The Atlantic Cities has posted an excellent opinion article called "Cyclists aren't 'special' and shouldn't play by their own rules". The author, Sarah Goodyear, points to Chicago enacting higher fines for dangerous motorist actions, but also for cyclist rule-breaking. Praising its even-handedness, she states the following:
I am truly sick, at this late date, of people wanting to have it both
ways: calling for protected bike lanes and a bike share system,
demanding that cops step up enforcement when it comes to cars, and then
blithely salmoning up a major thoroughfare and expecting everyone look
the other way.
If cycling will truly become mainstream, the author emphasizes, it must shed its renegade/outsider trappings and become a team player in our urban environment. As a cyclist, she sees it as a very personal decision:
I am trying to see myself as an ambassador for bicycling and to break
the bad habits I formed over years of biking on streets designed solely
for cars. If I am going to fight back against the forces that want to
intimidate and marginalize me when I am on my bike, I think that riding
as squeaky clean as possible is my best strategy these days. The balance
has shifted, and with the advent of bike share, modeling good behavior
is going to be more vital than ever. Not just to prove the naysayers
wrong, but also to be truly safer riders.
And I agree. I try very hard to bike legally and cleanly in a civil and accommodating manner. I too have bad habits formed over the years of biking in an environment designed for automobiles that I suppress. I sometimes see that desire to have our cake and eat it too amongst other cycling advocates and I try to avoid it myself. And yet...
No posts for a while, so let's cover a number of topics. Today's topic theme: Science! It's what's for breakfast.
Changing Orbits
I remember the downtown Kitchener of the 90's. Like many long-time residents, this memory has coloured my perception.
In 2007, despite being within walking distance of downtown Kitchener from a house we owned on Cherry St., our lives revolved around uptown Waterloo. Which proved to be an inconvenience because we now faced a 35-40 minute walk to get there. But I remember our first weekend at that place, walking into the downtown, looking for somewhere to enjoy a nice Sunday afternoon... and drawing a complete blank.
In 2009, we decided to move-- not too far away, over to Peltz Avenue. Today is the 4 year anniversary of moving into the house we still live in. Our lives still revolved around uptown Waterloo, but my workplace was now out at Northfield and Bridge (and still is)-- transit options had forced our hand.
In 2012, I observed that we were heading into downtown Kitchener nearly as often as uptown Waterloo. The opening of places like McCabes and Firkin paved the way, we re-discovered the Boathouse, and then later in the year Imbibe became a frequent attraction.
Fast-forward to a Sunday afternoon's walk home from the Boathouse last weekend.
A Sunday lunch and pint overlooking the lake. What's not to like?
On that walk home, we observed that we're now downtown Kitchener for our dining options most of the time. Uptown hasn't quite fallen out of favour, it just has less to offer (apart from patios... so we may see a summer resurgence.)
Then, we stopped off to opportunistically check out an open house on Heins Street, very close to Victoria Park. And it was tempting. And I realized: the constraints to our location (I want to maintain a low car commuting rate to allow us to share just one car) is loosening due to transit improvements! The rerouted 35 (it'll be renamed 6) provides immediate benefit for direct travel to work. The new iXpress routes allow for better connections to Waterloo destinations off the mainline. And, of course, LRT is coming.
Taken together, it made the idea of living closer to downtown Kitchener-- its attractions and its renewal-- much more appealing. We aren't exactly raring to move. But this is an eye-opening realization.
Speaking of LRT...
Charged Particles
It'll be called "ion". Well, what can I say?
I'll say that I really don't care as long as they don't get it wrong. The name is okay.
I'll tell you what I do care about: this result from the branding telephone survey. It's not about the name, it's about 305 random people's perceptions of the Rapid Transit project:
Whoah. That's 47% favourable to 23% unfavourable. People who are still carrying on with the narrative that "nobody wants LRT" need to consider the distinct possibility that they are in an echo chamber, convinced their voices are the only ones.
(Since the theme is Science-- and apparently breakfasts-- I'll point out that this confidence interval calculator shows that 305 random participants is enough for a usual standard in survey confidence: answers are +/- 5%, 95% of the time. Even on a regional population of 550,000. Unless there is something flawed in the sampling method, with margins like this, it is extremely unlikely-- much less than 5%, to be sure-- that unfavourables are greater than favourables, let alone close to it.)
Okay, let's move on from statistics. It is one of my least favourite sciences.
Scientific Principles
Oh irony. Looks like we're still on statistics.
