Library strike/lockout

I find the call for pay equity rather odd. There is no internal inequity that I can see among the library workers. The workers think that they should have pay equity with workers from the city of Victoria - I can not see why they are suggesting this.

The GVLRA has suggested looking at what library workers get paid elsewhere and the union has disagreed with this, as has local MLA Rob Flemming.

There are some private sector workers that operate in much the similar environment as the library workers - people in book stores. Much of the staff on the floor at a Chapters seems to know as much as your average clerk in the library. Certainly the staff at Munro's is very comparable to in knowledge to library workers.

The rhetoric of the union seems utterly out of touch with reality. Certainly there are a lot of people out there that instinctively will support the workers as I would have done 15 20 years ago, but I do not see a lot of public support for the workers. Certainly I see few people that seem to understand the issues at stack, all it looks like is a desire by the workers to get a pay increase faster than the rate of inflation.

I am curious, with automated check out system, is there a reduced need for workers in the library? At the new Saanich Centennial branch the vast majority of people use the automated system. As time has gone by the relative cost of staffing has been rising for the library system, something that has happened in almost all sectors.

A have a few things that I think should be considered in this region with respect to libraries. First, why not integrate the school libraries with the public system? This would mean more books for everyone, and ideally more branches to access if one could get access to the schools for the public. It also means that there would be more resources for the schools to offer library programs.

The next level of integration could be with UVic, Camuson and the legislative library.

Ideally I would love to see a new legislative library built close to the legislature. This could be done inconjunction with the Greater Victoria Public Library and be a new larger central branch for the library.

At the corner of Menzies and Superior there is a parking lot - a site of about 2.5 acres. You could build a five floor building, with three floors of underground parking, that would have about 400 000 sq feet of usable space. The building could function as a major library and also be the start of a downtown UVic campus.

If the idea of a downtown UVic campus works, then there is a five acre site to the south of the legislature that needs redevelopment. The site could easily host 700 000 square feet of building and not be very tall. This would allow more offices for the legislature, the existing government offices and allow for more UVic downtown.

There is a further location that could be developed, a half acre at Government and Superior, right now an underused parking lot. Done properly at this location, a development there could connect over Superior to the site on the south side.

Anyway, enough on this going off on a tangent.

I have some other ideas for the libraries - why not have them privately run?

Spencer road interchange

There has been a lot of discussion about the new interchange being built out in Langford at Spencer Road.

There are several issues that come to mind for myself:

1) Why is there so much concern about this location and this construction? The interchange is one of the two next ones that are most likely to be built in the Greater Victoria. Any work on the Malahat would expect to get rid of the light at Spencer road.

The forest area is one that is not of core importance to much. The lands have been harvested in the past and are highly impacted by the urban areas around it. It is also a move away from agricultural lands.

2) Did not the people of Langford elect this council? As far as I can see the public in Langford chose the current council knowing full well that they are a council that favours more development for Langford.

3) If sprawl is the issue, why are we not seeing opposition to all the building in Sooke or on the other side of the Malahat or out on the peninsula? Bear Mountain is a fairly dense housing development that is close to almost all the shopping needs people have. It would seem to be a good fit for the region. It is being built on lands that are not available for use for agriculture.

The interchange is also important to the Westhills development. The primary outlet for the development for people working in the city will be via the new access to the highway or via Sooke Lake road. The Sooke Lake road access will require a new interchange at that location as well and will need the Spencer Road interchange to keep the traffic flowing. The plans for Sooke Lake Road are already in the works as are the Langford Parkway and the Westshore Parkway. The access to Bear Mountain is the smallest of issues as far as I can see.

4) First Nations - why were they not consulted with? It seems as if the developer and the local government spent almost no time talking with the Sencoten or Songhees about the lands in question. Why did they go ahead with archaeological work without the full partnership of the First Nations?

Top Ten Reasons Not to Amalgamate

10 More local councilors means more politicians in training for provincial politics.

9 Divided we rule – no need to ever worry about coherent action happening to screw up senior levels of government

8 Local mayors are preparing for the second coming by forming a new 13 disciples group, though disagree on who will be Judas.

