This week we had our last 379B class meeting for this academic term. In exactly one month we will be heading to Williams Lake to conduct our research. We recognize the host of preparations that still need to be done in April before our virtual conference. We have drafted out the things that need to be done before we arrive Williams Lake in order to maximize the limited time we will spend there.

After several discussions with the team, talking to urban researchers from our mini day panel and interviewing a postgraduate student from UBC School of Community and Regional Planning, we critically thought through our methodologies and chose the major ones that we will be using.

Since we are prioritizing surveys and interviews, there are many things that we need to do in April to keep our practice ethical and inclusive for different communities in Williams Lake.

The four main targeted population of our surveys and interviews are:

• Children and Seniors
• Low income families living around the city’s outskirts
• First Nations Communities
• People that heavily rely on public transit

These are the marginalized populations: people that can’t drive personal cars for a variety of reasons (mainly financial). The purpose of our interviews and surveys is to collect data and information to visualize these marginalized population on a map, and how the existing public transit system does not meet the demand at certain locations in the city.

Preparation plans for our research in April

In order to make our survey data effective, we would need to reach out to the specific communities. Our work will follow a general work plan we agreed to at our last meeting. Some individual tasks that need to be done will include the followings:

• Finalize our survey and revise it after getting feed back from the Social Planning Council.
  • Deciding on the layout
  • Prioritizing questions
  • Prioritizing respondants
    • Our priority is reaching out to transit-underserved and transit-dependent communities, not on popularizing the bus to people who are already driving.
  • Designing prompts to improve response accuracy
    • Instead of asking “how much do you spend on transportation,” ask “how much do you spend on gas? insurance? repairs? financing?”
• Write paper consent forms for surveys and interviews listing the all the details of our purpose and use of information
• Contact key community groups to get both the online and paper survey introduced before we arrive.
  • Social Planning Council (through Jessica)
  • Sugar Cane Community
  • Soda Creek Band/Xat’sull First Nation (through Band Office)
  • Williams Lake Band (Through Meggan)
  • School District (through our classmates)
  • Girls and Boys Club (through Matt)
  • Williams Lake Library
  • Local Grocery Store and Mall (Boitanio Mall, Safeway, Save-on)
  • BC transit bus drivers (TBD)
  • Newspaper media (TBD)
• Setting up schedule for expert interviews in Williams Lake
  • City transportation planners
  • Community Leaders
  • BC Transit Authorities (TBD)

• Post web survey to social media, newspapers, and distribute paper surveys by April 15th
  • Social Planning Council web page and community Facebook pages.
• Continue our literary background research throughout the process
  • research more on related books and case studies on rural transportation

Tentative Plans during our one week stay at Williams Lake 

During our virtual conference on April 30th, we would like to present what we have worked so far in Vancouver to our community Partners, the faculty and our peers. This may include this blog, the findings and working process of our project, how are we going to conduct our research at Williams Lake (purpose and concerns) and especially what we have learned so far through this experience.

Meanwhile, our tentative plans for what we are going to at Williams Lake are as follow:

• Meeting our Community Partners and discuss our research project.
• Conduct informal interviews:
  • Give rides to hitch-hikers
    • these are a vulnerable group: people who rely on public transit but can not afford to buy the ticket or bus routes do not run by their neighbourhood, nor often enough. A free ride is an easy, time effective form of compensation.
  • Interview at locations/services that most people in the community use (i.e. Grocery stores)
    • how did they commute to the store; are they aware of the public transit options?
  • Informal bus interviews
    • these are people who are currently taking the public system: why they are using it; how they feel about it?
• Distribute paper surveys
  • Ask bus drivers to distribute surveys OR ride on the bus and distribute them ourselves
  • Make use of established community centres/meeting areas to distribute surveys
• Distribute and explain travel diaries
  • This process is still in discussion, we may or may not have travel diaries.
• Conduct public participation map:
  • Set up a large map in a public area and allow individuals to identify the locations they frequent the most. To do this they could use dot stickers, a pen, or pins (still to be decided)
  • This method is especially useful when targeting children, it would easier for them if we visualize the questions and information, it is also more interactive.
• Produce finalized maps to aid in the explanation of our findings. May end up being a few separate maps.
  • Key locations for different groups within the community
  • Most popular routes; are they different from the current existing routes?
  • Existing public transportation networks and suggested new bus stop locations.