This is a follow up on my earlier post "A Whack of Stupid in Port Moody Over the Murray-Clarke Connector.

Right now Port Moody is proclaiming victory with quite probably the spammiest, ugliest homepage graphic imaginable, and a press release that states,

The city's campaign to explain the urgent need for the twice-delayed Murray Clarke Connector paid off. The campaign included a Council demonstration to expose what would happen if the project was delayed again

So what was council so up in arms about, exactly?

Looking at the meeting minutes for the Translink Board of Directors meetings, that a report dated November 23 was presented to the directors during their December 3rd meeting that first explains

GVTA has partnered with the City of Port Moody (the 'City') to develop the Project ['Project' previously defined as The Murray-Clarke Connector], as confirmed by a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) authorized by the Board on October 10, 2007 and executed by the GVTA and the City on October 23, 2007...

In accordance with the MOU, a value engineering review was undertaken to:

1. provide an independent assessment of the cost of the Project; and
2. identify and recommend any alternatives ("value proposals") that appear to improve value and/or minimize life cycle of the Project

The value engineering (VE) team did their job and

The VE team reviewed all alignments included in the City's 2004 "Murray-Clarke Connector Alignment Options" study, as well as a number of variations developed since then, plus their own suggested modifications ... the VE team has suggested that the Project could taper down to a two-lane crossing of the rail tracks, and that would be adequate to meet reasonable traffic projections for the area. Since this particular value proposal has a significant cost implication (i.e. almost $10 million potential savings), TransLink staff recommend that the traffic projections be investigated in greater detail, perhaps including micro-simulation modelling, so that the functional needs of the Project are well understood.

This is not what the auto-loving, Coquitlam serving, Mayor, Councillors and City Manger of Port Moody wanted to hear.

Councillor Mike Clay, in his own blog complete with the sort of random and excessive capitalization and all-caps furor one more commonly finds on the Geocities pages made by conspiracy nuts, elaborates on the report:

Last week we received information at the city that indicated Translink staff were bringing forward a report at the next Translink board meeting (Dec 12,2007 , 9AM, Richmond City Hall) that would be suggesting cost savings measures for the Murray Clarke could include removal of pedestrian facilities, bike lanes, and, quite amazingly, reducing the overpass from 4 lanes to 2 (one in each direction).  We currently HAVE a 2 lane overpass at Moody Street, so effectively this would accomplish NOTHING.

The information we received went on further to suggest that in fact the Murray Clarke Connector project may not be justified at all, and that there should be an evaluation of the need for this project.

THIS PROJECT WAS IDENTIFIED AS NECESSARY IN THE EARLY 1980's, AND HAS BEEN PART OF VARIOUS PROJECTS AND PLANNING SINCE THE EARLY 1990's.  WE HAVE  NO IDEA HOW ANYONE COULD NOW SUGGEST THIS PROJECT MAY NOT BE NEEDED BASED ON THE EXPONENTIAL GROWTH OF THE NE SECTOR !!

Could it be, maybe, that something might have changed since 1983? In 1983 there was no Skytrain, let alone the Millennium Line to Lougheed Mall that connects to Port Moody via the 97B-line. In 1983 there was no WestCoast Express. Driving was the only option. And is it inconceivable that a connector option allowing traffic flow over the railway tracks that does not involve a poorly marked intersection, two stop signs, poor visibility, and a 270° loop might be able to handle more traffic than the existing crossing?

And what of that "do nothing" option? When in the long history of urban planning has increasing capacity ever done anything but ultimately increase volume and congestion? Port Moody City Manager Gaëtan Royer notes on one of his web pages that his credentials include studying Urban Planning at Queen's University. He should know better.

Cities all over the world have learned this lesson and taken it to heart and are strategically limiting traffic volume to encourage walking, use of transit, and the unthinkable for the suburban mind, actually living close to where one works. Port Moody's idea of sustainable, multi-use development is building towering condos over crappy little retail spaces that house businesses that certainly don't pay anywhere near enough for anyone working there to actually afford to live in the condos. I'm sure no one working at the Mac's in Newport Village actually lives in Newport Village. Rather, they drive in from a rental apartment they can afford, most likely in Coquitlam or Port Coquitlam. Will the housekeeping staff at the new hotel being put in across from the fire hall on Ioco Rd. be living in the adjacent condo tower? Doubtful.  The condo dwellers are by necessity commuters, driving out of Port Moody on a daily basis to places where there are jobs that pay well enough to afford their home. There are only a small handful of jobs in Port Moody that pay well enough for someone to afford to buy a condo in Port Moody and, unfortunately the $140,000+/yr. position of City Manager is already taken by Mr. Royer (all civic employee salaries over $75,000 are a matter of public record).

