Transcription of City of Vancouver councillors' remarks from a public hearing on bus lanes, July 24 2024.
Original video: https://www.youtube.com/live/42xxT_6wpHc?si=t5li2BR1_F0RA663&t=20453
Downloaded audio with yt-dlp --download-sections "*5:40:50-6:05:30" -x --audio-format best https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42xxT_6wpHc, transcribed with Deepgram. Lots of small transcription errors but you can get the gist.
Speaker 0:
Into council, to committee to, to reflect their their views on this motion. We're now going to move to discussions. So, looking for anybody who would like to jump on the queue, and you can go ahead. Thank you very much, councillor Boyle.
Speaker 1:
Great. I I got to say a few things in introduction, but I could talk about my enthusiasm for bus lanes for hours, so I'll use a couple more minutes. One of the great things about bus lanes is that they are a tool we have in our jurisdiction. I know many of us, wish that we could wave a wand and improve public transit for residents in a whole lot of ways, but we don't directly fund public transit. We don't, we don't direct the schedules and resource allocations.
We do make land use decisions, and bus lanes are a key land use decision that we can make in how we allocate our limited road space to move the most number of people, more quickly, more efficiently, more reliably. We know that TransLink is facing operating funding challenges right now, that they don't have more buses to be putting on the road. And at the current state, more buses would be stuck in traffic as well. Bus lanes are something we can do that is squarely within our jurisdiction. And in fact, the return on investment, the benefits are so large that TransLink has funding available to support us doing that, and we're already accessing a good amount of that funding.
And we can do even more, and it will make even more of a difference. I also just want to point out that bus lanes are good for emergency responders too. It is so frustrating. I know, regardless of our mode of transport, I'm sure many of us have witnessed watching a, an ambulance or a fire truck stuck in traffic, and there's no space for cars to pull over. Bus lanes create space where emergency vehicles can move quickly to get to the call they need to get to.
One of the speakers, Gustavo, spoke about, housing. A number of speakers spoke about housing in in particular. We are adding badly needed housing in neighborhoods across the city. I know that is a commitment, shared among council. And as we heard from speakers, we need to think about, as we welcome more people, how are we moving them efficiently around the city?
We're not building new roads. So we need to use our road space more efficiently, and bus lanes are a great way to do that. I also wanna lift up again the automated enforcement piece, and it was great to hear from a couple bus drivers. Thank you for that. I was, out riding the 49 with Vision 0 volunteers last week, and there talked to a couple bus drivers as well, whose, frustration at the delays that are caused when a car is kind of rat running through the bus lane illegally or parked, illegally in the bus lane, you know, often kind of with blinkers on, like, they're just there for a moment, but those are delays that impact thousands of riders.
And the rules should apply for all of us, for a smoothly run system. So automated enforcement is a great opportunity that works in so many places, and could help expand the impact of these types of changes. Yeah. Just I I think also just wanna say a huge thank you to the hundreds of people who wrote into councillor, with personal emails and stories about the route that you take and the delays that you experience and the difference that this would make in your lives. And, a thank you to Vision 0 and Movement who have both been both organizations, with a ton of energetic volunteers doing great work, and I would encourage folks to get, look them up and get involved there as well if you're not already.
And I'm I have a couple more things to say that I'll save for the end. Thanks.
Speaker 0:
Okay. Great. Thank you very much. Councillor Kirby Young, you're next on the queue.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. Thanks, chair. And thanks to all the speakers that came out. I love the passion on this. And I would just say very I don't need to repoint it repeat a lot of what's been said, but I would say very simply that, this council crew has already boarded this bus.
It was pretty clear and pretty evident, and we're heading in the in the same direction, from the previous motion. I do, at the risk of, striking fear in people's hearts, I do have an amendment, but I think it's a positive one. So, if we wanna move this to amendment queue, and I can speak to it. Thanks. There we go.
Alright. Gonna provide a bit of context here. And I think, for me, I it was great to hear all the stories of people that came out. It's clear people are very passionate about something when it impacts your daily life, literally your ability to get to your job or at a living, beyond time for your midterm, for anybody that's written in midterms and walked, especially at UBC, and you have to hike across campus. Then you have to walk down the stairs into the chair, and you have a fine other night of minutes to answer x number of questions.
