I'm glad this was approved. Staff objected to this project in part because students might have "problematic and unintended impacts on the surrounding neighbourhood" if they're not chaperoned by RAs. That seems completely wrong to me. Students are people, not a nuisance to be abated!

Vancouver Sun [Unofficial]@vancouversun.com.web.brid.gy · 7d ago

Reading the latest issue of Vancouver magazine and this line in an article about hospital food took me aback. Surely we can devise better ways to support local farmers that don't lead hospitals to fail to meet their patients' dietary needs.

VZV volunteers & friends out at the baseball game!

I have nothing to add that hasn't already been said but this is an act of abject cowardice. All the endless hand-wringing about towers and concentrating development on existing rental areas, and when the opportunity comes to do something about it everyone except Lucy votes for the status quo.

Peter Waldkirch 華彼德@pwaldkirch.bsky.social · last wk.

Ok, they severed the SES part, so this is the vote on the main part of it: A-J. And, the Villages Plan is dead. This hurts. ABC, COPE, and the Greens are all unwilling to take even quite modest action on expanding low-rise apartment areas.

Vision Zero Volunteers loving the Granville St pedestrianization! What a great hang out spot after our monthly meeting.

Brent Toderian@brenttoderian.bsky.social · last wk.

Never forget, you can double the number of people in a pedestrian street or people-place in two different ways — by doubling the number of people who come (which is harder), or by doubling the length of time that people stay (easier, but we too often get this wrong). Make streets magnetic places.

Putting aside that this is slopulism that will make parking availability worse, it bears noting that the reason there's paid parking in front of beaches and community centres in the first place is that Vancouver Liberal park commissioners Scott Jensen and Brennan Bastyovanszky made it so.

Kareem Allam@kareem42.bsky.social · 2w ago

Within the first year of a Vancouver Liberal Government, we're going to get rid of every single parking meter in front of beaches and community centres throughout the entire city.

Got to try out the new Solaris trolleybus today. It was a smooth ride and the AC is going to be a godsend in the summer. Very excited for it to enter service!

Between Californian randos reading from AI and fake translators arguing with the chair, this should be the nail in the coffin for the idea that a public hearing is a sacred exercise in direct democracy in front of a disinterested panel of judges. There's no baby in the bathwater. Get rid of this.

Peter Waldkirch 華彼德@pwaldkirch.bsky.social · 2w ago

Apparently one of the earlier callers also confirmed that they used AI to write their comments. This tactic--filibustering, potentially with AI...oof. This could really break local government's ability to act at all.

Shout out to whoever at the CRTC thought using the US president's nuclear attack warning system for Amber alerts 16 hours away was a good idea

The people who make things with ports need to talk to the people who make things that need to be charged. this message brought to you by my crashout at buying a USB-C ring light and only having USB-A ports around my desk

One of my pet peeves is when retired planners--whose failed policies created our housing crisis!!--gripe about attempts to fix the problems they created. I got a chance to say a bit about that when I was on BC Today to talk about the Villages Plan recently--here's a clip, full interview below!

Interesting case study. I find some of the conclusions odd. - Praises the retail on Broadway but wants to concentrate growth there to keep "incompatible" uses off side streets - Lots of Condonomics about land lift - Critical of "long approval processes" but also wants more public participation

School of Cities@uoftcities.bsky.social · 3w ago

Vancouver’s Arbutus Station is an example of TOD in a mature area w/ active commerce, pedestrians, multimodal travel. How to protect #affordable #housing & amenities? A case study w/ Infrastructure Institute, as part of Canadian Urban Institute TOD on Main project https://ow.ly/4vKN50ZmAwG

Ruofan: "The truth is, no amount of gentle density will ever be gentle enough to appease those who do not want things to ever change, and by prioritizing those voices for decade, council after council have robbed young people of the opportunity to stay in this great city." PERFECTLY SAID

Ruofan: housing options besides dingy basement suites would also have allowed him and his student friends to stay. lol now he's going through the last community-driven planning process, the dunbar city plan from 1998, and it basically rejected EVERYTHING and allowed NOTHING

And now it's @ruofan.ca to support! Here to support more housing options, but also personal. Lived in a basement suite in Dunbar while a UBC student. Can't begin to count the hours he spent waiting for the bus to get groceries. More retail options nearby, cafes, etc would have been life changing.

