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nitronuts

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A void paved over with concrete

Posted: Nov. 7, 2009

My wife and I own an apartment in the European city where her parents came from. Almería's population is over 200,000, and it's been around for hundreds of years.

As a pedestrian, one is in constant negotiation with cars and scooters because the streets are jagged in shape, cramped, sometimes lacking in sidewalks - and teeming with life. Shop storefronts display dresses and shoes that would star at the Oscars. The window of a hardware store accommodates three centuries of door latches, from the rustic to the ultra-high tech. Every step has my head craning in one direction or another, even if it is to wave a car right through a stop sign as I slip around behind - faster and friendlier for both of us.

Arriving home from Spain, we drove through Milwaukee from Mitchell International Airport, and the eerie calm of sealing ourselves behind car windows settled over us; the "carness" of our life here spread out like a gray pall all around us.

Instead of people, conversation, shopping, eating and attending to business on the hoof, we were surrounded by access roads, parking lots, highways and bridges until we eventually passed under the shadow of the hulking three-story garage whose gloomy, and empty, cavern overshadows our magnificent art museum.

We Americans are all infrastructure - and no people.

Friends here are surprised that we don't own a car in Almería. There's no need, even though life there is pretty regular and not some outlandish eco-haven like Carmel, Calif., with its boutique clothing shops and celebrity clubs.

Everything we bought for our apartment in Almería we bought on foot. Plumbers, furniture stores, computer equipment and appliances are only a few minutes away. When we bought our washing machine, the owner's brother was waiting for us at our door, our washer on a handcart, even though we lingered for only moments on the walk home.

What's the cost for living our American way? It's not just the thousands of dollars for the second car, insurance and gas. We also have to support a lake of concrete around us - and gas, electric and sewer lines to stretch out past the near-vacant belts beyond the older suburbs. Property taxes in Almería on our condo are one-twelfth our taxes in Milwaukee, even though the value of the two homes is roughly the same.

One-twelfth. Oh, and they throw in free health insurance.

That's a lot of concrete, wire and pipes to keep up - and patrol. Milwaukee's close suburbs have residential streets that have room for two lanes of traffic going each way, plus both parking and turning lanes. Six lanes of concrete.

I was driving on a street like that recently - it's residential, so I was the only car in sight, although several white lines directed me around like I had a ring in my nose on the rare chance that a second car may venture into sight. Not so long ago, people's eyes grew large when a news announcer glowed about "six-lane super-highways" in Los Angeles. Now we have them to serve blocks where only a few houses stand.

Where are the people? Nobody is coming; nobody is going.

If we gained something for our money, I'd happily pay it. But I look south out the window of my downtown office and see streets and highways, of course. Plus parking garages, ramps, driveways, surface lots and street parking - not to mention the gas stations, auto-part stores and car washes.

Our cities (and Milwaukee still remains one of the most attractive) are dead zones with small pods of life barricaded between the elements that support the passage, storage and care of cars. In our most densely trafficked sidewalks, it is a hundred feet between businesses whose windows have a chance of being interesting to look in at while walking past. Throw in a bank or two and one has to take a taxi to get between shops where people congregate over a cup of coffee or buy a shirt.

No wonder we all drive.

Almería is modern enough to need cars. For the most part, cars brought into the city are routed to underground parking. As expensive as that might sound, what otherwise would be dead space at street level goes instead to businesses with apartments above, as well as an interesting collection of squares, parks and kiosks that are a part of every day's stroll.

Read this again: one-twelfth our property taxes.

Still, it's not about the money. It's about life. We stood on the street one night in one of America's few cities that are dense and walkable: New York City. A local television station was hosting a karaoke event. Tough-looking teenagers in floppy pants were singing along with suited Japanese businessmen, middle-aged housewives in sensible shoes, Orthodox Jews in yarmulkes, students in backpacks and a couple of tourists from Milwaukee. An older businessman waited at a crosswalk with me the next day, giving directions to a pair of young guys who would raise hair at the back of my neck if I ran into them on a lonely stretch. They thanked the older man and headed off. The businessman explained, "When you're on the street, everyone knows you have to deal with people. We're all in this together."

A more ominous view about our expansively concreted lives came from a Bulgarian programmer who has just moved here. Commenting about our infrastructure, America's glory and disaster, he said, "People who are separate are easier to control."

