December 2022

I hope you enjoyed our alarmingly pleasant fall. Personally I found watching my zucchinis grow until late November was a bit like knowing someone was behind my bathroom door holding a knife: grateful I could still enjoy my deck, but not looking forward to the part where I get stabbed. How about you?

Project Update

You may recall from my last post that I have been working with a group of non-profiteers toward getting a multi-use path built in the right-of-way (ROW) of a numbered provincial highway. We are only one year into the project, but there is already much to tell.

Most dramatically we received the Preliminary Design Report from our consultant, GJD Planning + Design. The report:

breaks the approximately 30 km route into 25 segments,
identifies relevant GIS data for each segment (ROW width, roadway width, location of powerpoles, etc),
recommends a type of all ages and abilities active transportation facility for each segment based on available ROW and surrounding land use patterns,
provides high-level cost estimates for the construction of each segment,
develops a multiple accounts evaluation which ranks each segment on a range of factors, and
identifies segments that are a priority for construction based on need and ease of construction.

In short, it’s a terrific piece of work and it has given us a much clearer idea of the challenges and opportunities we face.

We also had a terrific party to launch the report. I’m sorry if you were missed from the invitation list. Let me know if you’d like to be added because believe me, there are more great parties to come.

We’ve also been working on developing our relationships with local, regional and provincial authorities, as well as with stakeholder groups. We may have reached out to you. Thank you if you were nice to us! But, as you know, I’m not here just to talk about the good times. I’m also here to talk about things we could do better, and today I’d like to talk about the enigma at the heart of the problem.

The Enigma at the Heart of the Problem

In BC, active transportation is not transportation. You may think that’s just crazy talk, but I assure you it’s true. Here’s an excerpt from the 2022/23 – 2024/25 Service Plan for the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure (MoTI), published in February 2022, which describes the Purpose of the Ministry [almost] as follows:

“The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure plans [active] transportation networks, provides [active] transportation services and infrastructure, develops and implements [active] transportation policies, and administers many related acts, regulations and federal-provincial funding programs. The Ministry strives to build and maintain a safe and reliable [active] transportation system and provide affordable, efficient and accessible [active] transportation options for all British Columbians.”

Of course, the Ministry does no such thing. In practice, responsibility for planning, developing, implementing and maintaining active transportation infrastructure in BC lies entirely on municipalities, regional districts, and volunteer based non-profit organizations. It is a very heavy load for such organizations to carry.

Outside of municipalities, which is the majority of the province, MoTI is solely responsible for the transportation network. The Province owns the road right-of-ways, and makes the rules for who can use the road right-of-ways, for what purpose and for how long; the Province sets the standards for the placement, construction and maintenance of infrastructure within road right-of-ways, and makes the laws regarding what assessments must be done and what licences and permits must be obtained before any construction can begin. At the planning stage, there is a morass of jurisdictional issues and private property impacts to navigate. There are public consultation processes and First Nations engagement processes which must be undertaken, land surveys that must be carried out, environmental and archaeological assessments, fisheries impact studies, engineering assessments and detailed design work which must be done. None of this work is done by the Ministry despite the fact that the Ministry is ostensibly responsible for providing safe and reliable [active] transportation options for all British Columbians.

This problem isn’t limited to the unincorporated areas of the province either. In most municipalities, the Ministry also owns and controls the main street(s). Pursuant to s.35 of the Community Charter, SBC 2003, c. 26, municipalities do not have ownership or control over provincial arterial highways, and pursuant to ss.44-47 of the Transportation Act, SBC 2004, c. 44, the Province decides which highways are provincial arterial highways. In a great many, if not most, BC municipalities, the main street has been designated a provincial arterial highway, leaving the municipality powerless to address the safety and other concerns that come from having your town bisected by major road. For example, the municipality cannot set or reduce the speed limit, cannot install crosswalks or crossing signals, cannot build bike lanes along the sides of the road, cannot design accesses to adjacent commercial properties, and so on.

Now, let’s put down our law books for a moment, take a deep breath, and spend a bit of time imagining how many highway interchanges or skytrain stations or railway trestles would have been built in BC if the Province had relied on the efforts of small groups of volunteers to plan, develop, construct, operate and maintain them. Well, none, obviously. As it happens, none is also the approximate number of multi-use paths that currently exist in the ROWs of provincial numbered highways. Personally, I don’t think this is a coincidence.

Proposed Solution

The province needs to start treating active transportation as if it were transportation.... because that’s exactly what it is. The Ministry needs to be tasked with planning, building and maintaining an affordable, efficient and accessible [active] transportation network throughout the province, just like the Service Plan [almost] says it will. It needs to work in collaboration with local and regional authorities to plan active transportation networks throughout BC. It needs to be given a time line for completing the build-out of these networks. And, it needs to be given enough money to take on a task of this magnitude and importance.

And here we come to the end of the road, as it were. I could go on, but the holidays are quickly approaching so ending here will be my gift to you. Happy holidays.

We’ll talk some more in June.

Adventures in Active Transportation, Part 2