…and by they, I mean cars. Lots of them.
On Sunday, one of the oldest, skinniest, and deadliest bridges joining my hometown, New Westminster, to the great unwashed suburbs to the south, caught fire. (Come to think of it, it’s the only such bridge.) It caught fire! Have you ever heard of a bridge catching fire? If you have, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
One of the only really compelling pieces of news to come out of the furore about the bridge-burning has been this piece, by David at CityFocus. So what, exactly, would happen if they just left the bridge there, unrepaired?
Or if, when they re-opened the bridge, they opened it only to HOV traffic, trucks, bicycles (although that last pairing scares me a bit) and commercial traffic only - as Dave says - what would happen?
What if it was the opposite of what they say happens in every city everywhere when you build new roads…? More cars. Not less congestion - more cars, and more congestion! So if we leave the bridge in its decrepit state, refuse to re-open it, would there be fewer cars?
Bet yer ass. If that bridge was closed and it was significantly harder to get across the Fraser River northbound to work each morning, solo in an SUV when there is a fixed electric train linking each shore that clocks a faster time and greater reliability than your Hummer, don’t you think that economic considerations, time considerations, and plain old aggravation considerations will begin outweigh the dubious advantages of commuting in said SUV? Not to mention the effect it would begin to have on housing economy. Maybe people would start to choose homes closer to their work - sure, perhaps smaller for the same money, but a small price to pay to shave an hour off of your commute each day.
What if it might actually be good to have some pushback on our road network, something that might actually communicate in a dollars-and-sense sort of way to the average citizen that living in Langley and working at a Yaletown legal office for a $20/hour is just not worth the 3 hours you spend each day fighting traffic, guzzling gas, and adding stress? That this negotiation we’ve been making ever since the internal combustion engine became cheap enough to put in every driveway, is a false one; that instead of saving you that money on your cheaper suburban home, it costs you value from your life by stealing time from your family, fuel money from your pocket, and potential from your environment.
Maybe we should just leave the bridge, or restrict it to commercial traffic or (gasp) pedestrians and bicycles. Maybe then we’d begin to see what happens when humans are confronted with the rare anti-vehicle economic pressure, and see what sort of ingenious lifestyle changes we dream up to solve the problem?
I’m just sayin. Not a bad thought experiment.
11 responses so far ↓
1 Will // Jan 20, 2009 at 8:35 am
You are very wrong. Wrong Wrong Wrong.
More roads = more cars only if you also allow a dramatic increase in population on the other side of the road. Ergo, more population + more roade = more cars. But, less roads + equal populaton = same cars, moving slower, exhausting more, costing family time and money and delaying vital services.
More roads + equal population = faster commute times, less exhaust and gas purchases more family time and higher economic productivity. I am tired of the rose colouredly informed greenies blaming the population for having to get to work in the morning or not being able to afford a $650,000 house to raise their kids in. Vancouver police officers dont live in Vancouver, they commute. Why? Not because they hate David Suzuki. A condo in Surrey fits their budget and the VPD is not going to put a detatchment in Whalley to accomodate that.
So there.
2 Will // Jan 20, 2009 at 8:37 am
Oh and I am your brother (and a meanie) and also typically vote green.
3 Jenn // Jan 20, 2009 at 12:34 pm
While I agree with what Will says, I think it’s a good time for people to learn that transit isn’t evil.
So many people, for example, the people I work with gasp in horror at Skytraining/Busing - I literally had to hold emotional hands with them on the way from Surrey Central to 12th and Cambie for our cooking class. Like goodness folks no one is going to die, the homeless folks and those emo teenagers could care less. I mean lets take a moment to understand that the management here takes the train (including the boss) and we for the most part have a stressless commute (aside from the frozen trolly lines today…). To be honest you couldn’t pay me enough, even a house to get in a car and drive to work. Maybe if you paid off my personal debt I’d be willing to get a licence but not a car. I like to sleep, read, listen to music and in general not be stressed by road ragers, crappy radio and horrors I’m doing to the environment. Nevermind I have the peace of mind knowing I’m not driving over that horrible bridge…
4 Tenth To The Fraser » Blog Archive » Contrarian thoughts on predicted Pattullo chaos // Jan 20, 2009 at 10:00 pm
[...] co-author, my husband Will, on the other hand, thinks the whole thing is a crock. Here’s his rebuttal on Jocelyn’s blog: [...]
5 josiejose // Jan 21, 2009 at 9:24 pm
but… more roads + easier transportation due to more roads = more people at end of said roads. It’s an equation that many, many people have measured and understood. Gateway is destined to simply make possible a 90 minute commute which would never ordinarily be possible or advisable. It will make more people apt to think that a commute from chilliwack to yaletown each day is not only possible, it’s “speedy.” until 40,000 of their closest friends join them and make it the same sort of congested maelstrom that it is today, pre-gateway.
6 Rod Smelser // Jan 22, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Josie, … why do you think easier transportation means people will choose to live further out? Don’t relative property prices play a role?
Jocelyn:
“Maybe people would start to choose homes closer to their work - sure, perhaps smaller for the same money, but a small price to pay to shave an hour off of your commute each day.”
