The biggest and most needed change in our community would be if everyone on the North Shore took the time to vote at the municipal election on October 20 this year.
By Eric Andersen
There are three major problems on the North Shore: traffic, traffic and traffic.
The one topic that comes up again and again when you talk with friends and neighbours around here is… traffic.
Everyone has horror stories to tell about being stuck in the western part of the North Shore and taking three hours to get home (in my case to Blueridge). That has happened to me more than once, and it has happened to everybody I know, who drives or takes the bus.
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The only way to avoid it is to walk, bike or not leave your neighbourhood or the adjacent wilderness. Of course, that is not realistic. Over time it has gotten so bad that I totally avoid making appointments or meeting people from Lonsdale and further west after 2 PM. If I venture west of Lonsdale after 2 PM, I know that chances are that I will be stuck on the Cut or on the Low Level Road or on Keith for a long time.
There are many reasons given for the increased traffic, the one most cited is that tradespeople cannot afford to live on the North Shore and have to drive across the bridge in the morning and drive home in the afternoon. I am not arguing this point, but what I believe a lot of residents are questioning is whether we can build ourselves out of a traffic problem. Let’s look at some numbers.
Out of countless planned developments in the District of North Vancouver (DNV)) let’s look at three coming to you soon: Seylynn Gardens (386 units (with not a single unit set aside for affordable or below-market rental) – 582 parking spaces), Maplewood Plaza (193 units (of which 10 affordable rental units) – 286 parking spaces) and next to Blueridge, the Seymour Estates (333 units (of which 8 below-market rental) – 599 parking spaces). You will note minimum 1.5 parking space per unit.
Will it really mean that all the new residents in all the planned developments will not use their vehicles to go to work, but will walk or bike to their work on the North Shore? Will it mean that building as much as the DNV is planning on (not to mention the City of North Vancouver) will eventually mean fewer cars on our roads, on the Cut and on the two bridges?
Well, if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you (let’s call it the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge for the sake of simplicity), but you’d better hurry, because many politicians believe that… The only two politicians on DNV Council, who have consistently voted against this onslaught of development since the last municipal election, have been Councillors Lisa Muri and Jim Hanson, often supported by Councillor Doug MacKay-Dunn.
They have again and again asked to have the infrastructure in place before developments take place everywhere in the DNV. The other four members of the DNV Council have consistently voted in favour of developments, regardless of size, shape and location. Who is right and who is wrong here? I guess everyone looks at it differently.
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We are told that all the housing being built on the North Shore is supposed to benefit those, who cannot afford to live here. Yet, the three examples above showed a grand total of 18 below-market rental and affordable units out of totally 912 units (and 1,467 parking spaces) – less than two percent of the units planned. Who are we then building for? Foreign buyers? Investors?
People, who can afford to live here, but who work on the other side of the two bridges, where the majority of jobs are? Your guess is as good as mine. Hopefully the ‘missing generation’ (20-40 years old), that we were supposed to attract to the DNV, have deep pockets, if they wish to buy into the new apartments and condominiums that are being built everywhere.
Another problem is that many current residents are or will soon become victims of the so-called renovictions. These are tenants or owners of units in buildings that are being torn down to be rebuilt (but of course, much larger), however, with a strong likelihood that these residents will not be able to afford to live there. Many of them are long-time residents who are working on the North Shore and their kids go to school here.
Yet, in the building boom, that we are experiencing, they are the true victims. Sure, they may get to stay for free, courtesy of the developers, for another 6-12 months before their buildings get bulldozed, but ultimately chances are slim for many of them that they will ever be able to afford a new home on the North Shore.
Meanwhile the majority of our municipal politicians are essentially rubber-stamping any development that is presented to Council, without ensuring that the ones, they really claim to be building for, get a chance to come back or come to live here.
If you consider how developers are jumping on top of each other to get a piece of the development action on the North Shore, it is truly shameful how few below-market and affordable units our Council has insisted on and has to show for all the developments we are now getting. Back to the traffic: surely the three levels of government have committed a huge amount of money to ‘fix the problem’ on the Cut, nearly $200 million.
That sounds good, although it will be another four years before all the improvements to the Cut have been built. The question is, however, whether it will solve the problem in the long run. Or is it just a very expensive band-aid solution? ‘Build it and they will come’, as they say. This very expensive solution may help for a while, but in view of the current construction going on everywhere on the North Shore, I am rather sceptical that this will be money well spent.
The proof is in the pudding. The real solution is likely in better public transportation, not in improving the road network, which could prove to be just a quick fix.
One small step, that would help us all NOW without costing the taxpayers a cent, would be if the provincial government agreed to change the rules for accident clearing on the bridges.
Rather than having police officers from Surrey come all the way to North Vancouver when there is a fender bender on the Second Narrows Bridge, the provincial government should let the local police take over, and no accident report should be requested for minor accidents less than $10,000 – currently the dated limit is only $1,000.
A united DNV Council suggested exactly that change at the last UBCM meeting, but they were overruled by smaller rural communities in BC, who have never been exposed to the traffic problems we experience here on a nearly daily basis. This is most definitely something our local MLA’s should work on together to have changed – the sooner, the better.
