Burrard Bridge comparisons part two

My last post talked about the traffic management issues that, at one level, illustrate why the Burrard St. Bridge is not a good model for critics promoting a "two lane solution" for our own Blue Bridge.  I've added a few more pics and some commentary at my flickr site to illustrate further some of the engineering challenges that should add another nail to that coffin.

Burrard has more width to work with and the separated bike lane has been installed using concrete barriers to provide some distance between cyclists and fast moving traffic.  The facility is designed to provide single direction bike lanes, with the east side sidewalk converted to bicycle only use and pedestrians assigned the west side sidewalk on the bridge.  This will prevent conflict in the confined space on the bridge, something that would be a serious problem if the bike lane was two-way or worse, multi-use, an idea that has been suggested by critics looking for "solutions" to save the Blue Bridge.  Some may profess an interest only in providing a substitute for the loss of acces to the now closed rail bridge for cyclists and pedestrians, but I believe that many are simply looking again to find some way to demonstrate that a "solution" exists that would allow the city to save the bridge while providing improvements for cyclists and pedestrians.

The photos should provide some food for thought on how much more constrained we would be on the Johnson St. Bridge, as compared to Burrard, where we have lanes that are narrower and the functional needs of a movable bridge can't accommodate the significant additional weight of an effective barrier system.

The need for robust separation would be particularly acute if a two-way or multi-use lane were to be contemplated.  While daylight is generous through spring and summer and into early fall, commute times across the bridge will be cloaked in darkness for many months of the year and bicycles in particular, riding against the flow of traffic on the bridge, would need some signficant separation from opposing traffic and blinding lights.  Engineering standards for multi-use or two way facilities adjacent to roadways demand more space than would be available on the Johnson St. Bridge where a standard dimension "jersey barrier" would rob at least two feet from the separated lane.

It's another example of where the math doesn't work.  The city's response so far has been to strengthen the visual cues for drivers to slow down and share the road across the bridge, and to encourage cyclists to "take the lane" to ensure safe passage.  It is a safer and more effective way of calming traffic and providing an adequate, if not ideal, level of service for everyone who will be using the bridge over the next 3 1/2 years while we work on our replacement structure.

http://www/flickr.com/photos/luton/

Back to basics on the bridge

Last week the rail span of the Johnson St. Bridge was closed for safety reasons.  The rail stopped using it a few weeks ago and service has been suspended, at least temporarily, while the Island Corridor Foundation that owns the rail line scrambles to find funding for track fixes well beyond the bridge.

While the bridge may have been safe for cyclists and pedestrians to use for awhile longer, perhaps a few weeks or a month, the prudent approach was to accept the advice of the engineers of record and close the bridge.  It's a cautious approach and ensures life safety issues are addressed, protecting our citizens (as well as reducing our exposure to liability issues should the bridge fail without warning).

We're ahead of the game here, not so much like Minneapolis where the I-35 bridge collapsed in 2007, killing 13 and injuring dozens more.  I've covered that one elsewhere in the blog or on my website.

What's got me back on the bridge is the rise again of what I believed to have been a dead issue.  More than one council colleague raised the prospect of closing one lane to provide some separation for cyclists and, I think for some, the idea that it could be shared with pedestrians.  More on some of the design challenges in some blogs in the days to come, but first I wanted to address one of the flippant comments made during our discussion of what to do.  So far, a lot has been done already, with signage and on-road improvements to remind everyone to slow down and share the road while we wait for the new bridge.  Most cyclists I've talked to are very enthusiastic about the rapid response and the effectiveness of the new treatments in making their commute a little more comfortable.

More than once though, I've heard, to my frustration (and expressed in most unparliamentary language), that "they can do it on the Burrard St. Bridge so we can do it here" for one, or  "we took a lane away on Fort St. and it works there so it can work on our bridge".  Neither comparison stands up, however and you can find some photo links here that illustrate some of the differences.  Traffic operations don't lend themselves to simplistic solutions and misplaced comparisons.

The volume, lane capacity and intersection dynamics, particularly on the downtown side of our Blue Bridge will break down if we close a lane, not to mention, yet, all the other design problems of viewing the bridge in isolation from the surrounding road and sidewalk network.

The Burrard St. Bridge, by way of comparison, has six lanes to our three, but more to the point, when the bike lane pilot was introduced, lane capacity was cut by a third (taking one of three outbound lanes is the important factor to understand), while proposals for the Blue Bridge would take away half the capacity available for outbound traffic - and in close proximity to nearby downtown intersections, and those feeding, steadily, five lanes of traffic into the bridge.  (The single inbound lane is the opposite - it feeds several lanes so has all the relief it needs from congestion pressures, not to mention a long approach where vehicles can store if traffic is busy or, what is another key to our crossing, when the bridge is up and all traffic is stopped).