Kitchener has decided to try sharrows on King Street (along with a number of other measures.) These sharrows are an important step to encourage better road sharing between motorists and cyclists.
I spoke to council and wrote about this topic on behalf of TriTAG. The sharrows are important, but what really gets us excited is that Kitchener is going to measure the effects of the change with cycling counts before and after!
And why shouldn't they measure? We want to know if this sort of thing works. We want to know what works well, and what doesn't, so that we can use that information when choosing future improvements... or to fix and correct flaws that are keeping good ideas from reaching their full potential.
Just last week I was cycling on King St. in downtown Kitchener, taking the lane. Sharrows or no, the legal right exists to take the full traffic lane if there is not enough room for a car to safely pass. The sharrows merely remind everyone about the expectation.
The funny part was, traffic was moving so slow that I went to the sidewalk and (also legally) walked my bike to my destination and it was faster. But that's something you can do when your conveyance doesn't weigh two tons or is the size of small room.
Bonus!
I can't make this section title fit with the Science theme, but everyone likes bonus Science. Since starting this post, I discovered that the City of Waterloo is restarting its Uptown Streetscape improvement project. This project is looking at how to fix the situation in Uptown (north of Erb) where traffic lanes are of substandard width and sidewalks are narrow and crappy in the urban core of the city. It could (and in my opinion should) result in the removal of 1 or 2 traffic lanes.
This change makes complete sense to me, because King Street south of the Town Square will only have 2 traffic lanes in just a couple short years due to the Rapid Transit construction. So why continue with this fantasy that we can have a major arterial road through the pedestrian heart of the city?
This project was going through consultations in 2010, but was suspended in 2011 because the details of RT project would affect things so much. But now the project is restarting. We should soon hear news of new public consultations.
Waterloo needs only look a few kilometres down King Street for the inspiration they need. Kitchener has done a fantastic job with their King reconstruction, and the model could work in uptown.
Edit: video was moved to a new location, link fixed.
It's sometimes hard to spot concrete evidence of actual progress in our community on a week-to-week, month-to-month scale. But if you look closely, the signs are there. Kitchener-Waterloo is evolving.
A major obstacle in the face of intensification-- namely, mandatory parking minimums in new development-- is starting to erode. There are two reasons why parking minimums are so damaging to urban areas:
Vehicle use is ultimately a function of the space devoted to vehicle storage. An oversupply of parking encourages car use over other modes, even when that contributes to congestion and when a car is not necessary for certain trips.
People love free parking, but the cost of providing it is high: borne in construction costs for buildings which must provide parking structures to hit their target density, or more often just borne in wasted surface space that spreads a city apart like stretching at a piece of fabric. This decrease in density, in turn, makes the city less navigable without a car.
Ever been to the Sunrise centre? Have you parked at one store, shopped, and then driven to your next stop within the same plaza? I know I have. And the reasons are (a) there is an incredible abundance of parking that I can get close to each store, and (b) the incredible abundance of parking pushes all of these stores so far apart around a windswept, concrete expanse that I don't want to walk. These traits apply doubly for the ironically named "Boardwalk".
Cities in North America have mandated parking minimums built into their zoning rules for virtually every use, on the logic that a new development will increase the need for parking (which is often true). But parking is created in such quantities, and for singular purpose, that taken as a whole there is vastly more parking than we need in virtually all parts of our communities. And often when parking is tight, there is still plenty of supply available, but a territoriality (Parking for Customers Only!) that precludes using it.
That's just the supply side, and I'm not going to touch the demand side beyond suggesting you google "The High Cost of Free Parking" by Donald Shoup.
We're not yet at the point where our municipalities are ready to sit down and say "fine, no parking minimums". Our downtowns are (in my opinion) quite ready to let the market drive the amount of parking a new development should provide, but our governments are not ready to make the leap even for our densest, best transit-served areas. But the good news is, we are inching closer.
The Transit Hub at Victoria & King
Aiming to combine LRT, bus, GO, VIA and Greyhound all at the same
location-- along with residential and commercial uses, the block
bordered by King, Victoria, Duke and the CN tracks has (I believe) now
been zoned with a reduced parking minimum of 0.7 spots per dwelling unit
for the residential use. (There will also be parking for other purposes
at the site.)
This is important, because it will mean that many new residents at this location-- possibly the most accessible location without a car anywhere west of the GTA in Ontario-- will purchase units without a parking spot at all.
It also sets a precedent that Kitchener is open to negotiating on parking minimums. If the market doesn't justify a certain level of parking, developers will be happy to forgo the expense of it, and it appears that at King and Victoria at least, these conditions are expected to exist.
