Well THAT took long enough. Forgive the egregiously long time between posts, dear readers, but I just wanted to let you know that the hiatus is over. I’m in the process of writing and cranking up Connecting Dots again. Over the last year, family concerns behind the scenes–plus many nifty new projects at work–meant that my focus needed to shift… Read more »
We move in our communities and help shape them. But we rarely speak of how grieving and loss change how we perceive and connect to places, or how that connection to the land and community helps us move forward. It’s an aspect of placemaking–the way we create places around us to be distinct–that I’d never considered until it became such… Read more »
For those of you keen on the next era of transportation, one more seemingly small but notable shift just happened. And it didn’t start on a city street but in a change in mindset. Canadian Transit Forum, the respectable and somewhat traditional journal of the Canadian Urban Transit Association (CUTA), just relaunched itself. With the Spring 2017 issue just released,… Read more »
Much thanks to all those who commented and provided additions to my 10 Principles of Great Transit Planning post. One interesting response that came in via Linkedin was from Nick Danty, who is an Intern at San Francisco’s Recreation and Parks Department. He referenced Principle #8–Don’t get stuck in “because we’ve always done it that way”–and provided the following comment… Read more »
Some work I’ve been undertaking over the past couple weeks related to a prairie community got me thinking about what the “laws” or principles of transit planning might be. By this I don’t mean the principles of good transit service design: the best practices for designing route networks, schedules, infrastructure, their accompanying plans and so on. Instead, I’m talking about… Read more »
From the Vault: The following post was originally published on June 28, 2015. It was one of the first things I ever wrote here at Connecting Dots, and for good reason. The people and transit systems of northwest BC taught me much since I first started working with their region as a newly-minted transit planner in 1999. And in particular–as… Read more »
This past Friday I left my role as BC Transit’s Manager of Planning to take on new opportunities as a Senior Transportation Planner & Transit Lead with Calgary-based Watt Consulting Group. Understandably, this change has occupied much of my mind and presented a range of feelings. Gratitude for the opportunities I had to grow over the last 21 years with… Read more »
Can you identify the long term costs of sprawled development? Three BC-based planners certainly think so and they’ve contributed to the creation of a free online tool to help communities of all sizes do the same. “I feel like it’s the tool planners have been waiting for,” said project lead Narissa Chadwick, playfully referring to the tool she helped create…. Read more »
The Canadian Urban Transit Association (CUTA) recently held its annual conference and giant transit trade show from November 5-9, 2016 in Vancouver, B.C. Billed under the title “Inspiring Sustainable Change,” the conference focussed on changing technology, climate, demographics and customer expectations when it comes to cities and how they move. I had an opportunity to attend part of the conference… Read more »
This past weekend, TransLink’s SkyTrain network in the Metro Vancouver, BC region underwent a pretty sizable series of route and platform changes. The changes are paving the way for the start later this year of service along the new Evergreen Extension and revised supporting bus routes. I thought it would be interesting to look at some of the transit planning… Read more »
Over the weekend, B.C. band NoMeansNo announced their well-deserved retirement after nearly four decades of churning out music. My nerdy love of weird, noisy music usually doesn’t so obviously make its way into my equally nerdy blog about transportation and cities, but in this case, I felt like I needed to make an exception. When I heard of NoMeansNo’s retirement,… Read more »