Given its confining geography, absence of freeways, reasonable transit, limited parking and 30 years of traffic calming (roundabouts, speed bumps and miniparks - right), Vancouver has constrained the car – and has coincidentally turned out to be one of the most livable cities in the world. Actually, that is not a coincidence at all. …

As people substitute walking trips for car trips, there are now 25 per cent fewer vehicle movements downtown than a decade and a half ago (below), even as the population has doubled and employment increased by a quarter. In other words, congestion can decrease as density increases – but only if there are constraints on the car, alternatives that work and good land-use planning and urban design. …

Some would give no ground to the car; others would take no ground away. The challenge is to find a limit on capacity that ultimately benefits the users of the transportation system and the communities affected, without gratuitously punishing those who accept the limits.

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DO TRAFFIC CONSULTANTS FUDGE THE NUMBERS?

Not so much, says this story from Washington, D.C.  Which concludes:

“We rely too much on numbers, and we think the numbers are going to give us the secrets to the universe or something,” says Ricks. “What you want to do is change behavior. It’s not about the traffic study.”

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MORE EVIDENCE OF VANCOUVER’S ‘WAR ON THE CAR’

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Captured by Dianne Waggoner on a bicycle with an iPhone.

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And here’s more evidence, as reported in The Globe by Frances Bula:

Vancouver’s 1997 transportation plan capped downtown parking and banned new roads. Since then, the number of car trips and parking spots has gradually declined, even while the number of jobs and overall trips in the central city have increased. …

The trend is also showing up in the underground lots of commercial buildings, both in the downtown peninsula and the city’s second downtown along Broadway. The city’s transportation engineer, Jerry Dobrovolny, commissions a usage survey every two years.

“There’s a high vacancy rate in the majority of those buildings. And the studies show the vacancies are rising. At the peak – noon to 2 p.m. – some are only half full,” Mr. Dobrovolny says.

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NEW WORLD, NEW STANDARDS

Further to the story above, here’s what the new parking reality means in the post-motordom world:

Old builds

Building: 777 Hornby – a 20-storey tower built in 1969

Size: 138,585 square feet

Parking: 457 stalls

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New builds

Building: Credit Suisse tower, a proposed 30-storey building at 800 West Pender

Size: 320,000 square feet

Parking: 164 stalls planned

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The District’s proposed 37-mile citywide streetcar system could attract up to 7,700 new jobs, raise property values by up to $7 billion and bring in as much as $8 billion in new development over the next decade, according to a study released last week by the D.C. Office of Planning. …  

Chris Leinberger, a senior fellow and land use expert at the Brookings Institution, said the projected $7 billion boom in property values is a conservative estimate, and that the streetcar system would accelerate more growth, particularly beyond the Northwest quadrant.

Story here.

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To find out, go here to this week’s Price Points at SpacingVancouver.

Originally built as a Chinese military fort, the Kowloon Walled City became a residential enclave after the New Territories were released to Britain in 1898. The population boom occurred after World War II, when the Japanese occupation drove prostitution, gambling, and drug use out of downtown Hong Kong and into Kowloon. In 1987, its population numbered 33,000 within its 6.5-acre borders.

More here.

Now it’s a park (map here):

 Video here, before it was torn down.

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Here’s another way to think of it: Take almost all the population of the West End (38,000) in the red box – and squeeze everyone into the two blocks inside the yellow box.

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So, um, where is the densest place now?

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UPDATE: TWO WHEELS AND HIGH HEELS 

Recently, I won a fellowship and got to spend six months living life on two wheels in the world’s most bike-friendly cities. I brought home ten lessons, and thousands of photographs, for Cascadia.

Outside addresses bike theft:

When thieves stole his beloved ­commuter bike on a busy street in broad daylight, PATRICK SYMMES snapped—and set out on  a cross-­country plunge into the heart of ­America’s bike-crime underbelly. What he saw will ­rattle your frame.

And this: Get a bike. Lock it to a post. Take a pic every day for a year.

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SO WHO’S CHEATING? 

Tim from B.C. Hydro:

I made this bike about my electric bike and the typical response I have with people when I tell them about it:

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MAKING CYCLING COUNTS 

Invented in Denmark, the cyclist counter represents the melding of infrastructure and public data in a way that is transparent, interactive and even fun for citizens.

An interview with Marianne Weinreich of Veksø A/S, a Danish company which has produced cycling equipment for the urban environment for the past 60 years – here.

How do you respond to someone who says: “This is just a waste of money, why do cyclists need special counters?  Pedestrians and cars do just fine without them.

It’s an important signal.  It’s a signal from the city saying that they want things to be different.  We’ve had 50 years of cities being planned for cars.  Now we are at a point in time because of congestion, climate change, immobility and obesity that we have to do things differently.

Of course you cannot suddenly increase the number of cyclists just because you put up a cyclist counter, but it can be a first step – a kind of a lighthouse – and a signal to citizens saying that cyclists are a priority.  In the United States in particular where the bike is viewed not so much a means of transportation, but rather as a thing of leisure, it may be that a counter could get cyclists to view themselves as part of a movement.

Also, a short catalogue of cycle counters, along with some useful info here.

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BICYCLE SUPERHIGHWAY

From Treehugger:

Malmö is upping the stakes by putting up 30 million Swedish crowns (about US$4.1 million) toward the building of a four-lane super cycling highway between it and its bike-happy northern neighbor city Lund….

The proposed bicycle superhighway would, in addition to four lanes (2 in each direction) have exits but no intersections, two types of wind protection (low bushes as well as solid fencing) periodic bicycle service stations, and would take eight years to complete.

Total cost of the superhighway is estimated to be about 50 million Swedish crowns (US$ 7.1 million).

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Dubai Marina – the development based on a rough equivalent of False Creek (seriously) – can be seen centre left, next to the base of the Palm Islands.

Thanks to Tom Durning for this and other links.

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Winter in Vancouver is not quite like winter in other Canadian cities. There is a unique beat that arrives in the city as the days get longer and the nights get shorter. …

The last week of December ended with bitter blasts of chilly air, followed by intense rain showers. Vancouverites bear this kind of weather triumphantly, year after year, saving the evenings to be outdoors discovering their very own winter solstice beat. We find the time to be colourfully lit skaters in Robson Square, blinking cyclists with white front and red rear lights, and most popular of all, joyful walkers exploring our downtown community.

[Plug: For those out there looking for a landscape architect intern - one whose visual skills are on display in the video and this exquisite website - then you might well contact Kathleen Corey here.]

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