Ekdog

Does anyone out there live in Vancouver? It looks like they're doing a lot of things right there: building protected bike lanes, investing in mass transit, encouraging multi-modal commuting... Sounds like a lovely place to LCF or LCL. Vancouver's Active Transit Success Explained - CityLab

Walter S

Vancouver is a very populated place. Many people live there.

winston63 

I don't currently live in Vancouver, but I'm not too far away. I did live in Vancouver in the 80's when I went to university (and I rode a bike everywhere back then). I do get to the city several times a year.

It's interesting, because just about every move to accomodate non-motorized vehicles that I've seen has met huge resistance and shrieks of outrage, but the city simply had to get people out of cars. Gridlocked traffic at just about any time of day was (and still is) a regular occurence. Parking is difficult to find and generally outrageously expensive. Quite frankly you can probably get anywhere in the city faster by using alternate means.

They still have a ways to go in my opinion, but the progress has been fantastic to date. It is a city where one could easily live car free should one choose to, though that might depend on which neighbourhood one lives in.

The current mayor is something of a controversial fellow, but he's an avid cyclist and he's unapologetically put in loads of separated bike lanes and infrastructure and taken that from motor vehicles (hence the shrieking). The funny thing is that after these changes are in place for a while it's hard to find anyone critical of the initiative as it seems to generally correlate with improved livability, more commerce for local businesses (who are usually the first to freak out) and fewer pedestrian/cyclist fatalities.

I like what they're doing. There are a few gaps in public transit that should be addressed, but on the whole it's a great direction they are moving in.

winston63 

On that note, there are plenty of Vancouver members here in BF, but I don't know if any of them show up in LCF. I've mostly noted them in commuting, touring and general cycling.

cooker

Recently it has been ridiculously expensive to live there, partly due to non-resident home owners driving up the real estate prices, and it rains a lot. Prices dropped a lot last month but are still high. https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/10..._12440200.html However it is a beautiful location and has year-round world-class outdoor recreational opportunities

Ekdog

Looks like the bubble is bursting.

As I recall, there was an influx of wealthy Chinese there when the British returned Hong Kong to the People's Republic.

cooker

Yes partly that, and probably now with some additional wealthy mainland Chinese, and a lot of them don't even live there, but are holding the houses in reserve in case they decide to move, or as offshore investments, so they have jacked up prices for everybody else. You'll see in the link I posted that the the recent price drop might have beeh partly due to a new foreign buyer tax to address this issue, but they're still pretty high. The other problem is that the fairly flat land of the city is hemmed in by mountains, so it is difficult and expensive to build outwards.

https://silverladylimo.com/wp-content...-vancouver.jpg

Ekdog

Yes, all of the things you mentioned have happened here in Seville, too. I'm glad Mayor Robertson has been re-elected twice despite the "bikelash" that has emanated from the usual quarters.

wolfchild

I don't care how beautiful Vancouver is or how many bike lanes they have, that city is just too expensive to live in...LCF may be a necessity for many people in Vancouver because the cost of living is so high. One of the reasons why it's expensive to live there is because British Columbia implemented that damn carbon tax few years ago and the cost of living just shot up.

winston63 

No, I don't know where you got that idea. The carbon tax has had a fairly minimal impact: it's province wide, but the cost of living didn't skyrocket all over the province. And, by law it's revenue neutral (other taxes must be cut commensurate with any monies collected through the carbon tax). In fact, check out this article from a couple of years ago on the topic: The shocking truth about B.C.?s carbon tax: It works - The Globe and Mail

The carbon tax may very well have lowered the cost of living for many people and businesses:

"..The result is that taxpayers are coming out ahead. B.C. now has the lowest personal income tax rate in Canada (with additional cuts benefiting low-income and rural residents) and one of the lowest corporate rates in North America. "

Vancouver is insanely expensive because the cost of property is insanely expensive. That's got to do with global demand, not carbon taxes.

cooker

The carbon tax itself is not the problem, it is that it was used to offset tax cuts for corporations and wealthy people. However the main high cost of living in Vancouver is housing, and that is due in large part to foreign demand, not the carbon tax.




Forget the Praise: BC's Carbon Tax Is a Failure | The Tyee

"Most of the carbon tax revenues (2/3) have been in support of corporate income tax cuts, plus 17 per cent to personal income tax cuts, 12 per cent to a credit for low-income households, and small amounts for a bunch of boutique credits, some of which have nothing to do with carbon," Lee writes.

"The low-income credit, in particular, offset the carbon tax for the bottom 40 per cent when it was first introduced in 2008," Lee writes, "but as the tax has gone up, the credit has not, making that whole regime regressive -- that is, low-income households pay a greater share of their income to the tax than higher-income households."

wolfchild

I know that cost of real estate/housing is the main expense in Vancuver, but I am pretty sure that carbon tax has made all other consumer goods like food, gas, energy and everything else more expensive.

350htrr

Well, you would be mistaken... House prices, maybe gas taxes to pay for the public transit options are about the only things that are more expensive than average in Vancouver. JMO as I see it when I travel through Vancouver to Victoria, from Prince George, about twice a year...

