Why not have narrower road right of ways?

On Orillia Street Saanich has a 20 meter wide right of way

It is amazing how wide the right of way for most streets is, much wider than anything I could imagine you would need it for.

In the case of my street one of the main needs for the right of way is for the sewer and water lines, but they are under the street and not in the edge right of way.   The other major use of the right of way is the the hydro poles which also carry the cable and phone lines.   They only run along one side of the street and are more than three meters from the edge of the right of way.

Overall the width of the road right of way for Orillia street is 20 meters, it could very easily be 14 meters wide with no loss to the municipality or the utilities.   This could add about 3 meters or 10 feet to the properties on each side of the street.   For a lot with a width of 50 feet, this would add 500 square feet to the lot.   The average lot on my street is about 6,750 square feet, this would increase the size of each property by 7.4%.

Reducing the right of way to 14 to 16 meters from 20 meters is not unreasonable.   A street like Niagara in James Bay only has a 16 meter right of way.

If the right of way on a street like mine were reduced by three meters from either side people would have more property to work with.  It would mean the front of a house could closer to the street and thereby allow more backyard.    It also offers more space for an extra small building on the lot which would increase the density.

For corner properties that gained land on their long side and not the narrow the increase in my neighbourhood would be 1200 square feet which is an 18% increase in property size and makes it large enough that subdivision becomes an option    The addition means two 4000 square foot lots become possibel

For the municipality a long term benefit comes from larger properties paying more in property taxes.   Any land owned by the municipality pays no taxes.

How would one go forward with this?   I would have municipal staff identify streets where this change might possible - over 15 meters wide for a residential street and no need for the edges of the right of way.   I would then offer to street blocks where if all the owners agree a reduction for it to happen.

To get the public to agree to doing this, I would offer some form of property tax relief.   Something like for 10 years or when a property is redeveloped, which ever comes first, the properties on the street get a 10-15% property tax reduction.

Overall taking land that is owned by the municipality and not providing a lot of benefit and transferring it to home owners would offer long term benefits to the community through encouraging more density without any dramatic change to a neighbourhood.

Amalgamation - nothing happening yet

It has been more than 50 days since the new councils have been sworn and close to 70 since election night and nothing has happened with amalgamation.   We had the public in eight municipalities vote on the issue and in seven cases voted in favour.    It seems there is a fairly clear desire to have something happen but nothing has started.

I do not know why the various local governments have not yet started to do anything on it.   I think the public will accept some delay in anything happening, but I do not think it can be delayed for too long.   At some point the public is going to feel disrespected if nothing is happening.  

The mood of the public is clearly open to the idea of amalgamation.  Going against this mood could lead to a backlash at the polling both in 2018.   Councils need to be seen to be doing something on amalgamation.

I could understand if there were bigger issues looming over the councils in the region, but in the last six weeks I have not seen any major municipal issues come forward.    The Saanich soap opera is not about governance or municipal issues.

If action is not taken soon by the councils I suspect there will be angry public ready to vote for new people.   A significant reason people voted against Frank Leonard was how he handled the amalgamation issue.  He at first dismissed it even though there is very high support for the issue in Saanich and then he offered a question to be put on the ballot that avoided asking anything clear about amalgamation.   I know many people who voted against Frank Leonard purely because of the amalgamation issue.

How long can they leave it?   I think another month or two at most before people start complaining.

What I would like to see is some announcements, one from the three Peninsula mayors and another from the mayors of Esquimalt, Saanich and Victoria.    Something public that says "Yes we are going to work on amalgamation".

The coming Big Earthquake - a crucial reason we need amalgamation now.

Right now we have a host of local government emergency services in this region that are not coordinated.. I have no doubt that all the people involved are doing their best but they seem to be all be constrained by the boxes created in their minds by the existence of our arbitrary municipal boundaries.   We have a structure in place that is not the best we can do.

When the large earthquake happens people's lives will be at stake and the lack of a well thought out single plan for our region means we will see more people die than we need to.   There is an easy solution that will offer us better and more effective emergency services in the event of an earthquake - amalgamation.

I defy anyone to say that the following list is the best way to prepare for a major disaster in this region:

• Victoria Police
• Victoria Fire Department - Emergency Management
• Esquimalt Fire Department - Esquimalt Emergency Program
• Saanich Police
• Saanich Fire Department - Saanich Emergency Program - Saanich Search and Rescue
• Oak Bay Police
• Oak Bay Fire Department - Oak Bay Emergency Program
• Peninsula Emergency Measures Organization which includes the following:

1. Central Saanich Police
2. Central Saanich Fire Department
3. Peninsula RCMP Detachment
4. North Saanich Fire Department
5. Sidney Fire Department
6. Peninsula Disaster Response/Search and Rescue Team

• Westshore RCMP Detachment
• View Royal Fire Department - View Royal Emergency Program - they plan on operating their one Emergency Operations Centre
• Colwood Fire Department - Colwood Emergency Planning Committee - I do not see anything on their site linking to any other local government
• Langford Fire Department
• Metchosin Fire Department - Metchosin Emergency Program
• Highlands Fire Department - Highlands Emergency Program - The will have their own Emergency Operations Centre 
• Sooke RCMP Detachment
• Sooke Fire Department - Sooke Emergency Planning
• CRD operated 9-11
• CRD Hazmat response 
• Juan de Fuca Search and Rescue - Juan de Fuca Fire Departments - Juan de Fuca Emergency Program
• Local Government Emergency Program Advisory Commission
• Regional Emergency Coordinators Advisory Commission

In looking through all the sites I find very little sense that in the event of a major disaster there will be any sort of effective coordination of the responses.   I see numerous different emergency programs with wildly differing capabilities.    Other than PEMO on the peninsular, for each of these emergency programs I see more or less nothing that would indicate that neighbouring municipalities are considered in their plans.