7 Cooperation and amalgamation is a communist plot

6 Cooperation and amalgamation is a capitalist plot

5 Since the province and the feds cut taxes we need to make up for the excess money in people’s pockets

4 Help keep UBCM convention solvent by sending 80 more delegates than needed each and every year.

3 The municipal governments created as a make work project for lawyers with 13 sets of bylaws

2 Local mayors are concerned about other municipal governments in Canada and worried that a unified Victoria will carry too much clout and be taken seriously to the detriment of other towns getting more than their fair share.

1 Money, money, money, must be funny in a local taxpayers world.

What is Our Vision?

When I look around this city of ours, I see very little pride but a lot of smugness, the sort of smugness that makes people from elsewhere hope for an earthquake.

Winnipeg can be proud of having a cultural importance way above its weight in a place that humans have a hard time living. Kamloops can be proud of its amazing community spirit and volunteerism – I figure Kamloops would do a better job of 2010 than Vancouver. Fairbanks has its amazing can-do, frontier spirit it can be proud. But here in Victoria we are not proud, we are smug, arrogantly smug

Cities elsewhere in the world envision their future and then strive to try and achieve, here we let the future happen and accept the result, trusting that it will not affect our attitudes of smugness. Why try when this place is so wonderful?

What great people do we have that came from here, that called this city their home? We have the Courtnalls and David Foster but that is not nearly enough.

I dream of a city that people from coast to coast in Canada and around world would know where it is and have an image of it.

This does not mean we need to change the physical look of the city, or have the city grow to some huge metropolitan centre. Our size and scale is almost perfect – another 100 000 to 200 000 over a few generations would enhance the city.

So what can we be known for as a city? What is our place in the world? Clearly we are a centre for the arts or film or governance. We need to express our vision forcefully and push for excellence.

Greater Saanich

Given that Saanich has 114 000 people and that Victoria only has 82 500, why are we calling this region Victoria at all? The time has come to call the region Greater Saanich. Add to this the population of North and Central Saanich and you get to 142 000 people living in a Saanich out of 341 000 total.

Much of what is considered Victoria does not sit in Victoria but in Saanich or North Saanich. UVic and Camosun are both in Saanich. The airport and ferry terminal are in North Saanich.

Who is Running for the Councils?

The mayor's seat is open in Victoria as Alan Lowe is not running again, but who will run for his post?

The NDP have closed down their local affiliate the VCE. I think this is a huge mistake on their part as brand names or labels on the ballot are so important in bigger centres to get anyone elected. The simple reality is that few people are well enough known to be able to win a seat on council in Victoria or Saanich without having their affiliation on the ballot. The loss of the VCE will hurt the left in the council elections.

What will also hurt the left is the fact the Dean Fortin is giving up his seat. Incumbency is the single most important factor in the Victoria and Saanich elections. He may run for mayor, I give him a slim chance in a two person race and good odds if there are two candidates to the right of him. Dean Fortin is strongly oriented towards partisan political positions in my opinion. The mayor of the city can have strong political beliefs, but they have to be someone that can work across all political beliefs. I worry he could suffer from the problems David Turner had when he was mayor.

At the moment the most prominent name from the right side for the mayor's chair is Robin Adair. I think he is an interesting and good guy, but I think we have a few better people out there that should consider making a run for the job.

I would love to see Bruce Hallsor make a run at it. His politics are on the right but I have seen the amazing diplomacy he has and his ability to work with people from all political beliefs and treat them with respect.

I would also like to see Chris Coleman put his name forward. He and I are almost 100% in accord with what the city of Victoria and the region needs for the future. He is smart and thoughtful and can work across the political spectrum.

We should see several vacancies on the Victoria city council this time around but I am not sure who the people would be that could win them. I believe that anyone that organizes a formal slate will be able to win a large number of the seats on the next council.

Saanich another time.

The Busway - Victoria's Ugly Duckling

It seems almost no one is willing to come out and speak enthusiastically for the bus rapid transit on Douglas.

Let us review the situation:

There is more and more demand to be able to move people out to the western communities and Douglas backs up badly during rush hour.

The BRT would immediately speed up transit for people by five to eight minutes with only the Douglas section, this may not seem like a lot, but this is a 10 to 15% improvement in the transit time for people from Langford. This is enough of an improvement to move people into the buses - even a small transition of people into buses would make a big difference for everyone.

