The 1994 movie The Paper was a hot mess, but it has one great scene that reminds me of Vancouver’s plan to later this year require permits to park on city streets. Remember the scene?
A half-dozen people are arguing at once in editor Michael Keaton’s office – hollering that eventually ends with a gunshot – and into the fray at peak furore enters an editor. Doesn’t matter that hell has broken loose or that more important things are at stake: he has an invoice for an ergonomic chair and he wants it paid. Now.
The non-sequitur of that $600 invoice has the same feel as the moment we’re experiencing as we continue the city’s journey to make Vancouver not just the greenest city, but the greediest.
For the record, for the umpteenth time, for posterity, for heaven’s sake, let’s get this straight: We are in one of the world’s most expensive cities, with North America’s highest fuel prices, a comparably low per capita income even by Canadian standards, in a pandemic that has cost tens of thousands of local jobs and hundreds of businesses, in the midst of an opioid crisis, still dealing with knuckleheads who throw penthouse parties.
And yet here we go with an oblivious, pretentious paper chase – a cash grab with no evidence it will do anything other than grab cash.
With any new policy initiative must come the question: What problem is it attempting to solve?
In this case, I see none.
Are we in our cars too much?
No.
Is there a parking space problem?
No.
Will this stop people buying cars?
No.
Will this stop people driving cars?
No.
Will the revenue make a difference in our picayune attack on climate change?
No.
Does the city, in surveying the public, want to know if we agree or disagree with the plan?
No.
Now, this latter Q&A is most important because it is evidence of a process that is well down the road. The city boasts on its website: “Your input will help us develop a program that works for everyone.” It should read: “Your input will help us roll out a program we’ve determined and now can say we’ve consulted you about.” It will work for everyone, yes – everyone who is happy with it.
Do we know the details?
No. On the FAQ about the plan, the answer is the same to questions on a) how much the permits will cost, b) which vehicles will pay a “carbon surcharge” above the permit fee, c) how the revenue will be used, d) how people with disabilities will park, e) how visitors and service providers will park, and f) how existing permit areas will be affected. “More details will be shared later this year when they become available.” Meantime, thanks people, we’re proceeding.
A “Climate Emergency Action Plan” has many important ingredients for any city, including ours, principally in the construction of infrastructure to help us deal with flooding, drought, cold and heat that are consequences of a world producing outlandish weather episodes routinely. Fine, let’s pony up for those, even in a pandemic that will leave a permanent hole in the local economy. Perhaps some local spending cuts could help foot the bill.
But this plan gets out of its lane and pretends that a sticker (oil-produced, I might note) in the windshield is some sort of behavioural modification.
It even claims it’ll encourage people to buy an electric vehicle because, yes, the permit prices will be higher if your gas mileage is lower. As an EV owner, I call ... well, you know what I call. A permit for an EV is useless because there aren’t curbside charging stations.
When not obsessed with creating an eleven-figure westside subway by 2035 to a university that might not need bricks and mortar by then, the city is obsessed with gobbling parking spots for bike stands that, at this time of year and on the 100 days rain falls, serve as symmetric art installations. Charging stations? Uh-uh.
We might have pollution problems from cars circling the block to look for downtown parking, but not as much as the pollution from idling at intersections because street lights haven’t been made more efficient since what seems like the 1970s. Then there’s the diesel-fuming cement trucks coming to Vancouver to pour yet another tower to feed the housing demand and heading home just ahead of departing rush hour congestion from said uncoordinated lights.
The remedy to the car is a full-court-press of a public transit system, not a tiny SkyTrain extension that has taken 20 years to hatch but a batch of smaller artisanal, arterial approaches with mini-buses and, gasp, trolleys that can be manifested in a few years.
Another remedy is to diversify, even subsidize our districts so small shops can sprout to be handy, walking-distance conveniences. Yet another is to spend civic effort on courting the next major employers so people can sustain themselves as the planet tries to do the same.
But that takes real work, real planning, real understanding of how economies operate. It’s a lot easier to slap a tax, claim it’s not much, and pretend it won’t soon be much. It’s a lot easier when the people deciding to do so have little or no experience starting and running a business and when the jobs they hold are the most lucrative of their lives.
No, just keep experimenting with us frogs in the pot of water, keep turning up the burner as we anxiously frolic, then prepare to wonder how just another few degrees ended the spectacle.
Kirk LaPointe is publisher and editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.
