I came across this blog today it is called digital perspectives. I like the pictures she takes of Victoria, they are the sort of pictures I wish I had time to take - my life does not allow me the time to take my camera out as much as I would like.
I have an iPhone now and it has a moderately decent camera on it, but with no zoom I have to get the picture right. The iPhone also has no flash.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
A project for 2009 for my blog
With the local elections over, I was trying to think of a theme for 2009 for the blog and I have found one. I will still be posting ideas and thoughts about the city as they occur but I was looking for something bigger to go on for the year. One of the things that matters to me most is livable neighourhoods. For 2009 I will be looking at neighbourhoods one after the other and seeing what I like about them and what I think could be done better - what would need to happen to make them more liveable.
I will be starting with the Victoria and Saanich neighbourhoods because the cities both have plans in place for their defined neighbourhoods. I will not be using their definitions all of the time because there are numerous cases where a municipal boundary carves up a neighbourhood.
Here is a quick run down of neighbourhoods, as I look at them I will define them better.
Victoria Neighbourhoods
Saanich Neighbourhoods
Oak Bay Neighbourhoods
Esquimalt/Vic West Neighbourhoods
I will be starting with the Victoria and Saanich neighbourhoods because the cities both have plans in place for their defined neighbourhoods. I will not be using their definitions all of the time because there are numerous cases where a municipal boundary carves up a neighbourhood.
Here is a quick run down of neighbourhoods, as I look at them I will define them better.
Victoria Neighbourhoods
- James Bay
- Fairfield
- Humbolt Valley
- Downtown East - Harris Green
- Downtown North
- Fernwood
- North Park
- Quadra Hillside
- Oaklands
- Jubilee
- Rockland
Saanich Neighbourhoods
- Tillicum - Burnside (includes Burnside residential area of Victoria)
- Cadboro Bay - Ten Mile Point Arbutus
- Gordon Head
- Mount Tolmie
- Cedar Hill
- High Quadra - Lakehill
- Broadmead
- Cordova Bay
- Maplewood - Quadra
- Royal Oak
- Carey
- Strawberry Vale - VGH
Oak Bay Neighbourhoods
- Uplands
- Henderson - inculdes Saanich panhandle
- North Oak Bay - Estevan
- South Oak Bay - Gonzales - includes part of Victoria
Esquimalt/Vic West Neighbourhoods
- Esquimalt Village
- Craigflower - Vic West
- Rock Heights - Coville - Parklands
- West Bay - Work Point
- Songhees
- Saxe Point
Monday, December 22, 2008
Snow in our city
I have to say I am utterly unimpressed with how the major malls are dealing with the snow we have had for the last week. The pictures on here were taken at 3:30 pm December 21st - a full 20 hours after the snow had started to fall. You can see in them that it is clear that no effort was made overnight to clear the lot and that it had been left unattended to till late in the afternoon.The Tillicum mall was a sheet of ice last week, bad enough that you could have used skates on it. We were at Mayfair mall on Wednesday evening and found the lot to a shear sheet of ice. Yesterday I passed by both malls and saw they had not done much to clear the snow even though the snow hard started at 5:30 the night before.
Yesterday afternoon the parking lot was close to effectively unusable for parking as it was very difficult to get in or out.I am told they have been sanding, but the volumes they are using are not enough to make any difference. Frankly they are leaving it so late to be dealing with the snow and ice that I suspect they are opening themselves up to lawsuits for customers and tenants. The volume of business in the malls has been incredibly low on the snow days, low enough that I am certain businesses are feeling it.
It also did not feel safe walking on the ice in the parking lots. I suspect there were a number of falls and I think there is a good case for people to sue the malls for not have bothered to make an serious effort to clear their lots.
All of this is in stark contrast to the work done at the small strip mall at Gorge and Tillicum. The lot was cleaned quickly and done well each time I came by there. Given that this small strip is not owned by a big company that offers the potential of big contracts, they should have been at a handicap in being able to get a contractor to come the site and clear the snow.
I lived for years in the interior and never experienced these sort of problems in mall parking lots. Aberdeen mall in Kamloops or Orchard Park in Kelowna were always quickly cleared overnight. They seemed to be able to do it even though they would collect less in rent than the big malls in Victoria. Mayfair mall apparently has the highest rents of any mall on Vancouver Island - I wonder what they put in their contracts to get out of the most basic efforts in snow removal?
If you think their efforts were less than reasonable, I urge you to contact Mayfair and Tillicum and let them know. I have done so.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Rail on Vancouver Island
So far I have mainly touched on this issue with respect to transit in the Greater Victoria area and I remain very skeptical that the idea can make any sense financially for us in this region. I want to look at the bigger picture of the E&N railway on the island.
