Queensborough Ferries, or If You Believe That I've Got a Bridge to Sell You

Ahh, the pedestrian bridge to Queensborough.  The final rabbit to be pulled from the casino grant hat.  With reconfigured plans for development east of the Fraser River Discovery Centre, linking Westminster Pier Park to Quayside and potentially all the way up to Sapperton Landing, we will only be missing one link – Lulu Island to the mainland without resorting to the Queensborough Bridge. 

Much has and will be said about the eventual bridge.  It’s still many years off.  What I, and apparently a few others have wondered, is if we need to wait until the sun goes supernova before we see it, why not use a ferry for the interim?

As is usual for these sorts of things, the answer comes down to money.  Just for fun, I did an electronic paper napkin business plan for one (yes dreaming up business ideas and spreadsheeting them death is fun for me). 

The obvious analogy and comparison comes from those cute little ferries running across False Creek.  However, the operation conditions for False Creek and New West are substantially different.  For one thing we don’t have 100,000 people living within walking distance of our docks.  Secondly, we have a river to contend with and larger distances between places people actually want to go than Vancouver. 

But first of all, to run a ferry we need a boat.  From what I can tell, a 12 passenger ferry is the largest one that can be handled by one crew – more than 12 passengers you get into a whole different world of rules.  Just in case you thought otherwise – the Canada Marine Act and Regulations are hard.  I can’t believe how much time I spent just trying to figure out how many crew members you need on a ship of a given passenger capacity, and I never did find a definitive answer.  As best I can tell, Transport Canada’s answer is “show us your ship and we’ll tell you.”  So one of these, with a hardtop and in a brighter colour should do nicely.

Next we need somewhere to go.  Being the one in charge of this fiction, I demand the route traverse the following points:

• River Market
• Quayside
• Port Royal
• Queensborough Landing

Let’s assume everyone involved is being generous and giving a dock to use at their location.  The distances as the sturgeon swims are roughly

• River Market to Quayside:  1.0 km
• Quayside to Port Royal: 0.4 km
• Port Royal to Shopping: 2.2 km

Assumption time!

• Boat cruises at 15 knots (mixing units FTW)
• Boat burns 8 gph at cruise and 2 gph at idle (let’s throw a few more in there for fun)
• Fuel costs $1.60 per litre (you thought I was kidding)
• Captain’s rate of $20 per hour, all in (how do you cancel out Captains?)
• Said Captain is also our clerk, deckhand, cashier, janitor, seasickness bag dispenser, first aid attendant, and overall superman
• Maintenance costs are equal to half the fuel costs
• We run 12 hours per day, every day

If you plug all that into a calculator, it will yell at you for doing science wrong.  Then it will show you that it is possible to make one round trip per hour, and your operating costs are about $62 per hour, or about $5 per seat per hour.  However, that doesn’t include overhead, depreciation, operating expenses that are non-revenue generating, and days lost due to ice on the Fraser.

Ice on the Fraser River – December 9^th, 2013 - photo by James Crosty 

Throw all that crap in there and you’re talking $7 per seat per hour to break even, and that’s not paying off the boat or paying you unless you are the superhero captain (yarrr). 

To make a real business of it you would really need to be generating about $8-10 per seat per hour. What does that mean?  It gets tricky as it depends on both fares charged and how many people are travelling, but an example might be $4 to go from the North Fraser to Port Royal, and $7 to Queensborough Landing.  With those fares, and a mix of 80% Port Royal Passengers and 20% Queensborough Landing Passengers, you would need to run the boat 100% all the time to make money.  And you have zero upside – there’s no way to run more passengers and make more money. 

The Queensborough Landing leg is long, expensive and risky in terms of passenger attraction. What if we chop that off, move the dock so it’s centrally located between the River Market and Quayside, and do a simple shuttle back and forth to Port Royal.  Now we can increase service to four to six round trips per hour instead of one.  Let’s say we do four, so a trip every 15 minutes.  And let’s assume with the shorter crossing we can manage with a less powerful boat that burns less fuel. 

That cuts our operating expenses down - $47 instead of $62 per hour.  Overheads don’t change, so we’re only reducing revenue requirements by $1.25 per seat per hour.  So we still need $7ish per seat per hour to make this worth our while.  Let’s say we charge $3 per trip – to make money we need to average 28-32 passengers per hour, 12 hours a day. 350 people per day, 7 days a week.  That’s only 33% of capacity, so we have the ability to make money, but are there enough people to carry?  And are they willing to pay?

I’m no marketing expert, but I struggle to believe a Queensborough ferry service would get that kind of demand at this point in time.  According to thecommunity plan in 2011 there were 7,155 people living in Queensborough.  There's some 9,000 at Quayside, but if you don't go to Queensborough Landing, there's not a huge draw for them on the island.  Even at the 2040 estimate of nearly 15,000 people in Queensborough I have a hard time believe you would average 350 people per day.