Here's what Burrard used to look like - and you can count the lanes.  It's just not like our bridge and not a useful comparison.  The math doesn't add up.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/luton/5633272863/in/photostream

Fort St., another project used for comparison also doesn't add up for our bridge.  It's still 3 lanes, allowing for some traffic to be drained off to left turns during peak hours, and carrying about a quarter to a third less traffic than is using the blue bridge.  Again, the math doesn't work.  Here's a quiet moment on Fort.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/luton/301596464/

And here's where the traffic that uses the bridge fits into the road dynamics on the west side.  It's useful in understanding how and why traffic keeps moving over the bridge through Vic West and into Esquimalt in afternoon peak hours.  The math should be pretty clear.  It's not something that would fit on the bridge itself, let alone the nearby street grid on the downtown side.  Intersections are too close, and feeding too much traffic onto the bridge to make it work.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/luton/4733674188/in/photostream

More to come in blogs yet to be written, but I'll continue to argue, so far successfully enough, that our engineers shouldn't waste their time looking at two lane trials to solve a temporary problem while we wait for a new bridge.  For some, it's about clinging to an idea that the best research has already proven unworkable, but still looks like a pot of (fool's) gold at the end of the rainbow.

Latest on the Blue Bridge

While the chatter coming from various directions, promoted ad nauseum by some, that there are cheap and easy fixes that will save the old Blue Bridge, ongoing work by the city and its consultants continue to find evidence to the contrary.

With the new bridge project underway, though mostly on paper at this stage (design details), keeping the old bridge safe enough to serve for another three years remains a task at hand.  Rust never sleeps, of course, nowhere more so than on the wet coast, sitting astride a salt water harbour where the wind blows and the sea wash filter through the old structure.  Compromised rivets pop up like measles on a two year old.  Fixes will be more robust than band aids and bailing wire but the analogy is not too far from a harsh reality.

City staff and engineering consultants were out on the bridge Sunday, the 27th of March, chipping away at concrete to analyze rivet conditions along the steel members encased by the concrete counterweights - something no one has been able to look at for almost 90 years.

Starker still are unique points of failure that will be repeated throughout the superstructure.  Everwhere where there are rivets under stress, allowing salt water mositure to seep in between sandwich plates of cheap steel,  the integrity of bridge beams are increasingly being compromised.  Close examination of the interconnectedness of every part of the machine should dispel any notion of a complete and durable refurbishment without taking the entire structure apart.

Trying to do it on site would turn the Inner Harbour into a tailings pond.  A point of reference for marina opponents is the potential environmental impacts on the harbour from construction and operations, not to mention the disenfrachisement of people powered craft that enjoy the northwest shores of the harbour.  Those are very valid concerns.  By comparison, even repainting the bridge on site, a logistical nightmare on any movable bridge, and most problematic on bascule structures, would pose untold risks to the marine environment.  Look closely at what is already shedding and the concern should become apparent.

One recent letter to the editor promoted the fiction that we didn't do our homework on the bridge.  It's still a work in progress, but as the project moves forward we continue to confirm that the original findings of our condtion assessments have been followed by prudent and sustainable decisions.

Fresh pictures of our bridge in decline are newly posted in my flickr gallery at www.flickr.com/photos/luton/

Green and the economy

No surprise that the federal government is underperforming in the creation of jobs for the future.  While we continue to float above some of the rest of western economies on a sea of oil, building a more sustainable future at all levels, doesn't seem to be on the Harper agenda.

See the story in the Vancouver Sun:
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Canada+green+creation+falling+behind+bureaucrats/4441324/story.html

We have locally taken some of the stimulus funding to create our own green infrastructure, so credit is due to the feds for the investment in our Johnson St. Bridge project.  The new bridge will improve conditions for cycling and walking dramatically, inviting people to shift their trips to more sustainable modes. 

Still there is more to the green economy that our transportation systems design, and we have other initiatives underway that should help us meet environmental objectives, particularly reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.  Elements of our sewage treatment options for the Capital Region include, potentially, recovering heat from waste and distributing it through a district energy system - one plant or heat source for many buildings and businesses.

If the energy centre comes to Victoria, we could link the system to yet to be developed brownfield sites at Rock Bay in the Upper Harbour area.  One of the directions we have been investigating might be to target the neighbourhood for a hi-tech park that would cluster knowledge and skills in a near downtown location and use the heat and energy from wastewater treatment to help support the industry.  The more central location would invite, as well, more sustainable travel choices and support greening of our local, light industrial sector.  At this point, it's an idea, not yet a plan, but something worth exploring further as various projects come into focus.

One of the initiatives the city has undertaken of late is to sign on with Mayor Gregor Robertson of Vancouver and Mike McGinn in a "Cascadia" sustainability initiative to try and attract complementary green business and industry to the northwest.  Kudos to Victoria Mayor Fortin for leading the charge on behalf of the city.

See:
http://www.victoria.ca/contentmanager/press/110208_mr.pdf

Hi-tech is already our biggest industry locally - it generates more dollars than tourism and other industries usually seen as staples of Victoria's economy.  Hi-tech is a fluid, mobile industry, and not just the clean energy supports will be important to attracting business.  The things we are doing to support active transportation - cycling and walking, and an active, outdoors lifestyle, are big attractions to businesses that can locate anywhere.  Building a better transit system will need to happen too.

The future of our region, economically and environmentally, will depend on how we respond to the climate change challenge and on the social ledger, creating a vibrant place to live, invest and work will also help us to address the other account on our triple bottom line.  It's something every level of government needs to tackle with us.

