Vancouver – what we can learn

I had quite a few interesting suggestions in the comments section of a post I made a couple of days ago asking for a bit of feedback into what readers thought of this blog, and in particular what they wanted me to blog more about. One particularly good suggestion was that I do a series of posts on other cities around the world and what they’re doing in terms of public transport investment. So, the first city I’m going to look at is Vancouver.

Vancouver is a particularly useful city for Auckland to model itself on I think. Sure, its population is about 50% more than Auckland’s – 2.3 million versus 1.4 million. However, both cities were developed around the same time (over the last 150 years) and both are quite constrained in terms of the characteristics of the area around them – by water in Auckland’s case, and by water and mountains in Vancouver’s case. It also helps that I’ve visited Vancouver, back in 2005, so I can speak from some experience on the city. For a start, here’s a map of the city:

What seems immediately obvious to me is the comparatively low number of freeways/motorways the city has. There are a few in the southern area, but apart from that it seems there’s a single main freeway that runs through the city. That’s not very much for a city of 2.3 million. I remember when visiting Vancouver in 2005 doing an interesting comparison between it and Seattle. Seattle had masses and masses of freeways – yet suffered terribly from traffic congestion. Meanwhile, Vancouver had only built one freeway (excluding those ones in the south that don’t go anywhere near the CBD) yet I never noticed any congestion at all in Vancouver. It’s almost like they’ve achieved more for less, certainly worth exploring further.

The wikipedia article on Vancouver has an interesting extract on transport as well:

Successive city councils in the 1970s and 1980s prohibited the construction of freeways as part of a long term plan. As a result, the only major freeway within city limits is Highway 1, which passes through the north-eastern corner of the city. While the number of cars in Vancouver proper has been steadily rising with population growth, the rate of car ownership and the average distance driven by daily commuters have fallen since the early 1990s. Vancouver is the only major Canadian city with these trends. Despite the fact that the journey time per vehicle has increased by one third and growing traffic mass, there are 7% fewer cars making trips into the downtown core. Residents have been more inclined to live in areas closer to their interests, or use more energy-efficient means of travel, such as mass transit and cycling. This is, in part, the result of a push by city planners for a solution to traffic problems and pro-environment campaigns. Transportation demand management policies have imposed restrictions on drivers making it more difficult and expensive to commute while introducing more benefits for non-drivers.

So it seems clearly possible to avoid the increasing auto-dependence that Auckland has experienced over the past few decades. By focusing development around the public transport network, there has actually been a reduced need for travel, especially into the CBD. Vancouver is an excellent example of why integrating land-use planning and transportation planning is so critical. You can get it right.

One of the most interesting things about Vancouver’s transport system is that the rail system isn’t huge. It’s not like we’re comparing ourselves with London or Tokyo here – as can be seen on the map below in fact the rail system in Vancouver is not that much more extensive than what we have in Auckland:

However, what is key is that Vancouver have invested in their rail system over the past few years – and in fact the whole of the SkyTrain system (which makes up almost all the above map) has been constructed over the past 20 years. The SkyTrain is quite fantastic actually, with driverless trains coming at 90 second frequencies throughout the day. The newest line in the SkyTrain system, the Canada Line, will open next Monday in fact. This line provides a high-quality public transport link between the city’s airport and the downtown.  The photo below provides an insight into what the Canada Line looks like (although much of it is underground at its city end):

Vancouver is often rated as one of the best, if not the best, city in the world to live in. They’ve managed this without spending squillions of dollars on a motorway system (or possibly, because they haven’t spent that money). Vancouver continues to invest in expanding their public transport system – with future plans for another SkyTrain line being rapidly developed. The city also has excellent bus services – no doubt helped by its grid layout. We can certainly learn a lot from what’s happening there – which is not a lot of road building, that’s for sure!

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