What Fresh Hell Is This?

God, Vancouver sure loves cars.

(Note: this posting was edited a few hours later.)

After living in France, and then Nova Scotia, with side trips to Montreal, we actually felt good about returning to Vancouver. One of the big reasons for that was our memory that Vancouver was a green city, a city that likes bikes and people, that tries to make the world a cleaner and safer place.

Wow. Were we mistaken.

Despite its reputation, Vancouver is a city that first and foremost exists largely to support cars.

It feels as if every third or fourth street, east-west or north-south, is at least four lanes, and often six. Lanes and traffic lights are set up with one goal: to move as many cars as possible, as fast as possible, from Point A to Point B.

We’re living on the third floor of an old apartment building at Fir and 16th in Vancouver. The noise levels are beyond annoying. The traffic flow is unceasing. Just the endless noise of rubber tires on pavement grinds you down and seems to never, ever stop.

What we’ve come quickly to understand is that it’s not just the rubber and asphalt, it’s about the speed that the cars are moving. Slower cars are quieter, but in Vancouver there are no slow cars.

On top the noise from regular, single-occupied, passenger cars, are the busses, and the dump trucks, and the ambulances and fire trucks, and the Ferraris and Lamborghinis (though honestly, I love the sound of those) and, dear god, the motorcycles.

I know bikers, and have ridden bikes, and yes I get the idea of “loud pipes save lives” but nothing disrupts your day, or upsets your nerves, more than when some asshole picks our window as the target for a great, loud BRAAAAP!.

(Incidentally, Hemmings reports that loud pipes are still pretty much unheard inside most passenger cars.)

In all of this though, one thing stands out. In a city that is promoted as green, and even anti-car, I’ve seen no sign of anyone actually doing anything to police automobile traffic.

Speed? Noise? General bad driving? Giant trucks and busses on every street? Abrupt and exceedingly loud racket late at night? None of these things is policed in Vancouver.

No-one in Vancouver’s police, or municipal workforce, seems to have traffic enforcement as part of their job. The cops in particular won’t even come out to a traffic accident unless someone has been severely injured. It’s as if automobiles are simply beneath them.

What saddens me is that there are ways to make a city more livable.

Narrow the streets. Slow down the cars. Manage what you let drive in your town. And make sure that drivers follow the rules.

This all takes political will, and political courage of a sort that I just don’t see in Vancouver. These things could be changed, and it would make this city more liveable and pleasant, And healthier.

Sadly I can’t see that happening.