The city has now been promised $21 000 000 from the federal government for the replacement of the bridge. This money is not coming from the stimulus money, but from the Build Canada pot of money. This should mean the timelines the city was trying to meet for the stimulus funding are not longer an issue.
Without funding from the province, the cost of the bridge to the city is over $40 000 000 if there are no cost overruns. The city needs to either find some other sources of money for the bridge or scale back the project. The easiest way to scale back the project would be to drop the rail part of the bridge.
The rail portion of the bridge adds a significant cost to the bridge with no benefits to the region. People want to keep the rail aspect of the bridge in the false hopes that this will be part of commuter rail system into the city. The millions of dollars that this will cost the city of Victoria can not justified. The people in the city of Victoria have to pay for the bridge for rail but the rail line has not benefits to people living in the city of Victoria.
If the rail link is important to others, they should come forward with the money to build the rail part of the bridge. $10 000 000 to $15 000 000 from the Island Corridor Foundation would be a reasonable contribution towards the bridge to maintain the rail part of the bridge. If the ICF is not willing to pay for the cost of the bridge, then the rail part of the bridge should not be built. It would only reasonable for the ICF to pay for 100% of the rail portion of the bridge.
I would also like to see Esquimalt agree to contribute something towards the cost of the bridge. Ideally I would like them to cover 1/3 of the local government cost of the bridge. The bridge is vital to Esquimalt and they should be willing to cover some of the costs.
The time has come for this region to have something similar to TransLink. TransLink is not only responsible for transit in the lower mainland, but also for maintaining and improving the major road network. As long as we have 13 randomly created local governments, we need a region wide way to deal with transportation issues.
A CRD regional transportation authority would be able to balance the needs of the major roads and bridges with the transit system. Projects like the Johnson Street Bridge, Mactavish road interchange, or the Spencer road interchange would all come under the mandate of the regional transportation authority. This authority would also be in charge of transit and could take action on transit expansion including an rapid transit ideas.
A regional transportation authority would balance the costs over all of the people of the region and would allow for much better integrated local planning or transportation. The authority would be able to take action on the Malahat.
A regional transportation authority would be able to raise money from local gasoline taxes as is done in Metro Vancouver. A small fuel tax could raise an additional $10 000 000 to $20 000 000 a year for local transportation infrastructure.
A local regional transportation authority would also make it much easier to access contributions from the provincial and federal governments for capital projects in the CRD. Of the three major transportation infrastructure projects currently under way in some way, two of them are being driven not by the needs of the region, but by the interests of a specific large user - Bear Mountain in the case of the Spencer Road interchange and the airport in the case of the Mactavish road interchange. Our transportation infrastructure is not being driven by the needs of the region.
There are many upsides to a regional transportation authority and few downsides. The time has come for the regional politicians to push for the province to create our own TransLink.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Trees and Developments
I was sitting outside of the Starbucks at Tillicum and Gorge and noticing that the trees in the parking lot were getting to of a size where they added something to the landscape, that they could offer some shade. I also know that this little strip mall is very likely in its last ten years of life. With these two thoughts something came into my mind - the lifespan of most trees is at least twice as long as the lifespan of any development.
The average apartment/house/strip mall etc... has a realistic lifespan of about 4 to 50 years. One only needs to look around the neighbourhoods first built in the 1950s and 60s to see how many of the houses have been torn down and replaced with something newer. A strip mall that makes it past 40 years is rarity. We can look further back and see how few of the buildings built between 1890 and 1930 are still around, many of them were torn down with a generation of being built.
In drawings of developments there are always these wonderful mature trees, trees that take 40 to 50 years to mature. And there is the problem, by the time trees begin to leave their youth the development they are around gets bulldozed for something new.
Many of the trees that are planted have lifespans of several hundred years, they barely have started and we cut them down. The problem is that we can not think in timeframes that are tree like in length.
As a nine year old child I was in Finland in 1975. With the family over there we visited a church yard where there was a grave of an ancestor of ours, a grave from the 17th century. There was a wonderful big tree growing out of this grave, a tree about 300 years old, a tree not close to the end of its life. The tree was over growing the whole grave. The tree had been there for generations, it was a direct link between myself and my 17th century Schulmann ancestor. The three century timeframe is beyond human understanding.
As humans we perceive the world in a few generations. We tend to divide our world into the recent generation, the past generation and our parents youth. The last two meld when we are young into one. 25-30 years is our limit of what we consider recent and current, something older than that on the landscape is something from a past generation. We see things more than a generation old as being old, but we do not value you them till they are from a time before our parents.
This means that the developments we see become old long before their time. We can tear it down and build something new. With it we tear down the trees just as they are becoming what they could be.
Even trees planted for a purpose can be lost to future generations. The trees along Shelbourne were planted some 80 years ago as a living memorial to all the men killed in World War One. The trees are finally reaching the age where they are truly stunning, but so many of them have already been cut down. Their purpose has also been lost to the people of 2009.
People are also unable to see the life of trees when it comes to logging, they only see the clearcut, not the forest emerging again. Forests take generations to grow and clearcuts look bad in the present generation. We do not seem to have the patience to wait for the forest to come back.
As I was sitting their looking at these trees outside of the Starbucks I was struck with sadness that odds are very high they will not see another ten years. Sad that the hard work of the people building the small strip mall would also be lost.
The average apartment/house/strip mall etc... has a realistic lifespan of about 4 to 50 years. One only needs to look around the neighbourhoods first built in the 1950s and 60s to see how many of the houses have been torn down and replaced with something newer. A strip mall that makes it past 40 years is rarity. We can look further back and see how few of the buildings built between 1890 and 1930 are still around, many of them were torn down with a generation of being built.
In drawings of developments there are always these wonderful mature trees, trees that take 40 to 50 years to mature. And there is the problem, by the time trees begin to leave their youth the development they are around gets bulldozed for something new.
Many of the trees that are planted have lifespans of several hundred years, they barely have started and we cut them down. The problem is that we can not think in timeframes that are tree like in length.
As a nine year old child I was in Finland in 1975. With the family over there we visited a church yard where there was a grave of an ancestor of ours, a grave from the 17th century. There was a wonderful big tree growing out of this grave, a tree about 300 years old, a tree not close to the end of its life. The tree was over growing the whole grave. The tree had been there for generations, it was a direct link between myself and my 17th century Schulmann ancestor. The three century timeframe is beyond human understanding.
As humans we perceive the world in a few generations. We tend to divide our world into the recent generation, the past generation and our parents youth. The last two meld when we are young into one. 25-30 years is our limit of what we consider recent and current, something older than that on the landscape is something from a past generation. We see things more than a generation old as being old, but we do not value you them till they are from a time before our parents.
This means that the developments we see become old long before their time. We can tear it down and build something new. With it we tear down the trees just as they are becoming what they could be.
Even trees planted for a purpose can be lost to future generations. The trees along Shelbourne were planted some 80 years ago as a living memorial to all the men killed in World War One. The trees are finally reaching the age where they are truly stunning, but so many of them have already been cut down. Their purpose has also been lost to the people of 2009.
People are also unable to see the life of trees when it comes to logging, they only see the clearcut, not the forest emerging again. Forests take generations to grow and clearcuts look bad in the present generation. We do not seem to have the patience to wait for the forest to come back.
As I was sitting their looking at these trees outside of the Starbucks I was struck with sadness that odds are very high they will not see another ten years. Sad that the hard work of the people building the small strip mall would also be lost.
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