War on cars? Vancouver transportation director says city may have no other choice

[A recent report recommends dramatically increasing the cost of parking permits in a Vancouver neighbourhood as city continues to focus on alternate transportaion methods / THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck]

It has been called Vancouver’s “war on cars.”

In the latest skirmish, city staff in the west coast cultural capital are considering a substantial hike in the cost of parking permits for one of the city’s most traffic-jammed neighbourhoods. The report recommends fees rise from $80 to $600 a year for drivers seeking a new permit in the West End.

Previous battles have included the city’s multimillion-dollar investment in dedicated bike lanes, including the closure of the tony waterfront Point Grey Road to all but local traffic and cyclists.

Vancouver also recently launched a long-delayed $5-million bike share program.

A recent missive in the National Post blames “two-wheeler preachers and sanctimonious scolders who aren’t dependent on cars for their livelihoods” for the perceived anti-car actions.

Nowhere is the problem more defined than in the West End neighbourhood that borders iconic Stanley Park and its sandy beaches.

“People are spending 20 minutes just looking for a place to park and that is discouraging people from even driving to the West End. That’s not what we want,” Lon LaClaire, the City of Vancouver’s director of transportation, tells Yahoo Canada News.

LaClaire says the city is trying to make it easier to drive – for those who need to do so. And if there is a war on cars, the cars are still winning – but barely.

The latest transportation monitoring report last spring found walking, biking and transit use have increased dramatically. The city aimed to have half of daily trips by walk, bike or transit by 2020.

“We’ve actually already achieved that,” he says.

Their Transportation 2040 plan aims for two-thirds.

Over one year, daily bike trips increased from 100,000 to 130,000. They doubled over a three-year period.

But while some rant about losing the streets to bicycles, LaClaire says Vancouver has no choice.

Bordered on three sides by water, all but surrounded by bridges and hemmed in by dense suburbs, Vancouver can’t grow out.

“The walk-bike transit is the only way to provide the access needed to satisfy the demand being generated by increasing development,” he says. “It’s the only way we can grow.”

Over the next 30 years, the city expects an additional 130,000 residents on top of the 603,000 who call it home today.

Metro Vancouver expects to grow from 2.3 million today to 3.4 million by 2041.

“We have to plan for it,” LaClaire says of the population increase. “We can’t expect that they’ll be driving everywhere because then the whole road network will fail.”

While Vancouver itself has seen a decrease in the number of individual automobile commuters, there were 1,191,511 registered vehicles in Metro Vancouver in 2001, 1,346,705 in 2006 and 1,632,402 in 2016.

“How many parking spaces are on the street today, that’s how much there will ever be,” he says. “Same with the number of roads.”

About 1.2 million Metro Vancouver residents commute to and from work every day, according to the 2011 National Household Survey by Statistics Canada. About 66 per cent of those commuters do so by individual vehicle.

Across the country, 15.4 million Canadians commute daily – four out of five in a private vehicle. Only about 5.7 per cent walk to work and 1.3 per cent cycle – both fewer than in 2006.

The benefits of curbing car culture are economic, social and environmental, says LaClaire, who adds that people who ditch their automobile could also see a health benefit.

About a third of Vancouver’s community-based greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation.

Nationally, transportation accounted for 23 per cent of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2014 – second only to oil and gas at 26 per cent.

Vancouver – and others – need to tame congestion, LaClaire says.

“We are trying to make the streets function very well for the car trips that need to occur and for the goods movement and the transit movement on the street,” he says.

City staff will submit a report to council this fall on parking fees in the West End.