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The Weirdness That is Victoria Resident Parking

Byoliveridley
Picture of many cars parked on both sides of a street

Donald Shoup, the author of the high cost of free parking and a god-like figure in the urban circles that look at parking in cities/towns and say “too much, too cheap!” (we’re very popular at parties) died recently. His death reminded me that for a while now, I have wanted to talk about Victoria’s strange and ridiculous neighbourhood resident parking system that rewards already wealthy people with free public land to store their personal belongings.

I’ve always lived close enough to downtown that the parking spots in front of my home had been restricted, either no parking or two hour parking. So I hadn’t really paid much attention to the resident parking rules except to know when I could get away with parking in a residential zone for a few minutes. That changed when I moved to North Park and discovered that around the corner from our new place, I could leave my car parked with zero restrictions, all the time! So, I was curious and started ducking (is that what you say when you use Duckduckgo?!) to see how I could get a permit? Turns out, there are no permits! And it’s FREE! You park your car on your block till someone complains about you, then parking enforcement gives you a ticket. You appeal this ticket with documentary proof of your address, and voila, ticket is rescinded and your license plate is entered into the system. WHAT?!

First off, FREE? Parking especially in Victoria is a scarce commodity, and the people who live in these blocks are already either relatively well-off (relative, don’t compare yourself to the Westons!) or renting from the wealthy. Resident blocks are typically found only in what we call “residential” neighbourhoods, and by residential we mean single family home-heavy, not rental building with hundreds of residents. This is a massive subsidy. In my neighourhood, I see commercial parking advertised for 250-300$ a month. Perhaps there’s less demand in Rocklands, but at a minimum, that’s approximately 160 sq feet (or 15 m^2) of public land that’s paved, maintained and given over to store your stuff (if your stuff is a car, good luck if it’s a tent and you want shelter) for free!

Secondly, a SNITCH DRIVEN SYSTEM? Someone’s neighbour with little better to do has to complain and then we waste city resources on writing a ticket, sending one, an appeals process, all of which is time spent by a city official that generates cost and no revenue? Where does this money come from? I presume from property taxes?

At a time when we’re struggling to pay for the mandatory police-dominated municipal budget and everything else that needs building and maintaining, why are we giving away storage on public space for free? We need to start the discussion around what’s appropriate payment for a resident to store their car in a well-maintained public space. Given it’s not guaranteed parking I guess it can’t be $300 a month which is full retail value, but some reasonable fraction right? Remember that in most of these neighbourhoods, your home already has a garage that’s meant for car storage but has been repurposed as extra house because you can store your car for free. Even if we start at a $200 per year, that gives a permit to hang in the car/sticker so we can stop this snitch-based enforcement mechanism.

Anyway, nothing’s likely to happen given how loud the people who own homes and thus assume ownership of the free parking in front of their homes get, and how afraid councillors are of loud home owners. But I’m still going to advocate for a better system when I talk to someone on council next. Donald Shoup would insist!

Anyway, the always excellent SIdewalking blog has a very informative post on the same issue, check that one out too!

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  • Americanize Me? No Thanks

    Byoliveridley

    The Tyee gets all feisty on the subject of American-Canadian “integration”.

    It all got me to thinking about just why on earth Canadians would want to integrate into the U.S.Let’s be clear. This goes way beyond just having a bad neighbour. It’s about moving in with them.Don’t get me wrong. We can actually feel sorry for folks next door. They weren’t always this bad. But there is just no question that today they are a dangerously dysfunctional family. A lot of them are ill, but the other half refuses to come to their assistance. The old man squanders the family’s considerable income on his gun collection. They foul their own nests and squander their resources.The family behaves as if the neighbourhood’s rules don’t apply to them: they are noisy, pushy and if you try to reason with them they bully you. Hey, it’s not just our neighbourhood — they bully people all over town.

