Choosing a better land-use future

News April 8, 2013 Mike Boos

Transportation choice is inextricably linked to land use. When cities sprawl, the ability for citizens to freely choose their means of transportation diminishes as the number of trips requiring a car increases. If everyday destinations like home, work, retail, and leisure are located near each other however, it becomes easier to choose to walk, bike, or take transit between them. In addition, these kinds of places are much less costly to connect to each other with streets and transit than sprawled areas.

As renowned urban planner Brent Toderian writes, “the best transportation plan is a great land-use plan.”

In 2009, Waterloo Regional Council approved its Official Plan, a document outlining the shape of growth for our Region over the next 20 years. The plan encourages development to be mixed-use and to take place in already built-up areas, and limits sprawl over farmland by establishing a firm countryside line.

This plan has been appealed by a group of private developers who have benefited from previous sprawl-permitting policies. Earlier this year, the Ontario Municipal Board made a ruling in favour of these developers, requiring that the Region provide for more than 10 times as much development on new land (i.e. sprawl) than what was in its Official Plan. Essentially, the ruling forces Waterloo Region to provide farmland for another 20 years of full-speed sprawl, on the basis that sprawl is what the last 20 years looked like.

Waterloo Regional Council understands the threat this is to the Region and its ability to plan its own future, and has voted unanimously to appeal this decision in court. TriTAG applauds Waterloo Region for defending its progressive and responsible plan that would lead to greater transportation choice and quality of life for its citizens. It is vital that we citizens, through our elected government (rather than a handful of private developers), be in control of our own region’s destiny.

To learn more about the Region’s Official Plan and the Ontario Municipal Board appeal, visit smartgrowthwaterloo.ca

iXpress loves you and wants you to be happy

Proposed 2013 GRT Service Improvements

Buses, News, TriTAG February 22, 2013 Mike Boos 3 Comments

The Region of Waterloo’s Planning and Works agenda has come out for next Tuesday, including proposed 2013 service improvements in Waterloo and the service planning implications of cuts to existing transit service in the 2013 budget.

Public consultations on the service changes will be held at various locations in Waterloo and Kitchener between March 18 and 26.

We are very pleased to see a movement towards a grid system. A trade-off is present here however: it will take longer for customers within the neighbourhoods bordering Bridge Street to reach their bus stop. Once they get to a bus though, it will take much less time for them to reach their destination. We believe this change represents a net gain for GRT users and residents in general. [1] (more…)

Taxi licenses shouldn’t be further restricted

News December 10, 2012 Branden Wesseling 6 Comments

Below is a letter I sent to Regional Council on behalf of TriTAG. See the December 11 agenda of the Licensing and Retail Committee for the referenced report.

Dear Council,

We were dismayed to learn of the staff recommendation at Licensing and Retail Committee for the taxi-cab license ratio of 1:1650 to be reduced to 1:1850. This is based on an industry request and would result in the issuance of no new taxi licenses for approximately the next 10 years based on current population projections for Waterloo Region. It would be a setback for the urbanization and transportation goals of the Region of Waterloo.

The recommendation follows a request from the Taxi Association, which claims their request is the result of current taxi providers experiencing decreasing revenues, a situation which they curiously expect will worsen as the population continues to rise. They justify this concern by citing “newer communities such as Deer Ridge, Eastbridge, and Doon South [which] have 2 or 3 cars in the driveways,” concluding that “these areas do not use taxi service very much.”

However, thanks to the reurbanization policy in Waterloo Region, the next 100,000 residents to this community will live much more urban lifestyles than current residents in the Region do now. In fact, the Region is already making excellent progress towards its urbanization and intensification targets. Taxis are a vital part of urban transport and are important in ensuring that more urban and less car-dependent lifestyles are easy and enjoyable for residents. Restricting access to taxis at this point in time runs counter to the rest of the Region’s urbanization goals. Simply put, the next 100,000 residents to this community will be more likely – not less – to require taxi services than the 500,000 residents before them.

In order to support the Region’s urbanization goals, it is important to ensure that the barriers to entry into the taxi market are not prohibitive to new service providers, ones who will seek to compete in our rapidly urbanizing community by delivering innovations and improvements in service. Conversely, decreasing the per-capita number of taxis on the road only serves to restrict customer choice, and only benefits those who currently hold licenses by making those licenses an artificially high-priced commodity for those who are eager to enter the market. Reducing the taxi-cab ratios serves a rent-seeking interest of existing taxi companies, but does nothing to benefit the residents of this Region.

More taxis means greater competition, which leads to better innovation, and ultimately more and better choices for residents. The Tri-Cities Transport Action Group asks that the Region of Waterloo Council should disregard the Taxi Association’s request to reduce the taxi-cab ratio, in the interest of increasing, rather than limiting, transportation choice, and in order to continue to support its own densification and urbanization goals.