The BRT would have an even more dramatic impact for people living out in the Glandford/Marigold area. They would see their transit trip improve by 20% to 30%. For someone living off of Carey or Glandford, a trip downtown to an office would be under 30 minutes door to door. People agitating for the Light Rail system seem to always forget that the BRT offers options for multiple different routes, something rail can never do.

The time savings of the BRT means that the transit system effectively gains one bonus bus per 8 that operate on the route. Each bus is saving about seven minutes each in time. With nine buses you save an hour of time and the nine buses have moved as many people as 10 could. Once the whole network is in place, the existing buses in Greater Victoria will be able to move significantly more people than now.

There still remains this backlash from businesses along Douglas because of the loss of on street parking and left turn bays. Frankly the number of people turning left in any given block is tiny. The use of the left turn bays are intersections is low along the whole route except for Burnside and Hillside. The few left turn bays lost, and it is only a few, will have no measurable effect on business.

The businesses along the route already look like they are in trouble. The ones that seem to rely on on street parking are weak looking in any case. Will this businesses survive in any case? Anyone in a retail business along the Douglas strip should be looking at relocating. Without the BRT the congestion along Douglas is going to become intolerable and make the route everyone will avoid. With BRT and the turning bays, they movement of people will be better and the access to the businesses will be better.

Rails in Greater Victoria

I have been reading about the history of rail in Victoria. The interurban line ran for a scant 10 years until it was laid to rest. There was not the traffic to support it. The service from Sooke to Victoria did not last much longer.

During the era when there was a lot more need for public transit because people could not buy cars, rail transit in Greater Victoria could not support itself.

Ultimately the trams were taken out in 1948 because buses were faster, cheaper and much more flexible.

Tillicum Mall Redevelopment

There is a meeting tonight at Pearkes arena for a proposed redevelopment of Tillicum mall. About 7 weeks ago I suggested the same.

They are seriously considering something in the 10 story range. My hope is that they will consider adding more commercial and also office space along with the proposal for the residential.

Adding another 1000 people to that site will be a welcome addition to the neighbourhood. This should add a demand for buses into the neighbourhood. Make more use of the rec centre, make the mall more financially viable.

1000 people in the rest of the neighbourhood would take up about 350 houses. At 5 properties per acre, this would take 70 acres in the rest of the neighbourhood to house this number of people. This is an area equal to everything between Harriet, Burnside, Donald and Obed. All this onto a site that at the moment is nothing more than a parking lot that sits empty almost all the time.

I will be going tonight to very publicly speak in favour of the development

Keith Martin in Favour of LRT

I got a newsletter from Keith Martin, MP for Esquimalt Juan de Fuca, and it he is very strongly speaking for LRT for Greater Victoria. He also speaks very strongly in favour of the Spencer Road interchange.

Martin does seem to be realistic in his estimates for the cost to built an LRT from Langford into town, a cost of $500 000 000 to $700 000 000. I think his estimates could be low depending on the route you would use, but he is at least in the ballpark.

What I find interesting is his assumption of a net benefit of $200 000 000 over 20 years from the the LRT. I would like to see how that number is arrived at. IF this true, the benefits cover 1/3 of the interest costs on the money used to build the LRT. If we took the same $500 000 000 and created a foundation to provide local benefits, that foundation would be able to grant about $25 000 000 a year, or half a billion in 20 years.

Even if someone is dumb enough to stump up the cash to build the LRT, there still is not the needed number of people to make the operation work at all.

The Westshore is still only home to a small minority of the people in this region. There simply are not enough people out there that want to go downtown each day to justify rail transit. For an LRT to make sense there would have to be a concerted effort to build a lot more housing in all of the western communities. We would need to see the population rise 30 000 to 40 000 in a few years. The community infrastructure in Langford and Colwood would not handle this growth - look at the troubles Bear Mountain is having.

The LRT idea also assumes that the primary transit if from Langford to downtown. This simply is not the case. Most of us in Greater Victoria live urban Saanich and the City of Victoria. The LRT makes no sense to the 2/3s of the people living at the core of the city.

The idea of a single downtown as a destination is also no longer true. Government offices are moving further out of the core - there is a nice sized cluster at Selkirk Water now. It also ignores UVic - the university is a single destination with a constant level of traffic that would make sense for rail transit. But note that Vancouver has not chosen to build a line to UBC yet.