Interestingly, diagonally across the street is the One Victoria development. The company building this, too, is seeking reductions in parking minimums. If there's anywhere in KW this is justifiable, this corner that has access to All The Transit has got to be that place.
Now all the downtown needs is a supermarket.
Meanwhile, what's going on north of the border? Last we checked, Waterloo seemed to be struggling with its priorities, as the 155 Caroline project edges ever closer to approval, bringing to Uptown an overabundance of parking and a rerouting of the Iron Horse trail. In addition, the University neighbourhoods are sporting many a stucco-clad monstrosity, building after building of 5-bedroom student slums driven by existing zoning rules that drives a 1 parking spot per apartment minimum.
But wait... change is afoot. The first fruit of Waterloo's new Northdale zoning rules (which aren't properly in effect thanks to appeals to our ever-meddling OMB) are on the horizon.
300 Phillip Street, Waterloo
A new development is being proposed at the Ontario Seed location for a property package along Phillip that also reaches to Columbia Street. Four buildings are planned, along with significant surface parking. It doesn't look very inspiring, but it manages to do a lot of things right:
Mixed use, providing some actual street presence
Mixed unit sizes, with 1, 2 and 3 bedroom units that will have much broader appeal than 5-bedroom dormitory apartments
A reduced parking requirement of ~0.65 spots per unit.
Waterloo! I'm impressed! But how is this development possible?
The new zoning rules which (as I mentioned) are not in effect yet allow for a per-bed parking rate of 0.25. This allows for developments that are much more healthy than one full of five-bedroom units. Unfortunately, the 5br buildings we have accumulated will be a legacy we must live with for the next few decades.
The city and the developer have worked together to craft this proposal so that it could be considered as a zoning change. The result is a couple hundred fewer parking spots, as well as a design which brings a good street presence to Phillip and a mix of apartments that are in woefully short supply in this area. Bravo Waterloo.
The Community Building Strategy
The Central Transit Corridor project has published a draft Community Building Strategy report (available on their website). It is an impressive and comprehensive document, covering many aspects of how we can transform our city. A necessary component of the CBS is Transit Oriented Development (TOD), a set of guidelines that will allow central areas to intensify with better environments and a reduced emphasis on automobile travel. This includes reduced parking.
And it is not a moment too soon. The rapid transit project, as soon as it was passed by regional council in 2011, unleashed a lot of pent-up demand for development that had been holding its breath and waiting for a final decision.
Since then we have seen many interesting new developments, but also a few examples that aren't so flattering in light of what our goals are. The aforementioned 155 Caroline, as well as the "Northfield Station" project, are examples of Transit Proximate Development: denser development that fails to take advantage of transit, or contribute to making the place pedestrian friendly or accessible.
The CBS is badly needed: it must become a reality, and survive the transition from strategy to implementation. The sooner, the better.
Crossroads
The municipal staff and councils of Kitchener and Waterloo deserve a pat on the back and congratulation for the positive steps they have taken, but this is only the beginning.
We run the risk of intensifying in ways that undermine our urban environment, and leave us with a city that is still lacking at the human scale. We are in a period of precedent setting, where the pattern of future development can still be influenced by what we do now.
There are many positive steps being taken, and our local governments show they understand the challenge they face. And yet, there is still considerable danger that we will not rise to the challenge, that we let past habits and status quo bind us to obsolete and misguided goals.
Parking is just one small aspect of the complex interconnectedness of a modern city. Our need for it will not go away, but we must learn the difference between feeding this need, and legislated gluttony. All things in moderation, and that definitely includes parking. Otherwise, we are going to have a lot of trouble staying in shape... and getting around.
Heads up: the previous post on this topic contained a description of the proposed 2013 GRT improvements that has since been modified.
Here's the new map:
You may need to click through to see it in detail, or view the original PDF.
One big change: the 201 iXpress will not run to Blackberry campus. Instead the 202 iXpress will extend from RIM campus to Conestoga Mall.
This is a bit of a surprise, but the lesson is never assume something is final until it is final. Even this plan may be subject to change, based on public feedback, online or at one of the PCCs:
Monday, March 1812 p.m. to 4 p.m.
University of Waterloo
Student Life Centre, Great Hall
200 University Ave. W., Waterloo
Tuesday, March 194 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Kitchener Waterloo Bilingual School, Gymnasium
600 Erb St. W., Waterloo
Thursday, March 21 (This PCC will include information on the proposed 2013 Fare Change)
4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Waterloo Mennonite Brethren Church, Chapel
245 Lexington Rd., Waterloo
Friday, March 22 (This PCC will include information on the proposed 2013 Fare Change)
12 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Wilfrid Laurier University
Fred Nichols Campus Centre, Concourse
75 University Ave. W., Waterloo
Attention: Details of this post are now out of date. Please see the updated details here.