Only one municipality has included emergency preparedness in their official community plan even though we know a building damaging earthquake in this region in the next 50 years is a one in three chance.

Not only are we not prepared for a region wide disaster, we have structure in place that will not be nearly as effective as it should be.  The status quo can not be as effective as properly coordinated and centrally operated emergency services.   To continue with what we have now puts the lives of people in this region at risk.

 Note the comments at 2:20 in this report

A Visit to Elkington Forest in South Shawnigan

The view from what will be the Ridgeview Hamlet looking towards
Shawnigan Lake - yesterday was overcast so the photo did not turn out 

I was invited by Doug Makaroff to come visit the Elkington Forest site in South Shawnigan and I took him up on that offer yesterday.   I was impressed with what I saw, this is the real deal.  Doug and his partners are really trying to do something different.

Their vision could be offering realistic and viable alternative to how we offer people the places they want to live in while at the same time providing a focus on the ecological needs of the land.   They are creating something between a development and an intentional community.  All developers use words like sustainable and community but none of them ever seem like building a community really matters to them, other than Elkington.

Barry Gates and Doug Makaroff at the look out 

I wrote about the project three years ago and I was not that impressed with what I saw on the website at the time.  My doubts at the time were there because it seems every developer these days talks about eco-something and uses all manner of buzz words related to sustainability and such - green wash.   Going up to visit the site allowed me to put it all into context.

The website does not do a good job of putting the property, especially the forest, in context with the whole area around it.  From the website it was not clear to me the relationship of the houses to the rest of the property.  The houses are slated to be on the land with the lowest productivity forest and located for the most part on a ridge at the southern part of the property.  Frankly, the views from the Ridgeview Hamlet will be stunning.

The South Shawnigan area has been heavily harvested for timber over the last ten years.   It had been almost all previously been cut down in the 1920s so this is the second cut.

Elkington stands out because it still has forest cover

I had a chance to talk with Barry Gates about the forestry aspect of the project.  They have a realistic long term plan for forestry.   An important point for the forestry aspect is a large enough volume to make timber harvesting economic.  

The forest as it stands now is not anywhere close to ready for harvesting but there are trees that could come out now in a thinning process including some of the timber that will be used for the houses being built as part of the project.    The land that is the working forest is the flatest best part of the whole property.

Much the area around Elkington was harvested in the last decade which I find astonishing because the trees would not have had much value to them.  The trees would only have been about 70 to 80 years old and hardly the high value timber they would have been in several decades.  Much of the harvested land will not not return to forest because it is being sold off as building lots.   There clearly is no serious coordinated plans on the south Shawnigan lands in relation to forest management.

One thing that I understand much better now is that this development has the creation of a community as a very important value.  This is not an intentional community but the hope is that it will have many of the aspects of an intentional community.   The hope is that people who buy here will share similar values with respect to the land and that the design of the development will lead to people getting to know their neighbours.

The current master plan for the developed part of Elkington

Yes, Elkington will be a car dependent community but a much better designed and laid out one that most of the rest of the South Shawnigan area.   The Goldstream Heights stuff is a nightmare, the land was all completely clear cut before subdivision.   The very thin soils are gone so you are working with little more than bare rock.   A bare five to ten acre lot in Goldstream Heights will take a lot of work and time to look like anything more than a piece of bare land.,

Current work in the Trailhead Hamlet

I have looked at their drawings of the Trailhead Hamlet numerous times, but it was only by going on site that I understood how of small a space we are talking about.   Even though the bare land strata lots are in the range of 1/3 of an acre and up, the way the Trailhead Hamlet is laid out is very intimate.   While walking around it I was consistently surprised at how quickly I moved on the map.  This is because the roadway is narrow, the properties are only 20-23 meters wide, and all the development and construction has to take place in a small part of each property near the street.  The core of the Trailhead Hamlet takes up around 3 acres which is smaller than the smallest of the acreages being sold as part of Goldstream Heights next door.

This is about the same area that a cul de sac with 15 houses in Gordon Head will take up.  The big difference is that in Gordon Head a lot more of the land is taken up by the street.

A typical roadway in the suburbs is 8 meters wide.   The use of 4 meter roadways at Elkington Forest will reduce the paved area by 50%, which over all the roadways they intend to build on the site works out to about 1.5 hectares less paving, which is enough space to build 15 more houses.

As to the commercial, I got a better understanding of what they have in mind.   They have set aside 7 lots for light industrial/commercial in part of the development not near any of the housing.  The idea for these lots is to allow for businesses related to the forest activities or the farms plots to exist in the area.   The other potential is for home businesses that out grow the home could continue not far away.

I had thought the idea of a local coffee shop in the Trailhead Hamlet was not a viable option and they agree that it is not going to be a traditional coffee shop.   The coffee shop will likely serve as a seasonal location for  the people using the Trans Canada Trail.  In any case, it will be part of the community centre which is what the building is really about.

For me, the website is what lets the vision for this development down.  I will admit I am jaded because every developer website tends to say community, sustainable, green, eco, buzz word, buzz word etc....  Every developer has beautiful drawings to make us fall in love with the project.   I think Elkington suffers from looking and feeling like green wash when they are not.   The problem is that development is not like other developments.

Doug Makaroff is really trying to do something different in Elkington.  It means this development is not like other developments and therefore hard to categorize.  This is a developer who is trying to build a functioning viable community that respects the environment.  I know of no other people trying to do anything quite like this in BC.  Success here will prove a new model that could be replicated in many locations in BC.

They need to do a better job of telling their story.   This may be a for profit development but at the heart of it it is about a group of people working hard for a decade to protect a 1000 acres of land.