Consultations for University iXpress and 2013 Service Changes

Buses, News, Transit November 7, 2012 Duncan Clemens 6 Comments

In the upcoming weeks, Grand River Transit will be hosting Public Consultations for the Proposed 2013 Transit Service Improvement Plan. This includes the implementation of an express bus route running from the west end of Waterloo from the Boardwalk to the Northeast Corner of Waterloo at RIM Park via University Ave. Also being discussed will be route adjustments in Kitchener and Waterloo set to be implemented in September 2013. Maps will also be provided so you will be able to draw your preferred routes along the corridor.

Consultations will be held at the following dates and locations:

Thursday, November 15
4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Kitchener Waterloo Bilingual School
Gymnasium
600 Erb St. W., Waterloo

Tuesday, November 20
12 p.m. to 4 p.m.
University of Waterloo
William G. Davis Computer Research Centre
Room 1301
200 University Ave. W., Waterloo

Wednesday, November 21
4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Waterloo Mennonite Brethren Church
Chapel
245 Lexington Rd., Waterloo

Thursday, November 22
12 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Wilfrid Laurier University
Fred Nichols Campus Centre
Concourse
75 University Ave. W., Waterloo

You may also view these events on TriTAG’s Public Events Calendar and copy them to your own calendar.

You can preview the service changes beginning on page 117 of this Planning and Works Agenda [PDF]

[UPDATE] More information about the consultations can be found here on the GRT Site

Pulses, Headways, and Hubs

Buses, Transit September 24, 2012 Mike Boos 4 Comments

I live on Queen Street, about a 10 minute walk from Charles Street terminal. It’s a 3 minute bus ride though, and the stop outside my building is served by four different routes coming in and out of the terminal. In theory, based on the number of buses passing through each hour, you would expect an average wait of 3.5 minutes (up to 7 minutes) making the bus competitive with walking if I’m in a hurry or the weather is poor.

However, this is not the case. You can often see two or three buses coming one after another down Queen, which means there are up to 16 minutes of no scheduled service at times. We should expect 6.5 minutes of delay based on the number of buses, making taking the bus marginally faster on average. But because of the variations in bus headways, it takes almost twice as long as walking at worst. I can’t simply step out my door and know whether walking or taking the bus at any given time would be faster. Clearly, the bus schedule is not very optimal for wait times near my home. If the departure times between buses travelling to Charles Street were equally spaced, rather than all arriving at once, the bus network could be made more efficient and predictable, for the same amount of service and expense. (more…)

Highway 7 Alternatives

Intercity Transit, News, Other Cities, TriTAG August 24, 2012 Duncan Clemens 2 Comments

Update: With work on Highway 7 expected to begin in 2015, there appears to be little chance of a change in plans for the road corridor. However, your support is still needed to ensure transit connections are prioritized between Waterloo Region, Guelph, and the rest of the GTA, including two-way all-day GO train service. Contact your representatives today.

With the upcoming Kitchener-Waterloo by-election, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has pledged to construct an 18km grade separated 4-lane freeway. This 18km roadway will be placed along a new 100m wide right-of-way to the north of the existing highway, include a new crossing of the Grand River and include 6 interchanges. Of particular interest is the modification of the existing Wellington Street interchange with the Conestoga Parkway into a 4-level interchange with high-speed direct flyover ramps set to be a quarter of the cost of this project.

Image of the planned Highway 7 route taken from a presentation made to Regional council in 2011

However, is the construction of a highway at an unknown cost (>400 Million according this presentation) best way to meet travel needs on this corridor? TriTAG’s position is that before a new highway corridor is constructed between Kitchener and Guelph, less invasive approaches to this issue involving transit need to be investigated.

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Focus on helmets ignores more important cycling measures

Cycling, News July 12, 2012 Mike Boos 3 Comments

This column first appeared in the Kitchener Post on June 21.

It was inevitable. The expert panel even predicted it. The media’s response to the provincial coroner’s Cycling Death Review released in June has been to focus on just one of the fourteen recommendations – namely, that Ontario investigate implementing a mandatory helmet law for cyclists of all ages. This review studied the deaths of 129 people on bicycles in Ontario from 2006-2010, to determine the leading causes of cycling-related fatalities and how they might be prevented.

The helmet law recommendation, and the ensuing media coverage, does disservice to the otherwise excellent report which declares that all cycling-related deaths are preventable. It’s not that wearing a helmet isn’t a good idea (it can be), but requiring one has unintended consequences, as even some members of the coroner’s expert panel point out in the report. Places like Australia that have implemented mandatory helmet laws have subsequently observed dramatic decreases in the number of cyclists, often with a negative impact on safety outcomes. One of the most well-understood factors in cyclist welfare is safety in numbers. This becomes much more difficult to achieve when barriers to cycling have been raised. This also leads to less healthy lifestyles; as Dr. Thomas J. DeMarco writes in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, “helmet laws save a few brains but destroy many hearts.”

