Category: Transportation

Here’s an old joke: A motorist stops on a rural road and asks a local farmer, “How do I get to Midville?”

The farmer ponders for a moment and replies, “Sorry. Ya can’t get there from here.”

That is funny because we know that, given proper directions and sufficient fuel, motorists can reach virtually any destination connected to a public road. The farmer must be wrong. But for numerous travellers who rely on public transit, many destinations really are inaccessible: “you can’t get there from here.”

Currently, many Vancouver Island communities have terrible intercity transit service. For example, between Duncan and Victoria there are only four daily trips, all departing Duncan before 6:30 am and returning late afternoons. There is no reverse commute or evening service, and only three weekend trips. The fare is $10 each way. Service to Nanaimo is even worse. There are only one or two buses per day, with $24-34 one-way fares. This combination of poor service and high prices explains why less than 0.1% of trips over the Malahat are made by public transit.

It wasn’t always that way and needn’t be in the future. With more multi-modal planning, we can ensure that everybody, including transit users, have convenient and affordable mobility options. Everybody benefits, including people who use those services, and motorists who experience less traffic congestion, crash risk, and chauffeuring burdens.

The BC Ministry of Transportation and Highways new South Island Transportation Strategy identifies various ways to solve regional transportation problems. These include giant Saanich Inlet bridges ($2.25-2.74 billion), Malahat Highway expansions ($560-967 million), and commuter rail service ($513+ million). However, the Strategy ignores the most cost-effective and beneficial option: frequent and affordable bus service between Victoria and Nanaimo, with at least hourly departures from 6:00 am until 11:00 pm, and prices no greater than two local fares, so a one-way trip between Victoria and Nanaimo costs less than $5. Because it requires no new infrastructure, bus transit is by far the most cost-effective travel option, saving hundreds of millions of dollars that can be reinvested in other critical services. It would take advantage of the Island Highway’s new bus lanes between Victoria and Langford, which makes bus commuting faster than driving to many destinations.

This speed helps make transit useful and attractive, increasing ridership, but even more important is service frequency and operating hours. For many trips, travellers need to know that if they miss one departure they can catch another, or another, or another, late into the evening.

Many travellers will use bus service if it is frequent and affordable. For example, 22% of Sooke-to-Victoria commuters take transit because it is frequent and affordable. The #61 bus makes 30 daily round trips, starting before 6:00 am and continuing until after midnight, with rush hour express service. Fares are just $2.50 one-way, or $5.00 for an unlimited-use daily pass. Similarly, 20-40% of weekday trips between Fraser Valley towns, such as Langley and Pitt Meadows, to Vancouver, are by public transit.

The Strategy includes various incentives to encourage travellers to use the most efficient option for each trip, such as commute trip reduction programs and mobility. If implemented with frequent and affordable transit service, this approach should attract a significant portion of trips, including travellers who cannot drive, and motorists who want to avoid driving stress or save money. This can be the cheapest way to reduce Malahat Highway congestion and accidents.

Many people are enamored with rail transit. I certainly appreciate the romance of trains. However, regardless of whether or not service is reestablished on the E&N line, Island travellers need frequent and affordable bus service. According to the South Island Transportation Strategy it would cost more than one billion dollars to provide just one daily train that departs Courtenay early weekday mornings and returns late afternoons, with $10-30 one-way fares. If ridership grows sufficiently, a second daily train may be added by 2038, but the Strategy includes no reverse commute, evening and weekend service. Because the rail line ends in Vic West, most travellers must transfer to buses to reach their final destinations. For many trips, buses will be faster, more affordable and convenient than either rail or driving. As a result, even if rail service is reestablished many travellers will need bus transit if they want to depart earlier or stay later than the train, travel on weekends, or reach destinations away from the train stations.

For the last century, transportation planning has favored automobile travel. This is unfair and inefficient. It deprives many people of their independence, and it increases consumer costs, traffic and parking congestion, accidents and pollution. We can do better.

It’s time to implement more multi-modal solutions to Vancouver Island’s transportation problems. The South Island Transportation Strategy contains many good ideas, but overlooks one of the most important: frequent and affordable intercity bus service connecting our communities.

For more information see, Rethinking Malahat Solutions, Or, Why Spend a Billion Dollars if a Million Dollar Solution is Better Overall?

A couple months ago, Focus Magazine Publisher David Broadland posted a column, “Mayor Helps’ 1.5 Percent Solution,” which criticized downtown Victoria bikelanes. I responded with a CfE column, Stop Griping: Bicycling Benefits Victoria, to which Broadland recently criticized in Difficult conversations on the steep descent ahead. All this give-and-take offers a nice teaching moment about the importance of considering affordability goals into policy debates.