IF one were to build rail transit in this city, I would argue a circle route would make the most sense. Start Downtown and follow Fort to Foul Bay, up Foul Bay to UVic, then out along Mackenzie then down Quadra, over to Blanshard on Cloverdale and Blanshard to Fort downtown.

This route would be about 16 km long and cost in the range of $800 000 000. Still very expensive. What it does have going for it is enough riders to make the route realistic from an operational view. It also gives the core municipalities the impetus to add density along the route and not to have more greenfield sites made into housing (as would have to be done in the western communities). More people live long this route that work downtown than on any other possible route of the same length. The route also has the advantage of having UVic and Camosum Landsdowne on it and the Royal Jubilee.

Still, would I build this route? No. The operational costs would still mean that the bus network would have to be gutted to make it work and the bus network is the heart of our transit.

More on Light Rail

After having looked at the study again, there is one burning question I have - how do I get the next contract from the Communities for Commuter Rail? Clearly they are not too fussed about the quality of the work they get.

The report that came out will do more to harm commuter rail than anything else. Making unrealistic pie in the sky assumptions that make Chamberlain at Munich look like a pessimist does nothing to further the cause of rail.

There are major issues with rail that are almost impossible to overcome.

1) Rolling stock is expensive to buy and maintain. Buses are cheaper on a per passenger basis. Buses are also easier to sell used and bring a higher net return. This is because a bus can be driven to the purchaser and a rail car can not and needs to be specially shipped.

2) Effective rail transit needs separation from the other traffic. This alone makes light rail very, very expensive.

3) Rail transit requires a separate right of way - you have to devote more land to transportation than otherwise. The E and N line is wildly underused but still maintains the space that could be used for many other purposes. Rail transit makes sense when the volumes of traffic are high enough. The number of people on Skytrain can simply not be moved on the surface streets. There is no demand within an order of magnitude of SkyTrain in this region.

Ultimately I do not care about the capital expenditure to put in the rail transit, it is the ongoing costs that bother me the most. I assume that someone could be found to fund the capital expenditure of $35 000 000 or more that would be needed for a half assed and badly done Langford to downtown line and that the people of the CRD are not going to have to pay for this folly directly. The core problem I have is who is going to cover the three to four million dollar a year net cost of the service?

The Greater Victoria transit system has a budget of close to $70 000 000 - having the trains would mean a 5% budget deficit. How would you fund that?

Option One - Higher Fares - you would need to raise the fares by about 25 cents to pay for the trains.
Option Two - Drop the purchase of the new buses
Option Three - Higher property taxes - a 35% increase in the transit portion, or about $17. Keep in mind we are already seeing a dramatic rise in transit from property owners.

Let us say you build the whole thing and then find out that no one is using it. What then? I believe that since there is no evidence of a demand for the service, there should be some way to measure the demand. How about a binding sign on? If 2000 current car commuters are willing to sign a binding pledge to buy a transit pass for five years so that they can use the train, that would then show that there is the demand there.

My estimate is that the operation of the service will require a per trip subsidy of about $14. The current buses require a subsidy of $1.95 a trip.

The economics make no sense at all and that is the core of my problem with the whole idea

Victoria Housing Prices

The price of housing in Victoria is too high. This comes about for one single reason, there is not enough supply to meet demand. The more housing units will mean more cheaper housing for everyone.

The faster something like Bear Mountain is built, the more people move there from their houses elsewhere in Victoria. Each time someone buys one of the new upper end houses, they start a chain of purchases going down the value chain. The more Gordon Head or Broadmead houses that come on the market, the more the buyer gets a deal. This means the lower value neighhourhoods have more houses on the market as people try to move to the upper scale neighbourhoods.

If we were to see 3000 new housing units built in the region per year, we would see the market stagnate and the price of housing to fall in relative terms. We would also see a lot more housing come onto the rental market as it empty houses are of no financial benefit.

If people want to see lower housing costs in this city, they should be backing every proposed housing development. Every huge condo tower needs to go ahead.

The interesting thing at the moment is that people are opposing the Bear Mountain development. People are protesting the construction of the needed interchange at Spencer Road. If they manage to stop the housing being built, they will reduce the new housing stock coming onto the market and thereby keep vacancy rates very low and house prices high. For the sake of low cost housing we need to see numerous more Bear Mountains built in this region ASAP.