Bike Sense

New West Mayor talks Funding Freeze, Speed Cameras, Car Brain, and Safer Streets

• The BC Cycling Coalition • Season 3 • Episode 12

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'Slow down cars and save lives' sounds obvious, but how do we actually make that work on the ground? Where does funding for speed enforcement come from, and when fines are charged, where does the money actually land? New Westminster Mayor Patrick Johnstone debunks the myth of the speed-trap 'cash cow' and takes a clear-eyed look at BC’s pause on active transportation funding, the politics of 30 km/h residential limits, and why automated speed enforcement could be the fastest way to real safety gains.

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Bike Sense, the BC Cycling Coalition's podcast, where we talk about all things related to active transportation advocacy in BC. I'm your host, Peter Ladner, Chair of the Board of the BC Cycling Coalition. I hope you enjoy the show. My guest today is our first repeat guest on this podcast, Newestminster Mayor Patrick Johnstone. And we're bringing him back because he's that good and he's sometimes outspoken on topics that we would like to dwell on today, such as the BC government pausing active transportation grants, bike lash locally and around the world, the politics of getting support for active transportation, automated speed enforcement, and the old 30 kilometer per hour default residential speed limit. Welcome, Patrick.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you. Good to see you this morning, Peter.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm going to start you with our standard question. Describe your last bike ride.

SPEAKER_01:

My last bike ride was I got a little bit of time away on uh on the holiday Monday. Um, and I got a nice, I got about uh 70K in. I got to go for a road bike ride around Richmond and around uh Stanley Park and back to New West. It was a nice day. It was a nice sunny day. It was a beautiful warm day, and there were so many people outside enjoying that sort of nice fall weather in in Greater Vancouver.

SPEAKER_00:

Can you just push out your front door and off you go? Do you have to drive to someplace to start your ride?

SPEAKER_01:

No, I uh the wonderful part about riding a bike in New Westminster is every bike ride starts with a hill climb and every bike ride ends with a hill climb. It's a magic thing about our city.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm glad you're up to it. Now, could you just tell us? Let's start with the active transportation grants. This is a BC government program. It's been going for a number of years, and it's oversubscribed by municipalities. Last year they gave out$24 million. Municipalities have been told that this year there will be no grants. Whether that's a pause or a cancellation, um, who knows? But could you tell us, the listeners, what the impact of those grants has been have been in your community?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh the pause of the grant program is a huge disappointment and it's a big turnaround from just uh just two years ago when we were kind of excited because they were announcing they were expanding that grant program. Um I think the average over the last 10 or 15, 10 or 12 years of the program has been about 7 million a year. They announced, I think, a year and a half ago, that it was going to be up to about$20 million a year, maybe$24 million a year. It was really exciting. And to find out they're pausing that right now is really disappointing. In New Westminster, we have received those grants for a couple of projects. Um, the act, the Agnes Street Greenway is a project that we've built using, I think we only got about a half a million dollars for that project. But again, it's really good baseline funding to build an active transportation route in our downtown. And then we got another half million dollars just recently in the most recent cohort for a project in our Queensboro neighborhood to improve both pedestrian and cycling uh safety in the Queensboro neighborhood, connecting a new residential neighborhood with sort of the business and commercial area that's adjacent to it. Um but I don't think it's necessarily New Westminster's the best example. Um I, you know, we appreciate those grants and they really help us. They provide some baseline funding for some for some active transportation. But the number of small communities, uh, the number of First Nations, the number of organizations that just don't have uh the ability to fund active transportation in a meaningful way, the the Castlegarders and the Chetwins and the and the towns like that, uh where it can make a huge difference to get a half million dollars from provincial government to support uh an active transportation plan. Um, the planning part or the building of a new route, it's it's it's just a huge boost to small communities, especially. So um to hear that going the wrong direction is a real disappointment.

SPEAKER_00:

And what, if anything, have you done about it or anybody that you know has done about it uh as far as lobbying, pushing back, um, communicating with ministers?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I know active transportation community is actually pushing back really strongly. The cycling coalition has been doing that, hub has been doing it. Um, I have reached out to our members, our our members of the legislature in New Westminster. Um, you know, there was a lot of conversation at the recent UBCM meeting around this with my cohort, with the folks around the around the province who care about active transportation. I mean, we it was we're only a little more than a year from the last from the active transportation summit, where we stood up in front of the province and said, look, this is a really great program. It needs to be funded more. It's not, it's such a small amount of money when it comes to the the Ministry of Transportation's capital budget. The Ministry of Transportation of Transportation's capital budget is in the billions every year.$20 million is not enough to build a single freeway on-ramp right now in act in transportation funding. It might seem like a lot of money uh to small communities, but compared to the budget that is spent on freeways and highways and overpasses and things like that in the Ministry of Transportation's budget, this is a little tiny amount of money, and it's really meaningful to small communities.

