Metro Vancouver Bike/Pedestrian Discussion

[WBC]

Originally Posted by Rico

A couple of things, I am pretty sure you must remember this debate coming up every time Tom Tom releases their report. Tom Tom measures the difference between the fastest times recorded by their units (free flowing) and the slowest times recorded by their units ('congested'). First this is just a measure of congestion experienced by cars, not walkers, bikers or transit users (so about 1/2 the folks downtown), second it does not tell you anything about wether congestion is getting better or worse....but conveniently enough that horribly biased source statistics Canada does measure average commute times which is probably a better measure of how 'congestion' affects your life. For the record Vancouver as Canadas 3rd largest city has the 3rd longest commute and is the only major city that has had decreasing average commute times....even though it sure doesn't seem like it sometimes.

Statistics Canada is basing this on surveys. Tom Tom has hard data. What Tom Tom's data tells you is that our road network cannot handle stress (i.e congestion). Tom Tom's approach gets challenged by local experts because it tells them what they do not want to hear and that is that for medium sized city our road network has hard time handling increase in traffic during busy times.

Secondly you can track increase and decrease of congestion year by year by looking at Tom Tom's historical data.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by WBC

Statistics Canada is basing this on surveys. Tom Tom has hard data. What Tom Tom's data tells you is that our road network cannot handle stress (i.e congestion). Tom Tom's approach gets challenged by local experts because it tells them what they do not want to hear and that is that for medium sized city our road network has hard time handling increase in traffic during busy times.

Secondly you can track increase and decrease of congestion year by year by looking at Tom Tom's historical data.

TomTom measures as following:

Commute during free flow traffic = 10 mins
Commute during rush hour = 30 mins

Score: 300%

Commute during free flow traffic = 30 mins
Commute during rush hour = 60 mins

Score 200%

Vancouver falls into the first example. Toronto or other sprawl cities fall into the second example. Which would you rather be dealing with?

[officedweller]

Percent data should always be taken with a grain of salt.
Often absolute values are more meaningful.

[WBC]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

TomTom measures as following:

Commute during free flow traffic = 10 mins
Commute during rush hour = 30 mins

Score: 300%

Commute during free flow traffic = 30 mins
Commute during rush hour = 60 mins

Score 200%

Vancouver falls into the first example. Toronto or other sprawl cities fall into the second example. Which would you rather be dealing with?

How is Metro Vancouver any less less sprawl city then Metro Toronto? Region to region the density is about the same. Metro Toronto area is roughly double Metro Vancouver and it has roughly double the population. The difference is that our road network cannot handle rush hour. That does not bode well for the future. What happens to us when we one day reach Toronto population size?

My frustration stems from the fact that we have 20-40K (depending on the estimate) people moving into the region, the transit and rapid transit in particular is developing at a glacial pace (thanks to the decade of mayors vs. province gong show) and CoV is actively making things worse unless of course you live 3-5 km from downtown and you want to bike (which is a seasonal activity for most people as per CoV's own stats).

[Aroundtheworld]

Originally Posted by WBC

How is Metro Vancouver any less less sprawl city then Metro Toronto? Region to region the density is about the same. Metro Toronto area is roughly double Metro Vancouver and it has roughly double the population. The difference is that our road network cannot handle rush hour. That does not bode well for the future. What happens to us when we one day reach Toronto population size?

My frustration stems from the fact that we have 20-40K (depending on the estimate) people moving into the region, the transit and rapid transit in particular is developing at a glacial pace (thanks to the decade of mayors vs. province gong show) and CoV is actively making things worse unless of course you live 3-5 km from downtown and you want to bike (which is a seasonal activity for most people as per CoV's own stats).

Although they may be similar for average, I would argue that Metro Toronto and Metro Vancouver are very different when comes to residential density. Remember a lot of Metro Vancouver is ALR, agricultural land. This is not as much the case in Metro Toronto.

Even though transit expansion isn't happening as fast as we would like, it is the fastest in the country. Toronto and Montreal have expanded their networks at a a glacial pace compared to here. Only now do they seem to be getting their act together.

[s211]

I had to drive downtown today. For goodness sakes, the Nelson bike lane has turned Nelson into a parking lot. Not only is there one less auto lane, a few weeks ago they farted around with the traffic lights such that they are now out of sync along Nelson, particularly at Cambie and Beatty. There was only a couple of vehicles getting through intersections, whereas before there was a good flow and never a backup of any scale.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by s211

I had to drive downtown today. For goodness sakes, the Nelson bike lane has turned Nelson into a parking lot. Not only is there one less auto lane, a few weeks ago they farted around with the traffic lights such that they are now out of sync along Nelson, particularly at Cambie and Beatty. There was only a couple of vehicles getting through intersections, whereas before there was a good flow and never a backup of any scale.

