Fun With Statistics, by Michael Smyth

In his most-recent column, Michael Smyth paints TransLink in a negative light, pointing to “surprises” such as Ian Jarvis’s compensation boost, increased administration costs, and Transit Police going over budget. This plays right into his “holy shit TransLink is wasteful” story that people of his ilk eat up with a spoon (just check the comments for good examples).

But you know what? It’s really easy to cherry-pick statistics to suit your narrative like Mr. Smyth has done. Of course he’s never going to mention anything that makes TransLink look good, because that would be balanced and is contrary to anything he stands for.

So let’s try using the same 2014 report he used, and now we can make TransLink look good.

For example, he’s right in that Transit Police cost more in 2014 than in 2013, with expenses up by $3.7 million, or 12.2 per cent. What he doesn’t mention is that this is because of a collective agreement signing going retroactive to 2011, along with filling vacant positions. The agreement will actually result in annual savings of $800,000 because they’ve eliminated some benefits. Of course, Mr. Smyth completely fails to mention this.

TransLink had budgeted $1.506 billion for expenses in 2014, but actually spent $1.427 billion, which is 3.9% under budget. Of course, Mr. Smyth completely fails to mention this.

Corporate expenses were 10.3 per cent under budget. Bus operating expenses were 1.2 per cent under budget. Roads and bridges were 24.2 per cent under budget. Of course, Mr. Smyth completely fails to mention this.

TransLink’s revenues were up 10.2 per cent over 2013, and TransLink brought in $26.9 million more than it spent in 2014. Of course, Mr. Smyth completely fails to mention this.

See Mr. Smyth? I can cherry-pick numbers too, and pluck statistics to suit my narrative. And as the saying goes, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Justin Trudeau, King of the Flip-Flop

On December 3, 2014, Canada’s Parliament voted on the following:

That, in the opinion of the House, (a) the next federal election should be the last conducted under the current first-past-the-post electoral system which has repeatedly delivered a majority of seats to parties supported by a minority of voters, or under any other winner-take-all electoral system; and (b) a form of mixed-member proportional representation would be the best electoral system for Canada.

Justin Trudeau voted no on that.

On June 16, 2015, a mere six months later, Justin Trudeau stated “the 2015 election will be the last federal election using first-past-the-post.”

I hereby dub Justin Trudeau as King of the Flip-Flop.

Let It Go (Brown)

In the Lower Fraser and South Coast regions of British Columbia in March 2015, the snowpack levels were at record lows, at 26% and 13% normal levels.

In May 2015, both Environment Canada and AccuWeather predicted a hotter-than-normal summer for BC, one to one-and-a-half degrees warmer.

In May 2015 only 4.2 millimetres of rain fell at YVR, 6.5 per cent of the normal monthly rainfall.

All of these are pointing to two things: this summer is going to be hot, and this summer is going to be dry.

Will we have another 2003, where the extremely dry summer lead to the most expensive natural disaster in BC history? After that disastrous year, the BC government released Dealing With Drought, which states that

Managing community water supplies is a local government and local supplier responsibility. Planning will help your community to protect community supplies for drinking water, sanitation, and fire protection; protect fish and aquatic ecosystems, and sustain industrial development and economic activity.

Unfortunately summer months see residential water consumption spike by two to four times when compared to the rest of the year, and with hotter temperatures expected over the summer, we need to reduce this spike. While Metro Vancouver has lawn watering regulations in place, these restrictions will probably not be enough to conserve enough water in our reservoirs. We all need to use less water over the summer, and one way to do this is to let our lawns go brown.

To help promote this, I am asking City Council to request that the large lawn in front of City Hall go brown over the summer by turning off the automated irrigation system until the fall.

By going brown, we not only save on water, but a brown lawn also requires much less maintenance than a green lawn. A brown lawn does not need mowing, which frees up parks maintenance that can be allocated elsewhere. By not running a mower, the city reduces its air and noise pollution contributions, and saves money on gasoline and mower maintenance.

A brown lawn can also spur discussions about water conservation, using drought-tolerant plants in our landscaping, or the use of grey water systems for irrigation. All of these will help to reduce our impact on the environment, and I’m calling on the City of New Westminster to set an example.

Let it go brown!

New Westminster’s First Parklet

Earlier today Jonathan Coté announced New Westminster’s first parklet. Strictly speaking he wasn’t the first to announce it, as it was in last night’s Committee of the Whole agenda, but who reads those things?

For those who don’t know, a parklet is a mini park set up as an extension of a sidewalk. They’re not very large, typically fifteen to twenty meters long, and about three meters wide. They’re places for people, set up to allow people to meet, sit, and relax. Vancouver has five parklets, and they’ve been big hits almost everywhere they’ve been put in.

Philadelphia’s University City District did a study looking at why some parklets work better than others and found that the most successful parklet in Philadelphia was located in a medium-density residential neighbourhood, outside a taco shop and a popsicle store. Ideally, you want a main adjacent business with modest interior seating capacity, coupled with high turnover of that seating. You also want large windows on the main adjacent business, which gives a sense of connection between the business interior and the exterior parklet.

That said, where is this new parklet going to be located? In Sapperton, on E Columbia Street between Braid and Cedar. Specifically, it will be right in front of Fratelli Bakery and The Bloom Bloom Room, right where this black SUV is parked:

Note that that picture is from June 2014, and The Bloom Bloom Room opened beside Fratelli’s three weeks ago.

Do those businesses meet the criteria? Fratelli’s probably meets the first one (I don’t know, I’ve never been). The windows on both businesses are large and inviting (and I hope The Bloom Bloom Room has removed the bars from their windows!). I suspect that if the BBR puts flower displays out front, it’ll make the whole area even more inviting.

To put things into more context, here’s the current sidewalk:

…and here’s the proposed sidewalk with the parklet:

Now, of course, this wouldn’t be a post about New Westminster without some discussion of parking. This parklet is going to remove two parking spots. Luckily, that end of Sapperton doesn’t get much business and, as such, there is almost always parking available. And if we go back to that University City District study, they found that business owners reported a 20 percent increase in sales in the two weeks following a parklet installation. This jives with stats from California that found a 9-20 percent average increase in local business revenue.

This is to be the first of five New Westminster parklets installed over the next five years. I look forward to visiting Sapperton’s once it’s installed!

Announcing the Plebiscite Predictor!

The Metro Vancouver Transportation and Transit Plebiscite is finally coming to a close. During the mail-in period, Elections BC has been releasing the interim ballot returns broken down by municipality.

You can find out all sorts of things, like which municipality has the highest turnout, or… which municipality has the highest turnout. Okay, it’s dull.

But the most recent data release allows us to try and guess what the result is going to be. To help us out, I whipped up the Plebiscite Guesser Program Thingy 5000.

All you have to do is guess the percentage of votes the yes side will receive for each municipality, and it’ll tell you which side wins!

Here’s an incredibly realistic situation: every municipality votes 40% no, except for Vancouver, which votes 77% yes. Yes side wins!

Keep in mind that the results you get are actually wrong: everybody loses in this stupid plebiscite that we never should have had in the first place because fuck you Christy Clark.