The line belongs to the Island Corridor Foundation now. They are looking at rebuilding the line and making it a functional rail line again.
One aspect they foundation is looking at is freight. I am not sure that there is much of case to be made for freight via rail on Vancouver Island any longer. Rail freight service works well for large volume bulk commodities such as coal, grains, raw ore, lumber and similar. Rail freight also works well for intermodal - carrying containers on trains from a port to another city. Much of the benefit of rail is over the long distances.
A few years ago I worked on developing a business plan to move logs via rail from one part of BC to another. There was enough of a price differential at the time that there was the possibility of making a profit. Timber in the north was selling for $45 to$50 a cubic metre and was selling for $57 to $62 a cubic metre where I lived.
The biggest problem with the idea was that by using rail to move the logs you needed to first have a truck to deliver them to the rail head at one end and then have another one pick them up at the other end. The cost of moving the logs from the trucks to the train and then off of the train and onto trucks again added $12 to $15 to each cubic metre of timber moved. For $10 a cubic metre you can get a truck to deliver timber 400 kilometres, trucking timber is paid by the hour. Rail shipping costs are based on distance but shorter distances are much more expensive than longer ones per kilometre. In the end using rail to move the timber only made sense if the distance involved was more 1100 km but by then the total price was too high to make any profit.
Problem one on Vancouver Island is that the rail line is too short to be able to be competive with trucking.
More rail freight tends to be very long trains of a single commodity, a 100 car train is not usual. The more cars you have, the lower your costs are per car. A single grain train filled at trackside elevators on the praries unloads in Vancouver into the elevators at the port which fill the ships. The long grain train has been made as effecient as possible and therefore is profitable to operate.
Problem two on Vancouver Island is that we do not have any commodities of large enough volumes to make up long trains. We also do not have the infrastructure to load and unload these trains. The nature of Vancouver Island has been to make use of all the great access to tidewater on the east side of the island. Most industrial operations have been built close to tidewater to make use of this unique resource.
Vancouver and Prince Rupert are ports for container traffic. The port facilities are contructed to allow containers to moved directly from the ships to the train. The trains then deliver the containers all over North America. There is a large fully integrated rail system in North America.
Problem three on Vancouver Island is that we are not connected to the rest of the rail network in North America. We also do not have the container faclities. The E&N line is one of the isolated lines in North America and that will always hamper the business model of the line.
For rail to make sense you need big industrial users, so who are the major industrial businesses on the island?:
At the moment about the volume of freight moved on the line is very low. Only about 1200 cars per year or 4.6 cars per weekday. Realistically the line needs to have a volume of 200 or more cars per day to have a chance to be self sustaining. I have no idea where these numbers are going to come from.
The line belongs to the Island Corridor Foundation now. They are looking at rebuilding the line and making it a functional rail line again.
One aspect they foundation is looking at is freight. I am not sure that there is much of case to be made for freight via rail on Vancouver Island any longer. Rail freight service works well for large volume bulk commodities such as coal, grains, raw ore, lumber and similar. Rail freight also works well for intermodal - carrying containers on trains from a port to another city. Much of the benefit of rail is over the long distances.
A few years ago I worked on developing a business plan to move logs via rail from one part of BC to another. There was enough of a price differential at the time that there was the possibility of making a profit. Timber in the north was selling for $45 to$50 a cubic metre and was selling for $57 to $62 a cubic metre where I lived.
The biggest problem with the idea was that by using rail to move the logs you needed to first have a truck to deliver them to the rail head at one end and then have another one pick them up at the other end. The cost of moving the logs from the trucks to the train and then off of the train and onto trucks again added $12 to $15 to each cubic metre of timber moved. For $10 a cubic metre you can get a truck to deliver timber 400 kilometres, trucking timber is paid by the hour. Rail shipping costs are based on distance but shorter distances are much more expensive than longer ones per kilometre. In the end using rail to move the timber only made sense if the distance involved was more 1100 km but by then the total price was too high to make any profit.
Problem one on Vancouver Island is that the rail line is too short to be able to be competive with trucking.
More rail freight tends to be very long trains of a single commodity, a 100 car train is not usual. The more cars you have, the lower your costs are per car. A single grain train filled at trackside elevators on the praries unloads in Vancouver into the elevators at the port which fill the ships. The long grain train has been made as effecient as possible and therefore is profitable to operate.
Problem two on Vancouver Island is that we do not have any commodities of large enough volumes to make up long trains. We also do not have the infrastructure to load and unload these trains. The nature of Vancouver Island has been to make use of all the great access to tidewater on the east side of the island. Most industrial operations have been built close to tidewater to make use of this unique resource.
Vancouver and Prince Rupert are ports for container traffic. The port facilities are contructed to allow containers to moved directly from the ships to the train. The trains then deliver the containers all over North America. There is a large fully integrated rail system in North America.
