Every week, we'll send you an update on what happened at City Hall and School Board in the last seven days. Hear directly from OneCity Councillor Lucy Maloney, OneCity School Board Trustee Jennifer Reddy, and OneCity Board Member Natalie Cushing on the goings on in City government.
City Council Update:
Hi everyone,
Tonight is the first World Cup match in Vancouver, with the Australian team, the Socceroos, playing Turkey. I’ll be joining Australia fans at watch parties at Vancouver’s Australian pub, Moose’s Down Under in Pender Street, and at the Commodore Ballroom in Granville Street. I hope you get to enjoy the free Granville Street pedestrian zone, the FanZone at the PNE, or if you’re lucky enough, tickets to one of the matches. Let me know what you think of Vancouver’s World Cup celebrations.
This week staff advised me that the East Side Crosscut, a new cycling route running north/south in East Vancouver which has been part of Vancouver's City Greenways Plan for decades, has finally been finished in time for you to use it to get to the PNE World Cup FanZone, so let me know what you think of it.
Vision Zero Safe Mobility Plan
On Tuesday this week we considered the Vision Zero Safe Mobility Plan.
ABC once again chose to prioritize motorist convenience over people’s safety with an amendment by Councillor Peter Meiszner which gutted the Plan by removing the single most important part - reducing speed limits on selected major streets to 40 or 30 kilometres per hour. Speed kills, and over 90% of serious injuries and fatalities occur on major streets. This measure would have prioritised busy pedestrian areas such as the Downtown and commercial corridors, streets like Denman, Main and Commercial Drive.
Traffic violence costs us a lot. Between 2015 and 2024, over 130 people died on City of Vancouver streets, and more than 90,000 people were injured in collisions. Crashes put enormous pressure on emergency room departments and other areas of the health care delivery system. Province-wide, the direct healthcare costs for transport injuries in 2019 were estimated at $526.7 million, or about $1.44 million per day. Other costs include emergency response and legal costs, economic impacts from lost productivity and travel delay, and immeasurable costs of human suffering.
Mayor Sim and ABC have shown time after time that they’re not willing to challenge the status quo to achieve real reductions in deaths and injuries on our roads. Their abysmal record on traffic safety includes the following:
-
Voted against bike lanes on Broadway, which is causing headaches for the redevelopment of Vancouver General Hospital and its impact on the 10th Avenue cycling route
-
Disappeared an intersection safety cameras motion that would have given us an extra hundred safety cameras at Vancouver’s most dangerous intersections.
-
Disappeared my Halloween Safe Streets motion.
-
Abandoned Councillors’ Boyle and Bligh's truck sideguards motion.
-
Voted against reducing the speed limit on Cornwall Avenue in Kitsilano to 30 km/hr.
-
Reduce the Water Street pedestrian plaza to Sundays only - it’s not even operating during FIFA due to budget cuts.
-
Voted for an austerity budget that laid off essential road safety staff and reduces Capital Plan allocations for traffic safety infrastructure
-
Ripped out the bike lane on Stanley Park Drive and failed to replace it, even though that was a 2022 election promise.
-
Voted down the entire West End Waterfront Plan except the part that increased traffic and reduced safety.
-
STILL haven’t installed flashing pedestrian beacons at crash sites at Lord Byng Secondary or at Willow and 16th, despite promises to do so.
This latest vote is one more example of Mayor Ken Sim and ABC’s poor leadership and willingness to do whatever it takes to get every vote they can in this October’s election, regardless of the lives they put at risk.
Making Sure Everybody Can Vote This October
Council approved changes to the Election By-law, including a recommendation that voters who require the use of an assisted voting device cast their ballot at the Election Office. The assistive ballot marking device will be available at the Election Office for all 12 days of advance and normal voting. That amounts to the largest number of days such a device has been offered in a Vancouver election, compared with 5 days in 2022, with IT staff on-site the entire time.
However, the Election Office is just one location. Other cities, like Toronto and New York have multiple locations where assistive ballot marking devices are available.
As a result of my amendment, Council directed that staff explore adding four voting locations at which voters that require the use of an assisted voting device can cast their ballot in addition to the 12 voting days at the Election Office, and report back to Council as soon as possible. My amendment also directed staff to take into account geographic spread of the additional locations to maximize accessibility, convenience and privacy, and that staff recommend a communications plan to effectively alert voters to the options available for assisted voting to improve uptake of accessible options.
Other accessibility supports remain at all voting places: curbside voting, on-demand interpretation in more than 240 languages including ASL, priority access lines, and staff trained on a new accessibility and inclusion module. Vote by mail is available to all voters, and the Vote-at-Home program is available to voters who are unable to leave their residence or who are unable to vote independently by mail. And mobile teams will be dispatched to special voting opportunities at social service centres, shelters, care homes, hospitals and senior living facilities with 30 or more residents or users.
You can always reach me by email at [email protected] or [email protected] if you have any questions. During the next four weeks traffic is going to be tricky in the City, so consider taking transit, cycling or walking if you can. The seawall bike path is going to be open right through the World Cup, including match days. Enjoy!
-Lucy Maloney
OneCity Councillor, City of Vancouver
School Board Update:
