(An error has been corrected in this column, which was first published Feb. 4.)
Attention cyclists: City hall is about to knock you off your exalted perch at the top of the transportation pecking order. Make way for pedestrians.
Right now cyclists are the only folks commuting on our streets who have a formal city advisory committee. Car drivers, bus riders and pedestrians have nothing near the access to power of this privileged class.
That is about to change. We get this from no lesser sources than city manager Penny Ballem and the city’s new chief engineer, Peter Judd.
This week Ballem predicted “there will be a pedestrian advisory committee coming out of the new transportation plan.” She also says that will happen before the November election.
It’s about time when you consider daily pedestrian trips in Vancouver number 318,000. Cycle trips are a fifth, at 60,000.
And Judd admitted this week that even though for the past decade or more pedestrians have been cited as the most preferred folks in the city’s transportation universe, “there has been a gap” in making that a reality.
In the midst of a detailed report on capital projects at council Tuesday, Judd promised a “pedestrian safety plan.” Even though there have been programs in co-operation with ICBC and the police dealing with pedestrian safety, Judd says this will be the first comprehensive plan.
But there is more. In the last few weeks there has been major restructuring in the engineering department to begin a process that will put the concerns of pedestrians front and centre.
The re-jig has created a division within engineering called “Active Transportation.” It includes all human-powered methods of moving. Actually, rather than have a pedestrian advisory committee, don’t be surprised if they are blended with the cyclists into an active transportation advisory committee.
Two things triggered this. There was a council motion in November to improve safety and accessibility for pedestrians, which came from Mayor Gregor Robertson after he took a look at pedestrian traffic injuries and fatalities. (See Mike Howell’s Courier cover story Jan. 14 for those statistics.)
But that motion came at a time when there was a generational change taking place in the engineering department. Long-serving head Tom Timm left and Peter Judd was promoted.
While you could argue that the priorities of the engineering department haven’t changed since the Transportation Plan was passed by council in 1997, Judd has clearly changed what is being emphasized and it dovetails neatly with where this council wants to go.
Just ask the city’s director of transportation Jerry Dobrovolny.
He’ll tell you, “Peter is surfing on that wave. He is energizing it, that’s for sure.” Putting some muscle into solutions for pedestrians is one significant result.
Interestingly, this shift coincides with a visit to our city by one of the international rock stars of the planning world—Danish architect and urban planner Jan Gehl. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has this guy on speed dial. Gehl is the guy who advised Bloomberg on shutting cars out of Time Square and adding all those bike paths to New York’s congested streets.
Gehl wowed a Vancouver Playhouse crowd of mostly architects and their students last week. Then he went on to spend time with city staff and politicians in Vancouver and Surrey.
If he makes one point, it is this: Ever since the car began to dominate public space after the Second World War, architects and planners have forgotten they should be building to human scale. Restoring that practice, in part by taking space back from cars, he says is the key to creating healthier, livelier and more sustainable cities.
But at this point he says: “Every city I know of has a department of traffic planners. No city in the world has a department for pedestrians.”
Vancouver may be the first city to change that.
© Copyright (c) Vancouver Courier
Siendo que todos somos peatones en un momento del dia y que de todos los viajes diarios, la mayoria son peatonales o integran una porcion peatonal, debe hacerse una reorganozacion en la administracion publica para que exista un Departamento o Subsecretaria para los Peatones, que se encargue de ofrecer las mejores condiciones a esta modalidad del transporte.
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