Problem three on Vancouver Island is that we are not connected to the rest of the rail network in North America. We also do not have the container faclities. The E&N line is one of the isolated lines in North America and that will always hamper the business model of the line.
For rail to make sense you need big industrial users, so who are the major industrial businesses on the island?:
- The Quisam coal mine operated by Hillsborough Resources - they do need the rail line as they have a shipping terminal 32 km from the mine.
- The Myra Falls mine operated by Breakwater Resources - they truck to the port in Campbell River. There is no rational reason to use rail. The mine is also currently shut down.
- The Harmac pulp mill in Nanaimo is on the waterfront with a dock.
- Catalyst had three pulp and paper mills on the island. The Elk Falls pulp mill is closed for good and had a deep water dock on site. The Crofton mill is operating but has a dock. The Port Alberni paper mill is close to dock facilities in Port Alberni, though might use the line to Nanaimo simply because they did so in the past.
- TimberWest has no mills any longer and the rail line really does not offer any benefits to them for getting timber to the dryland sorts.
- Western Forest Products is the biggest lumber producer on the island, but most of their mills are located on the water with shipping facilities and the distance from the mills without docks to the other makes no sense for rail.
- Teal Jones has a shake mill in Port McNeil, but it is very far from the rail line.
- Coulson operates mills in Port Alberni - in theory they could use the rail line to get it over the hump to Nanaimo, but that means not using the port facilities in Port Alberni.
- Compliance Energy wants to open a coal mine to the south of Cumberland near Bulkley Bay, they would like to use rail to get the coal to a port. The mine still looks like a long shot.
At the moment about the volume of freight moved on the line is very low. Only about 1200 cars per year or 4.6 cars per weekday. Realistically the line needs to have a volume of 200 or more cars per day to have a chance to be self sustaining. I have no idea where these numbers are going to come from.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
It snows and the city freezes
It always amazes me how unprepared Victoria is for snow. People lack snow shovels, cold weather clothes, snow tires and the basic understanding of what snow means.
The weather forecast had been clear for days that we would be getting snow and that it was going to cold for a number of days after the snow. We know the snow is not going to melt in 24 hours and this means we will be dealing with the white stuff for days.
I was not all surprised to get my Times Colonist at lunch instead of first thing in the morning. The TC was prepared for the snow - they were not taking complaints.
Snow does happen here most years here, the cities should be better prepared. I am amazed in Saanich at how bad the road conditions were on major roads this afternoon. The corner of Blanshard and Saanich Road did not look like it had been plowed. Neither Saanich nor Victoria had done any sanding of side roads. These snow events are predictable - they do occur on an almost annual basis. The cities should keep their snow removal budget in a roleover fund - if it is not used in one year, it is there in the next. The city should have more snow removal equiment available. It does not take a lot to adapt your basic 3/4 ton works truck into a small snowplow, these could easily deal with the side roads.
We are required to shovel the sidewalks in front of our house, I had this done in the morning, most people in the neighbourhood have not yet shoveled their sidewalks. When does the city enforce this? Tomorrow? The snow is making many of the sidewalks all but useless for people to walk on. The city had an ad in the TC saying it was a requirement for people to shovel the sidewalks, but what is the point if it is no enforced? I saw condos that did not shovel the sidewalks.
I always marvel at the speeds some people drive through the streets when their is snow on them. The temperatures are too close to freezing for anyone to be sure what the road beneath their wheels will be like. There is no way to be certain if you can stop and these people racing down the streets are running unreasonably high risks of accidents. Even if you have good snow tires and a four wheel drive, you are still not going to be able to stop if you have to.
What amazes the most about people in Victoria is that so many people here come from somewhere else in Canada and should know how to deal with snow for their home and on the roads, but somehow people get some sort of a geographically weather amenisia after they move to the island.
The weather forecast had been clear for days that we would be getting snow and that it was going to cold for a number of days after the snow. We know the snow is not going to melt in 24 hours and this means we will be dealing with the white stuff for days.
I was not all surprised to get my Times Colonist at lunch instead of first thing in the morning. The TC was prepared for the snow - they were not taking complaints.
Snow does happen here most years here, the cities should be better prepared. I am amazed in Saanich at how bad the road conditions were on major roads this afternoon. The corner of Blanshard and Saanich Road did not look like it had been plowed. Neither Saanich nor Victoria had done any sanding of side roads. These snow events are predictable - they do occur on an almost annual basis. The cities should keep their snow removal budget in a roleover fund - if it is not used in one year, it is there in the next. The city should have more snow removal equiment available. It does not take a lot to adapt your basic 3/4 ton works truck into a small snowplow, these could easily deal with the side roads.
