"Vancouver has the vision to be the greenest city in the world by 2020. To get there, we’ve defined 10 long-term goals, each associated with a 2020-target. After talking citizens and stakeholders, we’ve created a draft action plan to meet our proposed targets." That is how begin each short video presenting these 10 targets (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yNV...) which are :

1.Green economy

2.Climate leadership

3.Green buildings

4.Green transportation

5.Zero waste

6.Access to nature

7.Lighter footprint

8.Clean water

9.Clean air

10.Local food

During my stay in Vancouver, I write about these targets. If you cannot wait to know more about it, here the official website of the project : http://www.talkgreenvancouver.ca/

Second part on the topic of the 4th long-term goal of Vancouver Greenest City : Green Transportation. Gordon Price, former City Councillor in Vancouver until 2002, and who has worked several years at the Translink (Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority), is now Director of The City Program at Simon Fraser University. He explained to me how Vancouver plans to enhance its transit network, with its flaws and assets.

To get the walking, cycling, and using of the transit network be more attractive than driving, Vancouver set two figured goals :
 Make the majority of trips (over 50%) on foot, bicycle, and public transit ;
 Reduce distance driven per resident by 20% from 2007 levels.

To achieve it, the city wants to re-imagine the streets : most of the proposed actions consist in reducing the space for cars and increasing the one for "clean transportation". There should be more and more pedestrian precincts, cycle tracks and corridors for rapid transit in Vancouver in the next years.

According to Gordon Price, to get people use their bike, the cycle tracks have to be "safe, practical and accepted" and t"here must be enough destinations at a certain distance of cycling, some " and also "safe places to park bikes". Vancouver considered all these aspects as many concrete actions are planned to take care of them. Density, which an important feature of downtown Vancouver, should help the city to shorten distances of the bikes’ trips.

As I wrote it in the last article, Vancouver’s transit system works already quite well. That’s why they are now ambitious for green transportation. Indeed, it is very common for people working downtown to use the transit system. In 2006, 39% of downtown residents’ journey-to-work were done by walking as against 36% by driving, more than 20% using the transit system but only 2,5% by cycling. These statistics are evolving in a good way as you see on the picture below.

Unfortunately, this good transit network is not extended over the whole city. Out of downtown, every business building is surrounded by parking lots, far less expensive than downtown, and bus stops are always far from workplaces. If we take into account all the inhabitants of Vancouver (and not only from downtown), then 57% of inhabitants’ journey-to-work were done by driving as against only 25% by using transit and 12% by walking, in 2006. The share of driving goes up to 80% if we take into account all the metropolitan area (and 13% for transit system). Here is the proof that transit network could be far better in the Vancouver metropolitan area. Thus, even if the "green transportation" long-term goal only concerns Vancouver, the authorities must collaborate with the other cities of the suburbs.

What about the electric car ?

The other main decision that took Vancouver’s authorities is to support the development of electric cars. Thay are collaborating with BCHydro, the energy company of the province, to install charging infrastructures. Nevertheless, Gordon Price admitted that the collaboration with car industry was not simple, they "just want some more space for vehicles whereas the city tries to balance between all kind of transportation". And concerning the cost of the batteries, Gordon didn’t convince me that the city could manage it. So this kind of transportation may be quite expensive.

However, defending the city, Gordon Price argues that "whatever is the energy you use, there will still be a limited amount of energy available (lithium for the bateries, oil, gas...). So we must balance between the different kind of transportation not to be dependant just to one energy." He also thinks that electricity will make a difference for bikes : electric assisted bikes will be a hudge market, for old people or just people who don’t want to sweat. It could appear in the next ten years, depending on the evolution of the price of oil.

The Jevons paradox

The price of oil can have very important consequences on transportation. Since the price of oil has increased dramatically, the efficiency of the vehicles has increased too. Unfortunately, when the efficiency of the engines increased, cars went bigger and bigger, so the advances were almost useless. It means that these technological progress that increased the efficiency with which oil was used tended to increase the rate of consumption of that resource. It’s the Jevons paradox. We will have to see how the american car industry (they develop the least energy-saving vehicles) behaves in the next years.

"Let’s go back to our sheeps" as we would say in french. With this goal of "green transportation", Vancouver tries to build an urban area "which gives people the choice of very high quality of life reducing the amount of energy that they have to use", according to Gordon. When I told him I was worried for social mixity in Vancouver (because of high prices of housing), he argued that "if you don’t have to afford a car thanks to the great transit network, you can save money to rent an appartment downtown". I am not sure it will convince everybody. But it doesn’t matter, Vancouver is taking important decisions to build a greener and greener transit network and we can just support and congratulate them.

See you soon, Be green, Ben