I think Will answered this quite correctly with his comments about City of Vancouver police. Many Vancouver City employees no longer live in the City because of housing prices, yet the Heather Deal types tell them tey are totally opposed to constructing a two block HOV lane on Grandview, because she “doesn’t care how many people [from Surrey] are in those cars!”
To put a number or two on the situation, for a family of four, they could make do with a detached house in Surrey, or a 1,500 sf apartment in Vancouver. That house in Surrey, and older one, could be had today for about $400,000. The 1,500 sf apartment in Vancouver is going to cost an absolute minimum of $600,000 for an older one in a less desirable neighborhood. That $200,000 difference is exclusionary.
If Vancouver had a realistic zoning map, apartment prices would be far less and there would be fewer people moving to the outer suburbs. But of course, that’s not the game is it? No, the game is to use public policy to incraese housing prices, not lower them, and you can see that in the Olympic Village fiasco where it’s now out in the open that falling housing prices are one of Vancouver City Council’s greatest nitemares.
7 Jen // Jan 22, 2009 at 3:04 pm
@ Jenn: One of my issues is the simplicity of transit. I used to work in North Van and live in New West. It was a ridiculously simple commute. Walk few blocks to skytrain, take skytrain, switch to urban cruise ship, walk two blocks to workplace. then I started working in Burnaby, a mere 5 km from my home. It became walk to skytrain station, take bus. Get off at intersection and run like hell to make connecting bus. Take bus another 45 minutes as it weaved its way through Burnaby. So yeah, total crap exercise in futility. I just wish there was a place where people could connect for carpooling.
8 will // Jan 22, 2009 at 10:36 pm
I know that if you build a road that makes driving easier, people will use it and move to those places. That is the point. But if you remove a road from where everyone already lives and it increases their “non-family time by 1h per day, those folks move out.
9 josiejose // Jan 23, 2009 at 1:25 am
@Rod - Good points - and I’m not saying that the contrarian point is without it’s flaws. I just think that we need to push back on this status quo attitude of road building as our traffic salvation. It’s not - and I defy people in the Lower Mainland who make commutes like those who are suffering through the loss of the Pattullo Bridge (whose plight I don’t wish to make light of), to identify a situation in which major road development has led to traffic relief or reduction.
I think you make a very key point, that every examination of this idea of “pushback” must consider - you cannot make a realistic urban policy about consciously restricting road development without also examining contributors to traffic commutes and vehicular lifestyles. Chief among them in Vancouver is the high property prices which have pressed homebuyers farther and farther outside the city in search of homes they can afford. I agree the city needs to examine how that can be alleviated …BUT! It is too often used as an excuse. If the routes that made commuting from White Rock or Chilliwack (which MANY do every day) didn’t exist, those locations would simply not be an option for commuters, and people would not consider living in those areas because you couldn’t get to work. You either live closer, or find work elsewhere. it is but one of many pressures that induce people to make their life and employment decisions.
@Will, I;ll give you that the logic works better in the “forward-thinking” direction - you can say, “don’t vastly increase road capacity as a means of controlling traffic, because it won’t work.” but once it already exists, you can’t just remove the capacity and say, “see, there you go, now you have to uproot yourselves and move because we want to shrink vehicular traffic.” People made the biggest investment of their lives by buying houses based on the commute available to them at the time.
I just think that this sort of opportunity is a rare one in which people can feel some of the real pain of the issues and think about what got us into this in the first place. People often feel like regional planning has nothing to do with them, and is very abstract, but it’s moments like this that we realize these decisions affect our lives in huge ways - it was a good time to stop for a thought experiment.
I guess, as an addendum to everyone, I would say - the second major consideration that would have to be made to even consider this sort of strategy, would be diverse and wide-ranging investments in transit. Has anyone ever been to San Franscisco? You can take the train from the airport, switch to the BART, get on the CalTrain (?) and take an urban railway all the way to San Jose if you want, all without getting on a bus. But if you want to take a bus, they are everywhere, convenient, and inexpensive. It is a city with as many geography-related challenges as we have, but that didn’t stop them. There is no doubt in my mind that to make a “shrinking highways” plan work, it would need a long term plan, and massive investment in public transportation.
I see some good ideas that lead in this direction cropping up. For example, I think Andrea Reimer’s ideas for making several locations in Vancouver into pedestrian malls on Sundays throughout the year, and perhaps permanently in some places, is a fantastic one. I do believe that one of the reasons we find it so difficult to think frankly about vehicular congestion is that we don’t realize our addiction to vehicles until we can experience life without it for awhile. Pedestrian-only areas are one step toward that. I have always enjoyed pedecstrian malls in cities like Philly, Liverpool, Melbourne, and Seattle.
I think we need to see incentives to build major industry and employers in the suburbs, and zoning to accommodate livable, affordable housing in each city. We should start to realize that “bedroom communities” are not sustainable cities.
Okay, I’m ranting. I’ve decided to organize my thoughts and make a post about it. follow me!
10 Recipe for a sustainable transit future? // Jan 23, 2009 at 2:41 am
[...] StreamsOfJustice ← If you build it, they will come [...]
11 Tenth To The Fraser » Blog Archive » Roadmap to a sustainable region? // Jan 23, 2009 at 2:51 am
[...] a recent post on my blog, Dis:adventure, I took an idea I saw on CityCaucus, and ran with it. What would happen [...]
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