I think everybody's been in that situation. So we appreciated the stories, and they resonated. I have heard, in addition to really, awesome advocacy here, perhaps a misunderstanding from some people about what council is already doing, and I think it's, helpful to kinda level set and provide an update on that. Council were fortunate that we got an update on the action plan, and it is pretty great to look at because you see everything here on 5 not 4 or 5 corridor, routes that are scheduled to be completed in 2 years. So I wanted to provide some context around that.
So there's some housekeeping, components in this that identifies the 5, priority routes that are already happening and the timeline and the fact that now that we have gone through that work, councillor committing to them. I wanna talk about sort of rapid speed. The last motion was October 4th. We, went to mayor's council. We got TransLink funding, of $11,000,000 staff have inputted it.
We have a plan, and we're gonna have, 5 of these improvements done in 2 years. So that's pretty significant. So that's part of the motion in it. What it does is try to just, do a bit of housekeeping here and delineate between the 5 that are underway and clearly show the other ones that are coming forward, because I didn't I thought that that could have been clearer. I also think there's a couple of other pieces of work that are important to bring together here.
1 is, if you can see here on f, with Broadway's, as we heard from our staff and the really informative transportation annual update this morning, is that there's work underway to complete a great street, and they're already looking at the bus component, but we have to be thoughtful around, how we do that with the other work. So, that's the part of the job of council is to bring some of those pieces together, because there's a, an entire reconfiguration happening at that street. So I think we need to just acknowledge that work. So it's sort of what can we do in the short term, but what also are we looking to do in the longer term with the street redesign? The other piece, specifically on the downtown to the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge that reference Cordova is that this council had given previous direction, to engage with TransLink on the potential of changing Cordova to a two way street, and that was to not only support traffic flow in the area, but it was also towards enabling a longer term, a more pedestrian friendly gas town.
So again, I think we wanna look at thoughtful planning here where we're not looking at making bus changes that then later may not be done the way that we would if we were able to achieve a two way. So we I think we wanna have one integrated conversation there with our partners at TransLink. So that was another piece of it. There's a little bit of clarification around the timeline here. And then the one additional piece, that is new and I think that we heard would be a positive addition, and I'll read this language so everybody's clear, is that council direct staff to utilize the TransLink speed and reliability report and its medium term public transit planning for Vancouver, which I think acknowledges and builds on that.
So that's the spirit of the amendment. I'm gonna let us deal with the amendment first, and then I'm gonna, I will wait for later to make comments on this overall. Thanks, chair.
Speaker 0:
Thank you very much. Council Boyle to the amendment. Thanks. Seconder. Sorry.
I'm Thank you, councillor. Go ahead.
Speaker 1:
Just to say I'm really happy to support this. I was really happy to support councilor Kirb Young's motion last fall on this. I know, we share a nerdy passion for bus speed and reliability. I think there are some really great suggestions, or amendments in here. I'm happy to see the support for changes along the whole corridor, in line with TransLink's 2024 report.
And, my memory is councillor Kirby Young's motion had a target of a 10% savings in travel time. I think all of these pieces fit really well together. So happy to support the amendment, and and thanks for the work I know it takes to craft it and bring it forward.
Speaker 0:
Thanks very much. So we can move to a vote on the amendment. And that passes with none in opposition. And moving back to the main queue, councilor Kirby Young, you have the floor. Great.
Thanks, Sarah.
Speaker 2:
Provide some comments on the overall motion, and I appreciate, councilor Boyle, bringing it forward to highlight the additional work. I wanna send a message very clearly, to a very passionate community about transit, and fairly and understandably so, is bring the passion and the advocacy and focus on what it is you wanna achieve in the content. You have allies in this council. You do not need to, target council as, with a presupposition that we're not gonna be supportive. And you, I would also say, it also doesn't need to be a politicized conversation potentially with maps about who voted where, etcetera.
