Rail For The Valley

This one's for the mainland folks, and, really, it's also for anyone who gives a shit about NOT trying to solve long-term problems with short-term solutions.

If you live anywhere east of Surrey, I should hope you're at least vaguely familiar with the Rail For The Valley movement. If you're not, first: booooo; second: RFTV is a campaign to get the old Valley Light Rail passenger service back on its feet. It was started in 1910 as a passenger line connecting Vancouver with the upper valley (Abbotsford, Yarrow, Chilliwack) but as people (and developers) started shifting to private vehicles, it lost steam and eventually shut down in 1950.

However, since the Metro Vancouver region has seen nothing but colossal population growth in the last several decades, sprawl and the transportation to serve it has become a big issue, especially in light of the whole the-world-is-going-to-be-completely-fucked-up-and-us-along-with-it-unless-we-seriously-change thing. The RFTV is, in my opinion, quite possibly the easiest best thing we can do about this. What would happen is that there would be a commuter rail line running from Scott Road station in Surrey to CHILLIWACK, passing through every one of the main communities along the way (ultimately it would connect all the way from Vancouver, but the first phase is from Scott). This is easy and bloody awesome because, simply put, the infrastructure's already more or less there. The rail line is still there, it's just used only for freight trains right now; the lines would need to get some upgrading and refitting and terminals and stations would need to be built, but the point is that the main "meat" of the project is already in place.



The RFTV organisation released a full 84-page report on the feasibility and costs of the proposed project (done by an independent rail committee from London that also worked on the Chunnel project). The skinny is basically what I already said about infrastructure placement, but the best part is this:

The "whole shebang" deal, which would include a full line from VANCOUVER all the to Chilliwack, running electric-powered trains at a minimum of every half hour, ever day of the week, would cost under $1 billion dollars.

For some perspective as to why that's "cheap", here's a quote straight from the RFTV news post:

"For a better perspective, the 11 km. SkyTrain Evergreen Line extension will cost over $1.4 billion and service far fewer potential transit customers.

[....]

For the same cost as the Evergreen SkyTrain Line, a full build (Full Meal Deal) Valley TramTrain, Vancouver/Richmond to Rosedale could be built and with the remaining $400 million, a Vancouver/Richmond to Maple Ridge TramTrain operation could also be funded."

When I read this report last night, I actually started to get butterflies. I don't go home to visit my family much because I simply can't stand going. I absolutely hate cars, but it's impossible to get there without spending almost three hours surrouned by or in one; inversely, I don't really like it when my family comes to visit ME because they can't/won't do it without a car, which costs them over a hundred extra dollars each time. Furthermore, I can't stand how the valley is developing: there are just more and more people coming and all the government/translink is doing about it is just throwing money at it and expanding the highways and bridges for ludicrous amounts of money when the roads and bridges only going to be inadequate again in ten or so years. The solution to traffic congestion is not expanding roads - that only provides more space for more cars to jam up again. The solution is giving people viable, convenient, and cheap ways to get around WITHOUT cars. Putting in a rail line that goes the entire way down the valley will eliminate so many people's need for cars; since the project will cost such a relatively small amount, fares would likely be equally low, and with a travel time that's comparable or better, accounting for traffic jams, than driving (Chilliwack to Vancouver would be under two hours), I think a lot of people would stop driving as much. It certainly wouldn't alleviate small-regional congestion by itself, but the linking of communities would provide the main basis for more comprehensive transit, and then all that needs to be done is expanding and coordinating local area transit branching out from the rail stations.

If this were put in, I could get off the Tswwassen ferry, take two busses (or maybe they'd update a new route) to the train station at Scott Rd, and then get off the train a mere ten-minute walk from my family's home in Chilliwack; it'd take around two hours probably. No two-hour three-exchange bus ride followed by a forty-minute car ride.

If I were still in Fort Langley, it would take maybe fifteen minutes to bike to the station near the 72nd St station (near the highway) and I'd be in Vancouver in maybe an hour. No twenty-minute bus to Langley Centre, thirty-minute to Surrey Central, then forty-minute Skytrain.

I could go on and on. Suffice to say, I am so passionate about this possibly going through. The thought of this happening fills me with so much hope for the Mainland. I love the vastness and beauty of the continent, but it's just so fucking impossible to get around without a car, and guess what - not everyone can afford to shell out around eight grand a year for an ugly, noisy, smelly metal cage that's a huge danger to yourself and everyone around it.

