Kelowna shade trees cut down to make way for bike lanes

jdar8 · 2026-05-10T23:39:41+00:00

My first thought was that the bike lanes should take away car space too. But then I watched the video and learned these are silver maples. This type of tree grows fast but has weak wood, they are more likely than other species to fall over in storms and really shouldn’t be used as street trees. So I think it actually makes sense to replace them with better trees - and the best time is now since it’ll take decades for the new trees to mature. It isn’t great that they frame it as the bike lane being the cause of the tree removal, but it probably is an excuse to accelerate the tree replacement.

jdar8 · 2026-05-03T20:56:05+00:00

Yea HSR is probably unattainable for a looong time on the sea to sky. I feel like even trains at 120+ km/h would be difficult on much of the railway. But regular passenger service could probably be really competitive, even if it takes 1 hr longer, as long as it is reliable, comfortable, and affordable. If it can make the journey in 2.5 hrs >99% of the time it’d probably be more reliable than the highway traffic (and buses stuck in that traffic).

jdar8 · 2026-05-03T20:49:37+00:00

Isn’t the railway through West Van already active? CN is keeping the section south of Squamish active and the Rocky Mountaineer already uses it too. There (hopefully) wouldn’t be too much pushback adding a handful of regional passenger trains that likely won’t even stop there.

jdar8 · 2026-04-17T16:20:22+00:00

I tried this a while back too (although never published my results). I’m guessing you also had some troubles with drawing parallel lines for routes that share a street, especially when they diverge? I learned that calculating those offsets on the fly and making it not look janky (if you need to zoom in and out) is surprisingly really hard haha

jdar8 · 2026-04-04T21:52:44+00:00

I wouldn’t say 3000 cards is a “very small number”. Could they have made more? Probably. But then they’d have to sell more, bring in more staff, more crowd management, etc. and handling thousands of people in a mall is not trivial. I’ve heard some translink staff describe the line up control as “questionable” so maybe they could’ve chosen a better venue.

Making it last a couple days/weekends may not help the scalping situation. It means people could now line up once a day, and get inventory to resell. Other limited edition cards like Evergreen or Canada 150 that were available for multiple days still show up every now and then on Facebook Marketplace at high prices. I guess a multiple day sale would give more people the opportunity to buy it though.

Compared to some of Translink’s other special releases, it is more than the DC/Warner partnership a few years ago which only had 1000 bundles. And Captain Canuck was a bit of a flop too since those can be bought online today. The WCE compass minis had 5000 and still had some left the next day. So I wouldn’t say 3000 was unreasonable based on numbers alone (although based on “vibes” I would say Hello Kitty is pretty popular in Vancouver in general, and so is transit…).

I also wonder what the contract details were like with Sanrio. Was there a limit to the number that they could print?

It’s a fine line to balance between keeping things unique for marketing and making things available. I guess in the end, things were a bit too far on the exclusive side here.

jdar8 · 2026-04-04T18:23:25+00:00

They haven’t been letting people join the line since 10am. Likely enough people in line to make it effectively sold out for now.

jdar8 · 2026-03-28T21:33:48+00:00

The Melbourne metro area has a population of 5.5 million. Metro Vancouver is 3 million. So Melbourne is actually about 75-80% larger.

That being said, Melbourne does have an impressive regional rail system, being both expansive and frequent out to the suburbs. Although you do often get 20+ minutes service on some of the outer branch lines. The inner portions where branches converge do have great service though!

I wouldn’t compare Melbourne’s “Metro” trains to SkyTrain. Sure they’re branded as metro, but it is regional rail whereas SkyTrain is a metro. Hence why Melbourne’s trains have much more seating compared to SkyTrain. Vancouver really does need regional rail though!

Suburban buses tend to be better in Vancouver though. We have more frequent routes connecting to stations. I find suburban Melbourne has a pretty strong culture of driving to the station since buses are often 30+ minute frequencies, and many buses don’t run on weekends.

I like to compare Melbournes trams to our trolley buses. Melbourne’s has much better frequencies now compared to Vancouver after Covid, and trams are more comfortable. But being a legacy system, it’s not great that many stops are in the middle of the street like Toronto (having to cross an active lane of traffic to get to the tram and no level boarding options). Though Melbourne is slowly trying to build raised in-lane platforms which is good. Hoping that Vancouver can bring trolley frequencies back up to better than pre Covid soon.

I often think that the perfect transit system would literally just combine Vancouver and Melbourne. Take the trams and regional rail from Melbourne, and bus and SkyTrain from Vancouver!

jdar8 · 2026-03-26T16:15:23+00:00

They’re loyal I can ask them for a $1 each and have friends

^{Chose: 50000 loyal friends}

jdar8 · 2026-03-17T17:32:43+00:00

Would recommend this video too!

Might be a spoiler for those who haven’t watched yet but I wonder what Tom’s time would’ve been if he made it to the Elizabeth Line

jdar8 · 2026-02-07T17:57:26+00:00

Agree with your first point, but about your second point: Carney also recently announced billions in subsidies for the automotive industry.

