It's most refreshing and truly gratifying to learn, that once in a blue moon our hard earned taxpayers money have been spend transparently and in the best public interest. But sorry, my friends Vancouverites, you'd better curb your excitement, because even if the above statement was plausible, it wouldn't apply to you. Your ambitious young mayor, supported by a horde of his "yes men" city counselors has some completely different ideas about it. His latest expensive obsession became a rather dubious vision of turning Vancouver into "the greenest city" in the world. How and by whom will be such indefinable achievements measured and judged and what they actually suppose to mean, only heaven knows.
When Robertson took over the Vancouver City Hall, he seemed to be "just the man for the job". Educated, charismatic, well groomed - overall impression: likable and perhaps even trustworthy. But today, without the rose-colored glasses, things appear quite different, don't they? He is still flashing his charming smile and saying all the right words when facing the media, but after the cameras and mics are turned off, then his true face get unveiled. Since I don't really know the man, I may be totally astray here, but I sense some serious signs of arrogance, ruthlessness, and shameless narcissism.
At this point, it needs to be noted, I know less than a little about managing the city affairs. In fact, I might not be qualified enough to run a successful hot-dog stand, but I do have one strongpoint at my disposing capacity. I know how to employ a basic common sense. And it tells me, it is hardly ever advisable to put the cart before the horse, which seems to be a strategy routinely exercised by the current Vancouver city council.
One of the classic examples of such an ill-conceived choice would be a downtown construction of the separated bicycle routes at the expense of the vehicular traffic lanes. The whole concept makes very little sense, considering that during the past two decades the city planners granted building permits to develop ten thousand condominiums in the False Creek area, another ten thousand in the Coal Harbour and a few thousand more in every square inch of remaining space available between those two. Each household, in my rather conservative estimate, owns at least one motor vehicle, which accounts to 25,000 additional cars embedded into the already insanely congested downtown streets. Removing traffic lanes inevitably creates series of gridlocks, where thousands of idling vehicles produce tons of that feared CO2 - yes, the same imaginary evil product used by the treehugges as their favorite scarecrow. So, how does it comply with the mayor's "greenest city" fantasy? I guess, you need to ask the fairy-tale teller himself.
In my respect, the greatest insult to the taxpayers must be the fact, that city bigwigs unanimously authorize these projects not only without any public consultation and input, but, what's even scarier than the previous - apparently without conducting a single study analyzing questionable benefits of the bike lanes versus the overall cost and indisputably devastating negative impact on the traffic flow (slowing down transit buses and blocking emergency vehicles routes), parking and taxi drop-offs, local businesses and even environment. Nope, its the same story again: a carriage first and a horse later. Take as an example the Dunsmuir Viaduct separate bike lane, which connects a shady, rough East Vancouver neighborhood, often dubbed as the "poorest postal code in Canada" with a wealthy Vancouver's financial and business district. Coincidentally, it also happens to be a part of my daily scheduled route, so I know from the first hand, this less than 1 km disaster project has not been utilized whatsoever. There are virtually no bicyclists to be seen anywhere close to this connector and there's no reason why they should be. What, on the earth were the city counselors thinking? That all of sudden, the East Side homeless people and drug addicts hop on their Schwinn bikes and start pedaling downtown to meet their bankers and lawyers? Or perhaps to spend an afternoon in the Art Gallery, or evening in the Opera? A reported price tag of the Dunsmuir bike lane: $350,000! Well done, indeed.
Any reasonable and responsible person would, after recognizing a problem, immediately put any similar future adventures on hold, at least until all the necessary data are collected and evaluated. Not in this case, though. Completely ignoring obvious failure to utilize the viaduct lane, city approved and promptly built its extension all the way to Hornby Street (at the cost of $810,000). The next step for the city council would be to decide on a north-south route along Hornby Street, Burrard Street or Thurlow Street. Their meeting is scheduled for the middle of next month, but the word on the street is, those planned projects are already "done deal". Considering a well known bullying and pretentious attitude of the Vancouver municipal leaders, such an undemocratic governing methods should be surprise to no one.
Milo.
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