The latest regional council Planning & Works agenda contain details of GRT's proposed service improvements for later this year. I wrote about this previously when multiple options were being presented to the public. They've taken in the feedback, and are now coming back with a single proposal for public consultation.
And, it is good. Very, very good.
(You'll probably need to click through to see it legibly.)
Grand River Transit has taken feedback to heart, especially from those of us who encourage them to look for opportunities to move our transit routing strategy away from hub-and-spoke and towards grids. Here's how they have done so:
Route 35 provides very direct north-south service along Bridge and Lancaster, with time-wasting loops cut out.
Route 6 trades its Downtown Kitchener destination for Uptown Waterloo, and interlined with the 5, it provides a solid east-west gridline.
Route 31 runs virtually all of Columbia/Lexington right across town: it no longer enters U of W campus.
Of course, there is also the major addition of the University Avenue express, which doesn't quite stick to University Ave in the west end but still cuts an easily understood path across town. 201 iXpress is also extended, to cover the densest portions of Columbia before turning towards Conestoga Mall and Northfield. This route is a little ideosyncratic but may improve the usefulness of this route that currently looped back at the universities.
And crucially, each will cross the LRT line, though some work must be done to provide a sensible transfer at U of W campus.
Overall, this is a solid set of improvements. But like all route changes, it will inconvenience some who may have located themselves to benefit from the existing route structure. Still, many of them will still have access to transit, and new alternatives available. And many more will be in a position to take advantage of transit. For instance, one coworker of mine has already happily observed that his home near Columbia/Westmount now has transit options to our workplace near Bridge/Northfield.
(These improvements are extremely good news for Bridge/Northfield, especially in light of plans to develop a multi-use node at this location. Large portions of the surrounding area will have transit access to this point, though it remains to be seen if people will take advantage of it in this very car-oriented suburban part of Waterloo.)
Good job GRT!
If you want to read more, TriTAG has a writeup on the proposal here. Also, here is the list of proposed stop locations for both iXpress routes, mostly sticking to their 400m stop placement minimum:
It's very easy to write a post when something gets up in my urbanist junk. I see red and the words flow. Recently I've been pretty critical of our municipal governments.
But here's the thing: by and large, and more so than most anywhere else in this province the region of Waterloo gets it so very, very right. I'm proud to live here, and it is the general positive direction we are in, and the vision this place has, that makes me happy to get involved. Because a man has hope living here.
Here's a couple of things, just from today.
The region got hammered by a ruling from the Ontario Municipal Board, the entity that former BC premier Mike Harcourt has called a "medieval abomination". The OMB has sided with developers-- who often direct much more legal resources at OMB hearings and seem to (almost) always come away with the upper hand-- against the region in its bid to limit greenfield development (i.e. sprawl.)
But the region is not going to take it lying down, and will appeal the ruling. I don't know if they'll win, but it will cast a stark light on the OMB's heavy, undemocratic hand in municipal planning. If nothing else, we'll go down fighting for principles.
Let's not forget, as quoted in the appeal article: the region of Waterloo has maybe the most aggressive growth management strategy in Ontario. It is the only municipality that is defining a countryside line to limit sprawl (and this, too, is going to be the subject of an OMB ruling.) We are blazing a trail. The Ontario "Places to Grow" act is based in no small part on the work done by local governments here in this region.
Along these very lines, today the Central Transit Corridor project presented to regional council on its draft community building strategy, apparently published just a few days ago. (I got listed as a stakeholder, thanks to one day in May I got to work with them on the Midtown vision.) It is pretty inspiring stuff, not exactly a prescriptive document but a descriptive one of where we can go from here. And it's heady stuff. The stuff cities are made of.
On a much smaller scale, today council decided to put aside the quantitative analysis by staff and support a pedestrian signal crossing at Weber and Wilhelm, where some major widening is happening and the Spur Trail will eventually intersect. The Mount Hope - Breithaupt Park neighbourhood association went to bat, and councilors took a more strategic view of the situation and almost unanimously supported aiding pedestrian movement across a widened Weber.
This is a tough year for budgeting, and the mantra must be "everybody feels the pain". While I, personally, would willingly sustain a higher tax hike to keep moving forward, many disagree. Council had to strike a balance between the two. Certain regrettable, but understandable moves have been made, like the delay of the long-awaited Spur Line trail ($3M in capital savings).