We are required to shovel the sidewalks in front of our house, I had this done in the morning, most people in the neighbourhood have not yet shoveled their sidewalks. When does the city enforce this? Tomorrow? The snow is making many of the sidewalks all but useless for people to walk on. The city had an ad in the TC saying it was a requirement for people to shovel the sidewalks, but what is the point if it is no enforced? I saw condos that did not shovel the sidewalks.
I always marvel at the speeds some people drive through the streets when their is snow on them. The temperatures are too close to freezing for anyone to be sure what the road beneath their wheels will be like. There is no way to be certain if you can stop and these people racing down the streets are running unreasonably high risks of accidents. Even if you have good snow tires and a four wheel drive, you are still not going to be able to stop if you have to.
What amazes the most about people in Victoria is that so many people here come from somewhere else in Canada and should know how to deal with snow for their home and on the roads, but somehow people get some sort of a geographically weather amenisia after they move to the island.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Grow in population and in traffic
I was doing some quick math again on population growth and on what this means for the number of cars in the region, I can see no way that population growth will not mean growth in traffic.
We are adding about 4000 people a year to the region at the moment, this means we are adding roughly 2000 more passenger vehicles to the region each year as well. We need more housing units for the people coming, but we also need more road space for the cars that are coming.
I know that it is very fashionable for people to say that more roads only leads to more traffic and if we did not build more roads then people would not be able to increase the traffic. I have disagree with this view strenuously.
Whether we like it or not, the cars are coming and will be on the roads. Offering more road capacity does not mean people will drive more, though it does mean they can get from point A to point B faster.
Not adding capacity to the roads means we reduce the average speed of traffic and we increase the time cars sit and idle waiting to move. We also increase shipping costs. We slow buses and therefore need more of them. We have more frustrated and angry drivers which leads to more accidents and a lower quality of life.
The assumption is that people will move further away from work if the roads are better. I disagree, people move further out because this is where they can find housing that is cost effective for them. If the housing someone desires is available at comparable prices in Oak Bay and in Langford, the house in Oak Bay is what they will buy. The problem is that we have all manner of restrictions on housing at the core of the city which create an artificial scarcity and thereby drive up prices.
There are a number of roads that could be expanded in this region and they would not lead to more sprawl, the expansion would simply reflect existing reality. Interurban from Camosun to Burnside should be four laned as should Wilkinson road, Glanford and Finlayson. I know the last one will make many people burst a few blood vessels, but the region is need of a decent east/west corridor between Hillside and Mackenzie.
Adding capacity to all of these roads would simply reducing long waits are traffic lights, allow more and better movement of people and goods in the region, and improve the quality of life for thousands of people.
The Mackenzie Highway #1 interchange would also improve things dramatically. Though I would only do this if the lights at Burnside and Mackenzie and Hwy #1 and Tillicum were also removed in some fashion. I think it is in the interests of better movement to have Mackenzie from Hwy #17 to Hwy #1 become a freeway.
2000 new cars per year in the region is an extra 50 million kilometers of vehicle use per year. It also means that there will about an extra six kilometers of road space being used during rush hours. That is a long line of cars that will be covering pavement in this region. This is an annual increase, not a one off.
I have lived in Vancouver and spend enough time there to know that traffic congestion has to be a lot worse before people might move to transit. Even with the virtual gridlock in parts of the Lower Mainland, people still drive to work. Anyone that thinks people are going to embrace transit here en mass is kidding themselves. The reality is that we have to work with the actual behaviours of people and not fantasy visions.
We are adding about 4000 people a year to the region at the moment, this means we are adding roughly 2000 more passenger vehicles to the region each year as well. We need more housing units for the people coming, but we also need more road space for the cars that are coming.
I know that it is very fashionable for people to say that more roads only leads to more traffic and if we did not build more roads then people would not be able to increase the traffic. I have disagree with this view strenuously.
Whether we like it or not, the cars are coming and will be on the roads. Offering more road capacity does not mean people will drive more, though it does mean they can get from point A to point B faster.
Not adding capacity to the roads means we reduce the average speed of traffic and we increase the time cars sit and idle waiting to move. We also increase shipping costs. We slow buses and therefore need more of them. We have more frustrated and angry drivers which leads to more accidents and a lower quality of life.
The assumption is that people will move further away from work if the roads are better. I disagree, people move further out because this is where they can find housing that is cost effective for them. If the housing someone desires is available at comparable prices in Oak Bay and in Langford, the house in Oak Bay is what they will buy. The problem is that we have all manner of restrictions on housing at the core of the city which create an artificial scarcity and thereby drive up prices.
There are a number of roads that could be expanded in this region and they would not lead to more sprawl, the expansion would simply reflect existing reality. Interurban from Camosun to Burnside should be four laned as should Wilkinson road, Glanford and Finlayson. I know the last one will make many people burst a few blood vessels, but the region is need of a decent east/west corridor between Hillside and Mackenzie.