Up to 300 MW of wind turbine power proposed by TimberWest for near Sooke

TimberWest and EDP Renewables Canada announced today that they are partnering to develop about 300 MW capacity of wind energy near Sooke.   It is a relatively large development which is great news because it will significantly increase green power production in BC.

At the moment we do not produce enough power on Vancouver Island to meet our local needs.  This project would be an important step to seeing the island produce enough power locally.

The details:

• The expected cost to build these wind projects is about $600,000,000 to $750,000,000.   
• This scale of installed wind capacity is likely to produce 600 to 1,200 GWh per year or about 1% to 2% of the electrical power used in BC at the moment.
• Realistically it will require between 50 and 100 wind turbines.
• The location is on to be on TimberWest lands near Sooke
• It is close to the existing BC Hydro transmission grid 

TimberWest and EDP Renewables have signed any agreement with the T'Souke First Nation, which I am impressed by.  It is very important to include First Nations very early in any natural resource development project.

So where would the wind turbines be located?   The area I have circled in black are the most likely locations for the turbines.  It is on TimberWest land, it is the first ridge coming off of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and it is reasonably close to the BC Hydro transmission line that starts in Jordan River.  Being close to the existing transmission grid makes all new power projects much more affordable.

Here is a panorama of the eastern most extent of the ridge - the picture is from Google Streetview.   

If I find a better picture of the ridge I will post it on here

One final important consideration.  Wind power really fluctuates making it hard to have consistent power.   Ideally you need a way to store some of the power to even out the load.   The reservoirs at Jordan River have been analysed by BC Hydro for pumped storage and there is some potential for this.   The orginal memo only considered hydro and not any potential for using pumped storage for wind power.

I am curious the role the CRD will have in any approvals of this project, I worry they might interfere with it and slow down or stop the development of more green power in BC.

All in all I think this is a great project and I hope it gets off of the ground very quickly.

Burnside and Harriet, a good location for a new urban centre

Uptown is a region developing not only with retail space but also residential and office space.   I think that a natural location to allow for a higher density that would fit well with this emergence at Uptown would be at the corner of Harriet and Burnside.

As a location it is well served by transit with the #21, #22 and #26 buses running through the intersection.   Road access makes it easy to get to this location quickly from most parts of greater Victoria.

This location would work well for mid scale buildings of six to eight stories tall that had a mix of office and residential space in it.   The southwest and northeast corners are both very much underused spaces that could well be redeveloped into something much more significant if several lots were consolidated.

Further west along Burnside there are buildings and houses on both sides of the street that are not in the best of condition and should be redeveloped into more commercial and higher density residential.   When you look at the various possible redevelopment sites and assume an average six story building with four floors of residential, the total increase in population in the immediate area would be about 750 to  2000 people.

This is large enough increase to make  locally focused retail that much more viable.   The additional people should also add to the transit demand in the area.    Something on the order of an extra 300 to 400 trips per day.   The redevelopment should also increase foot traffic and make the Tillicum Mall seem area more connected to this corner.  It also creates a way point between Tillicum Mall and Uptown which should all improve walk-ability.

Some of the apartment buildings constructed in the past clearly had to work within floor to space ratios and setbacks that did not allow for an effective use of the space.   The zoning bylaws that created these buildings mean it will likely take much longer before this corner develops as it should.

At the corner of Tillicum and Burnside you can see with the two buildings, the Ardrea and Heron's Landing, what can be done on a relatively small property.   The net increase in population because of these two new buildings alone is in the range of 200 people.

My fear is that because this corner is in two municipalities there will not be a clear vision to increase the density and the region will miss this opportunity.

We have 20 Official Community Plans for one City - Time to Amalgamate

Victoria is about to finish it's current Official Community Plan but it is only one of 20 in this region.   What I find amazing is that none of the plans seem to care about the impact of the plan on their neighbours.    We have this mess of multiple plans going in multiple directions for one city.   The best we get is the regional growth strategy but it does not work to coordinate the plans.

We have things like Saanich plans for Foul Bay Road in 2008, Victoria adopted a new plan in June 2012 that is written as if Saanich had no plans for the road and now Oak Bay will have new plan in 2014.  One street with three different OCPs created over more than five years.

Our OCPs in the region are not as good as they could be because they plan for the arbitrary borders that exist and not for the communities that really do exist.     We have neighbourhoods split up by the planning process and not being allowed to holistically work as a single community.

The OCP process is also very exclusionary.  Just because someone lives on one side of the street their opinion on the other side of the street does not get counted as an equal voice.   It is also  exclusionary  because there are so many planning processes.   There is no way anyone can keep on top of any of them.  It also means the media does not pay attention to them either.  We end up with much less input and from a narrow segment of the city's population.

We need amalgamation simply so that we can plan properly for the whole city.

List of Current OCPs

• 1995 - November Metchosin
• 1997 - April Colwood
• 1997 - June Oak Bay - starting their OCP process again
• 2003 - July Willis Point
• 2003 - August CRD Regional Growth Strategy
• 2004 - August Port Renfrew
• 2006 - February Malahat
• 2007 - March Esquimalt
• 2007 - May Sidney
• 2007 - May North Saanich
• 2007 - May East Sooke 
• 2007 - July Shirley/Jordan River
• 2007 - September Highlands
• 2008 - June Langford
• 2008 - July Saanich
• 2008 - October Central Saanich
• 2009 - November Sooke 
• 2010 - March CRD Rural Resource Lands
• 2010 - March Otter Point
• 2011 - April View Royal
• 2012 - June Victoria
• Draft Otter Point - this is the third major review of the OCP in the last decade

View Royal Votes on Saturday to borrow $5.49 million for a new Firehall - Please Vote Yes

I have heard very little talk about the referendum going on in View Royal.   There is a vote this coming Saturday to borrow the money to build a new fire hall.  I am worried that very few people will vote and that the borrowing referendum might be defeated.

