Rain Stops (CityStudio #3)

Last night I decided to leave enough time to walk to meet friends for dinner rather than rush and hop on the bicycle as I typically do. I am wholly aware of the healthfulness of downtime, but it never seems to win the day for me as much as it should. I am glad I gave it a rare priority last night.

As I strolled through the alleyways of Mt. Pleasant and across the vast lawn of Robson park, I watched my breath for the first time this year. I also smelled the damp earth underfoot and could not help being brought back to the days of field sports, under lights, as a young male. It wasn't raining as it had been these past few weeks. Winter seems anxious to arrive early this year.

Halfway to some southern Indian cuisine and the epicenter that is Broadway and Main, a thought I had this summer while researching water conservation for the city resurfaced. I asked myself: "What is an implementable project that can provide a teaching opportunity to the public, a potential for relevant data collection, and a spreading of awareness throughout the Vancouver community regarding the ten Greenest City goals?" And not long after, thoughts of bus stops revisited my mind.

So here's the pitch…I would choose three bus stops in Mt. Pleasant that would reflect as diverse a sampling of the local demographic as possible. I would transform each of these shelters into rainwater harvesting (RWH) stations by designing a means to capture its roofwater into a transparent cistern. The overflows for each bus stop would then feed into a raingarden planted with flowering plants for bee forage or with berry producing shrubs for human forage. 

The key would be to create a design that involved, in some way, each of the ten goals. I aim to tell the story of how water impacts or is impacted by all that we do and aspire to do, especially these ten altruistic goals. I cannot think of a better location to tell this story than in Rain City.

The shelters would be painted a blue-grey-green shade to match the iconic color of lakes fed by glacial melt. The cisterns would be transparent so that those waiting at the stop can watch the falling volume grow before their eyes. (Just 1mm of rainfall falling upon on a roof surface measuring 1 square meter in area yields 1 litre of harvested water. Vancouver receives about 1,155mm of precipitation annually.) The water captured would have its quality lab tested to help support harvested rainwater as a viable source to offset our city's potable water use and spread practices of conservation. The riders would be interviewed prior to the bus stop retrofits and after to try and understand behavior change and the assumed power of design.

Bus stops are owned and controlled by Translink, the transportation partner with the city. Rainwater, as soon as it hits any surface, is under the jurisdiction of the city. Of my concluding recommendations made to the Water Design branch this summer regarding RWH, I recommended they lead by example by implementing several visible RWH projects, introduce RWH incrementally, and supplement water conservation efforts with green infrastructure. This idea could achieve all three.