Dahon.Steve

I looked at the prices of homes in Vancouver and they pretty much in line with New York / New Jersey. I found a number of homes under 200K which is affordable for a city that size.

If you're going to live in a nice city like Vancouver, you better have a good paying job. That requires going to a good school, getting top grades and advanced degrees in medicine, law and engineering.

Any place that's worth living is not going to come cheap.

winston63 

Agreed - I'm quite familiar with the area and the overall cost of living (outside of housing) isn't higher than elsewhere in the country, particularly when compared to similar sized cities. They do have an additional transit levy on gasoline which makes it a bit more expensive at the pump (this has nothing at all to do with the carbon tax), but this helps pay for pretty good public transit within and around the city and is well worth it.

Dahon.Steve

Good post!

I had no idea Vancouver was such a great place for the carfree! I spent an hour using Google to Zoom in on the West End and downtown and general. All I can say is Wow!

Although they discarded their trolley cars, they're still using electric trolley buses. The have an elevated driverless lightrail system that circles a good portion of the town. I'm impressed.

There was a bridge that had pedestrian walk ways on both sides but they still took an additional TWO car lanes to build bike lanes! We need that kind of thinking in the states!

Public transit was slightly more per ride than New York. However, if they really want to increase ridership, Vancouver should introduce a monthly pass like New York City. We saw transit use nearly double in 20 years with the introduction of the monthly MetroCard.

Dave Mayer

The main reason why the cost of living is higher is because of the border. On average, Canadian goods and services are higher by about 25% relative to US prices. Here are the worst: financial services (banking, credit card fees), cell phone and cable fees, and food, particularly dairy products. And gasoline, even before the carbon tax.

Why is this? Because the border allows cartels and monopolies to form and be enforced, and keep broader competition from the small Canadian market.

One small example: bicycles and bike parts. At the wholesale level, these are hideously expensive, even compared to US retail. Politically well-connected domestic manufacturers ensure that their small assembly operations are protected from competition by restrictive import duties and tariffs. So to protect a few dozen minimum-wage bike assembly jobs in some junior minister's political riding, Canadians pay much more for their bike stuff.

This gets repeated across the entire economy. Which explains why there are constant long line-ups at the US border crossings south of Vancouver, where Canadians head down to buy gas, milk, cheese, and well basically everything...

winston63 

One other thing Vancouver has in its favour is the climate. Although we're getting a rare colder spell and some snow now, you can normally ride year round without encountering extreme cold or hot.

VintageRide

The Central Valley Green Way parallels the Sky Train route for a good part of it's distance between the East side of Vancouver and into adjoining Burnaby and New West, you can also take the older 7 11 off road pathway through another part of New Westminster and along a more southerly Sky Train route and then onto quieter side streets, there are a good number of bicycle orientated routes trans versing Vancouver North to South and East to West, plus you can take your bike onto the Sky Train on off peak hours and all buses have bike racks mounted up front, limit is only two bikes though.

I have traveled all over the Lower Mainland ( comprising Vancouver, North and West Vancouver, Richmond,Burnaby, New Westminster, Surrey, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge, quite a fair sized area and with the bike lane open on the new Port Mann freeway bridge into Surrey as well as a widening of the pathway over the Second Narrows into North Vancouver there is easier and safer access even if one is close to a lot of traffic depending on where you go.


The Evergreen extension of the Sky Train elevated system from Burnaby into Coquitlam makes it even easier to get out further with your bike, although I tend to ride everywhere it is nice to have the option if you are tired or do not have the time.

cvskates

Thank you! I just moved back to Vancouver from the Island and my family can't get over what I paid for a condo. As I tell them; it's expensive to live here because lots of people want to live here.

Walter S

In other words if you don't have much money you should probably kill yourself since you don't have a life that's "worth living". To be worth living you need to afford life in a nice city like Vancouver.

cvskates

I don't know how poorly your day is going that you managed to make the inference, but I hope things get a bit better for you.

Dahon.Steve

+1

Vancouver looks like a beautiful place to live. You have to make good money to live there like everywhere else. Being carfree, I was able to live in one of the most expensive places in the U.S. I could live in places that are not worth living like Camden NJ or Newark. The advantage of being carfree made it easier to live in better cities.

FInish4Finn

Been researching Vancouver for a tour. They have some real friendly areas for cycling. Quebec is where I am, but it's good, but Toronto is just great. Granted, Rob Ford tried taking a hatchet to the cycling community, erasing bike lanes and claiming roads are for cars. But, being obese, diabetes, being an alcoholic and developing cancer on an already bad lifestyle he died and new riding areas and bike lanes were developed. How you can blame cyclists for dwindling business on a street is ridiculous. But, things are improving. I want to check out Vancouver in the summer. The coast is where it's at. I have yet to do west coast Canada, only Seattle and it was glorious.

Ekdog

May his memory live in infamy as a warning to other hatemongers who advocate sedentary and car-centric lifestyles and try to impose them on others.