While the news coverage concentrated on the issues related to the Adanac Bikeway at Union Street (as usual, framed as cars versus bikes), the City of Vancouver’s May 30th staff report on Active Transportation contained a piece of remarkable data:
From 2008 to 2011, motor-vehicle trips fell from 57.9% to 54.3% of the transportation mode share in Vancouver.
Once again – despite our ability (or willingness) to perceive it – the evidence indicates that driving continues to drop.
Here are the data:
.
That’s the ratio for the City as a whole; the drop would be even more extreme (and in numbers, not just percent) for the downtown peninsula, where, as it’s necessary to keep repeating, traffic is down to 1965 levels.
Conclusions: Giving people options actually works.
And it’s safer:
Staff in 2012 reported a decrease of approximately 20% in all collisions (vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians) on Hornby Street and Dunsmuir Street after implementation of the separated bike lanes.
And it’s healthier:
From 2008 to 2011, the overall number of walking trips in the City increased by almost 50,000 trips, increasing the walking mode share from 15.4% to 17.0%.
During the same period, cycling was the fastest growing transportation mode with 40% growth in the number of trips, nearly 20,000 more trips citywide, increasing the cycling mode share from 2.9% to 3.8%.
And it’s gender balanced:
In 2011, 41% of all bicycle trips in Vancouver were done so by girls and women. In comparison, the Canadian average in 2006 (was) 30% of all cycling trips made by girls and women, while other North American cities, such as Portland, measured 31% (2012) and San Francisco, measured 28% (2011) of all trips.
In summary:
Overall, from 2008 to 2011, the total sustainable transportation mode share increased from 40% to 44%, moving Vancouver closer to its Greenest City and Transportation 2040 goals.
If the table excerpt shows what I think it does, it shows that driving still rose in absolute terms but fell as a share of overall transportation.
The table also shows that walking and transit rose more than biking (both in absolute numbers and %) yet there is more time/money spent on bikes in Vancouver than anything else. Perhaps some of the money going into new bike lanes should be redirected to pedestrian improvements.
except it is happening, both as part of the bike projects as well as pedestrian specific initiatives. its just that anything remotely involving bikes automatically results in “CARS VERSUS BIKES FIGHT!!!!!11oneone” from our media outlets. The Comox-Helmcken Greenway includes a lot of pedestrian friendly aspects. The Canada Line connections project yesterday includes a proper sidewalk along Kent, and sets them further back from the vehicles (many of which are trucks). and yet media focus was almost entirely on bikes.
here is the presentation given to council yesterday:
http://former.vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20130612/documents/cfsc2presentation.pdf
note all of the pedestrian safety improvements in Section 2. is this the sort of thing you had in mind?
a) That’s simply and demonstrably not true. How much did the Canada Line cost? What is the City’s operating budget for motorist facilities?
b) Vancouver has a deficit in cycling infrastructure. It makes sense that as we start to get caught up to the deficit, there’s going to be time and money dedicated to it.
c) As Jared points out, cycling and pedestrian improvements often go hand in hand. Read the City’s stats on the Hornby lane, for example. Fewer bike-ped conflicts, fewer car-ped conflicts.
d) The City needs to increase the time and money its spends on both cycling and pedestrian infrastructure. They are both so cheap that they needn’t be mutually exclusive. For the price of one left-turn bay for cars, we can get drastic improvements in both cycling and pedestrian infrastructure. For the money that Vancouverites are putting into all these new bridges, highway expansions, etc. around the region, we could have the best cycling and pedestrian transportation systems in North America. Don’t forget: bridges and highways cost billions; cycling and pedestrian infrastructure costs three orders of magnitude less.
“yet there is more time/money spent on bikes in Vancouver than anything else”
That might be your perception but it is almost certainly untrue.
^ correct.
Also, if anyone is interested, the full 2011 trip diary report can be found here:
http://www.translink.ca/~/media/Documents/customer_info/translink_listens/customer_surveys/Trip%20Diaries/2011%20Metro%20Vancouver%20Regional%20Trip%20Diary%20%20Analysis%20Report.ashx
oops, the “correct” comment was directed at Andrews post WRT absolute numbers vs. mode share
“..Once again – despite our ability (or willingness) to perceive it – the evidence indicates that driving continues to drop. ..”
No it does not. The car trips continue to grow in absolute terms. That is why we cannot perceive that car usage is going down – there is more cars and more car trips than before. It’s just that other modes are growing at faster rates.
Yes, there are also more people. I can’t find data for 2008 but between 2006-2011 there was a rise of nearly 200,000 people in Vancouver. That’s about 40,000 a year so let’s just say that between 2008 and 2011 there were 120,000 new people in Vancouver. What do these stats tell us? We had 120,000 new people, but only 11,800 new car trips. By comparison, there were coincidentally 120,000 more trips by walk, cycle, transit.
So when you factor in population increase with these stats it absolutely does show that driving rates are dropping.
Also, when you have the trip number increasing by 127,200 and only 11,800 of those trips were by car, combined with knowing there were roughly 120,000 more people, these stats speak volumes!
So if absolute numbers continue to increase (albeit slowly) – how can the City justify reducing capacity?
several reasons:
1) demand may not be increasing uniformly across the city. as per other stats seen previously, demand in the area where many lane reallocations are taking place (i.e. downtown) is in fact dropping.
2) some streets may have more capacity than they need and it can be reallocated without impact to vehicles (e.g. granville bridge)
3) most importantly, that lost capacity can be replaced with higher capacity uses. other than broadway, i wouldn’t expect any more tunnelled transit lines in the city. transit ridership(i.e. total patronage, not mode split) is intended to more than double by 2040. that will probably require permanent lane reassignments for buses or LRTs on just about every major arterial.