Broadland is correct that, although his column implied that downtown bikelanes are wasteful and unfair, he didn’t actually use those words as my column suggested. However, his latest column continues with two critical mistakes which have important implications for affordability.

First, Broadland argues that regional policies should have only one goal: reducing climate change emissions. Although that certainly is important, there are other goals to consider, including affordability and economic opportunity. Some strategies, such as subsidizing electric cars, reduce emissions but provide few other benefits. Improving affordable and efficient modes such as walking, cycling and public transit, and increasing the portion of residents who live in walkable urban neighborhoods, not only help reduce pollution emissions, they also help increase affordability, reduce traffic and parking congestion, improve mobility options and economic opportunities for non-drivers, and improve public fitness and health. Smart policies favour these win-win solutions.

Second, Broadland ignores the ability of walking, cycling an public transit to leverage additional reductions in motor vehicle travel. This occurs because a short walking or cycling trip often substitutes for a longer automobile trip, or described differently, once people get a car they tend to use it, so transportation and development policies that help households reduce their vehicle ownership provide large reductions in per capita vehicle travel and associated costs.

For example, one study found that installing sidewalks on all streets in a typical North American community would increase per capita walking and cycling by 0.097 average daily miles, and reduce automobile travel by 1.142 daily vehicle-miles, about 12 miles of reduced driving for each mile of increased active travel, and residents in Transit Oriented Developments drive about half as many annual miles and spend far less money on transportation as residents of more automobile-dependent areas.

Having been car-free for nearly a decade, I can report from personal experience that walking, cycling and public transit are all helpful in allowing a household to reduce its vehicle ownership, and therefore its annual vehicle travel and transportation emissions. Walking is most suitable for trips less than a kilometer, public transit is most suitable for trips more than five kilometers, and cycling is generally the most time- and financially-efficient mode for trips within this range.

Because of this leverage factor, mode share (portion of trips made by a mode) is a poor indicator of transportation system efficiency since it does not directly measure travel distance, and therefore the energy savings from more compact, infill development. In his recent column, Broadland criticizes the Netherlands because, although the country is famous for cycling, 73% of travel is my automobile, as if that is a sign of failure, but in fact, despite comparable incomes the Dutch produce about half the per capita transport emissions as in Canada, as illustrated below. This is good news – it suggests that we can achieve our emission reduction targets with policies that also increase affordability.

A transportation system must be diverse in order to serve diverse demands. Walking, cycling, public transit and automobile travel all have important roles to play in an efficient and equitable city.

Focus Magazine Publisher David Broadland’s recent column, “Mayor Helps’ 1.5 Percent Solution,” complains that Victoria’s downtown bikelanes are wasteful and unfair to motorists. His arguments reflect fundamental misunderstandings of cycling impacts and benefits.

If we listen to critics like Broadland, we will implement a weak bicycle improvement program which places cycling facilities where they are cheap to build and never conflict with motor vehicle travel, resulting in bike lanes that look nice but do little to serve cyclists’ daily travel needs. If we want useful bicycle facilities that help solve transportation problems we must implement a strong program which places cycling facilities where they are needed. Although more costly and disruptive, a strong bicycle program can provide large benefits.

In a typical urban community, 20-40% of travellers cannot, should not, or prefer not to drive, and this portion is probably higher in Victoria due to our demographics (lots of youths, seniors, people with disabilities and struggling artists) and geography (a compact downtown and walkable neighborhoods).

An efficient and equitable transportation system must be diverse in order to serve these diverse demands, so travellers can choose the most appropriate mode for each trip. For many decades streets were designed to maximize automobile traffic flow, with little consideration for other modes. This is inefficient and unfair to non-drivers. Transportation planning is now becoming more multimodal, in recognition that streets must accommodate diverse users and uses, including walking, cycling, public transit, private automobiles, delivery and emergency vehicles, local businesses and residents.

Broadland’s column reflects the old paradigm which considered cycling unimportant. Times have changed. Cyclists just want a fair share of public resources (transportation funding and road space). What would be fair? You could argue that it should be about equal to cycling’s mode share: if 5% of trips are by cycling then it would be fair to invest 5% of public resources in cycling facilities, but this is backward looking since it reflects the travel patterns that occur under current conditions, ignoring “latent demand,” the additional cycling trips that some travellers want to make but cannot due to inadequate facilities. To respond to these demands it would be fair to invest the portion of money and road space that reflects the mode share after those programs are completed; if comprehensive planning is likely to results in 10% cycling mode share, it would be fair to invest 10% of transportation funds and road space in cycling facilities.

Even this could be considered inadequate. We are now emerging from a century of automobile-oriented transportation planning: for many decades there was little investment in walking, cycling and public transit. This can justify additional investments to make up for past underfunding. In addition, we can recognize that cycling provides both transportation and recreational benefits – cycling ranks as one of the most popular forms of exercise and recreation – so cycling facilities can be funded through both transportation budgets and through parks and recreation budgets.

