A ‘sea-change’ in transportation planning

In the past ten days, US policymakers seem to have achieved the impossible. On March 11, 2010, US Secretary of Transportation Ray Lahood pronounced the end of favouring motorized transportation over non-motorized transportation. And on March 21, 2010, the US finally passed its health care legislation. Aren’t these the first signs of the apocalypse?

Lahood, at this year’s National Bike Summit, announced his new Policy Statement on Bicycle and Pedestrian Accommodation Regulations and Recommendations. Key recommendations for state DOTs and communities include treating walking and cycling as equal transportation modes, ensuring convenient accessibility for all ages and abilities, going beyond minimum design standards, collecting data on walking and cycling trips, setting a mode share target for walking and cycling, protecting sidewalks and paths in the same way roads are protected, and improving non-motorized facilities during maintenance projects. At this point of course, it’s a Policy Statement; it’s not law. But it marks the profound shift that is occurring in North America away from car-dominated discourse and policy.

On the health care front, the health care bill passed in the House December 24, 2009 served as the basis for HR 4872, the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010. HR 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, was passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve 2009, as I reported in an earlier post. Its main measures, taking effect six months after its passage, prevent insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, prevents increased rates for children with pre-existing conditions, forces insurance policies to cover preventative care without co-pays, allows children to remain on parents’ plans until the age of 26, and bans lifetime monetary caps on insurance policies. In the future (by 2014), it will prevent insurers from charging higher rates for those with pre-existing conditions, expand Medicaid eligibility, offer tax credits to small businesses (fewer than 25 employees) who offer insurance, impose tax penalties on businesses with over 50 employees who do not offer insurance, impose a fine on individuals who do not have insurance, give tax credits to individuals who have heath insurance, and offer a state-controlled insurance option. However, it differed significantly from the bill passed in the House, HR 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, particularly in terms of financing and subsidies. Because they were so different, President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced the reconciliation bill. HR4872 was passed in the House of Representatives March 21, 2010, in a close 219-212 vote (216 votes were need to pass the bill). Not a single Republican supported its passage, but it doesn’t matter: the bill will be signed into law by the president as early as tomorrow.

Canada has also had a few firsts lately, although they are small potatoes compared to these major American policy shifts. One was the announcement that woonerfs are coming to Toronto. A West Donlands neighbourhood, currently under development, would include these Dutch streets, narrow, mixed-use affairs without curbs, which are thought to encourage pedestrian and cyclists while discouraging cars. Dutch woonerfs include traffic-calming measures like speed bumps and planter “bump-outs,” and the streets are more like outdoor urban social spaces than thoroughfares. The other was the announcement that Canada had opened the first school to ever require students to use non-motorized transportation to get to school. The Halton Public School Board just opened a new school, P.L. Robertson Elementary in Milton, where the students who live within 1.6 km (1 mile) of the school are required to get there on their own two feet, and parents are forbidden from driving their kids. 98% of the 700 students walk, bike, skateboard or ride scooters to school, while the remainder, who live more than 1.6km away, are bused. The school board is running the pilot project for one year, and hope to expand it to other schools soon. If it is a success, project manager Jennifer Jenkins knows that other schools will rapidly jump on board; the wealth of research on this topic shows how much is at stake with increases in childhood obesity and diabetes.

All I can say is where is our national policy on transportation? Where is our Ray Lahood? And more importantly, where is our Obama?

March 22, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , | No Comments »

Lessons from Vancouver 2010

Robson Square, redesigned and reopened for the Olympics

Spectators arriving at Aberdeen station, preparing for a 20-minute walk to the Richmond Olympic Oval

After all the media hype and local anti-Olympic sentiment, Vancouver is enjoying a rare opportunity during the 2010 Games. Not only does the city get to experience a real urban vibe as tens of thousands of tourists have flooded the streets, but it’s also experiencing another rare phenomenon: very little car traffic and extra service on transit routes. These changes have created a very different feeling as the city celebrates Canadian and international achievements in sport.

