The Worst Intersection in Vancouver winner (loser?) has been crowned 🏆👀

In some personal news, I'm the latest rootless transient to move to Vancouver (now on a permanent basis)

Re-reading John Sawatsky's THE INSIDERS and I did not realize the extent to which not just Clark, but most of the PMO, was completely oblivious to the notion that the government did not have the votes to pass a budget. It was a complete afterthought! Anyways hopefully we've learned since then

Government House is really nice to visit in the fall

In 100 per cent unsurprising news, the bank that supposedly pulled funding from a Richmond project because of the Cowichan court decision says it definitely did not pull funding because of the Cowichan court decision www.thecanadianpressnews.ca/national/cou...

this clip is hilarious CTV: [You've bought a home in Kelowna.] How's that going? Montague: <sputtering> I'd like to talk about that off-screen

I wish there was a way to convey how much of a big deal this is to me, I wish you could feel it. Our work on housing policy, condensed in a single report, has finally been translated to English. You can download it here: carrefour.vivreenville.org/publication/... (Click "Télécharger le PDF")

The difference in the time it takes a streetcar in Amsterdam vs. Toronto to clear an intersection after servicing a nearside stop.

of course there's a UBC landscape planning angle to this insane NIMBY story

Honoured to attend today's ceremony marking and preparing the land for the Japanese Canadian internment monument being built just south of St. Ann's. jclegacies.com/programs/mon... #yyj #heritage

lots of interesting details here about the nuts and bolts of the french social housing system

london: more bikes, fewer cars bsky.app/profile/bovi...

@dannyoleksiuk.bsky.social writes for @sightline.org about the potential to bring back small lot apartment buildings. #singlestair code changes can unlock this option for the first time in a century. Let’s go! www.sightline.org/2025/10/28/t...

If we want prices to decline, cities need to make that assumption in the economic analysis they use to set form of development and set fees for development. Vancouver's most recent referral report that re-aligns residential zoning used existing prices as a baseline in their modelling by Coriolis.

good post from @russilwvong.bsky.social, contra defeatism on housing. The idea that most homeowners are sincerely motivated by property values (rather than by a fear of change) has always struck me as a largely fake issue that serves to stir Discourse morehousing.substack.com/p/defeatism-...

🎉Big news for Victoria pool users! The City is finalizing an agreement to use the building at Quadra and Broughton St. as an interim pool and recreation facility when the Crystal Pool closes for construction. 📰 Read the full story at victoria.ca/news 💦 Find more project info at crystalpool.ca

I have gotten lots of questions over the years for a python version of cancensus. @dshkol.bsky.social has now built a python port! Yet another way to make StatCan census data more accessible.

www.leg.bc.ca/parliamentar... A junior MLA is introducing a Member Bill to allow Professionals to certify that a permit application meets city bylaw/code requirements. Any thoughts on how effective this would likely be @lanefab.com @424.bsky.social?

After a lengthy abstention, decided to listen in to QP today and it's just crazy how paranoid, crackpot beliefs are just a daily part of the house debates now youtu.be/yMfDD3NEJ_M?...

the internet tells me that Dave's Hot Chicken is actually a well-known chain, but I genuinely thought that a name that generic only existed in developers' conceptual renders for the zoning hearing (aside: the protected bike lane here is done! I used to bike this stretch to school as a kid. Not fun)

engage.bctransit.com/victoria-reg... Looks like a Saturday in-person consultation session for the VRTP has been added for 2-4pm on the 25th at the Uptown Walmart. Probably a good call as students and commuters were largely timed out of all the previous sessions as they were all during the day. #yyj

A retired old Mark I SkyTrain car has now been converted into Canada's first standing subway film production set. Now found in a film studio in Metro Vancouver, backdropped by a LED volume stage. #TransLink #HollywoodNorth #bcpoli #vanpoli dailyhive.com/vancouver/ma...

National Centre for Indigenous Laws, at UVic, just opened

this is really quite cool. Includes an interactive 3d representation of Waterfront Station (which is handy if you've ever argued on the internet about extending the Canada Line)

We have a bike counter on the multi-use trail going over the bridge. The rush hour is real! You can also see the impacts of unusual weather (snow in Victoria 🤯) and the impacts of seasonal darkness.