Adding capacity to all of these roads would simply reducing long waits are traffic lights, allow more and better movement of people and goods in the region, and improve the quality of life for thousands of people.
The Mackenzie Highway #1 interchange would also improve things dramatically. Though I would only do this if the lights at Burnside and Mackenzie and Hwy #1 and Tillicum were also removed in some fashion. I think it is in the interests of better movement to have Mackenzie from Hwy #17 to Hwy #1 become a freeway.
2000 new cars per year in the region is an extra 50 million kilometers of vehicle use per year. It also means that there will about an extra six kilometers of road space being used during rush hours. That is a long line of cars that will be covering pavement in this region. This is an annual increase, not a one off.
I have lived in Vancouver and spend enough time there to know that traffic congestion has to be a lot worse before people might move to transit. Even with the virtual gridlock in parts of the Lower Mainland, people still drive to work. Anyone that thinks people are going to embrace transit here en mass is kidding themselves. The reality is that we have to work with the actual behaviours of people and not fantasy visions.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Paying for Rail Transit
We have a lot of people in this region talking about rail transit all of it in the context of providing service to Langford and possibly beyond. This talk keeps going and going as if it is inevitable and a reasonable choice for us to make in this region. The more I look at it, the more it seems like a very dumb idea that will cost us a lot of money with possibly limited benefits or even cause us to have a significant negative impact on the regional environment.
Few people are willing to realistically talk about the costs of putting in a rail based transit system. People make assumptions that it will be not that expensive to do because 'We own the E and N line'. People also assume that there will be a ridership for the line if it is built, that people in Langford are going to enmasse abandon their cars.
As I have pointed out concerns I have and obvious flaws with the rail based transit idea numerous times before and no one has been able to address my concerns or questions.
Problem 1 Where is it going to go?
The exisiting E&N line does not end where anyone works and only passes moderately close to one area of high regional employment - the dockyards. Why would people take this line if it is not going where they need to go? The line ends at a location with limited transit and very little space to make a transit hub.
The other alternate option is to follow along Hwy #1 and then Douglas. Not only does this add costs, it will be completely and utterly opposed by the businesses on Douglas - they could not even deal with a busway. An on grade rail transit down Douglas would cause more traffic problems than it solves and would increase green house gas emissions in the region.
Neither route strikes me as one that will work.
Meanwhile, the highest use transit use corridor in the region is from Downtown to UVic, either along Fort then Foul Bay or Douglas, Hillside and then on to UVic. Both these routes have heavy use all day long and are reaching the maximum buses can do along the route, should we not reward the people already using transit with better service?
Problem #2 - What is going to cost?
The end capital costs of building light rail in North America over the last 15 years has averaged about $30 000 000 per kilometre. A realistic estimate to build an LRT to Langford is about $500 000 000. With so many LRTs being built at the moment in US cities, the data is out there that supports this number, though most project estimates are at about 50% of that number before construction starts. If people think it will be cheaper, they have to come up with real data to show why - no one is managing to do that.
If one were use the E&N line and run a basic service one might be able to do something in range of tens of millions, but people have to aware of the limitations. Because the track is a single track the line can only offer very infrequent service - 20 to 30 minute waits for a train, 30 minutes is more realistic. If one has a three car diesel multiple unit train carrying people, you move about 180 people per run or about 700 commuter passengers - only 1/3 of the number of commuters the buses carry at the moment.
The cost of buying the rail cars is about twice as much per passenger capacity as a bus and it costs about three times as much to operate. I do not have firm numbers of the current cost to maintain the units, but I would be very surprised if it was cheaper than the buses.
As an example, the Westcoast Express costs about $16 000 000 a year to operate and it moves about 10000 riders per day. All of BC Transit in the Victoria costs about $70 000 000 to operate and it moves about 61 000 riders a day
Rail transit needs density and high levels of ridership to be able to make any financial sense.
Problem 3 - Ridership, who is going to ride the line?
Focusing on a commuter line for rail immediately causes problems for ridership. You have two peak times in one direction each where there is the demand for the service. What do you do the rest of the time? This is a problem with the Westcoast Express in Vancouver. The limited use of the rolling stock dramatically increases the costs.
The WCE moves about 10 000 people a day - roughly 5000 commuters. This from an area that has a much higher population than the Westshore. This is also an area that has a commute that is much, much worse than anything anyone in this region experiences. Even with all these good reasons to take the train, most people do not use the WCE.
At the moment there is a working population of about 35 000 people on the Westshore and in Sooke. In 20 years this number might be 50 000. The single biggest work destination is the downtown core, but it is dropping in dominance. People commute from the Westshore to all over the region. If we assume that 1/2 the people go downtown and that this number will grow slower than the population on the Westshore, we are looking at 18 000 daily trips downtown rising to about 20 000 over the next twenty years. Currently about 11% of those trips are on transit.