SPEAKER_00:

We calculated that it was less than 1% of their capital budget. Is this something that in your community you bring money to the table as well, or do you depend entirely on the province?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, this is absolutely what, yeah. This is like I don't think many projects are 100% funded by this. This is where your matching funds come from. We also have access to some funds from Translink to do sort of last kilometer active transportation to connections to get people uh to SkyTrain stations and to bus stops. And so municipalities are leveraging all of those. But the thing about the active transportation grant is it is it is what it did provide some really secure baseline funding that allowed you to sort of plan out a couple of years in advance and plan out where you're gonna get matching funds. We're currently halfway through building an active transportation network plan out in New Westminster. Our goal is to build active transportation connections to within 400 meters of everyone's home and to all the major destinations in the city. And it's gonna take us years. It's gonna take us five years to build this out. But having knowing that in year two, in year three, and in year four, we'll be able to apply for a little bit of grant funding for this helps us put it in our capital plan. And um again, I can't imagine how a small community, I can't imagine how a city that has Fort or Prince in its name is going to uh is going to make up for that loss.

SPEAKER_00:

You mentioned the UBCM, the Union of BC municipalities recently, as we're recording, had a conference in Victoria. There was a motion that was proposed at that conference to enable municipalities to do a blanket default speed limit of 30 kilometers per hour on any road without a center line, and it did not make it to the to the floor because I gather there was a lot of competition for resolutions needing decisions. Uh, what is your experience with trying to create 30 kilometer speed limits in your city without the power to just decree that all roads by default in your municipality at least are limited to 30 Ks when they don't have a center line?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, we're working on it. We're working on 30 kilometers an hour in our community. Um, we have expanded the hours around school zones and the areas around school zones where 30 kilometers an hour is the default or is the speed limit. We have also added 30 kilometers an hour to some of our commercial areas and some other, you know, sort of higher trafficked residential areas in the community. Um it sort of came out of a sort of a safer streets and green streets program that we sort of developed through COVID as people were out and walking more and realizing that we could actually create better spaces for people walking through COVID. But it's really challenging for a municipality. It's challenging for municipality to put a 30 kilometer hour speed limit sign on every block of every street because uh the police would argue that in order to enforce it, it has to be obvious to everyone on that street and the signage implications and the cost implications and the visual distraction implications of having to do signage like that on every block and every street is limits its effectiveness in a community. So having default 30 kilometers an hour in municipalities is something we have been discussing with the province for years now. Um there were it went fairly far about 10 years ago. There were some deeper discussions with the province, but it just never came to fruition for whatever reason. You have to ask the province why. Um but the current, there are current approaches, and I like this idea that I think it was Sanich who brought forward. It was the idea that if you don't have a center line on the street, then that's 30 kilometers an hour. If there's a center line, then 50 is the default. And I think the advantage, I mean, we don't want to have in the lower mainland, for example, or in Greater Victoria, with um, you don't want to have 21 or 13 municipalities all with different rules on the street. It's really hard to enforce, it's hard for drivers to understand what the rules are in their community. It's it's difficult to make these things stick unless it's a consistent thing across the province, or at least across the region. So um I thought that was a creative way to say, look, that's a clear visual clue. It already exists. Cities can decide to put center lines down or not to put center lines down. And if people are understand that that means 30 kilometers or it means 50 kilometers an hour, it's an easy way to get us towards a place where 30 kilometers an hour is the default in residential areas. And the data is clear that 30 kilometers an hour uh saves lives. Um, you know, this is not a novel idea. This isn't a radical idea. This happens in municipalities around North America, different jurisdictions. It does happen in across Europe, anywhere where a vision zero model for traffic safety has been introduced. 30 kilometers an hour seems to sit in the middle of it. They have, I mean, 20, it's 20 is plenty, is the is the saying they have in areas where miles where miles per hour is the measure they use. But um, and again, it's really clear that it saves lives and it does not reduce the throughput of vehicles, it does not create traffic hassles. Um, it it just makes sense. And I'm I'm frustrated the province is reluctant to just bring this in as quickly as possible.