Malls are about the only public place in America where people aren't separate. Look around a mall, though - teenagers hang with their high-school friends, parents keep toddlers in the firm grip of their hands, bums sag alone on a bench, while walkers stride by in the world of their headphones. We're as sealed off from each other as first-class is from economy on a long and monotonous flight.

In non-American cities, you see grandparents sitting with teenagers or elegantly dressed women mixing it up in a café with workmen taking a lunchtime coffee or beer. I've often seen fathers reading to their young children. Right out in public - an act that would rank as deprivation here, when the tykes could be mesmerized instead by a video in the back seat of their Escalade or Tundra.

Almería is seven hours ahead of Milwaukee, and my wife happened to call me at what was 3 in the morning her time. She'd just gotten in from dinner and a concert (whole families are out at midnight; nothing about their crazy schedule surprises me anymore). She had walked home alone, though of course she was not actually alone on the street. I was just leaving for a friend's who lived some blocks away, past several alleys, garages and shuttered stores flanked by asphalt pads.

I drove.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/69419357.html

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http://www.peterladner.ca/?p=401

Congestion costs of $1.5 billion are an urban myth

If you have been following debates over new freeways, you will be familiar with a well-known “fact”, most recently repeated by Premier Gordon Campbell and former premier Mike Harcourt: congestion is costing us $1.5 billion a year in the Lower Mainland. Sorry folks, that number is a hoax.

Congestion here, as in all other cities in the world, is a major problem. It costs us a lot. It is immensely frustrating; it wastes years of people’s lives, and it blocks the flow of vital goods and limits our future as a freight gateway to Asia.

But where does the $1.5 billion estimate come from? I only began to ask this question when I noticed a report from Seattle, prepared by the Puget Sound Regional Council. “Many transportation facilities experience considerable traffic congestion during peak travel periods,” said the report. “Annually, traffic congestion costs the region in excess of $1.5 billion in wasted time and other resources.”

It seemed odd to me that Seattle, with twice our population and one of the worst congestion problems on the continent, comes up with exactly the same cost (not counting for $US) as the Metro Vancouver.

Then, reading about the Denver region in an article called Regional Thinking, in the Sept. 2006 issue of Urban Land Magazine, I came across almost the same number: “The (Denver metropolitan) region has some big issues to address. Traffic congestion was ranked the nation’s third worst, causing an annual loss of $1.4 billion in time and gasoline costs, according to a 2003 report by the Texas Transportation Institute.” How curious that these three metropolitan areas, with widely variable transportation infrastructures, all had virtually the same congestion costs.

Then I read a Conference Board of Canada report that estimated the total cost of congestion across the nine biggest cities in Canada as between $2.3 billion and $3.7 billion a year. Hold that thought while noting Toronto Board of Trade estimates that “$2 billion is lost annually from gridlock in the Greater Toronto area alone,” according to Toronto Mayor David Miller. Taking the outside estimate of $3.7 billion nationwide, that means that with Toronto using up $2 billion (for a region with three times our population), and Metro Vancouver using up $1.5 billion, congestion costs in Canada’s seven other largest cities– including Montreal– add up to only $200. Highly unlikely.

Are we really doing that badly in our region, almost at a par with Toronto? Can we be suffering seven times the congestion costs of the other seven largest cities in Canada combined?

Well, maybe not. I traced one original estimate of our “$1.5 billion” mantra to the Vancouver Board of Trade’s Sounding Board newspaper: Under the heading “Transportation congestion costs hit $1.5 billion”, the January, 2006 article actually said: “Transport Canada has estimated that the cost of congestion in the region already costs residents and businesses between $700 million and $1.2 billion annually, with more recent estimates suggesting that the figure has increased to $1.5 billion.”

It’s almost as though the number was pulled out of the air. Maybe congestion costs everywhere (except Toronto) mysteriously add up to $1.5 billion by some magic estimating by highway planners. So I tuned into Google and searched for “traffic, congestion, costs, $1.5 billion.”

I ran into a roadblock of cities. The Xinhua News Agency, in a November, 2006 article, notes that Beijing Mayor Wang Quishan told the Hong Kong media that his top priority was to “borrow experiences” in mass transit management to alleviate traffic congestion in time for the 2008 Olympics. “A report from the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences says traffic jams cost the southern city up to 12 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion) a year, about seven per cent of its gross domestic product.”

