It's not a road, it's a loading dock

So, have you been downtown lately? Tried driving in the morning rush? Had to go along Seymour or Homer? How about Hastings? Cordova? Richards? Dunsmuir? It really doesn't matter. Likely, regardless of which street you've been on, you've been stopped for five, maybe ten minutes trying to get by a construction site that's spilled out into the street and is blocking two or maybe three lanes.

As much as we travelers might believe that major downtown thoroughfares are dedicated to the smooth flow of bus, bike and automobile traffic, the Vancouver City works department believes that their true calling is to grow up to be loading docks. If you're a user of the road system, it seems your time at home and at work has been sacrificed on the altar of ... well I'm not sure, actually.

It's not sure because it's not clear what blocking of the traffic lane adjacent to a construction site is supposed to accomplish. It seems that the curb lane beside every building site is automatically handed over to the construction project. From the moment the permit is issued, the curb lane is permanently occupied by the site's dumpster and a collection of shiny pickup trucks. I suppose it's supposed to be used as a place to handle the site's deliveries, but in reality it's just the first lane in a multi-lane road-block circus that goes on for years. It might save the builders money, but the public's time is not free.

And that's why the practice is so extraordinarily wasteful. When it became common practice isn't clear, but it's been overused and taken to ridiculous extremes (remember the chaos on Cordova at the Woodwards' site?). It's just got to stop.

Building construction for new buildings is not a public priority that stands ahead of the needs of people that need to get to work, to get home, or to just get around during the day. Twenty years ago, construction sites handled all of their loading and unloading, except for a few critical moments, by having a loading area on the site. City Hall treats road user's time as a limitless and free asset. The truth however is that every minute wasted by waiting increases environmental damage and is time and money that could be better spent.

Now, I agree that sites will occasionally need to use the roads for loading and unloading. A "usage fee" of, say $50,000 per lane per day would certainly focus their thinking very precisely on only blocking traffic on days they really need to block it. Until then, having a blocked curb lane is a perquisite for the builders that's granted by city hall, paid for by the public, and managed by absolutely no-one.

It's time to end the practice.