SPEAKER_00:

Let's talk for a minute about why that is. There seems to be a perception, again, going back to data. I have seen data that if people are asked, should there be a 30K zone in your neighborhood? The majority, I I want to say overwhelming majority say yes. And yet there's a perception, apparently, that this is somehow going to cause a backlash. And what is it about these measures that causes politicians to be so wary of bringing them in?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, carbrain? I mean, and it's um Is that a disease? Yeah, it's something. Um I think that you you the way you asked that question is interesting. It's like, yeah, you're right. Everybody wants 30 kilometers an hour on their street, but they also, I think a lot of people want to go 50 kilometers an hour on other people's streets. I think there is this is something about how we think about our relationship with automobiles. What is safe for us in our community is inconvenient for us when other communities want it. The only thing that people in New Westminster want is for everyone who's driving through New Westminster and trying to access freeways around New Westminster not to come through their neighborhood. And they want us to do that in a way that they can have easy and quick access to the freeways around our neighborhood. So that's that's a challenge we have. So 30 kilometer an hour, I think, is very much like that. We see that as being uh unnecessarily onerous in areas where we want to drive, whereas we see it as an obvious safety advantage in our own communities. And that's something that we have some education to do around, and some and people have to sort of understand the nuance of that.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, they also the politicians have to get elected. And you're a politician, you have to get re-elected. You must be wary of the voters' opinions on these things, and yet you have been elected, you continue to do these things. I'm assuming that you have some kind of electoral support for this. Why would you get it and other politicians not?

SPEAKER_01:

Um I think that the reality on the ground is different than what we read on Facebook. You know, I we as I talked about the active transportation network plan in New Westminster, this five-year plan to build out these bike routes, we introduced that before the last election intentionally. And, you know, I ran on an election with that in my platform in the middle of it. We got to get this built. And so when I am told now by people that, you know, we weren't consulted on this or that, you know, this, I'm not gonna vote for you because you supported this, you know, politicians have to be bold enough to say, well, actually, I ran on this, I said I was gonna do it, and I'd be untruthful to the people who voted for me if I don't move forward on this work. There's also um, it's not top-down, you know, to say that no, I said I'm gonna do it, I'm just doing it. There's a there's a place to say that I hear your concerns. Like, how are we gonna address your concerns while we do this? Uh, to say that I'm going to do something is uh is uh a promise we all make during elections, and quite often we move back on some of those promises and realize the detail of trying to implement those things. So we have a responsibility as elected officials to continue to talk to the community about things that we've promised we're gonna do while we're doing it, and to be truthful about um about um the ways we can adjust this in order to address some of the concerns that you have, and to be truthful about when we can't adjust it to address concerns that you're being that are being raised. Um, I don't like a bus stop in my near my home is um is not something I can address when I said like we need more bus stops. We need to build bus stops, we need to build sheltered bus stops in order to make transit more accessible. Um, you know, you have to, from all children, have to be bold enough to say that actually bus stops are a good thing. They they benefit society. And I'm sorry that it's in front of your home, that's the best place for it, but it's not in front of your home, it's in front of someone else's. We live in a society and you don't own the curb in front of your home. Uh, we live in a society and we have to share these resources as best we can. People never, I mean, we rarely talk about the cost of motordub, the cost of automobile-centric neighborhoods. The fact that if we don't fund active transportation, like I even even talking about the active transportation fund, we don't talk about the fact that, yeah, they're saving$20 million on not giving out this grants this year, but what about the$200 million they're spending to fix the 264th interchange, the one interchange? Like we don't talk about the cost of the alternatives because the alternative is the status quo. The alternative is automobiles dominating all our space, of 90% of our road space being used to move and store private automobiles. We never talk about the cost of that because that's status quo. That's just the way business is. And so politicians have to do a better job of talking about that in a way that isn't judgmental. I'm not judging you because you drive a car, you you drive a car because it fits your lifestyle. Um, but we also have to find a way that um to allow other people who have different lifestyles to be safe in our communities.

SPEAKER_00:

So the when you when you and I talk about this and we have a big love-in on all these issues, it's it sounds so obvious and easy. And yet it may be my impression, but it seems that this term bike lash has boiled up, and we see people opposing mayors in different cities around the world pledging to be against bikes, and for some weird reason I don't understand, this has seen to be or turned into a partisan issue where the left, so-called, is for active transportation and bikes. Certainly we see this south of the border, and the right, so-called, is uh loyal to the cars at all costs. Why do you think this is a partisan issue? And what could we do to make it less partisan?

