Vancouver City Council |
ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT
Date: April 28, 2003
Author/Local: J. Patterson/6644
RTS No. 03343
CC File No. 5560-1
Meeting Date: May 13, 2003
TO:
City Council
FROM:
City Manager
SUBJECT:
Downtown Transportation Plan: Canadian Institute of Planners' and Planning Institute of British Columbia's 2003 Awards for Excellence in Planning
INFORMATION
THAT this report be received for information.
PURPOSE
This report is to inform Council that Vancouver's Downtown Transportation Plan has received two awards from the organizations representing professional planners in British Columbia and in Canada. The Plan has been recognized by the Canadian Institute of Planners' (CIP) 2003 Awards for Planning Excellence as the winner in the category of Innovation. The Plan has also been recognized by the CIP's provincial affiliate, the Planning Institute of British Columbia (PIBC), as the winner of the 2003 Award of Excellence in the Comprehensive and Policy Plans category.
BACKGROUND
Each year the CIP honours planning projects from across Canada for their excellence, innovation and impact on the field of planning. Since the mid-1980s, the City of Vancouver has received CIP Awards for work on the Vancouver Legacies Program (1988), Artists Studios Policy (1989), the CityPlan Process (for Innovation in Public Participation - 1995), the Central Waterfront Port Lands Policy and Protocol (for Intergovernmental Co-operation -1995) and the Southeast False Creek Policy Statement (2000). For 2003 the CIP received 31 nominations from across Canada.
PIBC also provides Awards of Excellence in Planning. The City of Vancouver has previously received the Award of Excellence for the Implementation of the Downtown South Community Plan (1993), for the False Creek Policy Broadsheets and Official Development Plan (1996) and for the Vancouver Skyline Study (1998). The City of Vancouver also received Awards of Merit in 1991, 1992 and 1996. The City of Vancouver's Downtown Transportation Plan was chosen for the Award of Excellence in 2003 from amongst 11 submissions received in the Comprehensive and Policy Plans category, one of two categories in which PIBC provides awards.DOWNTOWN TRANSPORTATION PLAN
The City of Vancouver Transportation Plan (1997) recommended that a transportation plan be prepared for the downtown. Based on instructions from Vancouver City Council in 1999, the Plan was formulated over a two year period beginning in April 2000 and adopted by Council in July 2002.
The twin foundations underlying the Downtown Transportation Plan, as well as the Central Area Plan, 1991, that preceded it, are increased access by transit, principally rapid transit, from outside the downtown and continued residential development on the downtown peninsula to allow workers to live closer to work. The value of these principles is confirmed by short-term trends in walking and cycling, which increased from 20 percent of all daily trips in 1994 to 35 percent of all daily trips in 1999, as well as by longer-term trends in which most of the increase in peak hour commuting to downtown has been by transit. Walking and cycling moved from the third place mode in 1994 to the most frequently used mode in 1999. For the period to 2021, transit is expected to account for about three of four additional peak period trips to downtown, while walking and biking will account for the remaining 25 percent of peak hour trips.
Innovative features underscored in the submission to the Awards jury included restraining vehicular road space in the downtown, converting many one-way streets to two-way and positing a fine and varied network of improvements in pedestrian comfort, safety and priority - pedestrian priority routes, walking trails, great streets and greenways, as well as the Plan's preparation by an interdisciplinary team from the planning and engineering departments and emphasis on improvements in the public realm. Other innovative features included the development of a transportation demand submodel of the Greater Vancouver region's EMME/2 transportation to allow the assessment of the impact of proposed circulation changes on the overall road network as planning progressed and the parallel development of a dynamic assessment model for evaluating the quality of streetscapes, as well as systematic evaluation of noise and air pollution in the downtown.
Staff to be acknowledged for receipt of the CIP Award in addition to the Co-directors of Planning, Larry Beasley and Ann McAfee, and the General Manager of Engineering Services, Dave Rudberg, are Jeffrey Patterson, Senior Planner in Central Area Planning, and Doug Louie, Senior Transportation Engineer, co-managers of the project, as well as the multi-disciplinary team of Ian Fisher, Richard Johnson, Lon LaClaire, John Madden, Dean McKay and Katia Robichaud.
Another innovative feature of the Downtown Transportation Plan was its steering committee, which included elected officials. Councillor Bass, former Councillor Price and former mayor Philip Owen, together with the City Manager, the Co-directors Of Planning, the General Manager of Engineering Services and Ian Adam from Engineering Services assisted in guiding the development of a plan that eventually received support from practically all stakeholders on the downtown peninsula.
In addition to being a tribute to the co-operative efforts of the Planning and Engineering Departments, the awards demonstrate the very high regard for our work in planning in general, and especially in planning the downtown, by the organizations representing professional planners from across British Columbia and Canada.
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