Here are some links for the project. Please at least look at them, and you feel as strongly as I do, send emails or letters to the government (premier, transport minister) and the idiots at Translink who just want to throw money at Vancouver and make the rest of the Valley pay for it, even though they can't use it.

RFTV's new release on the report.

Media responses to the report.

RFTV website.



I do miss my Home. I just can't stand being there.

California HSR

YESYESYESYES.

I don't know how I missed this, but holy fuck I'm excited.

For those who don't know, HSR stands for high-speed rail. It's what it sounds like: it's your standard passenger train, except it's sleek and sexy as hell and goes anywhere in the range of 200-300 km/h. For some scale reference, if there was a HSR line along the Cascadia corridor you'd be able to get from Vancouver to Portland in a little over two hours - in the California model they're projecting San Fran to LA in about two and a half.

In truth, I don't know why this hasn't caught on in North America. I think anyone who's travelled by train can agree that it's exponentially more enjoyable than flying, and infinitely more enjoyable than driving. You can read, sleep, eat, work, talk with friends, or just stare wistfully out the window while you're riding a train. Hell, even the slow, standard passenger train ride from Victoria to Parksville (over three hours, probably about twenty minutes if it was HSR) is infinitely nicer than driving.

HSR's got it's downsides too, obviously. The amount of construction that it's going to take to put in all the rails and stations is going to be enormous, and rail construction, although admittedly much less messy than road buildings, is still pretty heavy business. Once everything's built, too, then you've got to power the trains. Electricity is better than oil or jet fuel, but you've still got to produce it somehow and that's where you can get problems on the Green front (although California could probably make a killing off solar and wind investments [like everywhere else, fuck]).

Above issues aside, HSR is long overdue and really, REALLY needed on this continent, and I really hope that this project doesn't fizzle out through beaurocratic processes. I'll be surprised if the system is running before 2020, but still, uuuuuuuuuuuurgh I'm really pleased that this looks like it's legitimately going.

I'm Interested to See Where This Goes

"President Obama, looking to stimulate a sluggish economy and create jobs, called Monday for Congress to approve major upgrades to the nation’s roads, rail lines and runways — part of a six-year plan that would cost tens of billions of dollars and create a government-run bank to finance innovative transportation projects....

....Specifically, the president wants to rebuild 150,000 miles of road, lay and maintain 4,000 miles of rail track, restore 150 miles of runways and advance a next-generation air-traffic control system.

The White House did not offer a price tag for the full measure or say how many jobs it would create. If Congress simply reauthorized the expired transportation bill and accounted for inflation, the new measure would cost about $350 billion over the next six years. But Mr. Obama wants to “frontload” the new bill with an additional $50 billion in initial investment to generate jobs, and vowed it would be “fully paid for.” The White House is proposing to offset the $50 billion by eliminating tax breaks and subsidies for the oil and gas industry.

Yes please. Here's the original news story, and here's the post from Treehugger that pointed me in the direction. (When I saw the heading from TH, I actually had a legitimate stop-and-stare-slackjawed moment)

Thoughts? I'm thrilled about the rail upgrades, albeit a little choked about how small the amount of rail upgrades is compared to the roads (4,000 to 150,000) but it's a great start considering the crippling damage that's been done to the continent's rail networks over the last sixty or seventy years.

I'm also pretty damn happy with how Obama's going all-out with general reforms and ideas. Everyone complains about the world and the system and then they complain when he shows us huge ideas that at least have the potential to change it. He told us he would bring change, we voted for him (well, not "we" - wrong country - but you know what I mean), and now that he is, y'know, doing what he said he would, we're all outraged? What the fuck?

A Case for Open Data in Transit

I've always said that the only percieved "Up" cars have over other ways of getting around is convenience - other than their "convenience" they're really nothing but smelly, noisy, and extremely dangerous metal boxes that rip around much faster than anything really ought to. However, the most frequent reason I've heard from people who don't take transit instead is that it's "too annoying to use" - ie. scheduling woes, wait times, etc etc. (another common reason is "I just bike everywhere" - this is an okay reason). Wouldn't it be nice if there was some way to follow exactly what the buses are doing? Wouldn't it be awesome if someone made a phone ap or something to keep live bus tracking and scheduling?