    Americanize Me? No Thanks :: Views :: thetyee.ca

    One more highlight…

    But what about the two decade long increase in U.S. productivity, constantly touted by Bay Street as a model for Canada? According to Doug Henwood of the Guardian newspaper, much of that increase can be traced to the enormous amount of forced, unpaid overtime by both waged and salaried employees. Americans work longer hours per year than those in any other industrialized country

    According to this report, Canadians worked 4 fewer weeks per year than Americans in 2002, which is good. Canada’s right in the middle of industrialized countries as far as hours worked per year goes, no need to emulate the US in that regard.

    Blogged with the Flock Browser

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    Fun with maps: BC Smart meters and the 2013 election

    Byoliveridley

    SmartMeterVotingMapI have been MOOC’ing this summer and learning how to do maps. Geography as an adult is much more fun than my 10th grade geography class.

    Chad Skelton over at the Vancouver Sun intrigued me with his data retrieval and mapping of British Columbia’s Smart Meter uptake. if you’re not from BC, here’s a short intro (#BCpoli-aware feel free to skip the next two paragraphs).

    BC Hydro is the government owned (Crown Corporation) utility that produces and distributes electricity for the province of British Colombia in Canada. In 2011, BC Hydro announced its intention to spend $$$ upgrading all its electricity meters to “smart meters”. These meters are capable of being read via wifi by meter readers, and potentially also give BC residents the ability to monitor their electricity usage in near-real time.

    Many concerns were raised about the smart meters. One was about the costs of the program vs. perceived benefits. The others, which gained traction were around an emerging movement in BC connecting wifi, cell signals and wifi-enabled smart meters with a whole variety of health effects. While few, if any of these health concerns have been actually causally linked to smart meters, or even to the amorphous descriptor “wifi radiation”, these health concerns have gained traction even among official bodies such as the Union of BC Municipalities, municipal councils and school boards. The BC provincial election in 2013 was a chance for people to voice their concerns. The opposition parties all brought the issue up during canvassing.

    For my peer assessment mapping project, I wanted to see if areas of relatively high smart meter refusal were correlated or co-located in any way with voting against the ruling BC Liberals.

    This is the map I made, my first ever map not scrawled on paper.


    View Larger Map

    Reading the Map

    The electoral districts are colour-coded by BC Liberal Party percentage, darker means higher vote for the BC Liberals. I chose this rather than “who won” because I was looking more for an anti-BC Liberal effect. I will, at some point in time, try to overlay “who won” as well. The smart meter refusal data is in three different coloured and sized circles. Large and red means higher refusal, and small and green means low refusal. This is a hybrid of a graduated circle symbol scheme and a diverging colour scheme. Clearly, using points to represent areas is a big limitation, but it is sufficient for a quick peek.

    Anything to See?

    • An overwhelming majority of people had smart meters installed, > 90% in most places. So, BC Hydro’s brute force, no options, default installation plan was mostly successful
    • Places of higher than normal refusal tended to vote against the BC Liberals. I believe this had more to do with existing anti-BC-Lib tendencies influencing smart meter refusal rather than the other way around.
    • Urban centres like Victoria and Vancouver had relatively low rates of refusal. Is this because of higher apartment proportions, or because smart meter refusal was restricted to a small number of high information, highly motivated individuals whose number varied by location and whose numbers in places like Victoria were muted by larger populations?. Note that my home area of Victoria had the most (7300) rejected smart meters, even though the percentage is small. The ageing white (l)iberal enclave of Saltspring Island (Ganges), aka hippieville, Canada had by far the highest refusal percentage. So, is this smart meter refusal map mostly a hippie population distribution map?

    The take home message for me was that the anti-smartmeter movement had little influence on the election, which was most likely won on the usual and mundane issues of the economy, trust and corruption.