What is a realistic goal for transit use? If one looks at the suburbs of Vancouver, something in the range of 15% to 20% is the best one could expect. I would be very surprised if a rail based transit system from the Westshore into town would end up boosting the transit numbers by much. As much as people do not like the Colwood crawl, the traffic problems during peak hours in Victoria are minimal when compared to a place like Surrey or Coquitlam. There is a big incentive for people in the suburbs of the lower mainland to use transit but still most people choose to drive.
I think 15% is the upper limit of realistic for transit use from the Westshore in the next generation. This number means we are looking at 3000 commuters using transit after a rail transit system is in place. Of those people, not all of them will be using rail as they need to go somewhere other than downtown.
If you do not agree with these numbers, please give me some data to work with that would suggest something different. Why do you think people will leave their cars for trains when they do not use the buses?
One big set of transit users on the Westshore are people going to post secondary. None of these people will make use of a rail based transit going downtown.
Finally, there is a strong emerging trend in the work world that is going to grow dramatically over the next generation, people working from their own homes. We may actually see a fall in the number of people commuting from the Westshore to downtown even as total population grows because people are working from home.
Problem 4 - Will the line not encourage more sprawl?
No one is talking about the sprawl that a successful rail based transit will bring this this region. The easier it is for people to live further out, the more people will do it. If the commute is eased through a reduction in congestion, the population on the Westshore will rise.
More people in single family homes further away from everything they need will simply mean a lot more driving for non work reasons. The Westshore has not thought about how to make any of it function for walking.
Where I live I can walk to the library, the ice rink, the movie theatre, the community centre and a host of other things. I do drive to shop because the volumes I have to deal with are too large to carry home on my back. My reality is one that is true for a large areas of the core of the city. In Colwood and Langford there are very few people that can do the same. More people on the Westshore will mean more off hour vehicle traffic, especially if the Westhills development is built.
Each new person on the Westshore has a significantly higher environmental footprint than someone living in the core of the city. A resident of the Tillicum-Gorge neighbourhood will on average contribute about 4000 car use km per year. A resident of Langford contributes about 9000 car use km per year.
On car use alone, the Westhills development will add about 80 000 000 kilometres of car use to this region than the same number of people added to the area around the Victoria/Saanich border. That is an extra 72 million litres of gasoline - you do the math on what that means for CO2 emissions.
I am still not convinced that a rail transit system to the Westshore will make the commute any better because it will not actually dramatically reduce car commuters at all.
Few people are willing to realistically talk about the costs of putting in a rail based transit system. People make assumptions that it will be not that expensive to do because 'We own the E and N line'. People also assume that there will be a ridership for the line if it is built, that people in Langford are going to enmasse abandon their cars.
As I have pointed out concerns I have and obvious flaws with the rail based transit idea numerous times before and no one has been able to address my concerns or questions.
Problem 1 Where is it going to go?
The exisiting E&N line does not end where anyone works and only passes moderately close to one area of high regional employment - the dockyards. Why would people take this line if it is not going where they need to go? The line ends at a location with limited transit and very little space to make a transit hub.
The other alternate option is to follow along Hwy #1 and then Douglas. Not only does this add costs, it will be completely and utterly opposed by the businesses on Douglas - they could not even deal with a busway. An on grade rail transit down Douglas would cause more traffic problems than it solves and would increase green house gas emissions in the region.
Neither route strikes me as one that will work.
Meanwhile, the highest use transit use corridor in the region is from Downtown to UVic, either along Fort then Foul Bay or Douglas, Hillside and then on to UVic. Both these routes have heavy use all day long and are reaching the maximum buses can do along the route, should we not reward the people already using transit with better service?
Problem #2 - What is going to cost?
The end capital costs of building light rail in North America over the last 15 years has averaged about $30 000 000 per kilometre. A realistic estimate to build an LRT to Langford is about $500 000 000. With so many LRTs being built at the moment in US cities, the data is out there that supports this number, though most project estimates are at about 50% of that number before construction starts. If people think it will be cheaper, they have to come up with real data to show why - no one is managing to do that.
If one were use the E&N line and run a basic service one might be able to do something in range of tens of millions, but people have to aware of the limitations. Because the track is a single track the line can only offer very infrequent service - 20 to 30 minute waits for a train, 30 minutes is more realistic. If one has a three car diesel multiple unit train carrying people, you move about 180 people per run or about 700 commuter passengers - only 1/3 of the number of commuters the buses carry at the moment.