Our job in this chamber is to make good decisions for good reasons that make sense for the city. And so I would and and to be sort of clear about, let's celebrate what we have done. Let's identify what remains to be accomplished, and let's move forward on that. That's what I'd like to see. It's a bit frustrating, when I hear interviews.
Like, I heard one on CBC about, well, we're gonna try to move forward on 9 corridors. And people are like, oh, we haven't done any of that in Vancouver. And they're like, oh, well, we should do some. How come we're not doing any? And we're like, well, we're we're actually made some good progress in the short term on 5, but we can do even better and do another 4.
So I'm just gonna level set a little bit. I think about how we can work together moving forward that I think would be productive and constructive and helpful, and channel all of that amazing passion and energy that I think that the community has. So that's my, kind of suggestion, if I can put it that way, in terms of moving forward. But, we are happy to support it. It is amazing what a cost effective strategy this is in order to achieve and to bring it forward.
The rationale, I think, in terms of the operational savings is very important for TransLink now. We are under an incredible financial pressure. It's amazing that the ridership is up, up, but we have one of the most broken, constructs around funding models for transit, probably anywhere in North America. And that is really, problematic as people get out of fossil fuel burning cars, which is great, but they go to EVs, so your gas tax declines. You wanna get medicars altogether, etcetera, etcetera.
And despite federal announcements, that's not a lot of money for transit. You know, sort of $3,000,000,000 a year or 30,000,000,000, whatever the feds announced, you would need that just for Vancouver alone. So just to give a versus a whole country. Right? Just to give a bit of perspective here.
So I I think that these are some smart things that we can do. I will sort of also say one thing that was mentioned in the motion was around keeping all the savings in Vancouver. We jurisdictionally don't have the ability to do that. That's actually part of our argument in order to achieve funding. That's one of our leverage factors is that we can be good regional partners and support the system and put money back into TransLink, be able to put it in the service, by stepping up and being a good partner and and looking at how we use our road space.
So those are some of the comments that I have, but I'm happy to support it. Transit is badly needed for people. People need to get where they need to go. And if you can't write your midterm or somebody can't get to their job and open that small business, those impacts become pretty or pick up their kid from daycare or whatever it is. Those impacts become pretty real pretty fast.
So, I will leave it there, but, I appreciate the work. Thank you.
Speaker 0:
Thank you, councilor. Councilor Meister.
Speaker 3:
Yeah. Thanks. As a fairly regular user of transit and and buses and, many other modes of transportation, I'm really supportive of anything we can do, within our powers, here, in the council chamber to speed up transit service and reliability. So I'd like to thank, councilor Kirby Young for the original motion and councilor Boyle for this latest update, and also for the amendment, that came forward today. And I'd also like to, thank the speakers, for their advocacy, to improve transit service in Vancouver.
I think it's something that everybody can get behind. TransLink in our region, as, many of you know, has the 5th most boardings of any metropolitan area, throughout Canada and the US despite having the 24th largest population. So it's very clear that, transit's, ridership, in our region is much higher than many other major cities, and that's something to celebrate. I've been on several BRT systems around the world. I love to go to Latin America, so I've done that in Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro, and they are amazing.
They do tend to run down the center of the street, in both of those cities, and I know that that's something that TransLink is open to in the future, should space allow. But in the meantime, making changes to our bus lanes and adding new ones, curbside are still extremely effective at speeding up transit service and encouraging people to get on transit, which is going to happen if it's faster and more convenient. I also really appreciate the inclusion of the automated bus lane enforcement, request to the province as I often with, witness drivers violating this rule, in particular on West Georgia Street downtown, although I know it happens elsewhere in the city as well. And to that, I saw a recent blitz by transit police, on West Georgia resulting in hundreds of tickets in just one morning. So I have no doubt, that if we were to have automated enforcement in those bus lanes, it would be extremely effective, and probably a big revenue generator, for the province or the city.
So very supportive of that piece as well. So I think this is a great moment, for Vancouverites, particularly those, use transit to get around as well as future transit riders, and we'll make a really big tangible impact on people's daily lives. So I'm really happy to support it today.
