Vancouver Housing Might Actually Become Affordable Now?

Vancouver Canada is famous in the transit world for its sky Trin trolley buses sea buses and well that's about it but what it is also famous for outside of the transit world is insane housing prices I remember growing up in the region and watching as from when I started school to when I graduated housing prices went from high to into the stratosphere those high prices meant a lot of people including myself didn't see a future in Vancouver where houses and apartments were just going to get more expensive year-over-year it's really an unfortunate black eye for which is one of the best city regions in the Americas you see while Vancouver is one of North America's if not the world's most famous cities for its Transit oriented development it's also the birthplace of the tall and sprawl model so common in Canadian cities where you have high-rise towers near a transit station surrounded by single family homes a couple blocks away now I will say the idea that new town homes and mid-rise development don't exist in Vancouver or Toronto is just rid ridiculous and they actually are pretty common there certainly isn't enough of this development to augment the massive number of condo Towers we've built and it's pretty clear that we shouldn't have a station towers and then single family homes there should be a gradual transition from extremely high density to lower density with things like midrise buildings duplexes and triplexes and then single family homes at the very edge that and the real Regional extent of the sky Train network is why British Colombia that is the province that Vancouver is located in New housing policy is so absolutely gamechanging and one of the best in the English-speaking World seriously this policy is going to transform Vancouver and Metro Vancouver so let's talk about it in this very special edition of RM housing plus [Music] Transit hi there if you're new I'm Rees and I'm from Vancouver I make videos about Transit and cities around the world so if if you enjoyed this video make sure to subscribe for more like it Vancouver Sky Train network is easily one of the most impressive rapid transit systems in North America it only started Construction in 1986 and now stretches roughly 80 km with 53 stations the network is fast with average speeds well over 30 km per hour Regional in scope with reach that goes into the cities surrounding Vancouver instead of just Vancouver itself and Incredibly frequent with trains coming every couple of minutes even until late at night all made possible by the Sleek automated trains that the system has run from the very beginning if you want to tour around the entire network not nearly enough people have seen the video I did a couple years back where I tour around the whole city so you should check that out and Sky Train is getting a lot bigger thanks to two major extension programs currently happening including one that will extend the Millennium line down the Broadway Corridor through the dense Regional core and another that will extend the longest line the Expo line further out into suran l ly on an entirely elevated extension and those extensions will take the Network's total length to over 100 km and add over 10 new stations at the same time capacity is being expended on the network with a massive order for several hundred cars from Alem so translit can start running five car Sky trains I actually talked about one of those Big Sky Train extensions in a previous video so if you're interested in that check it out here now obviously Metro Vancouver is famous for its existing Transit oriented development or to and while it is great at most major development nodes besides metrot town which is just crazy tons of development there there tends to be a couple large developments around the station and then a pretty quick fall off into single family homes and other land uses the scale and quality of the development tend to still be pretty impressive but it's far from ideal furthermore the approach to development is peac with individual projects needing to be approved one by one and that means it's slow and it leads to expensive housing that's why BC's new policy is gamechanging and should set the pace for cities across Canada and probably North America the new law sees the province overruling cities which under the Canadian system of government they can absolutely do to allow more density around Sky train stations on mixed and residentially zoned Lots suddenly developers will be able to build at minimum a 20 Story Tower on any piece of land within 200 M of a station a 12-story building within 200 to 400 m and at a very minimum eight-story buildings for everything between 400 and 800 M from a station all as of right this will mean that basically all land within a 15minute walk of a sky train station is now basically zoned for much higher density and I say 15 minutes not 10 because well 800 m is typically the 10-minute walking time there's not always a direct Street and now that all of this density is allowed it will come because that prices as high as Vancouver's not building is just not an option at the same time four area ratios will take paper from 5 at the station down to three on the Outer Circle of the development Circle as you travel out meaning that the highest densities are allowed around the station interestingly this policy is also going to apply to Metro Vancouver's bus exchanges which tend to be big Loops where a ton of different bus services converge there's usually multiple frequent Services they tend to be pretty nice with bike storage and lots of shelter and so these will become their own Transit hubs albeit without the condo Towers instead the development will kind of start at medium density around bus exchanges now there are a lot of reasons this is great for one the policy allows the highest densities right next to the station which is logical and even better it acknowledges the value of bus exchanges which could hopefully get new amenities and perhaps enclosure as part of all of the new density coming to the areas around them the way many best terminals in Toronto have nicer amenities