The biggest and most needed change in our community would be if everyone on the North Shore took the time to vote at the municipal election on October 20 this year. The voter turnout for the municipal elections the last many times has been dismal on the North Shore. Considering the importance of the local Council on our lives (parks, sports fields, recreation, police, waste disposal, sewer, rezoning, roads, libraries, local bylaws, sidewalks and not at least municipal taxes), it is shameful that the voter turnout is consistently only between 20 and 25% in the DNV.
The excuse of not knowing who to vote for is just not valid.
There are many ways to find out about the candidates, starting with the All Candidates Meetings that many local community associations host before each election. All candidates have a website and they will be happy to answer questions on-line or on the phone or at various meetings before the election. Ask them questions about where they stand on all the issues that are important to you. What will they do, if elected?
How will they vote on issues that matter to you? How did they vote (if they are already on Council) on various issues? Your chances of making a difference are much greater at the municipal level than federally or provincially. I would love to see a drastic change and see a much higher voter turnout, as you see in so many other countries. Voting is a privilege, and we should all make that effort.
Dear Mr. Andersen,
The recent open house hosted by the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure did a good job of showing how people like us living in Seymour might not get stranded on Lonsdale. It will be a big improvement but it is never enough. All that development will result in more cars and more traffic unless we provide convenience and incentives to not use the car to commute. The Seymour Estates development will have 2 pike parking spots per dwelling unit. The same goes for Maplewood. The B-Line on Marine will run every 8 minutes. If we build secure Park&Ride for cyclists in the soon to be upgraded Phibbs Exchange getting to Phibbs to catch a bus could entice people out of their cars. Anyone who has ventured to try an ebike knows it can also be fun and fast. After 12 years on an ebike it has become my first choice for travel on the North Shore from the Cove. And you will realize how your bank account is not drained every month by car payments and fitness club memberships!
Fred Rathje
It is now completely obvious that the North Shore is NOT being built for generational Vancouverites – we keep hearing that density equals affordability and we now have thousands of new condos and NO affordability. In fact there are probably almost as many rule obeying, regular paying renters that are find themselves being forced out of their homes just for greed as new units.
The most vulnerable are seniors on small pensions, people on long term disability, single parents and those working in minimum jobs, but more young people with decent salaries are finding themselves that their rental is taking more then 50% of their income making it very hard to safe for emergencies let alone save to purchase a tiny condo.
Forcing people out of their homes is one of the cruelest things politicians can do to the people they are supposed to represent and yet all 3 levels of North Shore governments seem very comfortable for the brutal renovictions (which is something that only third world countries do I always thought) because no one is doing anything to change it.
Maybe those same politicians should realize that the majority population that is being forced into leaving the Lower Mainland is slowly waking up from “politically correct” brainwashing and seeing the truth…….the Lower Mainland is indeed being built mainly for wealthy foreign ownership mainly from china but also from the middle east. This is not only a displace to replace program it is also obvious that is a racial displacement/replacement as well. Because the Lower Mainland was formerly majority white then that is the majority that is being forced out, but there are also other ethnic groups where people were born and educated here and in the same financial situation that are also being forced out.
One of the signs of proof is the new Beiding Society which is described in this paper – the only paper that has the guts to give us the truth of what is really happening.
If they truly wanted to keep the Lower Mainland affordable they would immediately make it far tougher for apartment owners to renovict and they would make foreign ownership illegal.
Thank you so much for the Canadian Guardian – please do not stop.
I am so grateful for the Global Canadian
We are building for foreign buyers and speculators.
It is a sad state of affairs but soon we will be finding we won’t have enough workers to live comfortably. On the the North Shore, if you have a business, you know how difficult it has become to find employees.
Simply said, if you price everything, rentals & real estate, out of the reach of working people no one will be able to work for you because they will be forced to live so far out of town, it gets less & less feasible to even commute to their work.
It is so bad that often even doctors are having to leave the North Shore because if they want to own a home, they simply can’t afford to live on the North Shore.
So who will be your retail clerk, your hair dresser, your butcher, your baker, your grocery clerk, your car repair person, your sanitation worker, your doctor, your dentist, your massage therapist, your police, even your municipal staff, if this skewed affordability keeps going on?
Really, at this point I don’t have too much sympathy for people who are angsting about having two homes, one they live in – possibly the other one to retire in, and having to pay extra tax on one of them.
There are masses of people who can no longer afford to live on the North Shore. Without a cross section of all working classes, etc., what do you think that is going to look like eventually?
A home should be simply that, not a speculative Monopoly game piece to collect. Otherwise how on earth can a community stay a community?
With none of these support people, you’ll have nothing but decay, then what will the housing prices be then? Empty houses and homeless vagrants moving in, possibly looting. Even insurance companies don’t cover long absences from premises.
Many things kill thriving businesses such as no one available to work at them.
As businesses leave because they can’t function with less and less staff, we might as well realize that we could very well look like when the automotive industry died in Detroit. It doesn’t matter that businesses have customers in this case, it matters if there are people who will make that business run.