View Royal wants to borrow $5.49 million to build a new firehall but has had to take it to a referendum because of the very successful counter petition.

Voting will on Saturday November 24th from 8 am to 8 pm

There are two voting locations:

• View Royal Elementary - 218 Helmcken Road
• Eagle View Elementary - 97 Talcott Road

To be able to vote you have to be over age 18, a Canadian, lived in BC for at least six months and in View Royal since October 24th.   This means UVic and Camosun students living in illegal secondary suites are allowed to vote.

You have to have at least some ID with your address on it.

I personally think it is vital to this region to have a decent firehall in View Royal because our primary hospital depends on it.   In the event of a major emergency we have to know that the View Royal Fire Department can be there for all of us.

Please go and vote for the fire hall on Saturday.

 

Following local government is almost impossible in our city which does no favours for our democracy

One of the biggest problems in this region in trying to keep up on local government is that we have 14 of them.  When you have so many local government meetings it would be more than a full time job just to keep up on the basic meetings of councils let alone on the various committees.

In November we have following number of Council Meetings or Committee of the Whole of each local government:

• CRD - 1 meeting (12 committee meetings)
• Central Saanich - 2 council meetings
• Colwood - 2 council meetings?  The Colwood website if the worst in the region and I have no idea about their media schedule.
• Esquimalt - 3 meetings
• Highlands - 3 meetings
• Langford - 2 meetings (6 committee meetings)
• Metchosin - 2 meetings (4 committee meetings)
• North Saanich - 3 meetings
• Oah Bay - 3 meetings
• Saanich  - 3 council meetings
• Sidney - 4 meetings (this is from October because I can not find any information on November meetings)
• Sooke - 3 meetings (4 committee meetings)
• Victoria - 2 meetings (7 committee meetings)
• View Royal - 3 meetings

We have a total of 36 full council meetings in November.   I only listed some of the committee meetings because many council do not seem to have an easy way to quickly find out about when committees were meeting.

This is way too many meeting for a region with only 330,000 people.   It is a waste of human resources in all the time people spend in meetings.

This many meetings also makes it impossible for the public or the media to keep abreast of what is happening in our city.   Decisions by Saanich or Langford impact me and whole city but with so many meetings we all end up in the dark and councils make decisions without the people of this city.

Without the scrutiny of the media and the public democracy has real trouble functioning well.

I have tried to make a page with links to all the agendas and minutes for the councils in this region.

Moss Street Market

Mid day and the market is almost empty

I know I am going to get flames for this post since I am about to attack a Victoria institution.

In my opinion Moss Street Market is a failure.  I was there for the first in a number of years on June 2nd.   I was there at 11 am till noon and the place was not very full.

11 am June 2nd - the market has vrey few people there

I have some experience in farmer's markets.  As a consultant I thought I should take a break from telling people what to do and show them what even a completely inexperienced person from Lillooet can achieve at a farmer's market.

In 2003 and 2004 I had a stall in the Whistler Farmer's Market    I sold my friend's produce, a bit of my own stuff and produce from the Malms.   A bad day for me was grossing less than $300.  My net income after all my expenses averaged $250 a market - I had to buy about 70% of the produce.   I had no idea what I was doing but learned over the two seasons what worked and what did not.  By the end of the second season I was averaged about $600 a week with my best week being just around $1000.

One big difference between Moss Street and Whistler is that the Whistler market was jam packed from 10 am to 2 pm.   There were on going constant crowds I was dealing with.   Between 2 and 4 it slowed down and I could check out things at the market.   Between 4 and 5 was when all the stall holders were cutting each other deals by bartering goods.   I bought a beautiful hand woven silver necklace for Catherine through barter at the market.

There is no way this is $500 worth of produce

Whistler is not a prime location for a farmer's market because the population is so transient.   There are less than 5,000 regular residents.  Still, I could sell a lot of produce - one guy I saw there sold $1500 to $3000 worth of apples each week.   My produce was also not nearly as expensive as what I see at Moss Street.  I sold a lot of certified organic produce.

Dwane is busy, but then all the food to eat vendors seem to be

When I moved to Victoria I helped out my neighbour Anne selling her tomato sauce.   She had a table at Moss Street and Sidney markets and there were some weeks she could not look after her stall so I did for her.   Sidney was busy but it is mainly people strolling in the evening.  Moss Street was not busy.   Anne managed to sell her sauce but nowhere in the volumes that I would have expected a high quality product like that should have.   My weeks were no worse than her weeks.

There are a few vendors that are busy but almost all of those are the ones selling food you can eat right away.

A see a few reasons for the market not doing well:

• Not enough vendors of fresh fruit and veg - I can not be certain if I go that I will be able to get what I am looking for.
• The quality of the produce is mixed - some of the stuff there is already wilted by noon.  It was better on June 2nd than it was in 2005 and 2006 when I was selling there.  I figured out how to keep the produce fresh when I brought it from Lillooet to Whistler, it is not rocket science
• Vendors not coming with much produce to sell.   For any market gardener to make it they need to be selling $2000 to $3000 at a farmer's market.   This is what people make selling in various farmer's markets in and around Vancouver.  I knew some people from Lytton that drove to East Van and typically sold $4000 a week.  Another problem of people not coming with enough is that anyone actually wanting to buy any produce 
• The number of people coming is not very high - you need traffic to sell stuff.   In the peak hours in Whistler I was non-stop selling with people lining up to buy from me.
• The parking sucks for people coming from elsewhere which means it really can not grow in size.  The density of the neighbourhood is too low to support a market
• It is not natural gathering place for people to come and hang out or shop.  Markets need to work with where the people already are.



