The Livable Blog

Great article in the Georgia Straight today. If you want to be involved in trail building sign up for our announcement list at http://groups.google.com/group/WitnessTrail?hl=en.?hl=en People are going tomorrow and Sunday - once you sign up you can see the announcements for both.

Note that until recently people like Paul Landry were dead certain that container volumes were going to start soaring again any day now. After all, they had studies that said it would happen. Now, he is not so sure: "container volumes will return and, I think, continue even higher.”

Now all he can rely on is "I think". Which is great news!

Wilderness Committee promotes South Fraser Witness Trail with political twist
By Matthew Burrows

The Wilderness Committee’s healthy-communities coordinator, Ben West, hopes that the South Fraser Witness Trail will stop a road project.

The gravel road shaping down from Surrey’s shiny new single-family housing in Fraser Heights is surprisingly steep, and the trailhead of the South Fraser Witness Trail easy to miss.

It’s a sunny afternoon, but Ben West—the Wilderness Committee’s healthy-communities coordinator—still has to watch his footing on the trail as he explains the hike will be about three kilometres. Twigs crackle underfoot and mud soon rises above the soles of our shoes once we’re off the gravel road and onto the main trail.

As West explains, we’re walking on what is, to the best of his knowledge, “the first urban trail that the Wilderness Committee has ever built”. Homes are visible on the south slope, and industrial buildings on the north side disappear after a short time on the trail when the scene opens out to views of the Fraser River below. Beaver dams, tall old-growth cedars, rotten stumps, and garbage dumped callously round out the scene.

“It’s just gorgeous down here,” West tells the Georgia Straight, not for the first time on the hike.

At a clearing, West stops to catch his breath and explain a bit of history. This is a trail with a political twist, he says. For many years, the Wilderness Committee—closing in on 30 years as an organization devoted to protecting B.C.’s pristine wilderness—has been aware of the adjoining Surrey Bend Regional Park. However, the new South Fraser Witness Trail is outside that envelope, he says, which has resulted in residential development close by.

But the real elephant in the room is the provincial government’s proposed $1-billion South Fraser Perimeter Road, which would pass overhead. The SFPR is part of the $3-billion Gateway project, which includes the supersizing of the Port Mann Bridge. West says it is “hard to imagine” how any of this pristine urban ravine would be left intact if the road goes ahead, or overhead.

[snip]

“The Fraser River is one of the world’s most important salmon rivers, and we shouldn’t be trashing the banks of it while at the same time we’re trying to figure out why the salmon runs are collapsing,” Doherty tells the Straight by phone. “The idea that you can put a freeway through fish habitat without trashing it is pretty ridiculous. They can try to reduce the impact, but even the dust going into waters where the salmon fry are is definitely harmful to everything there, as well as to kids in the schools nearby.”

Doherty says he is pleased to be aligning himself with West’s group, which, like him, wants the provincial government to cancel Gateway entirely—particularly due to the environmental damage—and reinvest the money in transit solutions and the electrification of existing rail lines. He says he believes that, financially, the final tally for the SFPR will come in at $2 billion after factoring in the interest and maintenance of the road.

“In light of the financial crisis, it’s going to be pretty hard to justify spending $2 billion on a freeway that they have justified based on freight volumes, when the freight volumes are declining,” Doherty adds.

The provincial Transportation Ministry’s own three-year service plan update states: “Container growth targets for 2009/10 to 2011/12 have been revised downward to reflect the continued slowdown in international trade.”

Transportation Minister Shirley Bond refused to grant the Straight an interview.

Paul Landry, president and CEO of the Langley-based B.C. Trucking Association, tells the Straight by phone that “the last two years have not been kind to transportation,” but he says he is still in favour of the SFPR.

“Of course, transportation really just mirrors what’s going on in the economy generally,” Landry says. “So I essentially see this as an aberration, something that was temporary. Although I don’t think we’re seeing sort of a traditional rebound in growth; often after a recession or a significant economic pullback there’s quite a bit of bounce. I’d say this time we’re not seeing the bounce that would normally be expected. But I remain convinced that we have long-term growth in our future in the Lower Mainland: container volumes will return and, I think, continue even higher.”

[snip]

See full text and video at
http://www.straight.com/article-296918/vancouver/group-promotes-urban-trail-political-twist

If you like the article, you can click on 'recommend' or leave a comment on the Straight web site.

To find out more about the South Fraser Witness Trail see http://wildernesscommittee.org/bend

Transit directions:
http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Broadway+and+Commercial&daddr=168+St&geocode=%3BFTPF7gIdC9Wu-A&hl=en&mra=ls&dirflg=r&ttype=dep&date=10%2F03%2F11&time=18:32&noexp=0&noal=0&sort=&sll=49.203215,-122.759171&sspn=0.013515,0.036607&ie=UTF8&t=h&z=11&start=0

Since Amy Goodman was harassed by Canadian border officials on her way to a presentation here in Vancouver, I have been watching Democracy Now semi-regularly. This segment is very interesting, it is mostly about how corporate money has corrupted some big environmental groups. But the conclusion is that people getting out on the street and taking direct action is the way to drive real change, for example stopping airport expansion in the UK.