TransLink staff, as well as City of Vancouver staff and the folks at Metro Vancouver have been busy planning transportation alternatives for tourists, spectators, media and athletes for many years, all in preparation for the 16-day Olympic and 10-day Paralympic Games. Some of the big-ticket items are well-known: the Canada Line from downtown to the airport and the Bombardier demonstration streetcar linking Granville Island and the Olympic Village.

Olympic line streetcar at Granville Island

The Canada Line, which was saw ridership of 100,000 per day before the Games, saw 200,000 riders last Sunday. TransLink’s overall ridership has already reached 1.5 million per day: not bad for a region that normally has 1.8 million residents.

But there are also lots of lesser-known initiatives that have gone a long way towards making this a very sustainable Games: increased transit service on routes serving the venues, no parking at most venues, and bike sharing at some venues like the Richmond Olympic Oval.

Free bikes provided by Heineken Holland House at Aberdeen Station

Streets adjacent to most venues were closed to all vehicular traffic, including Wesbrook Mall on the UBC campus, which is hosting women’s hockey at Thunderbird Arena.

Spectators leaving Thunderbird Arena walking two blocks to the bus loop. No parking was provided at the venue.

There are special “Olympic lanes” on city streets dedicated to transit and vehicles transporting athletes, media, and officials. Robson Street was initially closed between Howe and Granville, but this was extended to Bute and Beatty Streets; Granville Street is closed between Smithe and Cordova Streets. The energy of the crowds in these main downtown streets is amazing, and there is a lot of added pedestrian interest, including a lantern display on Granville Street. The number of cars entering the downtown peninsula has dropped 30% since the beginning of the Games on February 12th, while over 4,000 cyclists per day cross the Cambie, Burrard and Granville Bridges into downtown.

In addition to this, Cultural Olympiad concerts and events have been happening all over the region, from Our Lady Peace playing a free concert at Richmond’s O-Zone to a 24-hour outdoor art gallery at the Surrey 2010 Celebration Site. These events were planned to begin in January until the end of the Paralympic Games on March 21, 2010. Because there’s so much going on in each municipality, local residents can actually get involved in the Olympics and its related events without making the trek downtown.

Richmond City Hall, with exhibits and big-screen coverage of the events, at the entrance to the O-Zone

Richmond City Hall at the entrance to the O-Zone, with exhibits and big-screen coverage of the events

Many Vancouverites, anticipating intense crowds and traffic, actually left the city during the Games. This likely means that there are more non-residents than residents in the City of Vancouver at the moment. In addition to this, some workplaces are closed, and UBC and SFU both have a two-week Reading Week to cover the Games period. The absence of this regular commuting traffic has likely contributed to higher transit ridership and much faster travel times. I took the #44 express bus from UBC to downtown on Friday at rush hour, and was at Robson Square in 15 minutes, a trip that normally takes half an hour.

The question is, why can’t we do this year-round? Keep the Olympic lanes as transit-only lanes; decrease parking in the downtown core, along our main streets and at key destinations; and increase transit service. Most locals would love to see pedestrianized zones on Robson and Granville in the core area of downtown. Of course, the vast number of tourists in the city and the energy that comes along with such a major sporting event will not persist past February 28th (Olympics) and March 21, 2010 (Paralympics). It’s been a fantastic 16-day party, truly a defining moment for Vancouver and for Canada.

Robson Street nightlife during the Olympics

February 27, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , | No Comments »

The trials of the Burrard Bridge

July 13th, 2009 was a long-awaited day for cycling advocates in Vancouver. The Burrard Bridge, one of three bridges connecting the Lower Mainland to downtown Vancouver, officially began its six-month lane re-allocation trial.

Pedestrians on the sidewalk and cyclists in their own lane on the southbound side

Pedestrians on the sidewalk and cyclists in their own lane on the southbound side

One of the three southbound lanes was divided off by a concrete median for exclusive use of cyclists. Pedestrians finally get exclusive use of the narrow sidewalk on the south side, while the northbound sidewalk functions as a bike lane. You can see by the pavement markings above that each sidewalk used to be shared between pedestrians and cyclists. While the trial is far from ideal (pedestrians have to cross to the west side at busy intersections at each end), it is the culmination of more than a decade of efforts by sustainable transportation advocates. 