It’s everywhere. In a 1998 New York Daily News article, we learn that “extra transportation costs, such as overtime paid to drivers stuck in traffic, costs Brooklyn $1.5 billion a year.”

In Chicago, the good news was that transit saves the region, which, according to the Chicago Transit Authority has the second worst traffic congestion in the U.S. “over $1.5 billion in congestion costs”.

But that’s a different way of looking at it. Let’s get back to basics.

No less an authority than the Washington D.C. Road Information Trip Program discovered, according to an October 2004 report, that “Traffic congestion in Virginia costs licenced drivers $1.5 billion annually in delays and wasted fuel.” Note to drivers stuck on the Port Mann Bridge: don’t go to Virginia either.

Or Philadelphia. An October, 1 2003 article in the Philadephia Inquirer (The Traffic Commute? Hey, It Could Be Worse) takes the trouble to spell out the methodology behind the magic $1.5 billion number: “Figured at about $19 an hour for both time and fuel, congestion costs our region $1.5 billion annually.”

And steer clear of Boston. According to the I-95 Corridor Coalition, “the Boston, MA region ranks 10th at an annual congestion cost of over $1.5 billion. The economic cost accrues not only to local residents, but also to long distance travellers and to those moving freight through the region.”

The good news is you can escape this number by flying off to Australia, but not for long. The Southern Australian Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics has estimated the cost of congestion on Adelaide roads in 1995 was $0.8 billion and will grow to $1.5 billion by 2015.

Careful if you rent a car in Sydney. The Department of Environment and Conservation of New South Wales estimates the cost of traffic congestion in that city is between– you guessed it– $1.5 billion and $2.04 billion.

I hope the construction estimates on new highways are measured a little more rigourously.

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You know it's just as likely their estimate of congestion costs are also too low. If Pete wants to dispute the numbers he should come up with his own and show his work. Either way, congestion costs time and money, is detrimental to the enviroment, and lowers the quality of life, by at least a significant amount.

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Yep, lots of planners did some pretty bad layout of cities over the years now didn't they!

Which is why it boggles the mind that here we are in 2009, with all we now know and we're expanding hwy 1, expanded hwy 10, building the sfpr, nfpr, golden ears bridge, pitt river bridge, sea to sky, replacing and doubling the port mann, etc etc etc...

We can fund all that, no problem whatsoever. But translink (for various reasons yes) has no funding, busses are being cut (http://www.bclocalnews.com/surrey_area/peacearchnews/news/69671097.html), skytrain expansion is being scrapped, etc etc etc...

Boggles the mind it does....

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Which is why it boggles the mind that here we are in 2009, with all we now know and we're expanding hwy 1, expanded hwy 10, building the sfpr, nfpr, golden ears bridge, pitt river bridge, sea to sky, replacing and doubling the port mann, etc etc etc...

We can fund all that, no problem whatsoever. But translink (for various reasons yes) has no funding, busses are being cut (http://www.bclocalnews.com/surrey_area/peacearchnews/news/69671097.html), skytrain expansion is being scrapped, etc etc etc...

Boggles the mind it does....

intellectual inertia is a b*tch ain't it?

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oh and speaking of everyone's favorite 'safety' job the sea to sky highway....

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/medians+could+interfere+with+rescues+firefighters+fear/2204976/story.html

The second paragraph is interesting don't you think?

New medians could interfere with rescues, firefighters fear

By Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver SunNovember 10, 2009

Emergency personnel fear the new Sea to Sky Highway, with its string of concrete medians and narrow shoulders, may hinder their ability to reach crash victims during the 2010 Olympic Games.

While police and firefighters acknowledge the new design, which is part of a $600-million facelift, will reduce the number of head-on collisions, they also say people are now driving faster on the highway, resulting in more single-vehicle accidents.

West Vancouver police say they noticed an increase in speeders as soon as the highway opened, while RCMP Cpl. Dave Ritchie, of the Sea to Sky detachment, say weather and driver behaviour are a major factors in crashes.

A woman recently collided with a median after she started searching for her purse in her car, while there was a rear-ender during heavy rain on Monday.

"It's never been the highway's fault for accidents; it's been 99-per-cent driver error," Ritchie said. "We'll still see accidents for sure, because the nature of the beast is people speed, and speed brings more drastic results."