(Photo: aiisuki via Flickr)

The Dutch have a cycling fatality rate that is less than half the rate we have here in Canada, despite the fact that almost no one wears helmets there. What’s their secret to safe cycling? An abundance of protected cycling infrastructure can take you anywhere and makes cruising on your bike as convenient as driving your car. Strong laws keep motorists responsible for keeping an eye out for cyclists and giving them adequate space. Safe cycling education is integrated into primary school, which most children travel to via bicycle. All this was part of a deliberate strategy to protect cyclists and make the Netherlands more resilient to fluctuating oil prices. Their success in encouraging 30% of all trips to be made by bicycle comes from actually preventing collisions, not by imagining that collisions have to be inevitable and that the best defence is a piece of foam and plastic.

Provincial action on eleven of the fourteen recommendations from the coroner’s review would nudge us closer to the safer Dutch model. These include a ‘complete streets’ strategy that would require roads to be designed to give pedestrians and cyclists equal consideration as well as development of an Ontario Cycling Plan. Traffic and municipal laws should be clarified to make laws concerning cycling easier to enforce, hopefully to include actual consequences for negligent driving. A long-overdue one-metre passing law is proposed that would obligate motorists to respect the space around cyclists. Education at schools and at all levels about cycling safely and inclusion of road sharing in driver training is also recommended. These steps would put Ontario on the road (or is it perhaps a complete street?) to a safer cycling future.

Let’s not repeat the failed Australian experiment with mandatory helmet laws or allow the helmet debate to sidetrack more effective measures. Instead, let’s help our provincial and municipal leaders implement the recommendations that will actually make a difference in creating safer streets and lead to more healthy and sustainable transportation.

Mike Boos is a member of the Tri-cities Transport Action Group (TriTAG) who still wears a helmet when he rides his bike, mostly because he thinks it makes his hair look better in the morning. His loving wife disagrees. Follow him on Twitter at @mikeboos

Cycling Death Review – Summary of Recommendations

Cycling, News, Other Cities June 26, 2012 Duncan Clemens

The Ontario Coroner’s Report on Cycling Deaths has sparked much reaction in the media lately, in particular surrounding the proposition of imposing a mandatory helmet law on cyclists. While this review is definitely worth a read, we feel that the helmet law in particular has overshadowed the rest and has stolen the attention of media to the detriment of the rest of the report. More on this in a later post.

With the exception of that one recommendation, the rest need serious consideration by all levels of government; in particular the implementation of a complete streets approach to road design, minimum passing distance for bicycles, and increased focus on educating drivers on how to share road space with people who ride bicycles.

The full report can be found here.

For those that don’t have time to look though the full report here is a summary of the report’s recommendations, read on…

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The Week’s News

Cycling, Light Rail, News, Transit, Walking June 18, 2012 Michael Druker

It’s Committee week at the Region, which means lots is happening. But first, two other things. Our almost-monthly pub night is tomorrow evening, and you should join us!

Today, the Ontario Coroner’s Office has released its Cycling Deaths Review (HTML / PDF). I have not read through it yet, but it is supposed to claim that all the cycling deaths it looked at were preventable. It also recommends a mandatory helmet law for everyone, which is deeply problematic if the goal is making cycling a safer and larger part of the transportation system. We’ll have more on this later.

Tomorrow is Committee day for the Region of Waterloo. Agendas are always posted here at around 4pm on the preceding Friday. Typically, most issues and reports go to initially to the appropriate Committee, where motions are made, to be finalized at the full Council meeting on Wednesday of the following week. (See Council agendas.) As the standing committees are currently composed of all the councillors, the decisions are effectively made at the committee level, with rare exceptions. (more…)

Preserving the Integrity of the Iron Horse Trail

Cycling, News, Walking June 18, 2012 Michael Druker 2 Comments

The Iron Horse Trail is under threat from development, as we’ve posted about before. We need you to tell city council that development should be designed around transportation, rather than vice versa. Mady Corporation is proposing to buy the Iron Horse Trail between Park and Caroline Streets in Waterloo in order to facilitate a second tower adjacent to the 144 Park development, rerouting the trail to what we believe is an inferior alignment. The idea does not respect the intention of the trail as an important transportation corridor, appearing instead to serve a goal of land consolidation. The issue and the details have been covered well by Chris Klein and Mike Boos, so please follow those links for more information.

From the comments to our previous post, a couple of practical suggestions for the site included developing instead a triangular shaped building that fronts the trail with balconies or having the existing corridor go through the building complex. It is possible to develop the site in a way that works around and with the Iron Horse Trail, instead of moving it out of sight. If this developer isn’t willing to do that, the location one block away from an LRT station will ensure that another developer will.

Do you want the Iron Horse Trail moved to make way for condo development, so it travels in a shaded alley between two parking garages? Or would you rather see it preserved and improved instead, with development respecting the trail? It’s Waterloo City Council’s choice to allow the land swap, and it’s up to you to let them know what you think.