The Real Climategate: Conservation Groups Align with World’s Worst Polluters

Major environmental groups are coming under criticism from within their own ranks for taking positions that some say are antithetical to their stated missions of saving the planet. In the latest issue of The Nation magazine, the British journalist Johann Hari writes, “As we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world’s worst polluters—and burying science-based environmentalism in return…In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate.”

Guests:

Johann Hari, columnist for the London Independent. His article for The Nation is called ‘The Wrong Kind of Green’

Christine MacDonald, journalist who used to work for Conservation International, or CI. She is the author of Green, Inc.: An Environmental Insider Reveals How a Good Cause Has Gone Bad.

Watch the show at http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/9/the_real_climategate_conservation_groups_align

Read 'The Wrong Kind of Green' at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100322/hari

Well, here we go again. Another budget, another step towards cooking our only planet.

With apologies to WorldWatch Magazine, which has a 'matter of scale' section in every edition here is my quickie analysis:

BC Transportation Budget 2010-11 A matter of scale:

Total Provincial Roadway Expenditures $860 million
Total Provincial Transit Plan $173 million
Gateway Program – Lower Mainland $128 million
Oil and Gas Roads Improvement Program $51 million
Cycling Infrastructure $3 million
Sidewalk Program $0
(The word 'sidewalk' does not appear in the document)

Roads to transit and cycling ratio 4.8:1

Roads to cycling ratio 287:1

Roads to sidewalk ratio Infinite

Transit (Province Wide) to Gateway ratio 1.4:1

Source: Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure 2010/11 2012/13 Service Plan ‘Transportation Investments’ table P 30
http://www.bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/2010/sp/pdf/ministry/trans.pdf

Photo by Eric Doherty: Many streets in BC do not have any sidewalks at all, even in school zones

So how far do you think the Ministry will get towards meeting these goals?

Goal 3: Reduction of greenhouse gas for the transportation sector

Objective 3.1: Increase use of transit, cycling and other alternative modes of personal transportation

Great time for a letter to the editor!

Photo - Stephen Hui, Georgia Straight

GATEWAYSUCKS.ORG and the COUNCIL OF CANADIANS (Delta/Richmond chapter)

MEDIA RELEASE
For immediate release
March 1, 2010

Post-Olympic budget crunch may benefit environment

As the Olympic euphoria fades and attention shifts to the provincial budget, local environmental and social justice groups are calling attention to the billions British Columbia's government plans to spend on freeway building.

“We can't just stand and watch as billions are wasted on these destructive freeways while transit service and essential social programs are cut” says Cathy Wilander, chair of the Delta/Richmond chapter of the Council of Canadians, Canada's largest public advocacy organization. “And the post-Olympic budget crunch will make it much easier to stop this freeway building binge.”

The provincial government kicked off a massive plan to add over 1,000 km of new highway lanes when they expanded the Sea-to-Sky Highway for the Olympics. The plan includes the controversial “Gateway” Program, linked to the federal government's Pacific Gateway Strategy, now estimated to cost $21 billion in freeway and port expansion on BC's west coast.

The expansion of the Port Mann/Highway 1 freeway from Vancouver to Langley was suspended during the Olympics, but is set to resume. The new Port Mann Bridge is planned to be the widest in Canada.

Eviction and demolition of historic riverside homes to make way for the South Fraser Perimeter Road (SFPR) in nearby Delta proceeded throughout the Games. As many as 300 homes in Delta and Surrey could be demolished for this new freeway.

“These were not the 'Greenest Games', they were the Freeway Olympics,” says transportation planner and GatewaySucks.org organizer Eric Doherty. “The BC government has been attempting to brand itself as a 'Green Leader' during these games, yet their own studies show that provincial greenhouse gas emission targets are being undermined by their massive freeway expansion scheme.” Doherty also points to the thousands of acres of productive farmland under threat from the freeways. “There is nothing green about paving farmland,” he states.

The Gateway program has been met with an ongoing grassroots campaign of civil disobedience. In December, 50 people including University of British Columbia Professor Patrick Condon, occupied a Highway 1 expansion site in East Vancouver. Demolition of homes on the SFPR route has been disrupted by similar action on two occasions.

-30-

A $1 Billion Hangover From an Olympic Party
By IAN AUSTEN
Published: February 24, 2010
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Josie Lombardi came downtown this week for a taste of the Olympics accompanied by a friend rather than her husband, because he is on an Olympics boycott. She was thrilled to see the Olympic caldron up close, she said, but after being told she would have to wait five hours to see an exhibit of Olympic medals, Mrs. Lombardi began to think her husband might have a point.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/sports/olympics/25vancouver.html