This panel discussion at the UBCM conference is very informative It features David Rosenberg, lead lawyer for Cowichan; Robin Junger, former chief treaty negotiator; and a lawyer focused on municipal legal issues Really worth a watch

Pragmatism. In a context where funding for mass transit projects was sorely lacking, the city didn't waste time on pipe dreams; instead, it acted on what it had control of and fiscal capacity for: bus service levels and patterns, allocation of street space, and traffic flow organization.

Why tf does North America allow right turns on red? Was this ever a good idea? So proud of @ardenenglish.bsky.social for his first collaboration with the CBC! www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqDV...

Another neat technique you see in the NL is putting detector loops a fair bit in advance of intersections so bikes don't need to come to a stop. There's a neat intersection in Utrecht just west of the Prins Clausbrug where you can follow this path without stopping thanks to clever loops + phasing

Some valid points here but my impression was that in the NL, beg buttons for pedestrians are universal and still not entirely uncommon for cyclists. My experience was that Dutch intersections are very efficient and conflict-free but this means cutting down on unused signal phases

This is v unfortunate. I understand & respect why but this just means that all those folks on the street & shelters won’t access #housing into after all the relocations happen. Just recently finished relocating people from sites to be redeveloped.

Today, @nationalobserver.com is launching a tool to search municipal meeting transcripts across Canada. The tool has already helped us unearth a climate denial network targeting towns and cities, report on AI data centers, measure our impact and more. Journalists and researchers, sign up for free!

Burnaby is deciding to curb their SSMU bylaw because too much housing is being built

Oak Bay is doing an OCP update: here's the extent to which it is pre-zoning for higher-density townhouses and mid-rise apartments. This + SSMU meets their 20-year housing need, no more and no less Also includes this funny requirement that new retail be located to existing services and amenities

There's the usual discussion about using BRT as a proof of concept for trains, but it's too bad we're not doing kicking cars off of Douglas, or even median bus lanes (Draft design for Douglas below) 1/x

At the point in The Power Broker where Moses realizes that tolls are an infinite money glitch Retvrn

Praise for Montreal's bike-share system, from TIME. Worth a holiday thread on a couple of operational + political aspects of Bixi's history that are intriguingly left unsaid.

New local government act amendments to crack down on SSMU restrictions - expands the government's power to regulate parking minimums and site standards (height/density/form etc.) news.gov.bc.ca/releases/202...

Maybe this could be the solution to Vancouver's problems... has anyone tried doing a referendum? aha... ahaha... *Weeps*

Court reform legislation now

20km is a distance where very few would choose to bike, and so the only way you induce a positive modal shift is by convincing people to take transit. Only problem right now with that is, the *scheduled* time for this 20km trip is slower than biking, to say nothing of the chronic peak unreliability.

another example of the city asking itself for a rezoning 🙃

I'd like to concede the fight to the yimby critics. All we need is Parisian density, we don't need to go any further

Disappointed to see the reactionary UBCM call for repeal of single stair building legalization in BC. Nearly the entire world builds single stair buildings safely and has been for decades. There’s tons of data. The idea they are inherently dangerous has absolutely no merit to it.

Before we panic about government spending, @iglikaivanova.bsky.social examines what really created BC’s current fiscal challenge. The numbers tell a clear story she says. #bcpoli

www.saanichnews.com/local-news/s... 🤣🤣 oh no #yyj #yyjpoli

Wikipedia has a very cool map showing the scope Utrecht’s historic trams (none of which survived past 1939) concentrated in the centrum vs the Fast Tram connecting suburban areas outside the old city with Centraal Station upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...

Is he... pretending to be on a podcast? I kinda get the idea but it's weird

Time to fill out the survey for the Shelbourne Valley Action Plan. Slightly improved from the last one, but still mostly ineffective since it doubles down on discretionary approvals instead of proactive planning Survey open to Oct 13: hello.saanich.ca/en/...

In another edition of "I didn't expect this to happen to quickly", Spectral Labs has released a foundation model that appears to be pretty good at CAD work www.spectrallabs.ai/research/SGS...