    Methods

    1. I downloaded data on smart meter refusal from the Chad Skelton’s post and Tableau public
    2. The data from BC Hydro is categorized using their division of BC into distinct geographical billing areas. I used billing area names to geotag the information. The site http://www.findlatitudeandlongitude.com/ has a feature where addresses can be uploaded in bulk via a text interface, and the site returns the place, and latitude longitude. I added province and country to the place names, and edited ambiguous names to make the search more effective.
    3. I uploaded this table to arcgis to form one layer. Arcgis is a big and expensive GIS software, with a limited free online playpen where this map is displayed. I used graduated circles and natural breaks to represent the different levels of smart meter refusal. A big limitation to this approach is that the BC Hydro billing areas are just that, areas, not points on a map. However, the area boundaries are not available as a shape file, and geographical areas vary widely. So, the points correspond to the centre of the nearest big population area mentioned in the BC Hydro billing area description
    4. I downloaded BC electoral district shape files from Paul Ramsey of Open Geo. These shape files are an improved version of those available from Elections BC, again, thanks to Chad Skelton for pointing me in this direction
    5. Elections BC lists 2013 provincial election results information by party by district. However, there is no publicly downloadable mapped source for the election data results. I used the open source GIS desktop software QGIS to open the shape file and add the attribute of BC Liberal percentage to the shape file. I uploaded this shape file to arcgis and layered it with the smart meter refusal rate graduated circles to look for patterns.

    Maps are fun to play with, and I know very very little about them, which is a great combination. Every minute I spent making this map was a learning experience. Comments and feedback, please. I think I will slowly incorporate mapping into my skill set. But I think I will use open source/free solutions in the future.

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    Let all residents vote in Canada

    Byoliveridley

    BC has municipal elections in October this year and I will be voting for the candidates whose policies, values and voting records on housing affordability, harm reduction, and walk/bike/transit friendliness match mine the closest. I might even have an endorsement or three up my sleeve. This year, I will also be asking Victoria’s municipal election candidates where they stand on letting permanent residents vote in our elections.

    In the 2016 census, nearly 2.5 million people identified as non-citizen residents, out of which two million were permanent residents. The permanent residents live here, work here, play here, pay taxes, grow pensions, volunteer, commit crimes (yes, they’re like any other Canadian) and more, just like those with Canadian citizenship. However, they have no say in who represents them municipally, provincially or federally. I find this unfair, so do many people, including the Vancouver city council, who passed a resolution in 2018 (PDF) calling for the province to approve voting by permanent residents. This globe news article provides a good backgrounder.

    In short, municipalities have run into the conservative buzzsaw that is the state of our (mostly) conservative or liberal provincial governments. This won’t change unless more people speak up.

    The opposition is mainly that non-citizens are not sufficiently “invested” in the country, they’re too “new”. The more paranoid ones talk about divided loyalties, and bring up stories of foreigners being flown in to vote. Perhaps they should try getting a visitor visa to Canada (spoiler alert, difficult).  People who judge other people’s belonging or membership, however, usually have other items on their agenda. Let’s just leave it at that.

    From my perspective, extending the vote is common sense, fair and just, and that’s that.

    Permanent residents? The case is simple. They’re like citizens in all ways, except for voting, and having to renew every five years. If you want to make life difficult, you could ask them to renew voter registration every five years too, but really, you shouldn’t. Are you concerned about “loyalties”? If you are, then you should not be letting the thousands of dual British-Canadian passport holders vote.

    How about residents without the permanent residency paperwork? Don’t see why not? If you’re concerned about timing of residency, put a time limit on the voting registration. There are very few non-permanent residents in Canada, half a million at last count, so, impact is small.

    Undocumented? May be difficult, especially with visibility and its consequences. But, I would support it if we can find a solution that protects people while allowing for verifying identity for voting.

    Of course, giving people a vote does not solve most problems, but that’s not the point. We see conservatives south of the boarder ceaselessly chipping away at the right of non-white people to vote. We need to be be going in the opposite direction on representation.

    So, here are the questions on this issue I intend to ask Victoria’s municipal candidates in 2018:

    1. Do you support efforts to extend voting rights to all residents in Victoria?
    2. If you do, what are you willing/able to do to make this happen at the municipal level at least, then at the provincial level and federal levels?

