling, Transit, Goods Movement, and Private Automobiles, in that order. Plus it has been the city's observation that vehicle movements into the downtown core have been in decline while trips into the downtown core have been rising. Better transit, better walking and cycling options, and a substantial increase in residential population in the downtown core have not only absorbed the increase in jobs in the downtown core, but they have converted some trips from automobiles to other modes. The engineers working on the Viaduct alternative plan are labouring under the assumption that the present trend of a declining absolute number of trips into the downtown core by automobile and the automobile's trips-to-work mode-share will continue to go down in the years ahead, or at least hold steady at present manageable levels.
After all of the work on the Viaduct alternative is completed it will once again be a political decision as to whether the Council will wish to adopt the staff recommendation, which I think we can say is likely to be in the affirmative, with caveats. Regardless of whether the Engineers and Planners personally support the idea of the Viaduct removal, they will apply their professional knowledge and judgment to the creation of a plan that reflects the best practices of their disciplines and is in line with established Council policies. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if this Council approves the demolition of the Viaducts, but I also think that the plan which is ultimately proposed will include a greater amount of road capacity than was likely in the minds of some Councillors when they proposed and supported the motion to study the Viaducts' removal.
Since the 1997 transportation plan there has been a policy direction to not increase road capacity, beyond new roads in areas like the Olympic Village, and changes to the geometry, allocation, and functionality of existing road infrastructure, such as adding left turn bays, additional controlled intersections, and on-street bicycle infrastructure. I think that the Viaduct decision is really the first test of whether we should actively be
removing road infrastructure and putting the city on a 'road diet', as the planning kids say. There are significant regional connotations to such a policy, since more people than just those who live in the City of Vancouver use our local streets. On the other hand, changes must be made to our streets in order to better accommodate and encourage greater rates of walking, cycling, and other forms of active transportation. There has to be a balance between regional needs and local desires. I think that those on this forum who keep raising the sticking point of the Viaduct's inclusion in Translink's Major Road Network are making the point that there are certain roads of regional significance, which is why they receive a degree of regional funding support.
A compelling argument can be made that the pronounced modal shift that has taken place in the last 15 years by citizens of the City of Vancouver from automobile use to transit, walking, and cycling has had a direct benefit on the motoring public from across the region who no longer have to compete for rush hour road space in the City of Vancouver previously occupied by local commuters. From a road space perspective, buses are exponentially more efficient than automobiles, and obviously the Canada Line and existing SkyTrain lines are in a league of their own in terms of efficiency and capacity. I think that it is entirely reasonable for the City of Vancouver to make changes to the geometry of its road system if the changes are likely to convert even more trips to non-automobile modes of travel, which has a direct tangible benefit on the quality of life in the city while still benefiting motorist from elsewhere in the region through the further removal of automobile trips from the rush-hour streets. I do not think that the City of Vancouver can make these changes in a vacuum, because they have the very real likelihood of negatively affecting people who live in other parts of the region. On the other hand, the land use and transportation decisions that have been made, and are still being made, throughout the region directly lead to high rates of automobile use that has the very real likelihood of negatively affecting people in the City of Vancouver, through whose neighbourhoods these commuters travel if they travel to destinations in the city proper. So somewhere a balance must be struck and there are more issues and dimensions to consider than sheer vehicles-per-hour throughput.
Having said all of that in a stream of consciousness sort of fashion, I am not convinced that the Viaducts should come down in the immediate future. I think that as a city we have not tried to make use of the space under and around the Viaducts in the slightest way, with the only exception being the overwhelming success of the skate park. I would much, much rather we set a date a decade or so away, when the Viaducts will begin to approach their mid-life refurbishment stage of life, and say that we will make a decision about their future then. We have the luxury of time; they haven't been damaged by an earthquake, they are not cutting us off from the water, and they are not bankrupting us by requiring exorbitantly expensive life-prolonging feats of engineering, like the upgrades to the Lions Gate Bridge. Moreover, the long-awaited Concord Pacific-built Creekside park is still a ways off and any Viaduct demolition, road reconstruction, and park building effort must be coordinated with Concord. If they're footing nearly the whole bill for their section of the park then we're going to have to go at their pace anyway.
In the mean time we must ensure that immediately adjacent new development projects, like the Rogers Arena towers, are planned and designed so that they can function with or without the Viaducts. Most importantly, we then hold an international design competition to imagine ways that we can make the best use possible of the space beneath and around the Viaducts and we must implement the best and most novel idea(s) as pilot projects and we see how they fare. Maybe we tie the removal of the Viaducts to the completion of the UBC line, when east-west mobility in the region and the City of Vancouver improve like never before?
That's my two cents.
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Originally Posted by EastVanMark
The capital plan vote is rigged too. They always ask a vague question like "...do you support the spending of $600 million for roads, community facilities, and parks etc..." but they don't tell you anything more. (i.e. how you plan on spending that money and what EXACTLY you will be spending it on). That of course is by design because they intentionally mislead the public by making a vague reference to things that almost every single citizen cares about, all the while providing no specific details just how the money will really be spent.
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I think that municipal elections, including plebiscites, really ought to have an online voting option. That way we could have a link to the capital plan on which one is about to vote. If we can securely have an online census, which is infinitely more important in the grand scheme of things than a municipal election, then I think that we just ought to make the leap to online voting.
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Hahahaha! what they "meant to say." The charts and graphs at the open house clearly depicting a considerable increase in traffic, with the representatives frequently regurgitating what was being displayed. I am sure one of them would have noticed this "mistake" prior to the open house or at least sometime during it....
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