I’m not aware that anyone has done a market study of demand for a ferry service.  So this is going to be the first one, right here.  If anyone is reading this besides my wife, I would love to hear from you either in the comments or @lifeinnewwest on twitter. 

1. Would you use a River Market/Quayside to Queensborough ferry?
2. Where would you want it to go?
3. How often would you take it?
4. How much would you be willing to pay?

I can’t remember where I saw it, but someone on council said the city is supportive of a ferry, but isn’t willing to run one itself (politician speak for “Good luck, kiddo”).  If we sum all the expenses, it would cost in the neighbourhood of $400,000 per year to run the ferry.  The cost of a pedestrian bridge is estimated between $5 and $10 million depending on the whether they staple it to the rail bridge or build it completely independent.

 

$5 million would fund a ferry for just over 12 years, assuming no revenue and no savings on overhead from sharing with the city instead of being an independent venture.  If you can get the cost down to $350,000 per year, and revenue of $100,000 per year from fares (90 passengers a day at $3 per trip), advertising and the like, $5 million would run the ferry for 20 years.  Even better, take the $5 million and stick it in some bank preferred shares at 5% - the interest alone would pay for the ferry and you wouldn't need to touch the principal.  

Then there are other possibilities to promote it and encourage ridership.  You could integrate with Translink so one fare carries you from the ferry to a bus or skytrain.  You don’t need to run to Queensborough Landing every run, but set up a deal with the shopping centre to make less frequent runs down there.  Maybe the casino too.  If the winter demand is that friggen awful, run it seasonally.

But even with none of that, a small investment could let the money we already have for the pedestrian bridge pay for a ferry until it’s time to build the bridge. Maybe it’s time for the city to take a deeper look at running a ferry to Queensborough.  

Family Friendly Cities or Why Can't I Find a 3rd Bedroom Out Here?

As a family renting in Vancouver you get a constant sense of dread that you will never ever ever be able to afford to buy a home.  Despite earning good money and being reasonably diligent (but far from perfect - we really need to tithe more) with it, we constantly felt that dread, particularly with home prices rising incessantly for the last five years.  So it was a bit of a surprise at the beginning of 2013 when we looked at our finances and realized - hey, we could potentially afford something that would work for us.

Our challenge was we were fairly specific in what we wanted.
- Walking distance to the skytrain (we don't have a car)
- Walking distance to grocer and other common stores (we still don't have a car)
- At least 3 Bedrooms, preferably with a den (3 kids and 3 adults gets crowded quickly)
- At least 1250 square feet (still crowded)
- At least 2 bathrooms (it's the only way)
- Under $400,000 (at pre-approval our banker offered a much larger sum. I asked if he was sane.)
- North of the Fraser (we've done Surrey and will not be doing it again)

If you search for this at mls.ca you will find very little - a few condos in Downtown/Quayside New West, and a few south of Lougheed Mall.  So we checked out the neighbourhoods.  I wasn't a big fan of the Lougheed area - it's crazy with the highway there, and a lot more mall than anything else.  We also looked a bit around Port Moody where the Evergreen Line is going.  The neighbourhood was nice, but it was getting a bit far out and the units available in our price range weren't that impressive.

So that left Quayside.  I loved New West in from when we lived in Uptown, but among other things that neighbourhood was too far away from the trains for us.  Quayside offered a remedy to that.  It's an easy walk to the skytrain.  Quayside Drive, despite being all multi-family units, is very quiet and feels nicely residential.  With the New West station development and River Market, most of our daily needs are easily walkable. There are three playgrounds within easy walking distance. There were some nicely sized units available in our price range.  And (I don't know why but this constantly slips my mind) it is literally across the street from the Fraser River.

We poked into an open house at Quayside the spring and were quite impressed with the unit.  The building had some great amenities for the whole family.  Also surprising us was how friendly everyone in the building was.  So we did some more research on the neighbourhood, hung out at it several times, investigated the building, looked into schools, all the usual stuff. We found a few things wanting:

1. The units we were looking at were facing directly over the rail yard.
2. It's a hike to the elementary school (John Robson.  That is a BIG hill)
3. The building was built mid-nineties and uses an Exterior Insulated Finishing System (technical speak for it has the potential to turn into a leaky condo.  Or a pumpkin after midnight)
4. Certain amenities are farther away than we would like (swimming, skating, library)

But those seemed manageable given the positives.  We weren't ready to buy that spring, but come fall we were in position and it became a waiting game.  A unit we had noticed previously got relisted at price that looked good to us, so we jumped on it.  (totally random - it was owned by the parents of a girl we knew at our church.  Small worlds).  We've been there just over a month now, and are still very happy with it.  The train noise doesn't bother us (though an explosion might), the strata is well managed and on top of building maintenance, I get some exercise taking the kids to school, and we can all fit inside the place at once without feeling like we're in a clown car.