    A “no” on #1 is going to make it difficult to vote for you. A “yes” on #1 without some coherent plan on #2 means that you need to think about it some more.

    Are you with me? Would you be willing to ask prospective candidates the same questions? Should there be additional questions? Do these questions make sense, or should they be reworked?

    Cross-posted from interrobang

     

  • Victoria, not so quiet after all

    Byoliveridley

    One man is dead and two others are in hospital after a shooting near a popular downtown Victoria nightclub early yesterday.Officers were called to the scene around 2:50 a.m. after a report of shots fired outside 751 View St., between Douglas and Blanshard streets.Yesterday morning, forensic investigators inspected the body as it lay covered by a white tarp on the edge of the sidewalk in front of the exit to the View Street city parkade, about two buildings down from the Red Jacket nightclub.

    One dead, two in hospital after shooting outside bar
    Yikes…

  • Facebook and deep customer tracking, I want my data!

    Byoliveridley

    To nobody’s surprise, Facebook, just like any other entity selling you stuff, or selling you to people who sell you stuff is trying to connect more and more sets of previously unconnected data. This particular case deals with brick and mortar store data that is linked with customers’ email addresses and loyalty cards.

    Facebook will be using Datalogix to prepare reports for its advertisers about who, if anyone, bought more of their stuff after they ran ads on the social network. But by matching your Facebook profile with your CVS bill, this means that Facebook has the potential to know some of your most intimate details (my, that’s a lot of bunion cream you’re buying!), and the privacy concerns are enormous. When DoubleClick attempted something similar to this, user-backlash ultimately led them to cancel the project.

    Can Facebook Possibly Build a Business Model That Isnt Inherently Creepy? – Derek Thompson – The Atlantic.

    Corporations (more than government, open data activists!) have been deep mining our data for years. It is part of creating the information asymmetry that enables profits to be made. You may remember this story about Target (coming to Canada as soon as we can learn to say Tarjay) and how they outed a teen’s pregnancy.

     About a year after Pole created his pregnancy-prediction model, a man walked into a Target outside Minneapolis and demanded to see the manager. He was clutching coupons that had been sent to his daughter, and he was angry, according to an employee who participated in the conversation.

    “My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”

    Companies’ ability to reduce us to a shopping probability statistic is only going to get better as they learn to connect more of our data and computing gets faster. Can regulation keep up? Can customer outrage keep up with companies offering us coupons to keep us temporarily happy as impulse centres in our brain are carefully triggered for profit? Can customer outrage even keep up with the barrage of occurrences?

    Receipt 2.0

    I don’t think we can keep up. So, I want my data. I want information on what I bought, when I bought it, where I bought it in a standardized open data format. No, not a paper receipt, not a paper receipt scanner, but something that can be beamed to my phone, or emailed to me. I want to know when I buy coffee. Can I correlate my shopping habits with my mood?  Do I buy more random electronics when I need a pick me up? What is the spread in the price I paid for my favourite cereal? Do some stores price it differently on Wednesdays? I want apps that can mine my data and tell me where to buy my cereal, or when not to buy. I want apps that can tap into a product database and give me a carbon footprint, or a fair trade pass/fail, or a local product breakdown.

    Also, I do not want to re-enter the same bits of data multiple times and increase error. A payment made to my dentist should be sent directly to my extended health “insurance” provider for a refund. It should also go to my tax receipts virtual pile and await reimbursement. Any tax deductions can easily be tagged and directly entered into my tax preparation software at the end of the year. if I want to expense something for work, I should just be able to tag them and send them along. I can’t imagine how much time and effort this will save in error checking, manual entry, auditing, so much more.

    Some of this is possible with systems like Mint, but they operate on a payment level, not on a line item level.

    The new mobile payment system Square (not in Canada yet) shows some potential, so does Intuit’s GoPayment, which is available in Canada. But these payment systems emphasize ease of payment on both sides of the transaction, not the ability to mine our own data.

    Can this happen via the market with no regulatory push? I don’t see how. Reducing information asymmetry is not in corporations’ interest. So it will have to be regulated. You have our data, just give it to us.

