Public transit and land use planning plays a critical role in enriching and enlivening our public spaces and this session will aim to explore some the many ways that this takes place around the city.

We’ll be joined by Joanna Clark, Citywide Transportation Planner and member of the Transportation 2040 team at the City of Vancouver. Joanna will provide a short presentation on what the Plan entails and progress made on accomplishing goals since its launch in 2012. The presentation will be followed by an open discussion which we’ll be using to review previous VPSN initiatives around streets and transportation, and talk about potential placemaking, research, and advocacy projects that we can focus on over the next little while.

The event takes place:

Monday, January 21
7:00-8:30pm
Meeting Room, VPL Mount Pleasant Branch
1 Kingsway

Registration: The event is FREE. To help us with our planning, please let us know if you’re joining us. Email info@vancouverpublicspace.ca to reserve a space.

Image: The Georgia Gateway – one of the areas of the City’s policy focus over the past couple of years.

There’s lots of excitement for how ride-hailing — the technical term for the service provided by technology network companies (TNCs) such as Lyft and Uber — and AV can make getting around more reliable, less painful, and more sustainable.

We agree that the potential benefits are huge. But we would also like to see the enthusiasm balanced with two things: (1) the city and region’s existing approaches to moving around, especially what works and what’s challenging about the transportation system we currently have; and (2) an equally thorough review of both other cities and regions’ experiences, and the way their experiences are or aren’t applicable to Metro Vancouver’s streets and transportation as they already are.

Ride-hailing

The streamlined experience of ride-hailing through mobile apps holds a lot of appeal when trips and travel are full of annoyances and uncertainties. Apps often simplify fare payment, making it clear how much a trip will cost right at the outset, and they provide people with real-time information like how long it will take for ride to arrive. Ride-hailing has an important role to play in the mix of travel options — during times of day or in locations when other modes of transportation like public transit or taxis are unavailable or inconvenient.

In practice, however, ride-hailing has also been contentious in other jurisdictions, for a variety of reasons: from providing trips to people with disabilities or require accommodation; to the privacy and confidentiality of trip information; to the safety and conditions for drivers and their vehicles, wages and labour conditions, and personal safety of passengers.

We look forward to a Vancouver ride-hailing policy that does two things in particular:

1. Learn from other cities’ experiences, while keeping Vancouver’s goals in mind. As exciting as the new options are, our longstanding goals to reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) while growing, and to make healthy and sustainable transportation options competitive with car travel aren’t any less worthwhile or key to a livable and sustainable region. Let’s ask the right questions for what matters for Vancouver, based on what we know about how ride-hailing has changed the game in other places.
2. Work with providers to answer our collective questions about the impacts of ride-hailing. Let’s make sure we have the data and information to know who’s winning or losing, and exactly how, as a result of new options for trips. This information is vital for responding to new potential problems in a reasonable timeframe.

Autonomous Vehicles (AVs)

Cars that drive themselves sound like a dream: door-to-door service without the stress, worry or strain that comes with having to operate a vehicle. Many cite the safety benefits of fewer collisions between cars (or between cars and other road users), but are also excited about being able to make car trips available to those who can’t drive and for whom transit is not viable or possible.

Similar with ride-hailing, we encourage any policy anticipating the availability of AVs, to consider and monitor transportation-wide effects, such as induced demand. This is especially important as AVs will likely be adopted by different categories of road users, as well as individual users themselves, incrementally, with AVs sharing the roads and roadspace with a wide variety of vehicles and users.

In consideration of streets as public spaces, we further want to highlight that both AVs and ride-hailing will have impacts on trip destinations and origins, in addition to their benefits to the travel portion of a trip. We look forward to seeing how policies managing curbside pick-up and drop-off will anticipate conflict and ways to work with stakeholders and the public to manage this. This will be particularly important in places where we are in the process of building complete streets, as AVs will need to integrate with other vital street functions such as pedestrian movement, protected bike lanes, goods movement, parking, car share, bike share and other street furniture.

In particular, we also want to see policies that continue to prioritize and invest in sustainable transportation opportunities. Autonomous Vehicles could provide an opportunity to reduce some of the inefficiencies associated with our current cultural preference for individual ownership of vehicles, thus freeing up valuable road-space. But if everyone rushes out to buy an AV at the same rate they buy cars nowadays, then we may well see only limited gains.

In short: there are a great number of potential benefits to both ride-hailing and AVs. Let’s move forward to realize those benefits, without compromising what’s working about our transportation system already, and position ourselves to react swiftly as we learn about its real impacts.

Further Reading

• Human Transit – Jarrett Walker on autonomous vehicles and what we already know about induced demand in transportation systems.
• City of Vancouver – Staff Presentation, “Automated and Connected Vehicles: Implications for Vancouver and Next Steps” (2016 Dec 14, PDF; Presentation Video)
• TransLink – Future of Driving Report (PDF; Buzzer blog) (2016)
• Citylab – The Ride-hailing effect: More cars, More Trips, More Miles

Photo: Duane Romanell.

Photo by mellbin.

Thanks to the Vancouver Sun for publishing the VPSN’s letter in support of the City of Vancouver’s proposal for cycling and pedestrian enhancements to the Point Grey-Cornwall Corridor today, which are going before Vancouver’s council on Tuesday, July 23rd. (You can find the letter on the Vancouver Sun’s website).