About half of the 8,000-9,000 cars that drive over the bridge each day are single-occupant vehicles, a number that the City of Vancouver wants to decrease. Safety has also been a major issue: because of the narrow sidewalks, shared between commuting cyclists and walkers, and the lack of protective elements between the sidewalk and roadway, there have been many accidents in which cyclists have narrowly escaped death. As you can see in the pictures, the sidewalks comfortably fit three people across, which is why cyclists had to move fairly slowly (15km/h) to avoid injuring pedestrians. 

The last time the Burrard Bridge closed off a lane for cyclists, back in 1996, the trial lasted only a week before angry motorists forced it to close. However, the number of cyclists using the bridge during the short trial increased by 39% while drivers decreased by 9%. Traffic delays of 20 minutes the first day decreased to only a few minutes by the end of the week. City Council admitted that it hadn’t done enough to prepare people for the trial, including advertising and new signage. This time around, the long delay in getting the trial approved meant that there was plenty of publicity, new signage and traffic police on hand at each end of the bridge to help direct people to the correct side of the bridge. Of the $1.45 million budget for the project, $250,000 was spent on public education.

Banner advertising the Burrard Bridge Lane Re-allocation

Banner advertising the Burrard Bridge Lane Re-allocation

Council has been considering closing two lanes of the bridge (one northbound and one southbound) for many years. Four consecutive councils have considered over 30 different proposals for the Burrard Bridge, and Vision Vancouver’s discussion of the bike lane trial in 2005 was thought to be a deciding factor in that year’s municipal election, in which Sam Sullivan (Non-Partisan Association) defeated Larry Campbell (Vision Vancouver). During Sullivan’s term in office  (2005-2008), Council members decided against the proposal.

This time around, Mayor Gregor Robertson and Council debated three options: 

  • Closing two lanes for bike travel (one northbound and one southbound), leaving both sidewalks for pedestrians
  • Closing one lane for bike travel (southbound), leaving the southbound sidewalk for pedestrians and the northbound sidewalk as shared between cyclists and pedestrians
  • Closing one lane for bike travel (southbound), leaving the southbound sidewalk for pedestrians and the northbound sidewalk for cyclists only

Gil Penalosa, Executive Director of Walk and Bike for Life, was one of the speakers at the May 5, 2009 meeting that decided the fate of the bridge. Penalosa is the former Commissioner of Parks, Sport and Recreation for the City of Bogata, Columbia, where he helped introduce 91 km of car-free roads on Sundays (Ciclovia). 1.5 million people use the Ciclovia weekly.

The usual opponent in this storyline, the business community (such as the Downtown Business Improvement Association), opposed the lane closure. They apparently still believe the 1950s fallacy that only cars can bring people into business districts. Try telling that to Vancouverites, who successfully fought a series of highway projects that would have destroyed downtown neighbourhoods back in the 1970s. At that time, businesses supported highways that they saw as bringing suburban residents into the city, a strategy that failed miserably in many cities across North America.

Some suggest that there the Burrard Bridge lane re-allocation trial is not as politically risky as it might have been in the 1990s. There has been a considerable shift in sustainable transportation policy and programming since 1996. In the Greater Vancouver Regional District, TransLink was created in 1997 and ridership has increased substantially. In the City of Vancouver, cycling trips have tripled while driving trips decreased substantially. The City has decided to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 30%. Experts like Penalosa, UBC’s Larry Frank, and SFU’s Gordon Price, a former Vancouver City Councillor, support alternative transportation options and argue that increased cycling, walking, and transit infrastructure discourages driving. The final nail in this coffin might have been the vocal support of Gregor Robertson, a regular bike commuter; his opponent in the 2008 election was Peter Ladner, who also regularly commutes by bike.

