The connection between public transit and urban sustainability is significant; public transportation has been shown to reduce air pollution and GHG emissions, positively enhance urban densification, and drive economic growth in communities.
In light of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Christy Clark's multimillion dollar transit funding announcement, we sat down with Patrick Condon, Chair, Urban Design, and Professor of Landscape Architecture to get his perspective out what this development means for the future of urban design and public transit in Vancouver.
Q. What is the significance of this announcement?
This announcement presents nothing new, it only certifies what was previously announced: The Federal government is willing to pay 50 percent of the cost of new transit projects, up from the traditional 33 percent. Unfortunately the funding levels are far far below what is needed to build out the 7.5 billion dollar Mayor's Council transit plan. At only 250 million per year combined total from local, provincial, and federal resources it would take 30 years to finish this "ten year plan".
Q. How will these investments affect Vancouver’s urban design?
The Mayor's Council ten year plan will affect regional urban design in a number of ways. The most hopeful part of the plan, and the easiest to achieve, are the rapid bus improvements proposed for new "frequent transit corridors" in all parts of the region. These new "B-line" type services could catalyze new medium density development on many major corridors, especially if provided in dedicated lanes. Such systems have dramatically improved the number of transit users and urban quality of life in many cities, including Curitiba Brazil and Bogota Columbia. On the other hand, more expensive subway systems are only logical if accompanied by very high density development within a ten minute walk of transit stations. This model of development is now manifest at Metrotown and Brentwood town centres. High rise construction brings with it a number of social, economic and sustainability costs which I have enumerated in the past, including susceptibility to earthquake damage, high per square foot construction costs, heavy use of GHG emitting concrete, and the disappearance of small scale local commercial activity.
Q. Is this sufficient to address Vancouver’s transit issues?
WIth the funding formula and amounts we now know, we can calculate that it will take 30 years to build the Mayor's Council's ten year plan. By that time the region will likely be home to 3.5 to 4 million people. Most of this number will be located in currently suburban locations. The ten year plan is thus already out of date and will not serve our future region well. It would be wise to start over and generate a new, more affordable plan - a plan more in keeping with what we now know are the likely financial resources and the growth trends expected over the next three to four decades.
Q. What will the legacy of this investment be?
The political culture of our region is deeply committed to the plan as proposed and unlikely to re-evaluate it to reflect this new financial and temporal reality. My hope is that the much cheaper parts of the proposal, the rapid bus network, will be the first to be built, and that this system will be a sustainable armature for future regional transit oriented development.
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Patrick Condon has over 25 years of experience in sustainable urban design: first as a professional city planner and then as a teacher and researcher. He has distilled his 20+ years of experience designing sustainable communities in his recent book “Seven Rules for Sustainable Cities, Design Strategies for a Post Carbon World” (2010 Island Press). He is now the Chair of the Masters of Urban Design Program at UBC. |