Hornby Bike Lane / Reaction to NDP Governments

Some good news upon my return to Vancouver - I see that city council is going ahead with the separated bike lane on Hornby Street. Given the waffling of the provincial government on the HST, it's nice to see a government forging ahead with a plan despite a swell of ungrounded, yet hysterical opposition.

Speaking of hysterical and largely ungrounded opposition, the Globe and Mail has an excellent post from Gerald Caplan documenting the hysterical opposition that Bob Rae's government faced from business groups and the media when they governed Ontario in the early 1990's. It's too bad that Bob Rae and the NDP conceded so much ground to their opposition, even to the point of not implementing public auto insurance in Ontario. The concessions got them exactly nothing in the way of fairer treatment from the media or less hostility from the business community, so they might as well have stuck to their guns.

Dunsmuir Bike Lane

I don't see much of the Burrard Bridge, but I do see Dunsmuir Street on a pretty regular basis and, in my opinion, the early verdict on the Dunsmuir Bike Lane would have to be that it is a success.

Aesthetically, the street is much improved by the presence of the lane, giving it an urban feel that it lacked before.

Functionally, I've had to adopt the habit of looking both ways as I cross the street, since it's common to see bikes travelling in either direction in the two-way bike lane on one-way (for cars) Dunsmuir. Traffic doesn't seem any different (from my viewpoint) than it did before. Fewer turns due to the right turn restrictions, and less weaving since there's only two lanes to weave in rather than three seems to be keeping traffic moving as well as it ever did.

I tried a google news search for the Dunsmuir Bike Lane and came up pretty much empty for anything more than a week or two after it opened, so it doesn't seem to be causing much in the way of ongoing angst for people.

Now the city just needs an equivalent North-South lane to connect Dunsumuir with the Burrard Bridge. Hornby seems like an obvious choice.

End Times in Vancouver

After a hot Saturday in Vancouver, a rare Vancouver thunderstorm rolled in (the best I've seen/heard in over 5 years here), complete with the sky turning a shade of orange that I've never seen before and will likely never see again.

Last night Vancouver really was awesome, in the original, non-watered down, focus on 'awe' meaning of the word.

Although I took a few photos and videos myself, my camera-fu is weak and they don't really capture it properly. Luckily a flickr search for 'Vancouver orange lightning' gets lots of hits from better photographers than I.

Here is the best of my photos (my girlfriend's actually), but it truly doesn't do any justice to the display so you really need to click on the links.



Here's a photo from 'orcagirl' on flickr that managed to capture the true orangeness of the sky and the lightning at the same time...

The display by mother nature was nicely timed, since there were thousands of people already out on sunset beach and surrounding area (those that braved the accompanying downpour, anyway) for the evenings fireworks.

Good News for a Change

I was up on Burnaby Mountain for the first time, a few weeks ago, a day during the great fog-in of '09 when it was 14 degrees and sunny on the mountain, while near 0 and very damp and chilly in the fog below.

Winding our way up the mountain (which for those not familiar with Vancouver, is basically a large hill about half an hour east of downtown Vancouver in the suburb of Burnaby which has a university on top - Simon Fraser), I wondered if it could really be more efficient to run buses up and down the mountain all day long instead of installing some sort of gondola or funiculaire type system.

And now, via Stephen Rees, I see that such a plan is being considered, and is, as I suspected, a far more efficient option. Why do I suspect that our various right wing governments will plead that they can't afford the $70 million to make transportation faster, cheaper, more environmentally friendly, safer and more reliable in Vancouver, having chosen instead to spend over a billion dollars subsidizing granite countertops.

Winter Hits Vancouver

Always nice to get a little snow here on the West Coast...

Media Failure #3

OK, last bit of media-bashing for a while, Vancouver Condo Info reminds of this article from the CBC on the Vancouver Housing Market. Of course there are any number of articles like this one, but this one stands out for its timing (it was published right at the top of the market) and the lack of any balance to the bullish predictions.

Says the CBC, "

B.C. house prices forecast to keep rising: Anyone looking for a dip in the British Columbia real estate market before buying a home might reconsider their strategy.

A report by the Credit Union Central of British Columbia predicts housing prices will continue to rise by as much as 10 per cent this year and as much as seven per cent in 2009.

The report predicts that in 2009 multi-family units such as condos and townhomes could exceed single-family homes in B.C.The report predicts that in 2009 multi-family units such as condos and townhomes could exceed single-family homes in B.C.

Lower mortgage rates, a tight labour market, high income growth and rising in-migration all point to continued high sales volumes and price rises, according the CUCBC's chief economist Helmut Pastrick.

The Economic Analysis of British Columbia released Monday says the current housing boom is unlike previous market cycles that ended with a large oversupply of homes, causing a sharp drop in prices.

In the current market, sales have reached a plateau and the supply of houses is only gradually catching up with demand. And with the recent drop in mortgage rates, the CUCBC expects the number of home sales will pick up once again.