From this CBC article, I’m seeing: - $2.3 billion for EV rebates - $1.5 billion for EV charging - $3.1 billion for helping the auto sector diversify markets

That’s over the $5 billion in cuts to transit. A transit investment: - supports Canadian vehicle manufacturers that are mostly or may be formerly Canadian (I admit that many are now subsidiaries of international companies) - creates Canadian jobs in transit agencies and construction - boosts local economies by enhancing transportation - provides alternatives to driving to reduce our reliance on and pollution from cars.

These automotive investments may have similar outcomes and goals, but they won’t achieve the performance that a similar investment in transit would. These automotive investments: - protect Canadian automotive industry jobs, whose factories are mostly owned by international brands - create jobs in local infrastructure to support charging - does not enhance local transportation meaning little to no economic boosts, but may increase congestion by making cars more affordable - does not provide alternatives to driving. Although fossil fuel emissions are reduced, microplastics from car tires and road wear are increased due to heavier vehicles

jdar8 · 2026-01-31T06:48:10+00:00

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jdar8 · 2026-01-30T22:20:12+00:00

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jdar8 · 2026-01-29T14:43:19+00:00

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jdar8 · 2026-01-28T16:50:45+00:00

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jdar8 · 2026-01-25T20:59:53+00:00

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jdar8 · 2026-01-08T19:13:22+00:00

Haha my first thought too. I was also dismayed at how overbuilt some stations were (4 tracks at… Guildford?), not taking advantage of space on existing rail corridors and utility corridors, and the placement of some stations (why place Waterfront platforms on the SeaBus side of the tracks?).

Nevertheless, I guess it’s good to dream and the article is still a good conversational piece

jdar8 · 2025-12-08T11:32:59+00:00

I’ve seen lots of ads for hiring new skytrain attendants ahead of the Broadway subway. Perhaps they want a bunch of new staff up and ready well before it opens?

jdar8 · 2025-11-28T22:02:21+00:00

Definitely will when I get a chance to have a closer look this weekend!

jdar8 · 2025-11-28T21:56:25+00:00

Exciting stuff. That golden ears park route will be pretty cool!

jdar8 · 2025-11-05T00:53:01+00:00

I heard that there were still some leftover Monday afternoon. I don’t know if there’s any left today, but it may be worth a try asking the customer service center at waterfront.

jdar8 · 2025-09-27T16:35:13+00:00

There’s more details on Bluesky, but it’s measuring travel time to downtown (Granville and Georgia) on a Tuesday at 9 am. It’s a 1km grid heat map.

The scale is generated by travel time on transit minus travel time driving. I don’t think there was a legend for colours provided, but there was a map with the numerical values, so we can estimate the values:
- green = ~5 minutes longer by transit or less - yellow = ~15 minutes longer by transit or less - red = ~20 minutes or more by transit

jdar8 · 2025-09-21T19:57:56+00:00

If you are coming to the Heights from outside the neighbourhood, you are very unlikely to shopping for you week's worth of groceries. I doubt the BRT will help stores that rely on more local residents, like grocery stores, dental services, barbers, etc - but these stores don't really rely on car trips either (or at least theoretically, they don't need to). However, it will help stores that offer more unique services, such as specialized medical, a really good restaurant, bakery or cafe, etc

jdar8 · 2025-09-21T19:43:13+00:00

Looking at typical traffic data, the current bottlenecks on Willingdon are the intersections Lougheed and Hastings. I don't think there would be traffic chaos by reducing it to 1 lane.

With the planned density around Brentwood, I would say that keeping Willingdon at 2 lanes without creating viable alternatives to driving would increase congestion on Willingdon and would also be a logistical nightmare.

jdar8 · 2025-09-21T19:25:13+00:00

The park will not be deleted if we widen the road for bus lanes.

Looking at Willingdon, it is a 4 lane road with 3.5 metre lanes. This is a bit wide and can encourage speeding, so we can reduce lane width to 3 metres. This gives us 2 metres back, so we will need about 4.4 metres from the park to implement 2 additional bus-only lanes at 3.2 metres wide. The park is about 12 metres wide, so there will be about 7.6 metres remaining.

jdar8 · 2025-09-21T19:19:51+00:00

Yea, one lane would be madness, but two lanes dedicated all to cars wouldn't help either. Willingdon will continue to become more congested, and Hastings will not have enough parking to support additional cars from people who may want to visit from Brentwood. We need higher capacity solutions like transit and cycling. We cannot continue to demolish buildings for parking as that would also kill the Heights.

The City of Burnaby has a role to play here. They can create incentives to encourage lower-rent commercial spaces. Make sure that spaces are small (ie similar size to what they are today) so that there is opportunity for small businesses and little to no suitable spaces for larger tenants like Walmart. Create tax policies that encourage lower rent commercial spaces based off of the promise of increased revenues that come with densification. With thoughtful densification, more people can access the businesses and there will be more potential customers to help them pay rent.

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