To be fair though, the well-paid Mr. Gaëtan Royer is doing his part to reduce the number of Port Moody commuters by leveraging his position, which puts "The latest construction technology, code requirements and municipal law information ... at his fingertips" to help the wealthiest of the the condo owners combine two expensive condos in to one, huge, and even more expensive condo. Of course none of this sideline work would be done while he is on the clock as City Manager and his position as the building inspectors' boss' boss never influences approval of the designs. Besides, isn't it much more important to get one more SUV off the road? One less condo means at least one, perhaps two, fewer commuters.

All and all, something smells rotten, and it isn't just another dead sea-lion washed up on the mud flats. It's "The idea of a new two-lane overpass [that] is now dead," says the city's press release. The press release also talks about how Port Moody urged for "common sense to prevail." After all, why on earth would Translink even consider something as daft as saving $10,000,000, enough money to buy 30 buses? And why would Port Moody want to, "take back the roads as a local responsibility and change the traffic patterns to accommodate Port Moody drivers rather than regional commuters. [Mayor Joe Trasolini]" - surely that is just crazy talk. It makes much more sense for Translink to throw another $25 million at this project, on top of the $25 million already budgeted. $50 million dollars is enough money to buy 166 buses for a total carrying capacity equivalent to almost 10,000 cars. In just three trips with that many buses every single person living in Port Moody could be transported out of town. Every single person in Coquitlam could be moved in ten trips. Someone explain to me the "common sense" in building this four-lane monstrosity instead?

Yesterday morning (December 10, 2007) Port Moody council shut down lanes of traffic through Port Moody during the morning rush-hour in order to intentionally snarl traffic. The misguided media stunt fails on every imaginable front.

The timing of the stunt itself is laughable. The deadline for registering to speak at of the pertinent Translink meeting was, as was stated on the Port Moody website that inconvenienced commuters were directed to visit, was 8:00 a.m. Monday morning. The media stunt began at 6:45 a.m. Presuming commuters passing through Port Moody at the time were on their way to jobs with start times between 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m., too late register, one has to wonder what point the stunt actually served.

This becomes even more questionable considering the content of the media release from Port Moody where Mayor Trasolini is quoted as saying [emphasis added]:

"If the four-lane overpass is not approved this week by the TransLink Board Port Moody will have no other recourse than to negotiate removing Murray and Clarke Streets from the major road network, take back the roads as a local responsibility and change the traffic patterns to accommodate Port Moody drivers rather than regional commuters."

I fail to see the problem with that. In what way does that outcome fail to comply with Port Moody's vision statement, "Port Moody, City of the Arts, is a unique, safe, vibrant waterfront city of strong neighbourhoods; a complete community that is sustainable and values its natural environment and heritage character"? In what way does that outcome fail to meet Port Moody's 2006-2008  Council Strategic Plan which states as goals:

"Our plans lead to livable neighbourhoods that come together to create a complete community. Port Moody distinguishes itself as an innovative and visionary leader in planning,"

and,

"Port Moody plans ahead for livability and we are seen as sustainability leaders,"

and most notably,

To sustain livability, we plan ahead and adapt to changing circumstances.

We integrate the concepts of livability and sustainability in all that we do to create a lasting, vibrant economy with a healthy environment, social wellbeing and long term affordability and prosperity.

We foster service that results in a healthy community and we have confirmed this statistically.

In Port Moody, people are able to travel effectively around the community which includes creating pedestrian-oriented shopping & service areas.

St. Johns Street is already a urban desert of 60's-era car culture - six uncrossable lanes lined with car lots and service garages. How will adding adding a second high-volume path through town add to the "heritage character" of Moody Centre? ...but Port Moody city hall likes car culture. This is evidenced by the one of those very car-lots receiving honourable mention in the "Street Appeal" category of the city's own "Spike Award."