I met Albert years ago when he came to Lillooet to
collect apricots for free

• The prices are too high - the middle man has been cut out but the prices are high.   Selling at a farmer's market commands a premium but not on the scale the vendors at Moss Street think is a reasonable price.   Only the very wealthy can afford to shop there.  In Whistler the prices were much lower for better quality produce which meant people without a lot of money shopped there.
• The hours are too short.  The market should at least start at 9 am

At Moss Street too many of the vendors are using the market more as a loss leader to advertise their wares than actually make a living at it.   What I see at the market is whole host of enthusiastic amateurs and a handful of serious people.

You make think my criticism is harsh, but the goal of the market is to make local agriculture sustainable, it is not doing that if local growers can not sell several thousand dollars worth of produce each week.   Market gardeners in the lower mainland need to go to three markets a week and sell more than $6,000 a week for 20 weeks to have any hope of making enough to operate a farm.

President of the ICC Dwane MacIsaac with my son Stephen
who took part in the Earth to Table Program 

What can be done to fix it?   The market needs to be moved to Cook Street.  You close a couple of blocks and set up the market.  The market should also have at least 50% of the vendors being people selling produce.  No one allowed to sell something else until the produce seller numbers are high enough.   This is a policy of the Whistler Farmer's Market and the reason I managed to get in immediately and had a corner stall - they needed more produce sellers.

Offer to allow a couple of produce re-sellers to come to  the market if there are not enough farmer's with produce.

Without radical change the ideals behind the market will never come to pass.

Better local governance, the main reason why we should amalgate

For a local government jurisdiction to be an effective governance unit it has to be an area that encompasses most of the activities people do every day.  This means people should be able to live, work, shop and play in one municipality.   At the moment in this region very few people accomplish even two of that list.

Why is it good from a governance point of view to have a local government boundary that allows people to live, work, shop and play within it?   For any local government to govern well it has to consider all aspects of the day to day life of the population.  It has to be able to consider the holistic city.  It has to be able to look at the bigger picture and develop a real long term plan.  When you divide up one city into multiple local jurisdictions you end up with governance for the interests of a small part of the city without consideration of the rest of the city.  You also end up effectively governing only for one aspect of need of the public.

At the moment most of our small local governments govern only for the interests of existing residents, they do nothing to think about the bigger picture, they do not consider the environment, they will not take responsiblity for their share of the regional needs, and generally operate from a selfish governance model.

The most complete municipality we have is Victoria, but even then it is much less so than it used to be.   I live and work in Victoria - the advantages of a home office, but I shop in Saanich, Esquimalt or Langford.   My recreation is mainly in Esquimalt and Saanich.   My kids go to school in Saanch and Esquimalt.   My life is like

Langford has all the hallmarks of a complete community, but while it offers a reasonable amount of work, shopping and playing oppurtunities, it falls down because the majority of the people living there do not work there.  In the 2006 census only 16.9% of the Langford residents worked in Langford.

Percentage of people that work in the municipality they live in:

1. Victoria 50.4%
2. Sidney 29.5%
3. Saanich 23.4%
4. Sooke 18.9%
5. Central Saanich 18.5%
6. Esquimalt 18.5%
7. Langford 16.9%
8. Oak Bay 11.3%
9. North Saanich 11.3%
10. Colwood 7.9%
11. View Royal 7.3%
12. Metchosin 7.2%
13. Highlands 5.5%

What happens when the vast majority of the people in a municipality do not work in the municipality?    The local council is elected by people who do not work in the municipality and therefore the council does not consider the development of work spaces important.  It also means you have people spending years on councils and never learning about any sort of holistic or bigger picture governance because all that is important is the cul-de-sac where you live.

Did you know that four of the 13 municipalities in the CRD effectively have no industrial land and one, Oak Bay, does not provide a single square meter of industrial land?  North Saanich, Oak Bay, View Royal and Metchosin expect  the rest of the region to provide the industrial lands that are needed to make the whole city be able to operate.  It is on industrial lands that the bulk of the blue collar jobs in this region are located.

The OCPs for View Royal and Oak Bay have no consideration in them for the needs of the services just to have the city survive.   They have written their OCPs as if providing land for the boring but crucial background services for the city to operate will be provided by someone else.   Neither one of them addresses the issue of ensuring the employment needs of the people, once again they operate as if others will provide it.

These same problems play out as well with shopping.

Did you know that in you live in Oak Bay there is no way for you to buy fuel for your car?    There is no way I can imagine anyone ever getting approval to build a new gas station in Oak Bay, the public would revolt and council would say no.   Someone else can deal with all the problems that come from gas stations.

North Saanich, Metchosin, and Highlands, all have virtually no shopping.  None of them have any plans to fix this and simply assume someone else will provide.    This happens in these three municipalities  because they are governing for a narrow set of interests - the interests of residents and nothing else.   Their neighbourhoods likely should never have shopping, but they have to be part of the bigger picture so that we make the best decision where we shop.  An unintended consequence has been the development of most of our new shopping is not located anywhere close to where most people live and has caused non-work travel miles in this region to rise over the last decade.

As long as the primary concern of most of the local governments in this region is to govern for the interests of residences and nothing else, we end up with everyone passing the buck on development of places where we shop, work and play.   Unbalanced governance like this diminishes us all.   We also end up with many unintended consequences which cause us problems for decades.

Court decision on the Vantreight Development

View from the Hill Project location

I have been waiting till the reasons for judgement in the case were posted online before commenting on the case. Citation: Residents and Ratepayers of Central Saanich Society v. Saanich (District), 2011 BCSC 491

Main Points of Interest in the Judgement

• Bylaw1712 is legal
• The development is in keeping with the OCP and brings many benefits sought by the OCP
• The Regional Growth Strategy is not directly legally binding on councils.
• An OCP is a policy document and not a legal straightjacket.   It is also not possible to meet all the objectives when considering individual development proposals.
• Council, as the representatives elected by the community to govern, has a right to interpret the OCP and measure how a development meets, or does not meet, different objectives of the OCP
• The court decision is a victory for local agriculture

The case was brought by the Residents and Ratepayers of Central Saanich Society against the District of Central Saanich to quash bylaw 1712 allowing the Vantreight Hill project development.  Bylaw 1712 is an amendment of Land Use Bylaw 1309.