You know, sitting in the antechamber listening to the opponents' colour commentary, I'm starting to agree with Michael Geller about the benefits of watching public hearings at home.

Peter Waldkirch 華彼德@pwaldkirch.bsky.social · 3w ago

anyways it's hard to gauge how councilors will vote based on these questions, they might just be posturing, but so far this is pretty grim

So this isn't good. ABC (+Fry and Bligh) introduced an amendment to the Vancouver General Hospital campus report to order staff to study demolishing the 10th Avenue bike lane in front of VGH and rebuilding it on the north side. They say it's to reduce conflict, but the data says otherwise.

Apparently there's an on-demand transit service in Squamish that carries 100 people a *month*. For a service that runs for 10 hours on all weekdays with 2 buses, that seems quite low (0.8 boardings/hr). In general, I'm curious how often on-demand is actually more cost effective than regular buses.

Update: Squamish transit expansion in limbo after letter from Crown corp

BC Transit says in a recent surprise letter that expansion commitments—past and present—are under review due to the 'current fiscal environment.'

squamishchief.com

Apparently Ken Sim's decided to take on the Kits Pool reservation system. Fighting the good fight on behalf of uncles everywhere who insist you don't need a ferry reservation at 3pm on a long weekend

Justin McElroy 🇨🇦@jmcelroy.bsky.social · 3w ago

Ken Sim says that if re-elected he will stop trying to get rid of the independently elected park board. He says ABC will run a slate of candidates and try and reform the park board — which was his plan four years ago until he tried to get rid of it and lost his majority.

Bus lanes are important, but quantity has a quality of its own. Speeding up the bus 5 mins does little good if you're still waiting 20 mins at the stop. Unfortunately a lot of agencies have easier access to capital than operating dollars so they build very expensive BRTs with anemic service.

august 🍂@auguststreet.ca · 4w ago

thing is, bus speeds between LA & toronto are comparable. not dismissing speed issues, but the biggest delta between TO & LA is frequency (+integration) of bus+rail. lowering bus wait times region-wide is still the best bang-for-your-buck transit investment out there with quick results. 1/

“Villages” plan coming to council July 14. bit.ly/4atYlgE You can now sign up to speak! What do I think about the plan? Well…. 🧵

we are all belgian on this blessed day

The RCMP would like to remind you that the highway shoulder is a very dangerous place to be full of debris and garbage. Good thing we keep putting our bike lanes there rcmp.ca/en/bc/bchp/n...

This is great! Keeping Granville for people the rest of the summer will show that its success wasn't just FIFA-fuelled lightning in a bottle and that Vancouver wants more pedestrian streets. Next step: accelerate the absurdly long 10 year timeline to build the infrastructure to make this permanent.

Andrea Woo@andreawoo.bsky.social · last mo.

News release: "Vancouver City Council has voted to extend the Granville Street Pedestrian Zone pilot and maintain eligible FIFA-related temporary patios and public realm expansions across the city through the Labour Day long weekend."

Kinda messed up that Bosnia and Herzegovina is made up of two entities, one of which is called the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the other of which isn't called either Bosnia or Herzegovina

Didn't know until today how beautifully Alder frames Vancouver House at sunset. This is way more interesting than a view cone!

Most companies sponsoring FIFA probably aren't getting their money's worth, since I doubt anyone sees a Visa FIFA ad and goes "I should get a credit card". But I have to say Michelob Ultra is really getting incredible value for its money. I've never seen it in Canada before and now it's everywhere.

I'm really coming to agree with the argument @denisagar.bsky.social makes here. frequent transit that sevces more areas is far more important than free transit.

Fisticuffs: The argument AGAINST fare-free transit

If a terrible bus becomes free, will it truly free you?

planetizen.com

My hope for the condo buyback program was to be able to deliver a lot of non-market housing, quickly, at a price lower than what could be built from scratch, and to do it with a significant contribution from the feds. 1/5

Random question for the Bluesky housing hivemind: Why are bare-land stratas so much rarer in Canada than homeowners' associations are in the United States? Condominium title was invented around the same time in both countries, but we just... don't really have land condominiums?