January 21, 2010 - 10:58 am |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
The Evergreen line limbo should be a wake-up call for the City of Vancouver.
Tomorrow, Vancouver’s Special Standing Committee of Council on Planning and Environment will be presented with a staff policy report outlining the suggested terms of engagement for TransLink’s UBC Line Rapid Transit Study.
The study, which is a partnered project between Translink, the City of Vancouver, UBC, the University Endowment Lands, and Metro Vancouver, will identify a wide range of rapid transit options for the Broadway corridor including a preferred route, technology(ies), and general station locations.
Here is what Geoff Meggs told News 1130 about how such a line would already be able pay for itself:
“There already are more people riding on buses, jammed on buses, hanging on straps on buses, watching buses drive by them, than we need to justify the line.”
The evidence to support such claims is concrete and real, and Meggs is doing his job in advocating for Vancouver’s transit needs first and foremost. However, with the spectre of the yet-to-be-started Evergreen Line hanging over Translink and their next steps towards progressing forward on regional transportation, these plans for the city seem extremely premature.
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December 29, 2009 - 11:36 am |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
CivicScene is back in the saddle with a holiday diet and a blogging schedule that once again need a steady regimen.
I have returned to the blogging horse, a little more weighty from no less than three holiday dinners within four days – a condition, I might add, that I fully intend to begin working off sometime today.
Today I am struck by two columns by two of Vancouver’s most respected scribes – Rod Mickleburgh of the Globe and Mail and Allen Garr of the Vancouver Courier – that offer assessments on two of Mayor Gregor Robertson’s most prominent and contentious policy directions over the past year.
There can be little argument with the fact that Vision Vancouver’s victory in last year’s civic election was predicated on a strong commitment to tackle homelessness in addition to a stated intention to create dedicated bike lanes on the Burrard Bridge (the former obviously having a far greater impact than the latter).
So if both of these policies were clearly articulated within the context of an election campaign that returned a decisive victory for the party proposing them, then it is safe to say that a majority of Vancouver’s electorate embraced them as something they were willing to see implemented.
This of course didn’t stop certain members of the outgoing regime from doing their damnedest to work up fervour to the contrary.
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