and perhaps even washrooms the second awesome thing is that simply by allowing this circle of density around stations that sort of tapers off as you travel outwards I think you'll actually end up with some of the nicest and most Pleasant neighborhoods in Canada with significant density and a lot of different building types all of that without the jarring transition from Tower to single family home it'll be a more consistent level of density and I think that's going to be really nice better yet it's going to mean that Suburban places like Suri and Langley are going to be forced to allow high density not just directly next to their new Sky train stations but also surrounding blocks but also the city of Vancouver which is more nimi than a lot of the region and is already being outclassed by suburbs like bernabe for their crazy Transit oriented developments so much so that bernabe is actually soon going to have the tallest tower in British Columbia not the city of Vancouver even more interesting is that the rules will apply to other cities in BC albeit only the bus exchange part since there aren't other rail systems in BC besides Sky Train now I've mentioned a lot of the implications of this policy for density neighborhoods and housing but it also has huge implications for Transit that get me super excited for one denser neighborhoods are obviously going to be much worse for people to drive in and so alternative means of transportation walking cycling and Transit are going to get an instantaneous boost at the same time this consistent concentration of densities around stations will drive new amenities like shops and services so that people kind of effectively get to live in their own 15minute cities near Sky Train Station better yet the developments are going to have far less parking because none of them will have parking minimums within this 800 M circular Transit Paradise Zone which is fantastic because not only will it mean less cars but it will also mean more affordable development and housing by further solidifying and concentrating development around station areas and that's not just on the adjacent block but within 800 M it will also mean that over time in Metro Vancouver not only will a lot of people be living your station but a lot of their destinations will also be relocated to stations where a lot of people are all of this is going to funnel way more people onto TransLink Services especially buses thanks to the lack of parking minimums and the fact that bus exchanges are included and that means that TransLink needs to build a lot to serve all of this new density there should be new trolley routes rapid bus lines and express bus lines that operate like Rapid Transit over highways using HOV lanes they're actually fantastic and I made a video about them up here on the sky Train side there's a a lot too because many stations will need to be expanded to handle increased passenger numbers and to better integrate with their new denser communities at the same time all of the new density is going to cement the importance of those certain locations where stations are today we should also probably be planning for three car trains on the Canada Line as soon as possible as well as six car trains on the Expo and Millennium lines not to mention more sky train lines to complement the existing Network down the road such as a high-speed high-capacity bartlik line connecting Sur Vancouver and the various highdensity Transit oriented development nodes along the way I actually talked about this idea in my recent what I would build in Vancouver video so check that out if you're interested fortunately I think TransLink is actually one of if not the best Transit Agency in North America so I think they can build in a sort of polar opposite way to other Transit agencies in North America TransLink sort of loves trying new things from better wayfinding to Fair payment via wristband and complete station rebuilds all of that work rebuilding some of the Network's busiest stations to increase capacity and also just make the stations nicer as well as adding entrances is going to be invaluable for all of the work that is obviously going to come expanding existing stations that are going to get much busier with all of this new density basically all of the work that's gone in to upgrade stations like Joyce Collingwood metro town commercial Broadway over the last decade or so that's just going to need to continue to ramp up into the future as more stations need similar types of work at at the same time trans link is also building expansions to the rapid transit Network at semi-reasonable prices at least compared to other cities in North America including with the shallow cut and cover Station Broadway Subway extension and the fully elevated Suburban extension to suran Langley the good thing is that so often I talk about how to bring down the cost for building Transit you need to consistently be building Transit and Metro Vancouver has done this there have been major new Sky Train projects every decade since Sky Train was created what better is that since now trans leak is actually doing its own housing developments to fund Transit improvements and expansion they will benefit from this policy by enabling them to more easily build large Transit oriented developments near their stations this means that the benefit of the mass upzoning won't entirely be taken by private developers and instead TransLink can capture some of that value and funnel it back into the system which will be definitely needed suffice to say I'm elated because Metro Vancouver is going to try to tackle one of its biggest problems with with one of its biggest assets the transit Network and in particular Sky Train and I think there's a lot more transit to come thanks for [Music] watching

Channel: RMTransit

Views: 214,437

Keywords: transit, transportation, rail, railway, railfan, public transit, public transport, public transportation, train, subway, metro, underground, rail transport, urban planning, vancouver, skytrain, bc, british columbia, translink

Id: yRY1L4X3JqY

Length: 11min 29sec (689 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 11 2023