Oh wait.



Personally, I already find transit fairly easy to use, and when I happen to miss a bus or just don't really know, I don't really care anyway. However, as fantastic as it would be, I don't think it's really feasible for everyone to be as mellow and peaceful as I am. Thus, having transit schedules opened up like in the video would be a huge persuasion for people to switch to bussing and trains. This sort of open-sourcing transit data is also totally doable everywhere - none of this "well, it works in Europe, but it wouldn't work here" crap (as well as "well, it works in New York, but it wouldn't work here" - if you have a transit system, you can do this).

Please Spread This

(via Ecovelo)

What Are The Odds?

What are the odds that the one day I decide to go to Yarrow happens to be the day when Yarrow has a huge community fair/festival, complete with music and a goddamn steel-drum band? So awesome.

Anyway, aside from the awesome coincidence, the reason I went out to Yarrow was to check out the ecovillage that's being built out there. I will admit that at first glance, I was a little less than impressed. It looked like an ordinary farm with a couple townhouse-ish buildings at the back. However, after sitting around at the festival for an hour and eating some awesome food from said festival I went to the info booth thing for the ecovillage and had a great conversation with one of the women who lives there; after having her explain the whole concept to me, I'm pretty damn excited about the whole thing now.

There's twenty-odd (I think) buildings slated to be put in for housing - these will be high-density and efficient houses, each one with what looked like would be four "suites" each. The lady (whose name I unfortunately never got) was saying her place was around 700-odd square feet, which really is all anyone should need for just a couple people. The houses themselves (all four of them that were actually built, anyway) looked really nice, and they have NO driveways! (I'm finding this really cool 'cause I was thinking the other week that I would love to someday have a house without a driveway) The community is connected to the main road by a big gravel driveway with a small parking area near the homes, and then there is just a pathway leading through the center of the community; as the lady said, "now you actually have to, y'know, walk past your neighbours and say 'hi'". There's also a central common area - a "village square" if you will - and a big mound of dirt from excavations that they left for kids (and, let's face it, adults too) to play on; the diagram also had several areas designated as "bikes", which I assume denotes bike parks (parking). The rest of the "village" area will be "commercial" space - a grocery store, bakery, cafe - basically whatever any self-contained village would/should have.

And this whole area is only five acres of the whole land parcel. The other twenty is for organic farming - the whole parcel is like a big panhandle that stretches down from the road to the river that runs near the base of the mountain, including another wider area on the south side of the river. The farm will ideally produce most of (if not all, but I suspect that's wishful thinking) the community's food, as well as provide some external income from surplus production.


Anyway, summing it up, I'm extremely excited for this project. I'm actually kind of sad that I won't be around to see it fully mature, because as much as I'm starting to like it out here, I will never love it like I do Victoria. The community really is a fantastic idea though. As the lady told me (and I agree) we simply can no longer live like we're used to; the suburban "dream" (don't know why it's a dream - I hate it) is completely unsustainable and incredibly damaging to not just our natural environment - sprawl, pollution, car-dependence, almost no internal sustenance, I could go on and on - but also our social environment. Our houses are all isolated from the other; we don't go anywhere without our cars which nothing more than huge, heavy, smelly, noisy, and inefficient cages that go far faster than is really necessary; the fact that we're driving everywhere all the time obliterates any sense we may have of connection to our own community; the list could just go on
and on for pages.

What I mean by all this is that we simply cannot live in big, several-thousand square-foot houses anymore. There is no space, and, quite simply, there is no point. It's more expensive near the city, but guess what: if you have no car, you don't have to pay for gas, insurance, repairs, upkeep, and so on. That's a lot of money that you could now put towards rent, and in the meantime you have a huge palette of activities and community life within walking or biking distance.

My short posts always turn into rants. Ahwell - I guess that was kind of the point of the blog anyway. If you're also interested in urban redesign, here are some great resources for you:

My biggest recommendation is hands down "Ecocities" by Richard Register. I'm reading this right now and it's unbelieveable. Combined with a huge plethora of illustrations, it makes cities that, until very recently, in my eyes looked like science fiction, now seem completely reasonable and brilliant. Be warned, though: I've had to put the book angrily down several times because of the sheer idiocy of politicians, corporations, and attitudes that have made the kind of thinking in this book "crazy" or "unreasonable". Turns out that you can read the whole book on the link too. (that was a really big resource plug. geez louise.)