The Residents and Ratepayers of Central Saanich Society asserted that the bylaw allowing the development was in contravention of the Official Community Plan.

Here is what is the core of the judgement - highlights are mine:

[37] I find it difficult to understand exactly what distinction there may be between a bylaw which is in “absolute and direct collision” with an Official Community Plan and one which is in the words of the Local Government Act is not “consistent with the relevant plan”. For the purposes of this application, I will consider whether or not bylaw 1712 is consistent with the Official Community Plan of the District of Central Saanich.

[38] Bylaw 1712 was passed in conjunction with a covenant concerning the Vantreight lands, and in my opinion it is appropriate when examining whether or not the bylaw was consistent with the OCP to consider the bylaw and the covenant together because the approval of the bylaw put in place the measures agreed to in the covenant. 

[39] The enactment of the bylaw and its accompanying covenant clearly achieved some of the objectives of the OCP including by:
1. consolidating the land actually suited for farming and further restricting it from any development which would remove it from agricultural uses;
2. creating park land;
3. creating public trails to be paid for by the development;
4. making available 25 acres of land for a public garden on a 25-year lease;
5. requiring the developer to provide water and sewage utilities at its expense;
6. requiring the residential building to conform to Energuide standards thus contributing to protecting the environment; and
7. granting the farmland a nuisance easement over the residential lots to facilitate adjacent farming operations. 

[40] None of the foregoing results can be said to be contrary to the Official Community Plan. Clearly, the nub of the objection is that 57 residential units, which all may have suites is in the petitioner’s submission too dense a development to be fairly characterized as rural. I note that there is no evidence the land to be built upon is suitable for agricultural use, nor is there any evidence it has been used as crop or pasture land. 

[41] Whether the development permitted by the bylaw is inconsistent with the concept of rural as set out in the District’s Official Community Plan is a matter of interpretation. An Official Community Plan is not drafted in the terms of a statute but rather, in terms of objectives and policies, which are necessarily much less specific than statutory terms. It is obviously not possible to promote each of the many objectives of the Official Community Plan equally in a single instance, therefore decisions applying that plan must involve the exercise of judgement in balancing various objectives in each case. 

[42] The Court in considering a bylaw passed by a municipal council is not dealing with an adjudicative decision by an administrative tribunal, but a decision by elected council members, who have concluded in the exercise of their judgement, how best to accommodate the various policies and objectives they must serve. This does not empower council to misinterpret the Official Community Plan but it does suggest that the court ought not to interfere with any reasonable interpretation consistent with the OCP. 

[43] The District of Central Saanich’s OCP was given third reading by Council October 20, 2008 and finally passed and adopted November 3, 2008. The 2008 Official Community Plan included the R-5 zoning which permitted a single family residence density of one house per .2 hectares in a rural area. Inferentially, the Council adopting the OCP accepted that the meaning of rural at the time of adopting the plan could include such a density. On December 13, 2010, after having considered the issue of whether the proposed residential development would fit in with the Plan’s rural designations, and having obtained covenants which clearly advance a number of the objectives of the OCP, Council passed bylaw 1712. This bylaw permitted more density than R-5 and was passed as R-5 Amended, but it limited the density to significantly less than permitted in the urban zones. In my opinion, having considered the plan itself, the staff recommendations and the benefits conferred by the covenant taken with the bylaw, Council was acting reasonably in passing bylaw 1712. I am not persuaded that bylaw 1712 is inconsistent with the Official Community Plan adopted by the District of Central Saanich and I dismiss the petition to quash the bylaw.

The judge clearly found that the development is in keeping with the OCP but more importantly that the OCP is a policy of council.   As a policy, though one with a legal framework to give it weight, Council has a right to make decisions based on their interpretation of the plan.  It is also clear that a council can not ignore an OCP.   Interestingly, he found that the CRD Regional Growth Strategy does not bind any council.

To make it entirely clear - Bylaw 1712 is legal and arguments saying it was not legal lost in the courts.

He also recognizes that the OCP is a long document and that it is not possible to meet all the objectives of the OCP in each single instance.    Clearly the whole process between the Council and Ian Vantreight was a negotiation of benefits for both parties that meet the objectives of the OCP.    The consolidation and covenant against subdivision of the agricultural land is the single biggest action taken to protect the rural nature of Central Saanich and protect farming in this region in decades.   This one action goes a very long way to meeting core objectives of the OCP.

I am glad to see that the judgement came out quickly and was entirely common sense.   I found the opposition to the Hill project irrational and the lawsuit little more another than a nuisance lawsuit designed to make the Vantreights and Central Saanich look bad.

From the start the whole objection has felt like an irrational anger against farming by suburbanites that moved into farm country.    Beyond the dislike of active agriculture, to me it felt like the opposition was politically motivated for ideological reasons.   The opposition seemed have a strong streak of people opposed to the idea of profit and people that are perceived to be on the right politically.

I am sure this will be a major election issue in the fall in Central Saanich.   I expect the council race to be mean and nasty against the council members that supported local agriculture.

Vantreight Irrigation Pond

Access to the Gorge Waterway

Some people have access to the water

Not enough is being done to offer more and better locations for access to the water on the Gorge.   It is not easy to launch a canoe or kayak unless you drive to the locations set up for that.  There are numerous other locations that should be available for access to the Gorge.