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, municipal politics don't traditionally fall on that left-right spectrum in a way, because there are left progressive people who are very um concerned about density. You know, you know, like it, like there are issues around urbanism, around cities that don't fit on that spectrum cleanly. And I think this is one of them. Um, I think the difference is what I was saying earlier: status quo versus change. This is about change. It's about changing a little bit about how your streetscape looks, it changes how you move around in our city. Um, there's a, I mean, a running joke I often say is that the only thing worse than the way things are right now is any kind of change. And that's the reality we face every day in municipal government. Um, people are concerned when they see change in front of their home that they don't recognize or they didn't know it was coming, or they don't understand what the impact is going to be on their life two years down the road of this change. So um, and bike lash is part of that. Uh it's a response to a change and it's a response to uncertainty. I think the real dichotomy is between status quo and change. And as politicians, uh, we our job sometimes is to talk about the change people want to see actually, and to and to talk to people who don't are uncomfortable with change about what it actually means. These are very, in a case of uh of bike lanes or change in our infrastructure or our active transportation infrastructure, it is personal to people because it's right in front of their home. It's their neighborhood that's changing, and that makes people nervous. They don't know what that change looks like. Um, they've always been able to park in front of their house. Why can't I park in front of my house now? And um we have a job to explain to people about why we're making change and how this has impacted other communities. I mean, Vancouver has this excellent example of how a lot of the early bike clash was led by the business community who are really concerned about what it meant to put bike lanes downtown. And how once they were put in, it was a there was a turnaround. The downtown business community is one of the strongest supporters of the work that Vancouver did to make it more cycling city. So we can talk about those examples from around the world, but ultimately it's it's also taking the time to hear people's concerns about the change and try to understand what the root of those concerns are. Um and and sometimes you just need to be bold and say, you know, the community is asking me for this kind of change. And I can't say no to the community because of parochial concerns. I have to answer to 90,000 new Westminster people, not just the people on one street who are concerned about a change. That's why we have representative politics, I guess, in Canada. That's the system that we run under.

SPEAKER_00:

One of the solid pieces of advice that I've heard and tried to live by is don't come to a politician as an advocate with a problem, bring them a solution. Going back to the cancellation of the AT funding from the Ministry of Transportation and Transit, they're definitely in a fiscal bind. As you've pointed out, it's a relatively small amount of money, but they have to start cutting back somewhere. One of the solutions that's been put forward is to suggest that they increase automated speed enforcement with red light cameras, speed cameras, and so on. We just did a podcast with the head of the RCMP who reminded us that one police officer on the street costs about$300,000 a year after salary, cars, back end, pensions, and all that are taken into account. For$300,000, you could buy a lot of speed cameras. Why are we not doing that? And using that revenue to fund AT improvements and pick up for the lost revenue that's been canceled. I understand you've uh got your eye on some cameras, Patrick.

SPEAKER_01:

I might have been a little cheeky on Blue Sky suggesting that if uh if anyone knows how to ship a bunch of unused traffic cameras from Ontario to New Westminster, I'm happy to receive them and put them up here. Uh a little cheeky because I don't have the legal ability to put them up here, but we've been calling for the province to enhance their intersection speed camera program for years. This came to a bit of a head last year as we had two pedestrian deaths on McBride, a road in New Westminster that is a provincial highway that has a lot of people speeding beyond the 50-kilometer speed limit on it. Uh, and I'm frustrated by it. I'm I am afraid it's only going to get more dangerous as a road with when the new Petulo Bridge opens and more traffic is funneled at a higher speed along the Petulo Bridge. A ostensibly safer bridge and a safer route is going to make the street in New Westminster less safe as a result of it. I don't know. I think the public is very clearly in favor of automated camera enforcement in British Columbia. The polls are really clear about that. One of the claims I commonly hear in my community is that people just don't respect the rules of the road anymore. Um, I mean, we all see this from our viewpoint. I think a lot of drivers see it as the pedestrians and cyclists don't respect the rules of the road.

SPEAKER_00:

Which is often the case.

SPEAKER_01:

Which is the case, and and the pedestrians and cyclists see it as the cars who don't respect the rules of the road. I think they're all it's all true. I think that um the the question of potential harm of a pedestrian not following the rule of the road versus a vehicle not doing it is a bit different. But uh we I think there is a general sense that it's it's the Wild West out there right now on our roads. And I stand, I see the province um reducing the requirements for testing for new drivers. I see them moving through ICBC, saving money by creating a no-fault system, uh, which again takes some of the burden off of drivers to pay for the cost of road incidents, of road violence. So I see them going in a different direction than the direction I'd like to see them going, which is making our roads safer. I think that automated cameras make sense. I think that modern technology of automated cameras is very different than the photo radar uh debates that we had back in the 90s. Um, I think that it's demonstrated that they make intersections safer. It's demonstrated that they reduce speeds. Um I don't know why we are resistant to installing them. And I am a little concerned about um the cash cow argument, which is the argument that's being successfully used in Ontario right now to fight them. And if we say that we are installing these in order to pay for bike lanes and active transportation infrastructure, that will feed into that cash cow argument. The argument here is that we are gonna save a whole bunch of money on accidents, we're gonna save a whole bunch of money on health care on the healthcare system, we're gonna save a whole bunch of money on police enforcement and courts, and we're gonna make our roads safer. This is a win-win for everybody. And I guess there's a capital cost to installing them that maybe the province is worried about right now. Maybe they're worried about a backlash and not want to deal with the backlash, but bring it on. I'm happy as a city to take on these cameras. Um, if they if they want to give us the authority to install them, that I will invest the money to install them. I want people in New Westminster to know that this is a city when you drive through it. If you don't follow the rules of the road, you will get a ticket. You will get you it will cost you because I care primarily about people in my municipality being safe getting around.