It's almost like they are trying to parody a typical bullish media article from the top of a bubble. There's the classic 'this time is different' reasoning ("the current housing boom is unlike previous market cycles"), there's the reliance on 'experts' who work at institutions with a vested interest in rising prices, the discounting of data that doesn't fit the happy storyline, and so on.

And I can laugh, because I didn't buy a house this year, but anyone who did after reading this article would have to be pretty pissed off since the price of an average detached house in Vancouver has dropped over $100,000 since May. I guess the CBC was right, anyone looking for a dip in the B.C. market *should* have reconsidered their strategy - since far worse than a dip was coming.

Why you'd better hope it's different this time - Vancouver housing edition

Mohican provides a nice concise summary of the current state of the Vancouver housing market, complete with lots of to-the-point charts. I recommend that anyone in (or potentially in) the Vancouver housing market give it consideration prior to deciding their next move. Ironically, the collapse of the U.S. housing market, the subsequent economic troubles and the subsequent interest rate cuts may actually keep the Vancouver housing market going a little longer, I guess we'll see.

Anyway, Mohican's post in short:

* Prices have risen dramatically, to say the least, in recent years
* Prices are above the long run inflation adjusted trend
* You'd need an annual income of $113,400 to qualify to buy a typical Vancouver condo with a 25 year amortization and no down payment.
* Price/Income ratios are higher than they were in previous market peaks
* Price/Rent ratios are well above historical averages
* Mortgage Payment/Rent ratios are also well above historical averages
* Population growth is below historical averages
* Housing construction has been above historical averages for the last few years

You know, if there was a media in B.C. that actually had the knowledge and the will to do it's job properly you'd think that some part of this analysis might have shown up once or twice in the thousands of minutes and column inches devoted to the local real estate market. Oh well, thank god for the internet.

Golden Age?

I'm always skeptical of claims that things were better in the past then they are now, but the distance from nature in our modern cities is one of those areas where I'd say that the past probably was better.

Over in the land of drivel, Doug talks about growing up in Vancouver in the 50's and 60's and links to some wonderful photos (by Fred Herzog) of Vancouver in that era. Fascinating stuff for someone like me who has only lived in Vancouver for a short time and has very little knowledge of the city it used to be.

For All You Vancouverites...

Summer? What Summer?

Back to the Grind

The Bad: My visit to Ontario happened to coincide with weather so poor that it was (justifiably) named JimBobby's Outrage of the Week.

The Good: There are few (political) topics I find less interesting than the whole Gomery affair so it was nice that I missed all of the latest round of silliness.

I was struck by a couple of things on my first day back in B.C. (but luckily not by any of the incompetent Vancouver drivers who really have to be the least skilled in all of Canada):

1) When I first moved here, I was puzzled that Vancouver appeared to have two major daily papers, The Sun and the Province - both owned by the same company. Now I don't read either paper regularly since their web presence is laughable and the few times I have come across a paper copy I was uninspired to say the least (maybe I'm a Toronto snob when it comes to papers but I really do think the Toronto papers are much better).

But based on my observation of the front covers of the Sun and Province I have come to the conclusion that only one of them (the Sun) is actually a newspaper, and the other one (the Province) is really just the work of single photographer who hangs out at the local police precinct and writes up each day's most sensational crime in a big headline along with some quote from the relevant cops (Today's headline: "Eastside gunfight kills man, wounds another").

2) The other thing is that on my way to work I was reminded of the 'Safe Streets Act' which was passed a little while ago here in B.C. (similar legislation passed in Ontario in 2000). Readers may recall that I tend to judge legislation based on how its name compares to its intention. So the worst laws are those where the title of the act is the opposite of what the law is intended to accomplish, Ontario's 'Tenant Protection Act' being a prime example. Not as bad, but still unpromising are laws which invoke the mantra of 'safety' to provide cover for something which is not really about safety at all.

In this case, what the B.C. Liberals were after was really a 'Less Annoying Streets' act. I'm somewhat ambivalent about the law myself. On the one hand, it just seems like one more way for society to harass it's most downtrodden, desperate members, but on the other hand, the streets of downtown Vancouver can get pretty annoying at times, and certainly the actions targetted by the bill (aggressive panhandling, panhandling a captive audience, say at a bus stop) annoy the heck out of me.

Which, at long last, brings me to my point, which is that the most annoying thing on the streets right now is not panhandlers, it's the gauntlet of people making hopeful motions in my direction, obstructing my path to the bus, and indeed soliciting a captive audience at the bus stop, all in the hopes of fobbing off a free 'newspaper' on me in an attempt to position yet more advertising in front of my eyeballs. I couldn't help thinking to myself as I walked to the bus that, 'there ought to be a law' and then I remembered, there is.

So what does it all mean? Not much really, other than perhaps that I tend to be cranky the day after a vacation, when I realize how much stuff I have to catch up on...

On a day like this...

..Vancouver housing prices almost makes sense. There's nothing like walking around in early February without needing a jacket.

Still no explanation for Toronto though.

Winter in Vancouver

It's funny how the shortest days of the year often feel like the longest.