In support of country lanes

Article and photos by Michael Klassen

Last November at one of our final Vancouver City Planning Commission (VCPC) meetings, I presented a polemic to my fellow commissioners, as well as two key members of City staff responsible for the appearance of Vancouver streets. They were Sandy James, Senior City Planner in charge of Greenways Projects, and Rhys Williams, the Manager of Streets Design. Having representatives from the Planning and Engineering departments to me felt like a real coup. What a privilege it was to be in the presence of people from City Hall responsible for critical decisions in Vancouver’s public realm.

Going into the meeting I reminded myself that I had written this presentation in isolation. Apart from one of my neighbours who is also a devoted supporter of the Country Lane, and my wife who proofed the PowerPoint, I was going in cold. I sent the presentation in advance to Sandy for feedback, but didn’t hear back other than to get a confirmation she would attend the meeting.

As someone who was able to buy a house in East Vancouver, I consider myself extremely lucky given how expensive it is. We house-hunted for months just as the market was starting to get stupid. Remember not so long ago when any home on the market had prospective buyers crowding through the front door? The home we ended up owning backed on to one of the most extraordinary lane treatments I’d ever seen. I almost felt like my car didn’t belong there. What we stumbled upon was the very first Country Lane, built as part of a three lane demonstration project funded by the City of Vancouver. It was approved by Council in the summer of 2002, and the first lane was officially opened in November that year.

As we moved in about four months after that, my wife and I were not around for the genesis of this project. The Country Lane was very much a neighbourhood-driven initiative, a veritable partnership with the City. Photos show neighbours on their hands and knees laying paving bricks, shoveling dirt and planting gardens to prepare the lane for re-opening. I know the faces from the images. They came from blocks around and from homes far enough from the lane you might wonder why they cared about it. The fact is that the Country Lane stood to become a very important symbol of the community, which dubbed itself Mountain View after the nearby cemetery.

Mountain View follows the moribund commercial district along Fraser Street south of King Edward. When Knight Street became the principal north/south commuter route on the Eastside after the old Fraser Street bridge to Richmond closed, local shopping in the area waned. For many years the residential community surrounding Fraser Street struggled with increasing instances of social disease - open prostitution, drug dealing and homes turned into grow-ops. A few very brave and committed members of Mountain View decided to rise up against the status quo, forming foot patrols and a neighbourhood committee that worked to weed out the bad guys. In doing so they formed very strong relations with the City of Vancouver, who reciprocated with lots of help from planning and engineering.

One of the most clever accomplishments of the Mountain View neighbours was to narrow 700-block East 28th Avenue. That street is one of the few contiguous routes between Fraser and Knight streets. As a result it was used as a shortcut for cab drivers and other hurried commuters. This happened because cars could pass by each other safely without braking. So in an unprecedented move (not since repeated by the City), they allowed the neighbourhood to narrow the street by widening the boulevards. Soil and railway ties were trucked in to expand the width of the boulevards - the only wooden curbs in the whole city. With parked cars on both sides, it became a single-lane thoroughfare. Overnight the cabs and the speeding commuters found another way from Fraser to Knight and back.

The Country Lane was practically a “gift” to Mountain View. There are thousands of lanes in the city, and many deserving blocks. At this time the citizens of Mountain View, in this old working class neighbourhood, became the favoured sons and daughters of Vancouver City Hall.

Of the three lanes produced by the demonstration project, the south lane of 700-block East 27th was arguably the most attractive and successful implementation of the program. It certainly was the most expensive. Due to significant grading of the surface, plus the need to remove excess fill, the pouring of concrete, coupled with the learning curve on how to implement the so-called “ecogrid” across the surface of the lanes, the 27th avenue lane used up more than half of the $250,000 allotted to the demonstration project by Council.

Even with some economies of scale, the lanes were going to be too expensive a proposition for a wide implementation in the city. Which is why they wallowed for the years to follow. The City offered them to neighbourhoods willing to pay for the installation, and an ongoing “maintenance fee” (the lane on 27th has received no maintenance in its six year lifespan), but no block stepped forward to pay the price.

By making the economic argument only, country lanes are a non-starter. They are too expensive, when compared to traditional asphalt, to build. It is the social and environment value of the country lanes that makes them compelling.