1970s apartments on the water

The Gorge should be the focal heart of our neighbourhood but it is effectively more like the Berlin Wall than centre of the community.   There are some good spots where there is access to the Gorge.   Esquimalt Gorge Park and the walkway on the Saanich side are the better locations as is the park and beach at Craigflower park.

Closer to the harbour we have gained access at Selkirk, via the trestle and in the Railyards, but they remain the exceptions.  Of course there is also Banfield park, but there could be so much more.

We have about a dozen streets that end in cul de sacs at the water but we have little or no access to the water at these locations.  I did a quick drive and looked at a few spots today.

Harriet Road

Looking at water from the end
Harriet Road

Harriet as seen from Arm Street

The end of Harriet Road is located right above the Gorge and the crazy part is that the land between the end of the road and the waterway is already public property and could be a park.   There is a little of a space at the end of the street and a single bench, but there is no access to the water.   It is moderately steep but not unreasonably so and not for a long distance.

Some of the blackberries
at Harriet Road

There is no sign telling you the spot is there and it is heavily overgrown with blackberries.  We have lost a lot of public space to these plants and we need to start seeing some local government take action and pull them out.

It would not take much to make a path down to the water on which you could carry a canoe or kayak to the water.  I would also offer another location you could swim in the Gorge.





Arm Street Park

This is the empty field on the cul de sac

Path to the water

Arm Street is directly across the water from Harriet Road and it is a decent sized park.

There is an empty lawn/field at the end of the cul de sac.   All the site does at the moment is require mowing by the City.

Arm Street Wharf

A nice path leads you down a look out and they down to a decent sized concrete wharf.  There is no sign telling what is down there or that the park is there at all.  Once one is down at the water, there is no way to access it from wharf area as there is a fence around.   You could even have this as a stop for the Habour Ferries.

The park even has a path you could wheel a canoe down on.

Decosta Place and Burlieth Crescent

End of Decosta - this is a park

Burlieth Crescent Park

In theory these two locations have park to access the water, but there is no sign to indicate it is public access to the water and there seems to be little or no attempt to make them places where people would want to try and access the water.

If there the local governments are going to the trouble of making these parks, put a few dollars into them and make them useful.  Both of them could be made to have decent water access for the public

Gorge Park

Aaron Point in Gorge Park

  This is a decent sized park near Tillicum and Gorge but from the street you can not see anything of the park.   There is some decent access to the water and there is this nice dock close to the reversing waterfall.   This is a stop for the Harbour Ferry and makes for a great place to swim, but it is underused.   The access to the water in most of the park is limited and the brush in the park makes the seeing the water hard to do.

Few people know that Aaron point is part of the park.

In the past this was a major gathering point for people in the whole region and was the main swimming location

Washington Street
There is a nice little park at the end of Washington, but it has not access to the water even though it borders the Gorge for 140 metres.   This park should be connected to the Galloping Goose and would only need a 150 metre trail to do that.

End of Washington Street, Selkirk is across the water

 At the very end of Washington there is a perfect location to access the water easily and launch a boat.   You make some parking available in the park and you offer a nice ramp into the water and then we have more access.

Nearby there is the Gorge Road hospital, there is no attempt by the hospital to make access to the water available to the public.  There is 175 metres of waterfront at the hospital

100 years ago the Gorge Waterway as the heart of the city, it should be so again in the future

End run around local planning

Sobey's, the owners of Thrifty's has announced plans to build a new warehouse in North Saanich on Airport Authority lands.  Here is the report from CFAX:

BIG NEW GROCERY WAREHOUSE TO BE BUILT NEAR THE AIRPORT

Nov 15, 2010

THE PARENT COMPANY OF THRIFTY FOODS PLANS TO BUILD A $31-MILLION DOLLAR DISTRIBUTION CENTRE ON VICTORIA AIRPORT AUTHORITY LAND.

SOBEYS INCORPORATED SAYS THE 150-THOUSAND SQUARE FOOT FACILITY IS TO BE BUILT ON 19 ACRES OF LAND AT THE CORNER OF MCDONALD PARK AND MILLS ROAD IN NORTH SAANICH.

CONSTRUCTION IS SCHEDULED TO BEGIN MID 2011 AND BE COMPLETE BY MID 2012.

IN A PREPARED STATEMENT RELEASED THIS MORNING, SOBEYS' PRESIDENT AND CEO BILL MCEWAN SAYS "SINCE 2007 SOBEYS HAS INVESTED OVER $90-MILLION DOLLARS IN NEW AND UPGRADED THRIFTY FOODS STORES AND DISTRIBUTION CENTRES, ADDING MORE THAN 800 JOBS TO BRITISH COLUMBIA."

THRIFTY FOODS HAS A DISTRIBUTION CENTRE NEAR BY, OFF KEATING CROSS ROAD IN CENTRAL SAANICH. THE COMPANY SAYS THAT LOCATION WILL STAY OPEN AS THE SOBEYS DIVISION OFFICE.

- Ryan Price

My concern is that the local council in North Saanich has no say over what happens on the airport lands.  The Airport Authority is outside of the jurisdiction of local government and has no need to answer to the public or partake in any planning or zoning.

I believe we need more industrial lands in this region but I do not like it if this happens by end running any locally elected government.

I have been long concerned that the Airport Authority can choose the land use on their lands, there is no real limits on what they do on their lands.   I could almost understand the need to allow them the power to manage their lands for airport purposes, but to be allowed to build something on their lands that has no connection at all to the airport seems an arrogant approach.

Is North Saanich really the right location for a huge warehouse?  It might be, but it should be decided by the people of North Saanich.  It is wrong to have the airport outside of the jurisdiction of local government when it comes to planning.  I suspect that North Saanich is also not allowed to set the property tax rates for Airport lands and has to accept whatever the Airport wants to pay.