Emergency responders say a serious crash could result in a traffic jam stretching for miles, forcing emergency officials in some cases to pass by the scene and drive as far as five kilometres up the road to turn around.

Even then, they may not have a safe place to pull over at the accident scene as the highway runs between a rock cliff on one side and Howe Sound on the other, with limited places to stop.

Two-thirds of the road between Squamish and West Vancouver is divided by a concrete median.

While police officers are able to stop on the opposite side of the highway and jump the median to reach a scene, firefighters and ambulances don't have that luxury, especially if they have to extricate victims from a vehicle.

"Before, we didn't have to worry about barriers; we could get close or to the scene," Squamish Fire Chief Ray Saurette said. "Now we have to drive past the emergency to a turn-around point. You always hate to drive by an accident scene to come back to it."

The situation is exacerbated by the fact there will be more multi-passenger buses travelling the route, ferrying spectators, visitors and athletes to the Games.

Although all four fire departments along the Sea to Sky -- Lions Bay, West Vancouver, Squamish and Whistler -- are highly skilled in using the Jaws of Life, they are having to learn how to get people safely out of larger vehicles.

The provincial government has recently provided funding to train them, but fire officials say they will be in trouble if there are multiple crashes, because it will quickly consume their resources.

"There are going to be thousands of bus trips a day [along the Sea to Sky] to get people back and forth," said West Vancouver Fire Chief Jim Cook. "If the volume of accidents does rise, we have limited resources to respond to all of them."

Statistics from the Insurance Corporation of B.C. suggest the highway crash rate -- covering the stretch between Whistler and Pemberton -- has risen and fallen over the years with 790 crashes in 2007 and 710 last year. Three of the top five crash sites were near Squamish.

Cook said police will be enforcing speed limits along the highway during the Olympics. The four fire departments have requested another four to six firefighters each to work 24/7 during the Games period.

Lions Bay has so far been given approval for two more firefighters; West Vancouver has requested extra funding to provide staffing at Cypress Bowl.

Lions Bay Mayor Brenda Broughton said, "It has a been a significant challenge to ensure appropriate funding is provided."

She said Lions Bay is working with West Vancouver on who responds to an accident between the two communities to cut down on the turn around time.

Transportation ministry spokesman Dave Crebo said that despite the concerns of emergency officials, the highway is "vastly improved." He noted the shoulders are 1.5 to 2.1 metres wide depending on the section of road, creating more places to pull over than in the past.

Crebo said that while he has heard anecdotally of more speeding on the highway, it is also easier now for police to patrol and enforce the speed limit, with more than two dozen places for speed traps between Britannia Beach and Furry Creek, compared with four in the past.

During the Olympics, he said highways officials plan to station heavy-duty equipment along the route to deal with emergencies.

The BC Ambulance Service plans to add 100 paramedics during peak hours in the Games period, as well as 70 paramedics dedicated to Metro Vancouver.

Edited by inane
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oh and speaking of everyone's favorite 'safety' job the sea to sky highway....

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/medians+could+interfere+with+rescues+firefighters+fear/2204976/story.html

The second paragraph is interesting don't you think?

Oh come on Inane. You're better than that. From the same article a couple lines down.

"It's never been the highway's fault for accidents; it's been 99-per-cent driver error," Ritchie said. "We'll still see accidents for sure, because the nature of the beast is people speed, and speed brings more drastic results."

What the highway does is minimize the damage these idiots do. Head on collision > single-vehicle accidents (for overall damage and death)

Edited by ahzdeen
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Oh come on Inane. You're better than that. From the same article a couple lines down.

"It's never been the highway's fault for accidents; it's been 99-per-cent driver error," Ritchie said. "We'll still see accidents for sure, because the nature of the beast is people speed, and speed brings more drastic results."

What the highway does is minimize the damage these idiots do. Head on collision > single-vehicle accidents (for overall damage and death)

Better than what? So more accidents are better than fewer accidents because the damage per accident is smaller?

I said all along the design of the highway wasn't the issue, it was the idiot drivers. So we spend millions and millions to make it safer (faster) and now there are more accidents. Not to mention the fact that the dividers are preventing emergency crews from getting to the crash...

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Better than what? So more accidents are better than fewer accidents because the damage per accident is smaller?