I’m not going to get into how they can justify it, because that’s a much bigger conversation, but I DO want to point out that just because vehicle trips rose in absolute terms (though fell in overall share of trips) doesn’t mean that the road reconfigurations which affect capacity occur where vehicle trips increased. For example, if car trips are rising in absolute terms into the City of Vancouver (say, along Boundary), but dropping into the downtown core (which they are), then it would be silly to say that the City is pulling out car capacity downtown while trips are increasing. You shouldn’t muddle the aggregate, City-wide data with specific and targeted local changes to roads.
The City does not seek to reduce capacity; they seek to increase capacity by re-allocating space to different modes of travel. It’s foolish to count capacity in terms of how many cars can get through; you need to count it in terms of how many travelers and goods can get through.
Shifting travelers from cars to bikes, buses, and feet in fact increases the capacity of the transportation system.
Moreover, this data doesn’t look at when those new trips are happening. Road capacity is based on peak times–the city could double the number of car trips if they’re spread out more evenly. If most of the increase in car ridership is Saturday mornings to go hiking, our road capacity can handle it.
It is true, there is lot of spin on the data:
Staff in 2012 reported a decrease of approximately 20% in all collisions (vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians) on Hornby Street and Dunsmuir Street after implementation of the separated bike lanes.
Yes may be, but as I previously stated, that is a consequence of road diet more than a cycle path implementation, references provided in the staff report suffer similar issues when not worse (see here).
We could add that parallel parking suppression can reduce mid block crashes by up to 90% according to the NCHRP Report 395 (That is not affecting only the cyclists), and guess what has happened on Hornby and Dunsmuir?
One could add that there is a general trend toward safer street basically everywhere, and since ICBC provides statistic on every intersection in Vancouver, you can quickly find out a significant crashes reduction on random street, 10% on Denman, 30% on Georgia in the last 4 years.
In light of the above, the safety performance of Dunsmuir / Hornby are not that stellar.
One could eventually say the same on the increase in cycling modal share:
Tomorrow, Pucher will talk at the SFU: He is the author of a paper called:
“Bicycling renaissance in North America? An update and re-appraisal
of cycling trends and policies”
What the number said in this paper, is that cycling modal share is on the sharp increase in every metropolis, and again North America seems to be left in the dust by Europe in general on that trends, where it is even stronger.
Pucher, will try to find a link between cycling investment and modal share. There is certainly one, but I don’t think it is as strong as people here believe in general.
I am of the opinion that there is much more at stake- more noticeably the gentrification of cities D/T could be a major driver..
…and probably the underlying reason for increase cycling modal share are the same as for the increase in transit ridership in general.
All that said, it is still good to see cycling modal share increase in Vancouver, but it hides the suburban disaster where it is decreasing virtually everywhere in Metro Vancouver
Loving the anti-car spin, painting an increasing total number of car trips to sound like a reduction! Of course car percentage is down – there are thousands more living downtown than 5 years ago.
Oh and jared, nice try with the Palinesque tactic of blaming that darned lamestream media. Heard Gregor try the same line last week. It made him sound as ridiculous and paranoid as it did Sarah.
Alright Bob, despite your rather unfortunate association fallacy, I will concede my comments about the media were also over the top. Specifically, the all caps and the exclamation marks imply a message of childishness on the part of who I am criticizing, which is unfair. Someone had just linked me this article, and I was a little grumpy. http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/bloombergs-banana-republic/
So with that being said, allow me to rephrase:
Major media coverage of bike projects in Vancouver has ranged from nuanced and hard-but-fair to being misleading and setting a negative tone that encourages perceptions of conflict. Furthermore, even if the stories are otherwise reasonable, they can overshadowed by sensationalist headlines.
To expand on the examples I mentioned previously (which I note you did not actually address in your rebuttal):
This headline puts a very negative tone on some bike projects right from the get-go:
http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=e6f47996-bb4c-4aff-a755-e4eb0dd7a63d
Can you point me to a counterexample of a headline that says something along the lines of “bike lanes sure to reduce pedestrian/cyclist conflicts”? I’m not disputing the accuracy of the statement that there will be conflicts (were are seeing them right now!), but it chose to focus on the certainty of a negative outcome, rather than a positive one. Is there an opposite example of a headline solely focusing on positives and sweeping the negatives under the rug?
This headline incorrectly refers to the Comox-Helmcken as a bike lane, even though a large chunk of the project involves making improvements for pedestrians:
http://bc.ctvnews.ca/new-bike-lane-approved-for-vancouver-s-west-end-1.1077887
Can you point me to a counterexample of a headline that refers to the project solely in terms of a pedestrian project, and only discusses the cycling aspects at the end of the article (and after the cost)? This type of headline leads to an inaccurate impression of the amount of money being spent on cycling, since it suggests “money for cycling”, not “money for cycling and pedestrians”, and thus makes other modes look neglected.
Now lets look at the bike lanes approved last week (Adanac, north end of Cambie Bridge, Canada Line bridge connections):
http://www.theprovince.com/news/Plan+upgrade+Union+Street+bike+lanes+angers+residents/8517586/story.html
This article is almost entirely focused on the one that caused conflict and ignored the other two until the very end. Can you find me an headline that says “council unanimously approved two bike lanes with no public opposition”, and then only mentions the Adanac one in the last paragraph of the article?
For all of these topics, I can find well-reasoned and fair articles dealing with the same issue. But I cannot find examples that cast an unfairly positive light the way these was cast an unfairly negative one. Can you?