Sustainability is the biggest driver behind transportation planning policies in Metro Vancouver. Some of the guiding documents include: Transportation 2040, Greenest City 2020 Action Plan, Metro Vancouver 2040, and TransLink’s 10 Year Vision. What goals and methodologies do these documents lay out, and how do they really play out in Vancouver’s transportation engineering?

The primary goal of Vancouver’s sustainable transportation policies is to reduce carbon emissions to meet Greenest City 2020’s target of reducing community-based greenhouse gas emissions by 33% from 2007 levels by 2020. Currently, vehicles account for over 30% of greenhouse gas emissions in Vancouver. Transportation-specific targets to meet this goal are to increase the number of trips within the Lower Mainland by active transportation (bike, foot, or transit) to 50% by 2020 and 66% by 2050, and to reduce the average distance driver per resident by 20% from 2007 levels. On top of these, the Complete Streets Policy Framework creates guidelines for designing streets that integrate planning for all modes of travel as well as land use, urban design, green infrastructure, and public space. The Complete Streets Principles are shown below in Figure 1.

In order to meet these goals, the City of Vancouver has primarily looked at promoting active transportation via improving greenways, bikeways, and transit. Some examples of projects currently being undertaken within the scope of the Transportation 2040 Plan include: the Arbutus Greenway, the 10^th Avenue Corridor bikeway, the Commercial Drive Compete Street, and the Georgia Gateway West Complete Street.

The result? Although the overall carbon emissions goal is currently projected to fall short of the 2020 target, the transportation targets have met expectations. As of 2016, both of the Greenest City 2020 transportation targets have been met; 50% of trips are currently being taken by active transportation means, and the average distance driven per resident has been reduced by 32% from 2007 levels.

So what’s missing here? The narrow focus of Vancouver’s sustainability policies on reducing greenhouse gas emissions creates a glaring gap in other elements of sustainability, such as road ecology and green infrastructure. This is somewhat mitigated by Vancouver’s Complete Streets initiative, which includes elements of green infrastructure in street level design, but still lacks transparent guidelines and goals for creating green roads. Furthermore, there has been a lack of research on the specific effects of urban road networks on Vancouver’s ecology. Moving forward, it would be great to see Vancouver’s sustainable transportation goals be expanded to include more than just climate change mitigation strategies.

References

City of Vancouver. (2017). Complete Streets Policy Framework.

City of Vancouver. (2012). Transportation 2040.

City of Vancouver. (2017). Greenest City Action Plan. Retrieved from City of Vancouver: http://vancouver.ca/green-vancouver/greenest-city-action-plan.aspx

Government of Canada. (2017, November 3). The Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change. Retrieved from Canada.ca: https://www.canada.ca/en/services/environment/weather/climatechange/pan-canadian-framework.html

Metro Vancouver. (2017). Retrieved from Metro 2040: http://www.metrovancouver.org/metro2040

Province of British Columbia. (2017). Climate Action. Retrieved from Province of British Columbia: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/transportation/transportation-environment/climate-action

TransLink. (2017). 10-Year Vision for Metro Vancouver Transportation. Retrieved from TransLink: https://10yearvision.translink.ca/

Sustainable transportation allows people to travel while maintaining human and ecosystem health, is equitable between people through affordability and efficiency, offers flexibility and choices, and limits emissions and waste. Sustainable transportation of people and goods is an important environmental, economic, and health driver in Canada. Between 1991 and 2001, Canada saw an 11% increase in gas consumption, increased economic losses due to congestion, and an increase in obesity. These problems are addressed by the sustainable objectives of municipal and provincial governments. However, translating high level goals of reducing dependence on single occupancy vehicles into concrete plans to build and retrofit roads has proved to be difficult. The Transportation Association of Canada (TAC) recognizes this and has developed 12 guiding principles for sustainable transportation planning. These principles can help guide engineers and planners in making sustainable transportation decisions. For this post, I will focus on three of the 12 principles and provide examples of the principles in action.

• Principle 2 Protect environmental health

Protecting environmental health is important to ecosystem and human health – if highways were built without regard for the environment, the surrounding ecosystems could be majorly impacted. In addition, not considering the impact of changing existing roads can change levels of congestion elsewhere, increasing emissions. Some goals for Principle 2 include:

• Using environmental criteria (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions)
• Use strategies that limit air pollution (e.g. anti-idling campaigns, reducing congestion)
• Use strategies that limit the impact to water quality and the existing flora and fauna.

An example of a project that took protecting environmental health very seriously is the Banff Wildlife Crossings project, which used wildlife overpasses and underpasses to reduce the fragmentation that the Trans-Canada highway had caused.

Figure 1: Trans Canada Highway Wildlife Overpass in Banff National Park

• Principle 5 Take a strategic approach

Using a high level strategic approach is important to sustainable transportation – without a vision and direction for what the municipality/province/country is trying to achieve, goals cannot be set. In addition, long-term strategic planning can result in projects being more affordable and improving transportation choices before demand overwhelms a system. Some goals for Principle 5 include:

• Set vision and goals that are linked to sustainable transportation
• Consider future land use and its impact to transportation (i.e. will high density zoning occur?)
• Use quantifiable targets and objectives

An example of a municipality that is working towards more sustainable transportation is the City of Vancouver, who adopted their Transportation 2040 Plan in October 2012. While the plan may have some shortcomings, it overall addresses the need for Vancouver to have a strategic transportation plan.

Figure 2: City of Vancouver Proposed Rapid Transit Lines

• Principle 8 Manage transportation supply

The transportation system for a metropolitan area is complex, interconnected, and sensitive to internal and external changes. Managing the transportation network real-time and log-term requires a flexible inventory of supply in order to meet demand. Some goals for Principle 8 include:

• Maximize the capacity of multimodal transportation methods (e.g. HOV/bus lanes)
• Maintain a level of service to minimize congestion and idling
• Use strategies that recognize recurrent and occasional congestion and what can be done to manage both
• Manage transportation assets

An example of a transportation system that is managing transportation supply is Translink’s Metropolitan Vancouver proposed “mobility pricing”. This system would use a “user pays” system in order to reduce driving unless absolutely necessary.

Figure 3: In a mobility pricing scenario, users who drive more pay more, encouraging people to carpool or use alternative transportation methods

With these three principles, combined with others, engineers and planners can make our transportation systems more sustainable. A sustainable transportation network is one that is equitable, minimizes impact to human and ecosystem health, offers flexible modes of transportation, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.

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