SPEAKER_00:

Do you have the power to install speed cameras?

SPEAKER_01:

No, we do not. We know we're not legally able to do that. We're the only the province has that authority.

SPEAKER_00:

And is there a uh legislated uh place where the revenues go, or is that debated or negotiated on every installation?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, this is one of the common thing feedbacks we have. People always say to me, if you just set up a police uh at the corner of uh, I'm looking at my window right now at Eighth and Royal, they'd be able to hand out tickets all day and be able to pay for all the city's revenue with that. Um the reality is ticket revenue for Motor Vehicle Act violations goes to the province. Um, it is largely returned to municipalities through grants for road safety and other things, but it is returned back on a per capita basis, not on uh like you know, so if we go a bunch more tickets here in New Westminster, I have to pay the police to hand those tickets out, I have to pay the police to go to court to make those tickets stand, but I don't get any benefit from a municipality as far as my revenue from handing out those tickets. And again, a bunch of the cost savings go to the healthcare system, the cost savings go to ICBC, the cost savings go to provincial agencies. So yeah, we can have a conversation about that math. I can see a reason why we don't want every city having the ability to hand out tickets. We don't want to, we don't want to be the Dukes of Hazard and have uh boss hogg just handing out random tickets to pay for the city's revenue. That's probably not a fair way to allocate that revenue. And it's probably, and at some point, the emphasis does go away, go to being revenue driving instead of being to road safety. And we have to make sure the emphasis stays on road safety. That's the only way people will respect and understand and support the political decision, is if we actually demonstrate this isn't a cash cow. This is about keeping your children safe when they're walking to school.

SPEAKER_00:

We're gonna do a future podcast just on this topic and the conditions under which people are more willing to accept these cameras. You know, if you give them notification, if they're in the right places and so on. But I think in the interim, uh we, and I sounds like you, would continue to push for them. And I think the argument of cost savings, if people want to talk about money, then it's not just the revenue, it's also the cost savings. And those should also be taken into account.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, a third of a third of my police of my fire department's time is spent responding to road acts. It's a third of their time. So there's this one other example you don't think of of how a municipality like New Westminster spends a bunch of money on an issue that um enforcement could help with.

SPEAKER_00:

And I'm I'm gonna guess a third or some significant portion of your police officers' time is also spent on traffic enforcement.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, traffic enforcement and responding to accidents. Not so much enforcement as just responding to the incident, you know, managing the traffic situations around incidents, making sure things were secure, and investigating incidents when they happen. Yeah, that takes a bunch of our time as well.

SPEAKER_00:

And your police and fire budgets, I'm guessing, would be more than half of your entire budget?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh, when you put the two together, it's almost half of our budget. Yeah, we're we're relatively efficient here in New Westminster. We have our own police department, which costs a little more than RCMP, but we get really good response for that. But it is, it is definitely the fastest growing part of our budget right now. We're looking at a 5% or 6% tax increase next year, but our police department's looking at another 10% increase after 10% the year before and 10% the year before.

SPEAKER_00:

Patrick, I think we've pretty much covered it off. I really appreciate your insights and your leadership on these things. And uh, we're right there with you at the BC Cycling Coalition and other groups are eager to support you and other politicians who are willing to make those choices and make those decisions and demonstrate in the results a better city and a safer city. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, thank you for giving me the time to chat. Yeah, nice to see you again.

SPEAKER_00:

You've been listening to Bike Sense, an original podcast from the BC Cycling Coalition. If you like the podcast, we'd be grateful if you could leave us a rating on whatever platform you use. You can also subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. If you have comments or suggestions for future episodes, email me at peter.ladner at bccycling.ca. You can help us amplify BC Cycling Coalition's voice by simply becoming a free member at bccycling.ca.