All that is a long winded way to say we bought a home at Quayside because it is family friendly to us.  It has the mix of a good size home near the things we need to live, eat, work and play. And it has the bonus of being a unique neighbourhood on a river and relatively affordable.

At the December 2nd Committee of the Whole meeting, Council received a report with a title longer than my post - the Child and Youth Friendly Community Strategy and Family-Friendly Housing Policy for New Westminster. This report was developed out of a partnership with the Society for Children and Youth of BC to help with their initiative on developing strategies for creating child and youth friendly communities. The report identified a few things.

1. New West has a low percentage of children and youth compared to the rest of Metro Vancouver
2. The percentage of children relative to the city population is decreasing
3. Compared to the rest of Metro Vancouver, New West has a higher percentage of 2-bedroom housing and much lower percentage of 3+ bedroom housing and ground oriented housing.

The report is effectively calling for a Family Strategy, along the lines of what cities like Surrey and Burnaby have already developed.  The intent of the strategy is to inform development of neighbourhoods to meet the needs of children and families in an effort to attract and retain families in New West.  It will look at several areas (Employment, Housing, Childcare, Education, Belonging (I have specific questions around this), Transport, Parks and Rec, Participation and Inclusion (and this))

The goals are typically governmental wishy-wash, but a few concrete things are in there, primarily get input from families and children, develop a family housing policy, and develop a draft overall policy.

Most of the discussion on the report (and I apologize, I didn't catch the name of the staff member who presented it - he did a great job) was around housing.  That's understandable, as it is a major concern and something which the city has a lot more influence over.  It's also a peeve of mine - look at all the new development going on in Metro Vancouver, and see how much of it is 3+ bedroom.  Even when you can find a unit with 3 bedrooms, the overall size is still tiny, or as Councillor Cote pointed out, a penthouse unit and not necessarily family oriented.  I am totally in favour of driving more family oriented housing as part of the development deals/variance bribes/community amenity deals we make on new buildings, as Councillor Puchmayr (it took me three tries to get your name right) proposed.

The issue appears quite neighbourhood specific as well.  Queensborough has relatively more families, but it has relatively more ground oriented high bedroom housing.  Councillor McIntosh said she saw lots of families moving in, taking over their parents homes in Sapperton.  Great for those families with parents who own houses in Sapperton, but doesn't help anyone else.  The intent is to look at the ratios of children and families at a neighbourhood level.  This will be needed to drive specific requirements in each area.

As my extended-cut edition of our house buying process showed, family-friendliness is more than just housing and this was discussed.  Many tangibles and intangibles come into deciding whether a family will move to a home, a neighbourhood, a city.  The eight items listed above all play into it, and cover much of what is needed.

The report identified three descriptions of success for the sustainability implications of moving this direction.

1. Opportunities for residents of all age to engage with the community and be valued for it:  Absolutely. Why isn't this the case already?
2. Few children being driven to school: 100% agree.  So why are we replacing one giant high school for 60,000 people at the edge of town with a second giant high school for 70,000 people at the edge of town?  NWSS needs a serious rethink in terms of this objective.  Councillor McIntosh made a good point on this where schools now offer special programming, which parents from all over town want to enroll their children in.  This leads to far more kids being driven to school and cross-boundary enrollment than a common curriculum would.
3. Affordable quality child care that enables parent to work and contribute to the local economy:  50% agree.  Not all parents want to work and contribute to the local economy.  Some want to stay home with their kids or pursue opportunities that are not work but are still valuable to the community.  How do we encourage and support those families?

Overall, I would like to thank Council for taking this report and encourage them to move forward with it.   Stronger families make for stronger communities - my vision for this blog and all I do in the city is to make New West a place that helps build stronger families.  If you value that too, please let Council know you support this initiative.

Danger at Quayside

My family and I live in a condo in Quayside, so we are quite familiar with the rail yard.  In fact, we are practically right on top of it (the price you pay for an affordable family condo in Metro Vancouver).  The noise bugged us for the first week, but we quickly adapted.  Surprisingly, it didn’t bother our children in the least.  

Of more concern than noise and on a lot of peoples’ minds after Lac-Megantik is trains carrying dangerous goods.  

I can’t remember where I saw it (meeting minutes, a sign somewhere or something of that ilk), but something said to people living in Quayside “the dangerous goods are all heavier than air, so just stay in your home and you will be fine.”   At first I wasn't sure if it was serious or I was being mocked.  It was serious.  

While refined petroleum products may be heavier than air, the pressure wave created when they explode is not and will cause a lot of grief for anyone in its way.  Many of them vapourize readily and those vapours are lighter than air.  Being heavier than air doesn’t help all those people in low-rises.  And even if people could avoid the unpleasantness by staying in their homes, you’re still stuck in your home for an unknown amount of time, an island in a sea of chemicals.  