Something for drivers

Car insurance by the mile (or kilometer) is something that would benefit drivers who use their cars irregularly.  It's an idea promoted locally by Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute (http://www.vtpi.org/).  An incentive to use cars in moderation, mileage based insurance may be coming to Washington State in the U.S.  A bill introduced in the state legislature aims to remove barriers to introducing a plan.

Distance based insurance could encourage people to think before they drive - asking themselves if they really need a vehicle for any particular trip.  I drive my wife's car on occasion, but for most trips I bike.  It's habit, and a good one at that.  Helping people to make more sustainable decisions is good public policy, and the plan should be embraced by ICBC (the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia), which supplies our public, mandatory auto insurance in B.C.

Read more at: http://daily.sightline.org/daily_score/archive/2011/02/09/selling-insurance-by-the-mile?utm_source=Sightline&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WeeklyScore

Train in Vain

The Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway is still open for business, but efforts to keep the trains running could be threatened by the competiton for funding aimed at improving transit for Greater Victoria.

BC Transit is focused on the West Shore - Uptown - Downtown axis, desiging an alignment that would run along the Trans Canada Highway between Langford and the Uptown Mall, and then along Douglas St. to downtown Victoria.  While the public, (at least those paying attention to the project), strongly supports LRT (Light Rail Transit), provincial managers have favoured BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) in developing plans for the system.  The strong community support for LRT has lately brought Transit on board and more detailed work on the rail option is being undertaken.

Public enthusiasm may be tempered by the capital costs of LRT - it will take longer to implement and have a much higher initial cost than a bus system, but the many benefits of a rail based system may yet persuade decision makers to start planning now rather than waiting the 10 years or so when some planners suggest Victoria will be ready for LRT.  Why spend extra money on a short lived bus based system when the need for rail is visible on the horizon?

The challenge for the E&N is that its potential is more distant and the costs associated with upgrading the heavy rail system more forbidding.  A phased approach and incremental financing to get some useful service improvements have been proposed, but the longer term costs are still daunting. 

Still, the rail has the potential to fill some key service gaps that have not been entirely accounted for in transit planning.  Hundreds of commuters could take advantage of a commuter rail (not LRT) service that covered the long haul from Nanaimo through the Cowichan Valley and right to the door of the Canadian Forces Base at Esquimalt.  It could  help relieve some congestion on the Malahat Drive - a 350 metre high climb on the Trans Canada Highway separating Victoria from points north on the Island.  The Malahat already suffers heavy commuter traffic and sometimes winter weather clogs up the highway.  A well run E&N could offer relief for growing numbers of commuters living out of the transit region and accessible to the railway.

The $500 million calculated several years ago for improvements to the Malahat makes rail and transit alternatives look a lot more affordable; but tight funding and a focus on Vancouver area projects leaves little to invest in Greater Victoria's transportation challenges.

It's an unfortunate state of affairs, as crunch time is here for the little railway.  Victoria's Johnson St. Bridge project is a case in point.  $12 million is needed to keep rail on the bridge, something that would better commuter rail's chance of success.  So far, $15 million in costs have been identified elsewhere for the rail as far as Langford, and that only to achieve minimal standards for a modest commuter service.  Anything beyond that, either geographically or in terms of service levels, can be expected to add more to the bill.

It's costly, but is it worth the investment?  Certainly many of us in the community think so, but for Victoria in particular, the rail on the bridge might be a bill too big to swallow.  We've asked repeatedly for provincial assistance, without success, and have now appealed to the Capital Regional District - our services partnership with other local governments.  Apprehension exists around that table so the request for funding, although supported by the Mayors of numbers of affected communities, has met with less enthusiasm around some council tables and may face a rough ride at the regional board.

Victoria cannot, by itself, foot the entire bill.  We are already in for $50 million and the clock is ticking.  We need to get on with our schedule or face the prospect of losing $21 million in federal funding or missing construction deadlines.  We all want to see rail come to town, but clearly it is a regional service that needs regional support.  The rail doesn't run from downtown to Vic West, a few hundred metres away - it runs half way up the Island, and most pointedly, through several suburban municipalities who are now being asked to help out.  If they aren't now willing to invest in key elements of the rail corridor, what does it say about their commitment to the rest of the line?

Stay tuned.  If the money can be found, rail stays in the design.  If not, we can preserve the right of way but can't build the rail bridge right away.  It's an expensive decision either way - it's too costly for our taxpayers, but for everyone, a separate project will cost much more.  If we want the rail to survice, we'll all need to pitch in.  Here's hoping.

Guaranteed incomes and social outcomes

Carol Goar of the Toronto Star writes here about the 1970s "Mincome" experiment in Manitoba under Ed Schreyer's NDP and with the support of the federal government.  Guaranteeing incomes in a small community had numbers of positive outcomes for the community.  Goar notes, however, that a report on the experiment has never been written but research gleans from hard to get documents in Ottawa point to the program's success.

Thanks to Janine Bandcroft for tracking this one down.  Here's Goar's story:
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/920145--goar-anti-poverty-success-airbrushed-out