I said all along the design of the highway wasn't the issue, it was the idiot drivers. So we spend millions and millions to make it safer (faster) and now there are more accidents. Not to mention the fact that the dividers are preventing emergency crews from getting to the crash...

More single-vehicle accidents, which is what the median is supposed to stop. It doesn't mention that there is an overall increase in the number of crashes, just single-vehicle crashes. I'm sure there is a sharp reduction of multi-vehicle accidents.

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More single-vehicle accidents, which is what the median is supposed to stop. It doesn't mention that there is an overall increase in the number of crashes, just single-vehicle crashes. I'm sure there is a sharp reduction of multi-vehicle accidents.

Point is, we spent billions on this and all the other projects I listed, for what? What are we trying to achieve LONG TERM?

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Which is why it boggles the mind that here we are in 2009, with all we now know and we're expanding hwy 1, expanded hwy 10, building the sfpr, nfpr, golden ears bridge, pitt river bridge, sea to sky, replacing and doubling the port mann, etc etc etc...

We can fund all that, no problem whatsoever. But translink (for various reasons yes) has no funding, busses are being cut (http://www.bclocalnews.com/surrey_area/peacearchnews/news/69671097.html), skytrain expansion is being scrapped, etc etc etc...

Boggles the mind it does....

Well, the buses are taking an ever increasing pool of taxes, so it's odd that they are cutting service. I guess you can blame fuel but it's been pretty high for a long time. If the planners had built this city right it would be easy to service it with buses and we would need a fraction if any of the road improvement. Highway one had but one improvement (HOV lanes, which isn't the worst road improvement even even probably in your eyes) over my lifetime but wow did the sprawl out in the valley happen anyways, not slowing in the slightest despite the ever increasing queues on the Port Mann. But of course the problem is not enough transit, despite for example two major skytrain expansions in the last decade alone.

And of course, some of the road improvements are gonna stick a toll on them to pay for themselves, which is shocking considering how much money in gas taxes are allready paid out the drivers.

Boggles the mind, doesn't it....

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Better than what? So more accidents are better than fewer accidents because the damage per accident is smaller?

I said all along the design of the highway wasn't the issue, it was the idiot drivers. So we spend millions and millions to make it safer (faster) and now there are more accidents. Not to mention the fact that the dividers are preventing emergency crews from getting to the crash...

Uh, ya? I would trade a hundred cases of wipelash for the gruesomeness of a head on crash. So would any other sane person.

Even if you want to do an economic case, dead people are a lot more expensive than injured ones. Never mind the obvious point that the people causing the accidents are a hell of lot less likely to injure or kill others.

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Uh, ya? I would trade a hundred cases of wipelash for the gruesomeness of a head on crash. So would any other sane person.

Even if you want to do an economic case, dead people are a lot more expensive than injured ones. Never mind the obvious point that the people causing the accidents are a hell of lot less likely to injure or kill others.

If you're talking strictly economics, I seriously doubt that's true.

And if we continue to talk economics, more crashes = more money on car repair and more emergency response time/resources and more traffic delays/congestion etc etc

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If you're talking strictly economics, I seriously doubt that's true.

And if we continue to talk economics, more crashes = more money on car repair and more emergency response time/resources and more traffic delays/congestion etc etc

..... dead people don't contribute to the economy... well... other than caskets and cemetery plots.

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Well, the buses are taking an ever increasing pool of taxes, so it's odd that they are cutting service. I guess you can blame fuel but it's been pretty high for a long time. If the planners had built this city right it would be easy to service it with buses and we would need a fraction if any of the road improvement. Highway one had but one improvement (HOV lanes, which isn't the worst road improvement even even probably in your eyes) over my lifetime but wow did the sprawl out in the valley happen anyways, not slowing in the slightest despite the ever increasing queues on the Port Mann. But of course the problem is not enough transit, despite for example two major skytrain expansions in the last decade alone.

And of course, some of the road improvements are gonna stick a toll on them to pay for themselves, which is shocking considering how much money in gas taxes are allready paid out the drivers.

Boggles the mind, doesn't it....

'the planners' in the suburbs are no different than any other north american city, except maybe vancouver or nyc where they said no to highways.

The solution is more transit, more options. You say sprawl continued while the lineups grew longer. Good. If you CHOOSE to live in Abbotsford and work in Vancouver then don't get your panties in a knot when you find your drive takes a long time.

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