The cost of buying the rail cars is about twice as much per passenger capacity as a bus and it costs about three times as much to operate. I do not have firm numbers of the current cost to maintain the units, but I would be very surprised if it was cheaper than the buses.
As an example, the Westcoast Express costs about $16 000 000 a year to operate and it moves about 10000 riders per day. All of BC Transit in the Victoria costs about $70 000 000 to operate and it moves about 61 000 riders a day
Rail transit needs density and high levels of ridership to be able to make any financial sense.
Problem 3 - Ridership, who is going to ride the line?
Focusing on a commuter line for rail immediately causes problems for ridership. You have two peak times in one direction each where there is the demand for the service. What do you do the rest of the time? This is a problem with the Westcoast Express in Vancouver. The limited use of the rolling stock dramatically increases the costs.
The WCE moves about 10 000 people a day - roughly 5000 commuters. This from an area that has a much higher population than the Westshore. This is also an area that has a commute that is much, much worse than anything anyone in this region experiences. Even with all these good reasons to take the train, most people do not use the WCE.
At the moment there is a working population of about 35 000 people on the Westshore and in Sooke. In 20 years this number might be 50 000. The single biggest work destination is the downtown core, but it is dropping in dominance. People commute from the Westshore to all over the region. If we assume that 1/2 the people go downtown and that this number will grow slower than the population on the Westshore, we are looking at 18 000 daily trips downtown rising to about 20 000 over the next twenty years. Currently about 11% of those trips are on transit.
What is a realistic goal for transit use? If one looks at the suburbs of Vancouver, something in the range of 15% to 20% is the best one could expect. I would be very surprised if a rail based transit system from the Westshore into town would end up boosting the transit numbers by much. As much as people do not like the Colwood crawl, the traffic problems during peak hours in Victoria are minimal when compared to a place like Surrey or Coquitlam. There is a big incentive for people in the suburbs of the lower mainland to use transit but still most people choose to drive.
I think 15% is the upper limit of realistic for transit use from the Westshore in the next generation. This number means we are looking at 3000 commuters using transit after a rail transit system is in place. Of those people, not all of them will be using rail as they need to go somewhere other than downtown.
If you do not agree with these numbers, please give me some data to work with that would suggest something different. Why do you think people will leave their cars for trains when they do not use the buses?
One big set of transit users on the Westshore are people going to post secondary. None of these people will make use of a rail based transit going downtown.
Finally, there is a strong emerging trend in the work world that is going to grow dramatically over the next generation, people working from their own homes. We may actually see a fall in the number of people commuting from the Westshore to downtown even as total population grows because people are working from home.
Problem 4 - Will the line not encourage more sprawl?
No one is talking about the sprawl that a successful rail based transit will bring this this region. The easier it is for people to live further out, the more people will do it. If the commute is eased through a reduction in congestion, the population on the Westshore will rise.
More people in single family homes further away from everything they need will simply mean a lot more driving for non work reasons. The Westshore has not thought about how to make any of it function for walking.
Where I live I can walk to the library, the ice rink, the movie theatre, the community centre and a host of other things. I do drive to shop because the volumes I have to deal with are too large to carry home on my back. My reality is one that is true for a large areas of the core of the city. In Colwood and Langford there are very few people that can do the same. More people on the Westshore will mean more off hour vehicle traffic, especially if the Westhills development is built.
Each new person on the Westshore has a significantly higher environmental footprint than someone living in the core of the city. A resident of the Tillicum-Gorge neighbourhood will on average contribute about 4000 car use km per year. A resident of Langford contributes about 9000 car use km per year.
On car use alone, the Westhills development will add about 80 000 000 kilometres of car use to this region than the same number of people added to the area around the Victoria/Saanich border. That is an extra 72 million litres of gasoline - you do the math on what that means for CO2 emissions.
I am still not convinced that a rail transit system to the Westshore will make the commute any better because it will not actually dramatically reduce car commuters at all.
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Housing Prices in Victoria
At the start of each month the Victoria Real Estate Board releases the sales figures for the previous month. Yesterday the numbers came out for November of this year and they are bad, really, really bad.
November is 2008 is the lowest level of sales in nine years, the last month lower than this was December 1999. It would not have taken much to be the lowest level in 20 years. I expect December, January, February and March to all be lower than November and be the lowest sales months since 1985.
House prices are down a lot from the peak, we are 15% off of the peak in general terms and 20% in some neighbourhoods. We are now back at the price levels from the spring of 2006. To make this clear to everyone, if you bought a house after the spring of 2006, your house is now worth less than what you paid for it.
Condos have an even harder fall, we are over 20% off of the peak. We are back at prices from March of 2006.
In November three times as many residential properties came onto the market than sold. We have a 16 month supply of properties on the market at the moment, a year ago this was a five month supply and in November 2006 it was a four month supply.