I noticed they had desynchronized the traffic lights. Dorbrovolny needs to be fired.

[urbancanadian]

Originally Posted by WBC

How is Metro Vancouver any less less sprawl city then Metro Toronto? Region to region the density is about the same. Metro Toronto area is roughly double Metro Vancouver and it has roughly double the population. The difference is that our road network cannot handle rush hour. That does not bode well for the future. What happens to us when we one day reach Toronto population size?

My frustration stems from the fact that we have 20-40K (depending on the estimate) people moving into the region, the transit and rapid transit in particular is developing at a glacial pace (thanks to the decade of mayors vs. province gong show) and CoV is actively making things worse unless of course you live 3-5 km from downtown and you want to bike (which is a seasonal activity for most people as per CoV's own stats).

Vancouver has its issues with sprawl, no doubt. Toronto is much, much more sprawled though because they don't have the same geographical constraints (obviously). But Toronto's sprawl is quite compact, much like LA, and so the overall "urban area" is considered the most dense in North America.

That being said, the "shape" of our ALR skews our numbers heavily, so Statistics Canada's numbers would include a ton of non-urban areas in our "urban area". Really the best way to calculate Metro Vancouver's urban density would be to use the Urban Containment Boundary, which contains 99% of the regions population/jobs/etc. The UCB is about 905 sqkm., and of that, more than 79 sqkm is still undeveloped. (ie. the development happening in Clayton, Yorkson, Grandview, etc. is all still within the UCB.)

Toronto/Ontario has also recently implemented a green belt around the region, which is meant to act similarly to our ALR, preventing the suburbs from expanding forever. Anyway, using the more accurate UCB would put us "ahead" of Toronto, in terms of urban density, which is pretty impressive. Obviously that doesn't mean the drive from Lions Bay to Aldergrove is any shorter, but I think it does put things into perspective.

[s211]

Originally Posted by whatnext

I noticed they had desynchronized the traffic lights. Dorbrovolny needs to be fired.

Any ideas for the best means to contact the city? I'm tired being part of the silent majority.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by urbancanadian

But Toronto's sprawl is quite compact, much like LA, and so the overall "urban area" is considered the most dense in North America.

You're kidding, right? LA as an example of a compact city?

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by s211

Any ideas for the best means to contact the city? I'm tired being part of the silent majority.

[email protected]

Though I wouldn't hold my breath for a response, at least they will know people are getting pissed off.

[ryanmaccdn]

Originally Posted by whatnext

[email protected]

Though I wouldn't hold my breath for a response, at least they will know people are getting pissed off.

anyone want to take a stab on the increase of car exhaust with all the lights downtown being de-synchronized.

[SFUVancouver]

Originally Posted by WBC

Tom Tom has hard data.

The Tom Tom methodology is flawed. It confuses difference from significance: a 20 minute trip during peak traffic that normally takes 10 minutes in off-peak periods is "100% worse" due to the difference associated with congestion, while a 90 minute trip during peak traffic that normally takes 60 minutes is only "50% worse" due to congestion, but the latter is unequivocally worse than the former.

Furthermore, there is the fundamental issue of selection bias: only those who use their products are included in the data.

[WBC]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

The Tom Tom methodology is flawed. It confuses difference from significance: a 20 minute trip during peak traffic that normally takes 10 minutes in off-peak periods is "100% worse" due to the difference associated with congestion, while a 90 minute trip during peak traffic that normally takes 60 minutes is only "50% worse" due to congestion, but the latter is unequivocally worse than the former.

Furthermore, there is the fundamental issue of selection bias: only those who use their products are included in the data.

You folks are confusing what TomTom is trying to measure. What they are doing is a stress test. As in how the system behaves under heavy load. So they are comparing the how road system in city A behaves compared to road system in city B under stress.

What their test shows it that for a medium sized city our road network handles load as poorly as a large city's road network. That is all.

I am NOT arguing here that is better to commute in LA or Toronto then in Vancouver, or that is better to invest all money into building roads. I am arguing here that our road network, such as it is, sucks, unless you happen to be driving around Sunday morning.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

The Tom Tom methodology is flawed. It confuses difference from significance: a 20 minute trip during peak traffic that normally takes 10 minutes in off-peak periods is "100% worse" due to the difference associated with congestion, while a 90 minute trip during peak traffic that normally takes 60 minutes is only "50% worse" due to congestion, but the latter is unequivocally worse than the former.

