Smoky skies and a realization about building less.
Vancouver presents a wide range of policies which can help us move sustainable transport forward, while improve mobility options.
As I mentioned in last week's article, I've been spending time with family in Vancouver the past few weeks, which has been a pleasant experience with time for reflection, and a nagging reminder of the urgency of climate change.
Despite it being October, the ground is parched, and for the last week air quality has been severely degraded by a number of forest fires, which have become much more noticeable and hard to avoid throughout my life — which by extension relates to the urgency of getting transit built in an expeditious, cost effective, and rational way.
Fortunately, I think Metro Vancouver presents a really compelling model for how transportation infrastructure can be built and mobility options improved in a more cost effective and coordinated manner.
The overarching theme that I'd argue broadly applies to the way transportation infrastructure is built in the region is minimalism. When a major new project is built, it's rarely wildly in excess of what’s actually needed in the near term - whether that be a roadway project, transit, or something else.
This model keeps serious excesses of capacity in check, which means the value for money on infrastructure that gets built tends to be really good, because said infrastructure is fairly well used immediately. It also keeps demand for transportation and actual transportation infrastructure closely connected. Traffic is always a little bad, but this discourages people from becoming overly dependent on driving because it will never be all that overwhelmingly good of an option.
Now, while the model absolutely is minimalism, the volume at which things get built is actually quite high - there are simply more and a wider range of different pieces of transportation infrastructure and service provided. While some cities tend to lean towards overly dogmatic extremes, you really see that Metro Vancouver is open to finding the right tool for the job.
Let’s highlight this by looking at a few different categories of transportation.
Within transit, the wide range of different solutions is immediately obvious. While in other cities I've visited there tends to be only a few types of, say, bus service, Vancouver has loads within its own system. From the RapidBus BRT-lite service (which even gets to go on the rapid transit map and has the SkyTrain chime on the doors when they close), to highway express buses (which might be served by one of a few different types of buses depending on demand and the specific route), to local and local express services, to community shuttles — there are different solutions for all kinds of trips, so it rarely feels like anything is super over-provisioned, and there also tends to be a good number of options for riders. At the same time, since transit is really well regionally integrated, you'll see the same transit schemas - whether it’s the highway express buses or the community circulators - implemented similarly in geographically disconnected places, which is quite nice.
There's also minimalism in the transit infrastructure. While in other cities you might see a full bus terminal at a busy station, Metro Vancouver tends to do more basic bus loops that are only expanded as necessary; these are not within the fare paid zone of the rail service, but that's okay because connections are good and it ends up not really mattering. Low-cost policy choices like all-door boarding make up most of the difference from the lack of expensive infrastructure like aforementioned bus terminals.
This minimalism doesn't mean interesting initiatives are not undertaken, but they just tend to be a bit scrappy. One example of this are painted lines for queuing at some busy bus stops (a surprisingly uncommon thing on busy transit systems everywhere), which lessens the stressful rush to grab a seat, but don't have the cost of a maze of barricades.
On some infrastructure that does not have purpose built-transit provision, notably some highways, transit is squeezed in without costly changes, and this means there are a lot of nice bus lanes and queue jumps all over the region, rather than a few very nice but under-utilized pieces of infrastructure.
SkyTrain is arguably the perfect example of this. While some say (and I would disagree) that SkyTrain is underbuilt, I certainly wouldn’t say it's overbuilt. Infrastructure is comfortable and absolutely sufficient but rarely over the top, and the quality of service is prioritized over the simplistic appearance of capacity. Stations mostly start out as basic facilities (underground stations on the new Broadway subway and most of the Canada Line all have single entrances), but that's ok because Metro Vancouver and Translink have shown again and again that they are willing to undertake expansion projects, as well as work with developers to expand stations and add entrances. This not only means capital doesn't get tied up in infrastructure for years if not decades before it's needed, and it also means that there is a wider scale of facilities properly suited to their demand.
The minimalism of infrastructure is seen frequently with roads as well (I do admit to borrowing a family car and driving around some ports and other parts of the road network to see some of the infrastructure this time around).
For example, there are a few major rebuilds going on with crossings of the Fraser River, but they don't actually substantially increase road capacity - at least in terms of number of lanes. Projects mostly exist to improve safety and design, seismic and climate change resilience, and improved transport options with expanded cycling and pedestrian facilities that have historically been underprovisioned (as with a lot of bridges and tunnels in North America).
The new Patullo Bridge will have nice dedicated spaces for cycling and walking, and the new George Massey Tunnel will have bus lanes, cycle, and walking provision! This model gets the important safety and structural improvements done, but doesn't encourage substantial new road use, while very much encouraging transit and active transport use.
At the same time, the new build road projects you do see mostly tend to be focused on truck use, which is much more of a necessity than private car use (though more could be done to expand rail capacity for shipping in metro Vancouver), and which tends to be less useful for private travel anyways as it is usually focused more on connectivity as opposed to speed.
There are also a wide range of road types alongside the wide range of transit modes you see in the region. Metro Vancouver, far more than other North American cities I've spent time in, has less of a dichotomy between major road corridors being either 8 lane arterials or massive separated expressways. There’s some large expressways and even a few arterials, but there are also a lot of narrower separated freeways, and highways that are not separated but are designed with far fewer intersections, some of which can be converted to a separated freeway if demand requires. I think this approach is good, especially the narrow freeways, providing a lot of the connectivity and travel time benefits to important traffic without the car dependency cycle of larger roads.
You see this in things like crossing designs as well. Counterflow lanes exist in a fair number of places, as well as infrastructure designed for incremental expansion, which usually ends up meaning more minimal infrastructure at final build out than if you had just purpose built the final form (since extra future capacity often requires things like lane narrowing).
Now, for the private cars that do exist, there are an astonishing amount of EVs. Not only did I see all kinds of EV models I haven't regularly seen in other parts of Canada, but (and this is obviously related) the provision of chargers is also noticeably better, with most major locations from malls to tourist attractions having a good number of them. Given sales figures for EVs in BC are over 10% of new vehicles and that Vancouver is a large part of the EV market, I would be surprised if the number of fossil fuel-powered private vehicles in the region was not decreasing.
All in all, in some ways, it feels like Metro Vancouver does better with transportation by building what is needed and mostly just what is needed, but also with an acknowledgement that there are a lot of potential solutions for different needs, and that's something we should think about doing a lot more of in other cities.