Stronger Kamloops

Our City has plans. So many plans, lots of plans! Sustainability Plans, Transportation Plans, Neighbourhood Plans. And they all suggest that our population at large should be moving away from long distance, single occupant vehicle trips and move instead to transit, car pooling, ride shares, biking, walking.... Contradictorily, City Staff and Council are provided with free parking as part of their employment - and reciprocally staff must pay for a transit pass. So they have to pay to do the thing our plans say we want, and they get the thing for free we say in our plans we don't want. This is something the union is going to fight to keep, and that many staff like, so how could we find traction in changing this paradigm? Providing free parking, while charging for alternative transportation is certainly not in line with the intents of the Cities plants - providing incentives directly contradicting the plans the very same staff produced and enforce and the very same council voted to ad...

 In the "What's Wrong With..." series I look at some really cool experiences, businesses, streets, etc. that I have come across, and ask, why can't we have this in Kamloops and/or BC and/or Canada? I do want to acknowledge that no single regulator is at fault, nor do I believe that any regulatory branch or insurance company or lawmaker is out to ruin our lives nor do they have malice in their minds. Each is reacting to dangers (potential, anticipated or real) and attempting the best they know how to mitigate them. Health, Fire, Police, Parks, Zoning, Building Code, Ventilation, Business Licensing, Arts Approvals, etc. - are all doing what they think is best, but the large view of things is what I believe is lacking, and reviewing each of our roles in each of these things I believe is in order.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- from the website. " Word on the Water " - is a canal boat in London, or as th...

First Ave from Seymour up to Columbia is 416m long at a fairly formidable grade. That is why what was once a two lane street with street parking is now only a one way with no parking - cars careening down the steep hill seemed dangerous I guess, especially in inclement weather. Strangely, at least to me, when we removed the parking and the second direction of traffic - we left the little sidewalks and turned this into 3 wide lanes of uphill traffic. I have an idea in two parts. The "Park" part of Rain Park is pretty self explanatory - the Rain part - yet to come. First of all - consider that the traffic counts on First could never justify two lanes of traffic, let alone three, lets assume there is way more space allotted to cars here than is necessary to maintain the exact same level of auto-mobility that is experienced now. Reducing the amount of lanes would be unlikely to greatly reduce the flow and convenience of traffic (same too for the 4 lanes approaching on Seymour W)....

Housing Affordability and Availability remains a fraught topic about town these days. On the Supply side, it is well known at this point that we need thousands more housing units, and that each year the deficit of housing grows. We are not keeping up to current demand, let alone making a dent in the existing shortages. Understanding a bit about the basics of economics and business cases for new housing supply might go a long way to understanding what is going on. When people hear of $300,000 for a micro suite, they react thinking its nuts. However when you dig a bit deeper, you find out that the rules that we have which guide development in our country basically mandate this situation - combined with modern work standards in both material supply and construction wages being strong (it's own supply/demand situation as well). This article is about new housing supply, building and developing it, not about the price of existing housing. Also of note - while housing prices may be coming...

 The IDEA series is just that, some crazy ideas, some pragmatic ones, that seek to enrich and strengthen our City. ----- Yup, you probably have heard about the Gondola! Yes it has been given over to the public domain and the casual bounce around of crazy ideas in town - sometimes mocked, sometimes advocated.  I first wrote about this in 2011 on my blog Stronger Kamloops, and then put it again in the 2012 book Stronger Kamloops  on page 174. That book didn't exactly make a splash, but it did get around, and that year Arjun held his Idea Fest, where the idea further got around. Why do I feel like bringing this up again? Well an idea, however misunderstood and teased, that has pervaded for a decade, ought I think to get a fair account of its true proposal. So without ambling too much: Common Concerns Trust me, 10+ years of talking about this - I have good answers for: Will people use it? How much will it cost? How will it be financed? Is it a good return on investment? How w...