So where are prices going? A lot farther down. The trend from the last few months is that there will be a lot fewer sales in 2009. In 2007 there was a total of 7878 residential properties sold, in 2006 it was 7032. For 2008 we are looking at about 6300 sales, a 20% drop from 2007. October and November 2008 are both down more than 50%.
Realistically the Victoria region will see the sale of between 3400 and 4300 residential units in 2009. It will take until 2010 for the current stock of units on the market to all sell. A lot of residential properties will come off of the market, but these people were all planning on trading up, so them being out of the market will further depress sales.
Here are my predictions for average house prices by 2010:
The 2009 sales will be on a par with sales in the late 1970s and early 80s. We had a lot fewer people in the region at the time. 2009 will see total value of sales comparable to 1999, or about 60% less than in 2007.
In 2007 real estate agents earned about $120 000 000 in commissions, in 2009 I see that being around $42 000 000 to $47 000 000 and lower in 2010. Over the next year about half the real estate agents will either retire or find a new job, even then the remaining ones will be hard pressed to make a good living. A big hit is going to come in real estate advertising as the agents drop all non-online marketing. This will hit the local papers heavily and will be an impact on BC Transit (all those smiling people in ads at bus stops).
Home inspection will not suffer nearly as badly as the real estate agents. Home inspections for a while were something people agreed not to do because they we were making offers without subjects. I can not see anyone buying a house now without an inspection.
Anyone that put down more than 25% for a house that they bought in the last three years should manage to retain equity in their house. Many of us will experience a period of negative equity in our house till 2013 to 2015. The negative equity will put a squeeze on family finances as people will not be able to borrow against their house for renovations or as a family safety net.
People with negative equities that are more than their annual income will become major risks for bankruptcy.
November is 2008 is the lowest level of sales in nine years, the last month lower than this was December 1999. It would not have taken much to be the lowest level in 20 years. I expect December, January, February and March to all be lower than November and be the lowest sales months since 1985.
House prices are down a lot from the peak, we are 15% off of the peak in general terms and 20% in some neighbourhoods. We are now back at the price levels from the spring of 2006. To make this clear to everyone, if you bought a house after the spring of 2006, your house is now worth less than what you paid for it.
Condos have an even harder fall, we are over 20% off of the peak. We are back at prices from March of 2006.
In November three times as many residential properties came onto the market than sold. We have a 16 month supply of properties on the market at the moment, a year ago this was a five month supply and in November 2006 it was a four month supply.
So where are prices going? A lot farther down. The trend from the last few months is that there will be a lot fewer sales in 2009. In 2007 there was a total of 7878 residential properties sold, in 2006 it was 7032. For 2008 we are looking at about 6300 sales, a 20% drop from 2007. October and November 2008 are both down more than 50%.
Realistically the Victoria region will see the sale of between 3400 and 4300 residential units in 2009. It will take until 2010 for the current stock of units on the market to all sell. A lot of residential properties will come off of the market, but these people were all planning on trading up, so them being out of the market will further depress sales.
Here are my predictions for average house prices by 2010:
- Single Family Homes Overall - $340 000
- City of Victoria single family - $325 000
- Oak Bay single family - $565 000
- Saanich East single family - $380 000
- Saanich West single family - $285 000
- Esquimalt single family - $275 000
- Westshore single family - $265 000
- Central Saanich single family - $390 000
- Sidney single family - $260 000
- Condos overall - $200 000
- City of Victoria condos - $200 000
- Vic West condos - $275 000
- Oak Bay condos - $250 000
- Saanich East condos - $225 000
- Saanich West condos - $175 000
- Sidney condos - $290 000
- Westshore condos - $160 000
The 2009 sales will be on a par with sales in the late 1970s and early 80s. We had a lot fewer people in the region at the time. 2009 will see total value of sales comparable to 1999, or about 60% less than in 2007.
In 2007 real estate agents earned about $120 000 000 in commissions, in 2009 I see that being around $42 000 000 to $47 000 000 and lower in 2010. Over the next year about half the real estate agents will either retire or find a new job, even then the remaining ones will be hard pressed to make a good living. A big hit is going to come in real estate advertising as the agents drop all non-online marketing. This will hit the local papers heavily and will be an impact on BC Transit (all those smiling people in ads at bus stops).
Home inspection will not suffer nearly as badly as the real estate agents. Home inspections for a while were something people agreed not to do because they we were making offers without subjects. I can not see anyone buying a house now without an inspection.
Anyone that put down more than 25% for a house that they bought in the last three years should manage to retain equity in their house. Many of us will experience a period of negative equity in our house till 2013 to 2015. The negative equity will put a squeeze on family finances as people will not be able to borrow against their house for renovations or as a family safety net.
People with negative equities that are more than their annual income will become major risks for bankruptcy.
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