It's apparent that Port Moody's real agenda is not to tend to it's own sustainability and environment, but to bend over and be Coquitlam's bitch, catering to the surrounding municipality's hordes of gas-sucking, SUV driving commuters on their way to Burnaby and Vancouver. If Port Moody city hall really cared about their own community they'd be following the lead set by Vancouver decades ago when the city had the good sense to learn from Los Angeles' mistakes and rejected freeways and focused on transit. This effort would be better placed in fighting tooth and nail to reduce through traffic and pollution by getting the Evergreen LRT Line completed.

In the end, the only purpose of this stunt would be to get Mayor Trasolini on the TV as "the good guy", which ultimately is nothing more than a career advancing move for Port Moody City Manager Gaëtan Royer.

Conversation #1 - Overheard about two weeks ago.

[ Young guy with a death-hawk talking on his cell phone ] "Sanctuary? Why would you want to go to Sanctuary? They don't even have a dress code anymore. Sin City is much better. Ordinary people in regular clothes show up at Sanctuary."

Conversation #2 - Overheard last night

[Two English guys, mid-to-late 20's] "Sin City is OK, but there is another night on Fridays at the Lotus that is much better - same music and attitude but you don't have to do the clothes."

I've been reading "Historical Atlas of Vancouver and the Lower Fraser Valley" by Derek Hayes and have had a few old mysteries about certain streets cleared up. Ever wonder why the block between Alberni and Georgia streets is so narrow and why Alberni abruptly ends at Burrard? Or why, excluding Georgia, Davie, Pacific and Nelson, none of the streets west of Burrard match up with the streets east of Burrard? And why does Burrard, the busiest north-south street through downtown, just end at 16th? Or why there is a bizarre dog-leg in Oak Street at 16th? Or why on Granville there are shops north of 16th abruptly giving way to giant lots with mansions on the south side of 16th? What's up with that great big square of nothing in Richmond between Alderbridge, Westminster Highway. Garden City and Shell Road?

Well the mismatching of streets downtown on either side of Burrard is because, prior to incorporating together in 1886, there were two separate town sites on the downtown peninsula. East of Burrard was "Granville" and west of Burrard to Stanley Park was "Liverpool". Granville was laid out with the long side of the block parallel to Burrard, whereas Liverpool had the short side parallel to Burrard. Pacific, Davie, Nelson and Robson more or less line up by accident. Granville was a CPR townsite and Georgia was already established as main street so the planners of Liverpool carried it through despite that it interrupts their grid, thus the narrowness of the block between Alberni and Georgia, the after-the-fact dog-legs at Smithe-Haro and Dunsmuir-Melville, the weird left-over street-to-nowhere that is Eveliegh, and all the other "what were they thinking?" weirdness that happens at Burrard.

And why does Burrard itself just suddenly end at 16th? Because, in 1886, that's where Vancouver ended. The original city limit was at 16th and all the space beyond was unincorporated nothing. When the Interurban electric railway was built between New Westminster and Vancouver the people that had land in the intervening unincorporated space got together to incorporate everything from Point Grey to North Road as a new municipality. There was a disagreement over the name. The farmers in the eastern part wanted it named "Burnaby" after Colonel Moody's secretary Robert Burnaby, who was the first to survey and map Burnaby Lake. Real estate speculators who wanted to make money selling lots near the Interurban line wanted to call the new municipality "South Vancouver" since they thought that was a more marketable name. They split the territory at what became Boundary Road. To the east was Burnaby, to the west was South Vancouver. South Vancouver incorporated in 1891. Burnaby in 1892. Like the Liverpool/Granville join, the grid for South Vancouver was laid out separately from the grid in Vancouver, thus the mis-match of Oak at 16th.

Because land was cheaper in South Vancouver than in Vancouver lots in the east were marketed to blue-collar sorts. The municipal government of South Vancouver refused to go into debt and roads and other services weren't getting built fast enough to suit the richer land-owners in the western part, so they split off (at Cambie Street, then called Bridge Street) in 1908 and formed the municipality of Point Grey. The abrupt change in zones on Granville at 16th is because at the time houses like Hycroft Mansion were being built, they weren't in Vancouver. Point Grey and South Vancouver were separate municipalities up until 1929, and it is no accident that the new (and current) Vancouver city hall, built shortly after amalgamation, is at 12th and Cambie, more or less where the three municipalities met.