In response to municipal calls, Transportation Minister Lisa Riatt has issued a protective direction.  All railway companies must now report dangerous goods movements through municipalities every quarter (Class 1 railroads) or year (everyone else).   Apparently this will formalize some things that have been happening on an ad hoc basis already, and will be in place for three years while Transport Canada develops regulations on the issue.  

Municipalities, including New West, have been pushing railroads for information on dangerous goods shipments for some time.  Fire Chief Tim Armstrong’s "primary frustration, he says, is that rail companies are not obliged to provide his department with specific details of the materials hauled by their trains, or provide the times that any hazardous shipments might roll through town, unless he requests the information.”

So as nice as it is, this directive will not provide what Chief Armstrong is requesting.   Historical reports are good for watching trends and developing overall strategies, but don’t help in the day to day operation of a city.  Chief Armstrong is clearly looking for that day to day information, so I asked Councillor Jonathan X. Cote what this means to him.  How would the fire department operate differently if it had the information Chief Armstrong is requesting?  

Chief Armstrong’s response, through Councillor Cote, was that the NWFD has a good working relationship with the railways, Southern Railway (SRY) in particular, the Fire Department is continuing to train on HAZMAT response tailored to the mix of dangerous goods that tend to flow through New West, and that they get good information and quick responses from SRY.   He agreed that the directive doesn’t help much for being proactive, and that New West is ahead of that curve by using its relationships with the railways.  

Looking at the Public Safety section of the city website, I don’t see anything on rail safety.  A general search yields links to general sections and a few hits on some overpasses.  Digging a bit deeper found a report with the October 7th, 2013 Committee of the Whole agenda (starting on page 291) discussing this issue.    

The report is mostly trying to sell council on developing a stronger HAZMAT team within the New West Fire Department.  Currently the NWFD is only trained to identify and secure a HAZMAT issue, and is not trained or equipped to deal with it further.  We have deals with Burnaby and Coquitlam who are more trained and equipped to actually clear a HAZMAT incident.  Additionally, the report touches on preliminary work developing an evacuation plan for the Quayside area via the Fraser River.  Meeting minutes noted that dangerous goods travel a 5 mph or less, and the Federal Government is working on an apparent void in the railways’ emergency response plans.  

That’s all good and well.  There are arguments either way for training up a HAZMAT team in New West, I won’t go into that here.  Having an evacuation plan is prudent.  What concerns me more is this report, and everything else I’ve seen except the 5 mph limit, looks strictly at post-disaster response.  When the HAZMAT team shows up or the evacuation siren sounds, it’s already too late.  

The better question is how do busy railways and dense populations co-exist safely.  Information on dangerous goods is part of that, but what else must be done?  In New West particularly, how do we protect the Quayside development, Downtown, and Sapperton areas from potential disasters?  How would a potential covering of the railway affect this?  

I asked CN, CP and Southern Railways to identify what type of hazard assessments they have done around their rail yards in general, and the New Westminster yard specifically (google oddity: when googling Canadian Pacific Railway or CP rail, cpr.ca does not show up on the first page.  cn.ca is the first link that appears when searching for CN rail).  I've had no response yet, but it's only been a few days.  

I searched the city website for similar and found nothing substantial.  I found a few minutes from the Emergency Preparedness Committee, but nothing of consequence there either.   While it’s clear some issues are being addressed on a piecemeal basis.  Who is taking an overall look at the city to say “what are the potential hazards we face, and how do we prevent them from occurring?”

At this point the questions start getting interesting.  In all the industries I have worked in, a potential hazard that could result in the death of a person is rated as high severity and something must be done to prevent it.  Were we able to absolutely unequivocally mitigate every potential hazard of death or serious injury?  No, but we tried pretty damn hard to get there.  

Can you take that approach at a municipal level?  We certainly are not at the moment.  If we were, motor vehicle accidents, falls, and suicides should be getting a lot more investigation.  In fairness these issues aren’t emergencies in the same way things like a railway accident or a flood are.  They require different tools and techniques to manage, and one can’t be focused on to neglect the other.  

(google found  a few things, including contact details for the Suicide Prevention and Follow-up Program – you would think at least that would come up on a city site search)

I submitted an application to serve on the Emergency Preparedness Committee.  If I get the chance I will use the opportunity to push the city for more proactive analysis and mitigation of hazards.  We will see if anything comes of that, or my request for the hazard assessments from the railways.  

Back in New West!

Not long after this blog went dead, we moved to a place in East Vancouver, where we have been for the past three years.  

The wheels turn, though, and we have just moved into our new place at Quayide!  And we're bringing back an extra kid with us.  So far we are learning to live with the trains, loving the boardwalk and really liking what's been done with New Westminster Station.