Nina Ginsberg and Dale Bracewell (Manager of Transportation Planning. City of Vancouver, Canada).

Recently I attended a very interesting event hosted by BikePedTrans. It was a presentation by Dale Bracewell, Manager of Transportation Planning for the City of Vancouver.

For many years now, Vancouver, Melbourne and Vienna have been jostling for the top positions in the top 5 ‘World’s Most Livable City’ rankings.

Vancouver has a particular sustainable and social interaction angle for its urban improvements that has created incredible positive change towards biking and active transportation – to a point where Vancouver is an exemplary urban cycling role model almost without rival.

As a bike enthusiast, this is very exciting! I wanted to hear more!

So here’s a quick overview of Dale’s session. It was called ‘From a Trickle to a Stream: Achieving a Major Bike Mode Shift in Canada’.

Ambitious Plans: Achieving a Major Bike Mode Shift in Vancouver

In 1997, Vancouver’s Transportation Plan identified there would be no increase in road capacity for cars and that walking, cycling and transit would be prioritised.

It also set an active travel mode share target of 40% to be achieved by 2008.

Significant progress has since been achieved and the plan was updated in 2012 that increased the targets even more – to 66% of all travel to be via walking bike or PT transit by 2040.

Remarkably, Vancouver achieved these goals well ahead of time – whereby 50% of travel set for 2020 was actually achieved by 2015.

Implementation of an impressive protected bike lane network and an Active Transportation Promotion & Enabling Plan saw daily cycling trips in Vancouver increase to over 50% from 2013 to 2016.

Vancouver’s vision is to support happy and health living by inspiring and enabling people of all ages and abilities to walk or cycle as their prefered way of getting around Vancouver.

Vancouver’s mission is to be leaders and partners in creating and promoting a world-class Active Transporation network in Vancouver.

Vancouver is looking beyond transport and mobility as the foundation for their Active Transportation policy. Their focus addresses and prioritises other eco-socio-cultural dimensions of urban living, to include health, safety, accessibility, economy, public life, environment and resiliency.

Vancouver has 5 Key Cycling Directions:

1. Upgrade and expand the bike network with routes that are comfortable and convenient
2. Improve integration with other modes, including via public bike share
3. Provide secure and abundant paring and end-of-trip facilities
4. Focus on education and safety
5. Promote cycling as an everyday option

The implementation principles for Vancouver’s Active Transportation Promotion & Enabling Plan are:

• Think Big Picture
• Be Opportunistic
• Work Together
• Invest Wisely
• Innovate
• Learn and Adapt

Data and Monitoring is key to everything!

Monitoring is key to tracking changes, recording data and observing trends. It is also imperative as evidence to prove positive changes and to encourage (stubborn?) politicians and administrators to act on increasing active transportation.

Vancouver’s monitoring program is impressive. Dale said a number of times that ‘you need to love the data!’. For example, evidence on the time spent sitting and being sedentary can be used to demonstrate causal impacts on health and physical activity outcomes. Dale also stressed the importance of female participation rates as an indicator of achievement of all ages design. Collect data and use it as evidence of success and to justify future initiatives.

What were some of the most interesting ideas?

Dale’s presentation was filled with interesting facts, ideas, learnings, suggestions and insights about Vancouver’s 2040 Transport Plan for biking. There was so much that was interesting, more than I can share here (contact Dale for more!). A quick review of some of the most interesting ideas include:

• All ages and all abilities design – the end goal is for all Vancouver cycling infrastructure to all AAA standard. What a great idea!

• Must have solid policy backing. Policy needs to recognise and drive issues that are broader than just mobility, for example, safety, health, accessibility, housing affordability, liveability and environment.

• High-frequency mass transit is critical in shifting more locals towards using active transportation modes and away from private vehicles. To achieve this, having a minimum grid, forward-thinking strategic decision making and close consultations with stakeholders were key to building interest and momentum.

• This presentation was the first time I heard the term ‘conversational bike lanes’ as a way to describe the width of a bike lane. This is used to describe how some bike lanes need to be wider in some places where two bike riders can ride alongside each other  (to chat conversationally) as well as having room for one rider coming in the opposite direction (as opposed to just one bike width going both directions). What a lovely ‘social’ way of understanding bike lane usability.

It was inspiring to hear from Dale what could be achieved with political will and a clear strategic vision. What a brilliant model for other cities – a bikable city is achievable.

I am sure I was not the only one in the audience thinking why/how Brisbane could get to this same kind of state.

A trip to Vancouver anyone?

All images my own and/or from Dale Bracewell’s PPT presentation.