So what's the connection to all this and that weird patch of nothing in the middle of Richmond? It goes back to the Interurban - and this is funny in a painfully stupid kind of way. The original line of the Interurban, built in 1891, connected New Westminster and Vancouver, spurring the creation of Burnaby and South Vancouver. In 1902 a second line was opened to Steveston. That's what the railway tracks beside Arbutus Street in Vancouver and along Shell Road in Richmond are. In the 1920's someone had the brilliant idea of putting an airport along the Interurban line in Richmond and that blot of nothing is it. When planes got bigger and longer runways were needed the airport was moved to Sea Island, but think about it for a second. In 1986, in order not to look like dufuses with the rest of the planet looking millions were spent to build the original line of SkyTrain between Vancouver and New Westminster. Guess what path it follows? The path of the electric railway that was there in 1891. And right now, again simply to not look like dufuses with the rest of the planet looking because of the 2010 Winter Olympics, hundreds of millions more are being spent to build rail transit to Richmond that we had in 1902 and a connection to the airport that we effectively had before there was an airport. It seems that in the area of transit all we've managed to accomplish in the last twenty-one years is flail around trying to rebuild what was in place over a century ago.

Some of you may remember my post from last spring making fun of the use of "anytime" instead of "any time" on official signage at the Granville SkyTrain station.

Either the proofing skills in the signage department at Translink have deteriorated even further or they are very cleverly getting a jump on global warming:

Note the large lake where Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge should be. Not only did this clear the desk of whoever produced it, a manager must have signed off on this, it went to print, a proof would have been returned and signed off, it was then printed, received, distributed, and installed with *no one noticing*. In addition to the geographic error, the line for the 145 SFU run from Production Way/University Station and the 97-B Line from Lougheed Station are also missing.

Every time I take the train I notice how the etiquette around boarding degrades the further one gets from downtown.

At the downtown stations people about to board heed the instructions on the train doors stand to the side of the doors and additionally do the intelligent thing and stand close to the train on the platform so the people exiting the train aren't blocked and people moving down the platform from other cars aren't blocked either. By Broadway this degrades to people waiting well back from the doors as instructed, which is fine for people to step off the cars, but creates a series of obstacles for for people trying to get to the exits after getting off the train. Beyond Broadway Station people are crowding right up to the doors before they open, often requiring the liberal use of shoulders and elbows to get off the train.

At first I thought it was just a side-effect of a reverse commute, when people boarding the aren't really expecting people to be exiting the train, but it's not the case. For one, when I get off at Lougheed, the people I have to push through are on their way from Coquitlam to New Westminster or Surrey, which is an even stranger commute. I've also been watching it happen with the outbound trains in the evening when the trains are packed to the gills and scores of people exiting at the suburban stops, yet those boarding insist on standing completely in the way. It's like there is some unwritten rule that SkyTrain etiquette does not apply beyond the original 1986 Broadway-to-Waterfront run. I really don't get it.

Something I overheard on the Skytrain the other day made it on "Overheard in Vancouver".

As the Skytrain rolled past the 1960's concrete towers near Lougheed Mall I started thinking about how these buildings were the inspiration for the apartments-on-stalks in the Jetsons. It's a matter of extrapolation: the car park takes up the first few floors and the upper floors are the more desirable apartments. Why bother building the lower floors at all if no-one wants to live in them? And with the flying cars in the context of 1960's car-culture you no longer have the need for the ground-level parking and entrance - obviously people would simply fly in and out of the upper floors directly and never need to walk anywhere.

So then I started thinking about what life would be like in the Jetsons future for people who weren't Vice Presidents at Spacely Sprokets or their whiny, privileged, bleach-blond daughters? What of all the poor sods put out of work by Rosie the robot maid and her ilk? What miserable life would they be living down on the surface, forgotten below these unassailable towers of bourgeois privilege? Would miserable shanty villages be huddled up against the bases of the towers to tap into what little heat and power could be gleaned off the service shaft? Would their inhabitants survive off the cast-offs from the ten thousand slovenly, video-game addicted, overweight Elroy's above? Between the tower bases would there be the hollowed out, abandoned shells of closed businesses that once thrived on pedestrian traffic? What horrors lurk beneath the world of George and Jane Jetson?

Dodge the onslaught of zombie commuters coming into town from the suburbs.