Both sides are waiting to see how the trial lane allocation goes; it has been approved for six months but will probably be re-evaluated in September when traffic volumes resume. If you live in Vancouver, check out Vancouver Public Space, which has a list of ways, including old-school phone numbers and email addresses, plus blogs, Facebook and Twitter sites where you can voice your support of the trial. And go to the fun cycling-oriented events that have been planned along with the trial run (see below).

 

Bike-in movie at Vanier Park on the opening day of the Burrard Bridge trial

Bike-in movie at Vanier Park on the opening day of the Burrard Bridge trial

July 14, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , | No Comments »

Now it’s really over: Margaret Wente says the car-free culture is here to stay

I wrote recently about the end of GM, and noted that many advocates of sustainable transportation were looking forward to a new era of cycling, walking, transit, and reduced car use. While I count myself among these, I also acknowledge the difficulty of this transition for most North Americans considering our economic dependence on oil and the car-dominated spatial patterns of our cities. But when Margaret Wente says the love affair is over (“Object of desire or necessary evil?”, Globe and Mail, Saturday, June 6, 2009), the times they are a-changin’.

Let me explain. Wente is conservative, irreverent, controversial. She’s stirred up so much anger the Globe won’t even allow her column to be read online anymore. She writes from a white, upper middle-class perspective, and often comments on current affairs, politics, social issues, and lifestyles. Her attitude towards people of different cultures came under fire last October when she agreed with IOC Dick Pound’s controversial comment that Canada was a country of “savages” a few hundred years ago. Many of her columns show an insensitivity to the variety of ethnic cultures and religions that make up mainstream Canadian cities. An American and naturalized Canadian, Wente once called Newfoundland “the most vast and scenic welfare ghetto in the world.” As far as social trends go, Wente is regularly surprised by lifesyles of younger people, including Facebook addiction and commitment to environmentalism. She became a climate change convert at the same time as Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in September of 2006: very late in the game, when it became a sign of insanity to deny it any longer. Most environmentalists, democrats, and transportation advocates consider her laughable, a symbol of the type of conservative boomer culture that keeps Canada from achieving any real success in enviromental protection, alternative transportation, race relations or tolerance.

Today’s column is a case in point. Wente begins her article profiling people she finds truly unusual: young 20- and 30-somethings who live and work in the city and do not own cars. While this is news to none of us living in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and a growing number of other cities, Wente still finds the lifestyle surprising decades after the terms yuppie (young upwardly-mobile professionals) and dink (double income no kids) were coined. She then moves on to profiling several of these other oddball car-free types closer to her own age: “Fifteen years ago, it was almost unimaginable for a middle-aged, middle-class family man not to own a car. Such a person would have been regarded as mildly eccentric. Now I seem to be surrounded by them.” She writes about the average $8,000 it costs to run an average car each year (the Toronto Transit Commission has been advertising this info on posters for over a decade), the growing popularity of cycling and car sharing (which she feels the need to define) and of course the death of the automotive companies. But halfway through her article, there is a change in tone: Wente, that conservative bastion of right-wing ideology, concedes that “Maybe our love affair with cars is over.” In response to a man who confesses there is freedom in being car-free, she asks, “Isn’t freedom the very thing that cars used to stand for?” Halfway through the article she writes “For most of us, cars aren’t much of a status marker anymore…It’s really just a very big, very costly appliance with cup-holder.” She characterizes cars as shifting from “the wheeled embodiment of outsize ego and swattering masculinity…the product of the American empire at its peak” to representing “arrogance, deliberate disregard for the enviroment, and wretched excess.” While she confesses she still believes cars have the potential for personal liberation, progress and opportunity, “these days there are fewer and fewer who agree with me.”

Perhaps most advocates of alternative transportation would not see much hope in Wente’s article: she’ll probably continue driving until the steering wheel is pried out of her cold dead hands. But considering her personality, socio-economic profile, and personal beliefs, just admitting the times are changing indicates that, indeed, they are. They’d have to be for her to notice.

June 6, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , | No Comments »