If I have time, I am going learn some more about the relationship between the Airport Authority and North Saanich.

All that said, I do think it is a good location for a warehouse and the need is crucial for more warehouse space in this region as there is very little space for anyone to store goods in this region.  I also understand that if this land were within the jurisdiction of a local government the odds of the warehouse being able to go ahead is remote.  

Provincial government evaluation of the E&N corridor

The provincial government released their study into the E and N corridor and the results are not promising for people hoping that there will be any significant increase in passenger rail service of any sort.  This is a quick overview and not meant to be a perfect reflection, just an analysis to highlight some of the issues for the line.

Here are the highlights:

Freight
The current use of the line is very low, less than 1,000 rail cars per year.  Unless there is some major industrial activity that starts, the projection is for freight traffic to remain below 2000 rail cars.  If the Raven coal mine opens this rises dramatically to in the range of 13,000 to 18,000 rail cars a year.

Even with the Raven mine opening, the rail line needs to move more like 35,000 to 40,000 railcars to justify the expense of the capital investments needed in the line.

The norm for freight services is that they make money or they are not offered.   In the case of the E&N, more or less all of the capital costs for improvements of the tracks needs to come from freight services.  This mean the means the freight services will have to bear annual debt servicing costs of around $7,000,000 to $8,000,000 a year.   This adds $8000 to $10,000 to each freight rail car trip to recover the costs.

Intercity Passenger Service
Several options were evaluated which included looking at service to Port Alberni and adding more trains on the tracks.   At the end of the day the total passengers moved per year came to 160,000 to 220,000 depending on the options considered,  Currently 40,000 are moved each year.

The current service costs $2.2 million to operate and brings in $800,000 in revenue.   Extrapolating to the possible passenger numbers, revenues rise to $3.2 million to $4.4 million.   My estimate of the operating costs is that it would rise to something on the order of $4.4 to $6.6 million.  

Passenger rail continues to need a subsidy to operate and can not provide any revenues to help defray the costs of upgrading and maintaining the system.    The passenger service will need a subsidy of about $7.50 per passenger trip to be able to continue to operate.

The evaluation also looked at a tourist train operation and made estimates of 8000 to 13,200 with a revenue of $533,000 to $847,000 annually.  A drop in the bucket and not enough to make any real difference in covering the costs of the railway.

Commuter Traffic Service
Option 1
Minimal service from Langford to Victoria.   13 km of track and four stations with

Option 2
Upgraded service from Westhills to Victoria 17.2 km of track with six stations.

Option 3
Upgraded service but also one trip per day from Duncan to Victoria

Passenger Demand
The evaluation did not find a lot of potential daily demand for commuter rail.

The minimal service would have an estimated 535 daily passenger trips or 133,750 annually.
The full service would have an estimated 1050 daily passenger trips or 262,500 annually
The Duncan option would have an estimated 1350 daily passenger trips or 337,500 annually.

For comparison, Victoria Regional Transit had 24,800,000 passenger trips last year and should be at least 35,000,000 in 2026.  Commuter rail would only account for less than 1% of the total passenger traffic in the region.

Capital Costs
The minimal service of 13 km with four stations is estimated to be in the range of $70 to $130 million.   The higher cost reflects the need for a lot of upgrading of level crossings along the route, I can not see a regular rail service being acceptable without much better level crossings.   For this reason I will be using the higher number.

The expanded service with longer trains, six stations and 17km of service is estimated to be $90 to $166 million.   The variation is once again related to the costs needed for level crossing upgrades.

One capital cost that was not considered in the evaluation is the cost to build rail over the Johnson Street bridge.  This would add between $12 and $23 million to the cost of the line.

The Victoria Regional Transit Commission would have to take on a lot of debt to start the commuter rail service.  If we assume that the capital costs are between $130 and $166 million and 2/3s of the costs are covered by the senior governments, this means $43 to $55 million of debt will have to serviced by the Transit commission.      At the moment the VRTC has minimal debt servicing costs.   Commuter rail will add debt servicing cost of around $3.5 million dollars a year.  If the Johnson Street bridge costs are added, this raises it to around $4 million.   All these assume 2/3s of the costs are paid for by a senior level of government.

Operating Costs and Revenues
The operating costs are estimated to be about $3.5 million a year for weekday service for 10 hours each day.  This in current dollars.   With 300,000 passengers trips in a year, this means the operating cost per passenger trip is close to $12 per passenger trip.  In comparison, the existing bus network costs a $2.95 per passenger trip to operate.

The average fare that is brought in for each  bus passenger trip is about $1.43.  The subsidy for each passenger trip is $1.52.

If the commuter rail brought in about the same revenues per passenger trip, this mean a subsidy per passenger trip of about $10.50.  With the cost of a bus pass for an adult being $80 and much cheaper for UVic and Camosun students, the assumption of revenues per trip seems reasonable.   What this means is that each daily commuter would need a subsidy of $21 to cover the operating costs of the trip.

The debt servicing costs would add another $12 per passenger trip.   In the end, the Victoria Regional Transit Commission will have a cost of about $48 per round trip commuter each day but only take in about $2.86 in revenues.  This is a subsidy per commuter of over $10,000 per year.

Currently it costs the Greater Victoria Transit Commission about $90 million a year to operate the service.  The commuter rail service would be 7.8% of the all the costs but only 0.9% of the demand.

One of the big problems with the commuter rail idea is that rolling stock is only used for a limited number of hours a day.  The evaluation had each train set in use for seven hours a day and a total of 1750 hours a year.   This is capital cost per rail car of $80 an hour for a 20 year lifespan

Final Comments
The rail line is reaching a point where if nothing is done to repair and rehabilitate the line, there will be no option but to close the line.

The capital costs involved are high, but even if they were free, the costs to operate the rail line are simply not affordable.