I live downtown and work in a suburb. I don't understand why there are so many millions that do it the other way around. In the evening and on weekends when I want to be entertained I'm in the middle of all the cinemas, night-clubs, restaurants, near the sea-wall, etc., etc. Tthe whole gamut of what I want to do in my time is a short walk or a 5-minute $5 cab ride away. There is nothing to do in the suburbs. And don't feed me that walk-in-a-park and cleaner air bullshit: downtown Vancouver has one of the world's great parks, Stanley Park, that people travel from the four corners of the earth to see, and it is right in the city; and the offshore winds blow all the smog away from the city and into the suburbs. Yet now that I am doing a reverse commute rather than walking to the end of the block, I am faced every morning with wading upstream against the great torrent of people who can't fathom that they have it backwards.

That by itself is enough to make me wonder about their intelligenge. There is, however, something else that boggles me on a daily basis. Years ago I saw a television program about the difficulty in making autonomous, self navigating robots able to navigate through a crowd. The program made the point that this was a feat that humans performed easily. I disagree. Throw an unexpected obstacle in front of the herd like one or two people walking in the opposite direction as the bleating sheeple and it's clear that the self-navigating robots have the advantage. The advantage being that they look where they are going and are incabable of not at least trying to avoid collisions.

The walk to the Burrard SkyTrain station is not too bad. It seems once people surface and are not all moving in the same direction like lemmings to a cliff and have the threat of bumping into something leathal like a cement truck, they pay a little attention to their surroundings. As soon as I begin to descend into the station the game beings.

First off the two columns of people coming up the two up escalators from the platform almost all trun to their left to head for the escalator to Burrard Street. Getting to the one down escalator is a live game of Frogger. At the bottom of the escalator, at the level of the west-bound trains, the people come streaming off the platform in such a way that one gets to choose between head-on collisions with the timid foot-watchers hugging the wall and blocking the path the the right-side staircase down to the east-bound platform or another game of frogger to pass back through the oncoming stream to get at the left-side stairs. Either path will garner you about six to twelve startled and angry glares at the affrontery of forcing them to look up from their underground shuffle towards Metropolis.

I prefer the left stairs because, although it is slightly more difficult to wade through the crowd than to wedge along the wall, displacing the shuffling rat-people, this is offset by the grief it saves when changing trains at Commercial & Broadway. Taking the left staircase to the east-bound platform at Burrard puts one at the tail-end of the east-bound train - the end closest to the walkway to transfer from the Expo Line to the Millenium Line. This saves traversing the platform at Broadway Station which is clogged on one side with people from New Westminister and Surrey exiting to move to the buses that will take them to whatever dismal job they might have on the outskirts of downtown such that they need a bus along Broadway or Commercial clashing with the people coming from Coquitlam and Burnaby trying to get on the train to go the rest of the way into town. The chaos does not stay confined to the west-bound platform as most of the people coming from the Millenium Line are charging up the east-bound platform, trying to flank around the people getting off the west-bound train. Being anywhere other than the last door at the back end of the east-bound train means trying to get through this clusterfuck, which is far more annoying than being the Frogger frog at Burrard.

There remains the problem of heading up against the flow over the pedestrian overpass from Broadway Station to Commercial Station. Every once in a blue moon one lucks out and you can get entirely from one station to another between train arrivals, but usually, at some point one gets hit with a tsunami of people who learned their concepts of personal space and courtesy in the most hideously overpopulated areas of Asia. I have, in all seriousness, crossed dance-floors crowded with drunk Punks more easily.

My next affront comes at Lougheed Station. The humanoid things in Coquitlam (they are just vaguely distorted enough that I hesitate to use the word "people" - I can't really explain it) must see in a slightly different spectrum than humans. It's obvious every time I am waiting to leave the train that they cannot see the sign on the door windows that says "keep back and allow passengers to exit before boarding" and/or cannot see me standing right behind the window waiting to exit. Somehow there is always someone standing directly in my way, jaw agape, and clearly confused about the posted procedure. These people are of the same species that cannot grasp the "walk left, stand right" rules posted on the escalator. One's width must indicate status in the social hierachy of these creatures, because those that don't naturally have an ass three feet wide make up for it by wearing backpacks askew.

( Someone changed the signs on the GO train platforms )

Seriously, this is brilliant. Not only does the message get out to thousands, but no actual physical damage is done. It also amuses the hell out of me that no one at GO could actually fix the problem and the signs are still off. If anyone knows anyone in the Toronto area that has a picture of this, I'd love to see it.