Furthermore, there is the fundamental issue of selection bias: only those who use their products are included in the data.

Is that actually true though? There is the possibility of this being a flaw in the findings, but is it true? Is it true that say Toronto goes from 60 to 90 minutes and Vancouver only goes from 10 to 20? These seem like numbers pulled out of thin air that might not correlate to the actual numbers.

It's like your friend says you are ugly, and you say, well, that's only compared to my other friends I'm the ugliest, doesn't mean I'm ugly. But really, you very well could be ugly.

It might be flawed in terms of using the results to rank cities in a list. But I don't think it is flawed in that it shows there is a significant problem with road capacity.

If other, larger cities which on average might have longer commutes because of their larger spread out population, don't experience the same increase in congestion as we do, then there is a problem here.

They have a city whose infrastructure is better suited to their population, we are worse. And we continue to make portions of it worse.

[WBC]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

Is that actually true though? There is the possibility of this being a flaw in the findings, but is it true? Is it true that say Toronto goes from 60 to 90 minutes and Vancouver only goes from 10 to 20? These seem like numbers pulled out of thin air that might not correlate to the actual numbers.

It's like your friend says you are ugly, and you say, well, that's only compared to my other friends I'm the ugliest, doesn't mean I'm ugly. But really, you very well could be ugly.

It might be flawed in terms of using the results to rank cities in a list. But I don't think it is flawed in that it shows there is a significant problem with road capacity.

If other, larger cities which on average might have longer commutes because of their larger spread out population, don't experience the same increase in congestion as we do, then there is a problem here.

They have a city whose infrastructure is better suited to their population, we are worse. And we continue to make portions of it worse.

Those are just examples that some posters used to try to illustrate their point. 10 minutes will not get you anywhere in Vancouver. 10 minutes maybe gets you out of downtown on a good day. Unless of course you are like one of my colleagues who gets from Steveston to Downtown in 15 minutes...right..

[ClaytonA]

Originally Posted by WBC

Those are just examples that some posters used to try to illustrate their point. 10 minutes will not get you anywhere in Vancouver. 10 minutes maybe gets you out of downtown on a good day. Unless of course you are like one of my colleagues who gets from Steveston to Downtown in 15 minutes...right..

So what you two are claiming is that TomTom says Toronto has better mobility?

Since it takes twice as long, 60 minutes versus 30 minutes, and the amount of time to get somewhere increases by 30 minutes instead of 20 minutes in Vancouver, Toronto is supposed to be better?


We're getting what we earned after voting down transit improvements. Cycling and pedestrian improvements are orders of magnitude less expensive; these are the cheapest and most effective investments in better accessibility and mobility, so by removing the chance at transit improvements we're left with these.

I'd add that Vancouver's politicians aren't voted in by people in places outside Vancouver's political boundaries like Steveston, so it probably makes sense they're investing in their citizen's, their voters', transportation options even if it is at the expense of people who feel entitled to drive from outlying suburbs. We limited our options last spring.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by ClaytonA

We're getting what we earned after voting down transit improvements. Cycling and pedestrian improvements are orders of magnitude less expensive; these are the cheapest and most effective investments in better accessibility and mobility, so by removing the chance at transit improvements we're left with these.

I'd add that Vancouver's politicians aren't voted in by people in places outside Vancouver's political boundaries like Steveston, so it probably makes sense they're investing in their citizen's, their voters', transportation options even if it is at the expense of people who feel entitled to drive from outlying suburbs. We limited our options last spring.

Well said.

[Large Cat]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Well said.

Agree.

[WBC]

Originally Posted by ClaytonA

So what you two are claiming is that TomTom says Toronto has better mobility?



We're getting what we earned after voting down transit improvements. Cycling and pedestrian improvements are orders of magnitude less expensive; these are the cheapest and most effective investments in better accessibility and mobility, so by removing the chance at transit improvements we're left with these.

I'd add that Vancouver's politicians aren't voted in by people in places outside Vancouver's political boundaries like Steveston, so it probably makes sense they're investing in their citizen's, their voters', transportation options even if it is at the expense of people who feel entitled to drive from outlying suburbs. We limited our options last spring.

Yes, and every winter and fall when those cycling numbers go down by 60-70% percent from the peak due to weather, all those people are back on transit or in cars...So very well done indeed...