Also, here are a couple of websites too.

Livable Streets is a web network full of videos, news, and campaigns for urban redesign away from cars and towards pedestrians and efficient and great transportation.
and here is a lengthy article from Worldchanging about why car-centered development is the worst planning mistake ever executed and what the alternative is.

See y'all tomorrow mornin'.

Spare Some Change?

"In 1787 a dozen people began meeting in a small print shop in London to abolish the lucrative slave trade. They were reviled and dismissed by businessmen and politicians. It was argued that their crackpot ideas would bring down the English economy, eliminate growth and jobs, cost too much money, and lower the standard of living. Critics also pointed out that abolition was being promoted by a small group of self-appointed troublemakers and extremists who had no expertise in trade or commerce." (Paul Hawken, "Blessed Unrest," published 2007 by Viking Penguin)

Sounds familiar, don't it? I think this says all it needs to say.

Bike Pirates; Budget/tax/climate rant

This pretty much sums up my week/lack of posts.



I'd include a picture of me playing bass if I felt like finding one cause that's basically been it for me so far. I've been biking like no one's business and it's awesome. If anyone reads this that happened to go to the No HST On Bikes rally wednesday morning I'm sure they will agree it was fantastic.

(Not-so) quick note about this, because I like to use this to, y'know, speak my mind to the internet. I'm no economist, I'm a goddamned music major. I don't know all the ins and outs of the whole government revenue system. What I do know is that their revenue comes from taxes. Sure, they get some money elsewhere, but by and large all the money that the government has comes from taxes. I'm pissed that the BC government lied about HST implementation during their election campaign, but I'm going to have to say I'm more pissed about massive funding and job cuts to, ah, just about everything because of poor revenues.
I didn't go to this rally because I don't want to pay more taxes (which I don't really, but I will be okay with because it's necessary), I went because taxing bikes is fucking stupid. HST is getting tacked onto not just bikes, but all things bike-related: helmets, maintenance, parts, etc. This is going to be a huge DISincentive for people to ride bikes instead of driving cars, especially because of the second thing that completely pissed me off. HST IS NOT GOING TO BE ATTACHED TO CARS OR GAS. This is fucking stupid. Campbell rolls front page of The Globe And Mail saying that strong action is needed against climate change and then turns around and does the opposite in his provincial budget.

This is why I'm pissed off about the situation. BC NEEDS TAXES. It sucks, but that's the only way we're going to get money to the government so that they don't have to keep axing huge chunks out of health, education, arts and just about everything else. However, taxing transportation means and lifestyles that are both sustainable AND healthy while exempting gas/oil and the companies that produce them is just a whole different kind of stupid (it'd be a NEW kind of stupid too, except the the BC government completely obliterated Arts and sports funding a few months ago). Here's the news story on Victoria A Channel News if you want to learn more about it.


*gasp*. So yeah, there's that. Been biking like a mother, finally got a bean grinder, and there are four weeks of school left. Most likely this is it for the week before the Sunday Post. HOWEVER, this is because I'm busy as hell for the next while. UVic Orchestra concert tonight at 8 PM (UVic auditorium), student tickets are only $5 which is an amazing deal. Second, my band West My Friend is playing at Solstice Cafe tomorrow night around 7 with Petit Objet A, and I/we'd really love it if you all came out for the evening. Suggested $5 donation for cover (cause it does actually cost money to book Solstice), which is again a pretty good deal because you're in for a solid two hours of music. Post on Sunday, then it's papers and practicing ahoy.

Have good Fridays and weekends everyone.


PS. So how 'bout the ENTIRE COUNTRY going completely apeshit on Sunday? Best game I've ever seen. I have never before seen Canadians so proud to be who we are, either, and I wish that we could all feel like that all the time - I know I do.

Wind Farms

Found this slideshow of wind farm photos on Mother Nature Network (www.mnn.com) and just had to share it. I was trying to selectively pick one or two to keep, then I remembered "wait a mintue, I made the damn blog so I WOULDN'T have to pick and choose like this."

Here's some music to listen to while browsing the wind farms. Explosions In The Sky; this is the first track off their album "The Rescue". Amazing instrumental band from Austin, Texas; I fully recommend looking up the rest of this album and their discography.

Hope you enjoy.