The VPSN supports this proposal for its contributions to the City’s goals of zero pedestrian fatalities, for supporting sustainable modes of travel, and for effectively balancing the needs of mobility with expressed desires for high-quality public spaces, as defined in the City’s Transportation 2040 plan.

See the text of our full letter to the Sun below.

Re: Residents face off over Point Grey Road bike lane

The Vancouver Public Space Network supports the City of Vancouver’s proposal to improve pedestrian and cycling experience by reconfiguring Point Grey Road and Cornwall Street. High-quality public spaces start with safe pedestrian facilities. The corridor has long been identified as problematic for people traveling on foot; enhancements in this regard, including measures to reduce speeds, are overdue. Pedestrian improvements will benefit a large group of residents and commuters — as transit users end their trips as pedestrians. Finally, the close proximity of Kitsilano to both Downtown to the north and the Broadway corridor to the south — important pedestrian areas each in their own right — makes this area ideal for increasing pedestrian traffic to local businesses and improving pedestrian circulation by making walking safer, more enjoyable and more popular.

Additionally, cycling is a convenient, viable, and enjoyable mode of transport. Ever-increasing numbers of Vancouverites are choosing to cycle and realizing its wide range of benefits — for improving and maintaining physical and mental health, and for connecting people to their neighbors, enjoyable places and recreational opportunities in their communities, among numerous others. This plan also makes important strides towards reducing conflicts between travelers using different modes — particularly cyclists and pedestrians, and between cyclists and transit vehicles.

By investing in infrastructure to make our network of cycling and pedestrian routes more attractive and comfortable, we broaden access to these travel options for those of all ages and abilities. We support the Point Grey Road/Cornwall Street proposal for moving Vancouver towards the vision of a public realm supportive of people, not motor vehicles, in keeping with the objectives identified in the City of Vancouver’s Transportation 2040 plan update, including its commitment to zero pedestrian fatalities. We encourage and support these changes for its positive impacts to supportive and inclusive public realm in Vancouver.

Photo by Hubert Figuière.

The City and Translink are reviewing downtown bus service. This is a great opportunity for residents and visitors to weigh-in on the sorts of improvements that they’d like to see to the bus network. Moreover, it is a significant opportunity to support key public space improvements in the process – including the expansion of Robson Square and the pedestrianization of the 800-block of Robson Street. Please take a moment to share your thoughts on this important issue!

There will be Open Houses held in Downtown Vancouver on Saturday, June 22, and Wednesday, June 26 (see below for open house details). You are also invited to take the Downtown Local Bus Review online questionnaire, which will be accepting responses from June 21st until July 12th.

Since the beginning of 2013, the City of Vancouver and TransLink have been jointly undertaking a review of local bus service in Downtown Vancouver. The objective of the review is to consider changes to local bus service, as the current bus configuration has not accounted for a number of new realities, such as the growth in the population living downtown, the existence of the Canada Line, the desire for public space improvements (such as a pedestrianized Robson Square), and other potential changes (such as the removal of the Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts and a proposed move of the Art Gallery).

This Local Bus Service Review aims to support the bus-related needs of current and future residents living in downtown. This should be welcome news for residents and visitors to the area. There is significant room for improving transit on the peninsula — perhaps most significantly in the West End, where the neighbourhood houses a larger number of seniors (5,500 – or about 12.5% of the total neighbourhood population). Traffic congestion caused by visiting car traffic could also be mitigated considerably, if fast, convenient and reliable bus-service were available. The current transit plan for the downtown was done at a time when much of the new development in the area had not yet taken place. It’s time to refresh the bus routes and service planning so that transit can work well for everyone. This means taking a look at trolley and non-trolley bus routes, community shuttles and other transit linkages.

We welcome this review process. Our hope is that it will lead to a stronger, more efficient bus service in the area – one that is easy to understand, improves transit-related mobility and access (by effectively linking bus riders to key local and regional services – from shopping streets to medical facilities, cultural facilities to SkyTrain stations) and links all the downtown neighbourhoods – West End, Coal Harbour, Gastown, Yaletown and the Central Business District. Of course, as a public space advocacy organization, we want this bus routing to support a stronger, richer downtown public realm – one that includes a pedestrianized Robson Square, improvements to the north plaza, Granville Street, and key public spaces throughout the peninsula.

A classic photo of Robson Square by benleto.

The City of Vancouver and TransLink will be consulting the public for feedback on the Downtown local bus review at two upcoming Open House events. We encourage everyone to attend, learn more about the review and let them know your thoughts.

Saturday, June 22
1pm to 4pm
Barclay Manor and Heritage Square (1447 Barclay Street) – Strawberry Festival
(Note: the City of Vancouver will also be holding an open house for the West End community plan draft directions at the same time and place.)

Wednesday, June 26, 2013
3pm to 8pm
VPL Central Branch (350 West Georgia St.)

TransLink and the City of Vancouver are taking feedback through an online questionnaire, which will be taking responses from June 21st to July 12th. The review is scheduled to conclude at the end of 2013.

POSTSCRIPT – More Robson Fun – Free Jazz

For the music-lovers out there, don’t forget that this Saturday and Sunday (June 22-23) finds an array of free jazz taking place at the outdoor Robson stage (on the 800-block). It’s all part of the larger Vancouver International Jazz Festival. You can find the Robson stage listings on the main Jazz Fest website.

For more background on the VPSN’s work with Robson Square, see the VPSN blog achives. Please feel free to send your thoughts our way: robsonsquare [at] vancouverpublicspace [dot] ca.