Other decisions are less understandable.
The "200 iXpress" is the kind of transit success story that is the wet dream of municipalities struggling with road expenses. It has grown in ridership from a couple of thousand a day when it launched seven years ago, to over 14,000 a day last year. Ridership has driven repeated frequency improvements, from half hour to 15 minutes to 10 minutes, and these frequency improvements in turn have driven ridership growth. It's a virtuous cycle, and a beautiful example of the critical importance of frequency in transit.
A typical busy day for iXpress
The 200 is a route that has been noted as seeing not only high peak volumes, but healthy off-peak ridership. Because many (if not most) of its buses are standing-room only for at least part of its route, it must be financially a star performer. It sees strong student ridership, obviously, but also strong "choice" ridership from people who recognize a good service and will adopt it over other alternatives.
And it serves a route that will become rail-based in less than five years. An ambitious step by the region in search of a better way for its citizens to move about.
In the face of this blistering, searing success, last night regional council voted to cool things down. For July and August, iXpress frequency will drop back from 10 minutes to 15. This move will save the average household a whopping $1.46. (estimate TriTAG)
There are two negative consequences we must consider from this move.
Virtuous to Vicious
The justification for lower frequency is lower summer ridership. There lies the temptation to "optimize" the line for these months, to trim a few hundred G's from the cost of providing the service. But that justification ignores the effect of frequency on ridership. We're breaking the virtuous cycle in place, and possibly running it backwards.
Reduced frequency will reduce ridership, because the service is not so attractive. For some, it will not be there when they need it, without looking for a schedule, and this will turn them off. This, in turn, will offer justification to further frequency reductions if you are looking for short-term cost cutting measures.
We've seen this penny-wise, pound-foolish tendency before: bus wraps.
The region has stated in master plans and megaprojects that it wants to not only increase transit use but multiply it. It needs to keep its eyes on this goal, but budget pressures this year have caused its attention to wander. After implementing plans that will increase household tax levies by $20 a year, why put the success of those plans at risk for the price of a Tim's medium coffee?
Capacity
Another justification for lower frequency has been put forward (pp.76-77):
In July and August 2012, during the midday period, iXpress trips experienced peak passenger loads greater than 35 approximately 3 times per day (4% of trips) and did not experience loads greater than 60 passengers (maximum capacity).
(...)By reducing the frequency of service from 10 minutes to 15 minutes on Route 200 iXpress during the midday in July and August, 24% of midday trips would exceed the GRT off-peak service standard of a full seated load (35 passengers). In some cases buses would leave passengers waiting for the next bus. This would occur on average twice a week (0.5% of trips).
In fact, as I understand it (from Councilor Mitchell's tweeted clarification) the approved cut was in fact all day and staff indicated that buses would leave passengers behind twice a day.
In other words, at the one point of the year where iXpress is providing enough capacity to not fail its passengers, council has decided to "optimize" service so that it provides an acceptable level of failure.
One statistic in the study stands out in particular and should give
transit agencies pause: More than half of the riders said they had
reduced their use of public transportation specifically because of its
unreliability. Most of them didn't just make fewer trips overall;
rather, they switched to other modes of transportation to fill the void.
These words should freeze councilors' hearts. But the second troubling evidence is that council seems to discount this deliberate unreliability as an issue. They seem to believe there is an acceptable level of service that involves leaving people behind every day.
These would-be passengers will get a clear message that the region has little regard for its transit users. And they will abandon transit, if they can.
Silver Lining
It seems as if council has lost the plot. When the pressure is on, the region's long term strategy to shift itself towards a more sustainable (i.e. affordable) future model is put in jeopardy by short sighted penny-pinching. But all is not lost.
I would expect that the consequences of council's decision should be obvious and easy to demonstrate. In fact, the councilors who voted for this cut should be prepared to get an earful from the transit users denied service. There should be no surprises, or ambiguity about cause and effect. We should see ridership negatively affected, complaints increase, and no small amount of public ire directed towards this decision.
And then we can remind council of their goals, the LRT system they have hung their hat on, and that their small cost-cutting victory of today is putting their large victory of tomorrow at risk. I hope we will see good sense eventually prevail. Neither council nor the people of Waterloo can afford to damage the conditions that will make LRT successful, the same conditions that have doubled transit ridership in the last ten years.
If nothing else, we will be shown that, when attracting people to transit, there is no room for an "acceptable level of failure".