    Not to mention, this is the “free market” way to go. Think of all the innovation that can be unleashed on the consumer side. Think of the apps that can provide better financial advice, the apps that can collate data at city/regional level and help consumers make better decisions.

    Will companies have to spend money to make this happen? Yes. This will not be challenging for larger companies who already spend millions deep-mining our data. What about small business? This is where small tweaks to new systems like Square or GoPayment can be the game changer. Square already charges less for a swipe than a typical Visa transaction. So, I would see local business as saving money. When I buy local, I usually feel a bit more connection with the product. Imagine seeing my decision reinforced by data from Receipt 2.0. Small local business cannot data mine, but can generate enough goodwill with local consumers to get access to their data. Unlike Target, when my corner soap store does something unethical with my data, they cannot survive the bad publicity.

    Are there privacy concerns? Yes. But our privacy is already compromised the minute we pay anything other than cash, or use the internet (Tor users, stop smirking). Good regulation can address most concerns.

    My information is being used to make me a consume more, I want it to make me a better “consumer”. Open data efforts have focused intensely on public and government data, while privacy activists have tried unsuccessfully to stop private data gathering. I would like open data advocates to look carefully at liberating corporate mined data as well.

    Featured Image courtesy the Culturally Authentic Picture Lexicon used under a creative commons licence.

  • | |

    Who is Local?

    Byoliveridley

    “Ahmadi is still months away from getting permanent resident status, putting him in the unlucky group of middle-class British Columbians who have found themselves targeted by a tax purportedly imposed to crack down on rich real estate speculators from overseas”

    I’ve never been this hopeless

    I would not call Hamed Ahmadi unlucky, he’s a victim of the all too common policy apparatus that confuses residency with visa status. The BC non-resident tax of 15% on properties is supposed to target “foreign” (read Chinese) investors buying in Vancouver with no intentions of living there. I presume there are multiple other ways to determine residency and “localness” for the purpose of determining who lives here and who does not. The BC government, in its haste to demonstrate it was doing something, took the easy route and used visa status as a proxy.

    Hamed lives and works in BC, which meets my definition of local. While a speculation tax on non-residents is a reasonable approach, using visa status to determine residency, and providing no sensible exceptions for locals with alternative paper work is lazy and thoughtless policy making, so is not providing exceptions for people with home buying applications already in process. It’s almost as if someone looked at the polls and press and wrote the law in a day.

    In many ways, this is personal for me because I lived in the US for 10+ years under various non-permanent visas that left me vulnerable to these poorly designed, thoughtless policy measures. I lived in the same town for 10 years, was very much a local by the time I’d left, with a stable set of friends, family, work, places I shopped in, hiked to, causes I supported, volunteer work I did, and more. So, Hamed’s story could have been mine, and in some smaller ways, was mine for other parts of my life.

    “CTV News spoke with BC Liberal cabinet minister Andrew Wilkinson on Wednesday and asked several times for comment on Ahmadi’s situation. Wilkinson responded by repeating a piece of blanket advice for the people impacted. “Those who find themselves affected by the tax should seek legal advice because individual circumstances vary,” Wilkinson said.

    This is typical of policy makers who are so removed from the day to day lives of the people whose behaviour they seek to regulate. The casual assumption that regular people can afford professionals who bill at multiple hundreds of dollars an hour speaks more about the types of people these ministers hang out with than anything else. But this sounds familiar too, I needed to consult lawyers multiple times to help me with immigration paper work.

    As someone with a high level of institutional trust, and who thinks governments can affect our lives for the better with sound and thoughtful policy interventions, these types of hasty policy making are deeply disappointing. There are multiple other policy measures to make housing more affordable. The CCPA just released a comprehensive document of policies, focusing on the actual problem, the lack of affordable housing. Investment in affordable housing with a focus on cohousing and social housing, and zoning changes that reduce the protections afforded to affluent property owners would go a long way.

    Originally posted on Interrobang 04-August-2016

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