Search Results

Building complete, compact communities—the opposite of poorly planned sprawl—yields an impressive array of benefits including: reduced reliance on imported fuel, less need for expensive road infrastructure, fosters closer relationships among neighbors, and saves people time.

According to the Vancouver Sun (subscription required), transit ridership in greater Vancouver jumped 8 percent in 2004. That’s the largest increase since 1986 and corresponds to 11 million additional transit trips. Most of the growth was on the metropolitan area’s ubiquitous buses, not on its elevated light-rail SkyTrain. High gas prices and, especially, the late-2003 U-Pass program stimulated much of the increase, which was the biggest jump among large transit...

Former Vancouver city councillor (and Sightline board member) Gordon Price welcomed Seattle to the tall, skinny club with an op-ed in the P-Iabout what Vancouver’s learned in its pursuit of a compact and livable downtown. (See news about Seattle’s zoning changes here.) – High-rises, for example, should be not just tall but thin, since thin towers offer more privacy and light to residents. And stagger building heights for variety and...

All but one of the five points I wrote about the Dalco Passage oil spill also applies to the Unalaska spill now unfolding in the Aleutians. (Granted, the site of the spill is not in Cascadia, but the ship was carrying a cargo—and presumably fuel oil—from the Port of Tacoma. So it’s our spill, too.) I’ll add a sixth point. 6. Catastrophic spills—ship on the rocks, black ooze in the...

Petroleum prices are cooling a bit: a barrel of crude has fallen $9 over the last few weeks, though at $46 per barrel, prices are still at a level that was unthinkable a few years ago. Nevertheless, the fall in crude will probably mean that gas prices will come down over the coming months, too.  Which makes it an opportune time to point out that, when it comes to the...

The provincial government in BC has taken another step toward a parking tax covering the entire Vancouver metropolitan area, as the Vancouver Sunreports. The parking tax is politically tied to constructing the Richmond-Airport-Vancouver light rail line and a new highway bridge. My enthusiasm for these three items are probably the inverse of public sentiment: I regard the parking tax as a terrific advance, the light-rail line as a mediocre idea,...

A striking lede: New research from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) finds that all the impervious surfaces-buildings, roads, parking lots, and roofs-in the continental United States cover an area nearly the size of Ohio. I have a love-hate relationship with this sort of fact: it’s shocking, but I don’t quite know what to make of it. Is Ohio a lot of impervious surface, or just a little given...

Gasoline prices are at their highest in recent memory and they appear likely to stay high for months. Is this a dream come true for climate defenders and transportation reformers? Far from it. Short-term price spikes, such as the one we’re enduring now, have surprisingly little impact on driver behavior. But they constitute a massive drain on the economies of fuel-importing regions such as ours. And they enrich oil companies,...

The Car and the City is an offbeat journey through three great metropolises. Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver–by car, train, bicycle, and foot. It’s a fascinating conversation with people who are quietly, but radically, rearranging the furniture of the modern city.