Critics like Broadland imply that cycling facilities only benefit a small number of serious cyclists – those who ride expensive racing bikes wearing lycra. These critics couldn’t be more wrong. Those of us who ride regularly are able to hold our own on busy arterials; protected bike lanes are needed to allow inexperienced, less confident people bicycle. It has proven successful – the lane is full of diverse users, including many new riders who would not otherwise bike downtown.

Broadland begins by criticizing travel surveys. He is right that most surveys are incomplete and biased, but not the way he suggests. Conventional travel surveys were designed to measure motor vehicle travel; they tend to undercount short trips, off-peak travel, non-commute travel, travel by children, recreational travel, and walking and cycling trips to access motorized modes (the census classifies a bike-bus-walk trip simply as a transit trip, and walking trips between parked cars and destinations are generally ignored even if they involve several blocks of walking on public sidewalks). As a result, the actual number of walking and cycling trips is much greater than conventional travel statistics indicate.

There is now good research showing that improving bicycling conditions can significantly increase cycling activity. For example, five years after a major U.S. Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program invested about $100 per capita in pedestrian and cycling improvements in four typical communities, walking trips increased 23% and cycling trips 48%, mostly for utilitarian purposes. Similarly, a review of travel impacts in several U.S. cities found that adding protected bike lanes increased ridership on that street by 21% to 171%.

We now have good success stories. Starting in the 1960s, Davis, California and Eugene, Oregon started developing an extensive bike network. Although there was no economic analysis demonstrating that these investments were cost effective, their local officials realized intuitively that cycling improvements are worthwhile. Since then, both cities have experienced high cycling mode shares and low per capita automobile travel compared with other U.S. cities, and both cities have experienced much lower than average traffic fatality rates, demonstrating that bike-friendly cities are safer for all road users.

According to the CRD travel survey, in 2011 there were 4,796 average daily cycling trips to, from and within Victoria, representing 7% of the total 72,667 trips. If the City’s comprehensive bicycle program can increase cycling trips by 20-170%, as research suggests, this can reduce a few thousand urban-peak automobile trips, and their associated costs. Virtually everybody benefits if the travellers who want to cycle are able to do so, because it helps reduce traffic and parking congestion and therefore roadway facility costs, saves users money and increases affordability (savings to lower-income households), reduces total traffic accidents, improves public fitness and health, and improves mobility options for non-drivers. Even people who don’t bicycle benefit from reduced congestion and parking problems, and reduced chauffeuring burdens.

Automobile travel requires far more road space than cycling or public transit.

Broadland criticizes the downtown bike lanes because, he argues, they can do little to reduce regional automobile trips. This confuses local and regional scales: downtown cycling improvements are justified to address downtown transportation goals, regional policies will be needed to address regional goals.

Broadland assumes that the only reason for increasing bicycling is to reduce climate emissions. This ignores the many other benefits that cycling provides, including direct savings and benefits to users, plus savings and benefits to non-users including reduced traffic and parking congestion.

In an accompanying video, Focus Magazine argues that bike lanes cause traffic delays that increase pollution emission, a silly argument. A typical car consumes less than one liter of fuel per hour when idling, or about 7 grams of fuel during 25 seconds of delay so each additional bicycle commuter offsets a couple hundred car intersection delays. Delays and emissions caused by bike lanes are insignificant compared with those that result form traffic congestion caused by too many automobiles driving on urban roads. The best solution is to reduce automobile traffic by making space-efficient modes more attractive.

Broadland is hyper-sensitive to delays that bike lanes may cause motorists but ignores the much larger delays and risks that automobile traffic imposes on cyclists, and therefore the justification for separated cycling facilities. Just as railroad companies have a responsibility to help pay for rail crossings to protect motorists, motorists should help pay for protected bike lanes that reduce the risks their vehicles impose on cyclists.

By extrapolating the Pandora bike lane cost to other downtown arterials, Broadland estimates that Victoria’s cycling program will cost $16 million, which is almost certainly an exaggeration since the first project is always more costly than those that follow. Described that way, the bike program sounds expensive, but you could equally say that its cost is equivalent to just 320 downtown parking spaces, 18% of the McKenzie Intersection improvements, about $6 annual per urban core resident, or less than two-cents-per-day per capita. Cycling costs are tiny compared with what residents, governments and businesses spend on vehicles, fuel roads and parking facilities in automobile dependent communities, and compared with the potential savings from reduced driving.

This is not a “war on cars.” A multimodal transportation system is no more anti-car than a healthy diet is anti-food. Motorists have good reasons to support cycling improvements.