Back at our VCPC meeting it was interesting to witness the reaction of the engineer and the planner. They both listened intently taking notes, as you would expect from Vancouver’s professional senior staff. In my slide presentation I described how the Country Lane program had stalled after a promising beginning. Often over the preceding five years I ran into people who came to the lane just to see it. All were impressed, and many wished they could have one in their neighbourhood. I tried to be encouraging, but in all those years another country lane (besides the three from the trial project) was never built.

I reported there was anecdotal evidence that Vancouver’s powerful Engineering Department considered country lanes to be a nuisance. We had evidence of a city truck driver deliberately using his tires to rip up some of the landscaping just a few months after its launch. If Engineering wouldn’t embrace the lanes, they would never catch on.

The presentation described how the Country Lane had become a jewel of the neighbourhood. It was a place people wanted to be. We hold our annual community barbeque, and other events in the lane. The gardens and greenery during the Spring and Summer made it a beautiful street. Even with heavy rains the grass surface never seemed overwhelmed. Unlike traditional asphalt lanes, it was never overly hot and dusty in summertime, and neighbours always picked up litter. Drivers rarely if ever speed down the lane. Shopping cart people seem to pass it by. I called it a “thin park” in a park-deficient part of Vancouver.

I argued that instead of paving lanes tip-to-toe, that we revisit how lanes were surfaced for previous generations, the graded gravel surface. At least surface water could percolate into the ground rather than being channeled into costly storm sewer systems. The “heat island” effect and greenhouse gases emanating from asphalt demanded some kind of offset strategy from the City. I even proposed that we consider a “tax” for traditional asphalt lanes to subsidize green lanes, which impact the environment less. Now that Vancouver was moving forward with laneway housing, it must look at ways to make back lanes livable places.

It was a lot to throw at staff in a 15-minute presentation, but they continued to listen politely.

Engineering staff reported to Council in October that they had a revised design for lanes, using asphalt in a “centre strip” shouldered by permeable surfaces (grass and gardens). They argued, with not much evidence, that country lanes cost up to four times more than traditional asphalt lanes. My response in a letter to Council, and in my presentation is that let’s not rule out green lanes. Let’s find ways to make them more affordable.

I was done talking, and now waited for the rebuttal from staff. Rhys did most of the speaking. He assured me that the cost of the green lanes were prohibitive due to the grading and removal of surface materials. Something I confess I didn’t know about the lanes is that they remove the top 10 inches of surface, then replace it with soil and concrete strips. In my mind I was thinking about how we could achieve the same effect (green, permeable lanes) without the massive earth-moving.

Regarding the “hostility” Engineering had toward these lanes, Rhys disagreed. He assured me that the city would adopt more of them if they could justify it. Another staff person quietly assured me that it was true that Engineering had some misgivings about country lanes.

We opened up the floor for comments. My fellow commissioner Setty Pendakur, a former City Councillor during Art Phillips TEAM administration in the early 1970s, added his own interesting views. Something Setty said twigged an idea for me which I shared with everyone after the comments concluded.

“Why not create a city-wide contest for neighbourhoods to compete in, and make the prize a country lane?”

It was as though a light went off in Rhys and Sandy. Williams told me twice he really liked that idea. With thousands of lanes in the city, many not suited to country lane treatment, the decision as to where the lanes would be built could be a challenge. However, if you ask neighbourhoods to do creative presentations, and give maybe one, two or three lanes each year as prizes for the best response, the benefits could be huge.

First, you could get neighbourhoods really excited about community-building, and provide incentives for them to show what makes their community unique and special. Neighbours working together for a single purpose can be very powerful as Mountain View proved. The cost of a few lanes could be justified in the city’s capital budget. Communities would benefit by getting valuable green space in park-deprived blocks. It even makes higher density living more palatable in areas where parks are out of easy walking distance.

In the end, the best idea from our meeting was a happy accident. Yes, we would all like more green spaces and more country lanes would be great if we could afford it. But how about making neighbourhoods do some of the work, exploiting local leadership and creativity to make communities greener?

As we wrapped up Sandy James thanked me with the advice to keep pushing this issue. “It’s when we hear from the public that we do our best work,” she remarked. I’ve been a country lane booster for nearly six years now, and I’ll continue to be one moving forward. I hope that others from across Vancouver and in other cities will take a look at these great public amenities, and find ways to bring them to their block.

Editor’s note: Below is the slideshow presentation created by Michael Klassen.

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Michael Klassen is outgoing Vice-Chair of the Vancouver City Planning Commission. He writes about urban affairs at www.CityCaucus.com.