Speaker 2:
Thank you, councilor Meister. Councilor Domino's.
Speaker 4:
Thanks, chair. And first of all, thank you to councilor Boyle for bringing the motion forward, and also thank you to my colleague councillor Kirby Young for the amendments. I share the enthusiasm of, many of the speakers and advocates. I I was reflecting back. I've been riding public transit since I was probably about 14, and I was living in the suburbs.
So there, you'd miss a bus and you have to wait an hour to get the next bus. And, I still remember when there wasn't a SkyTrain as far as King George, and, there wasn't a Broadway line, and there wasn't a Cambie line. And, so, I have been an active user of public transit for most of my life. I won't tell you how old I am right, though. That being said, I wanna speak to the notion of the dedicated bus lanes and the corridors.
This is an important piece, and particularly, the speed and reliability, because it does go hand in hand with behavior change. If we want to encourage people to, get out of their vehicles and to use public transit to get to work, to enjoy their leisure activities, to go see their friends or family, transit needs to be rapid. It needs to be reliable. The connections need to be seamless, to encourage that change. And so, there is a I wanna just emphasize that because, we're not there yet.
We are increasingly seeing more congestion across the region, not just in Vancouver, but across the region. It's affecting people's quality of life, And so I wanted to highlight that. I also wanted to reflect that as we talk about the importance of improving public transit, here in Vancouver, we do need to be thinking about that regionally because we have underserved areas again back to wanting to have behavior change. If if the service isn't available, then you're not gonna use it. And so we need to work on that collectively as a region, and, and it does tie into housing.
They also go hand in hand is as we densify, as we have more people come to the region, we need to be supporting and enabling public transit. So happy to support the motion. Pleased to see it come forward. Thanks to all of you who came, who stayed through the entire afternoon, and called in, and I'll leave my comments there. Thank you, chair.
Speaker 1:
Thank you
Speaker 0:
very much. Casa Frey.
Speaker 5:
Yeah. Thanks, chair. And thanks to everybody who spoke, and thanks to Dennis for all the work that's gone into this. And, obviously, thanks to councillor Boyle for the work. Transit's my jam.
I love it. It's, you know, I like to multimodal with the mobi, going to the sky train and the bus, and unless, of course, I'm riding passenger on the back of councilor Boyle's electric cargo bike, which is as hilarious as it sounds. But, just to say that, you know, I it's funny. I was just correcting somebody who had sent me an email on this subject matter around, transit, and their perception that the Kootenay loop is just sort of really goes nowhere and it's just a place where buses turn around. And I was like, wow.
Well, obviously, you haven't been at the Kootenay loop lately because it's kind of the connection to Phibbs Exchange or Metrotown or SFU or downtown. It's, you know, it's a it's a real transit center. And, and it strikes me that maybe a lot of people haven't ridden transit lately. I know I hadn't, obviously, over COVID. And, man, the numbers have exploded.
Like, if folks who are listening haven't ridden transit lately, you would be shocked. Buses are packed. Sky trains are packed. The transit has come back in a big way, and clearly, there's a demonstrable need. And, you know, the only thing worse than getting passed up by a bus or, you know, being stuck in traffic on a bus is being stuck in a really crowded bus.
And I think recognizing that people are using transit, people wanna get around using transit, people want to have lower carbon, more efficient solutions, and let's make it happen, and let's make it even more efficient. So I think this is a great, motion. I think councilor Kirby Young delivered a great amendment that I think, this is a realignment that's great to see and a great way to kick off the the summer. So thank you all. Happy to support this.
Speaker 0:
Great. Thank you very much, councillor Hsu. Or, sir, councillor Frey. Over to councilor Hsu.
Speaker 6:
Thanks, chair. Yeah. So I'll be quick. So, yeah, also, you know, same as my colleague. Thank you for all the speakers for your passion and advocacy for transit for these many years.
And also, I want to appreciate the meeting we had last week with Vision Zero and the the movement team. So I think it's a really good, information session to hear, your idea about, the this upcoming motion. And, you also thanks, councillor Boyle for bringing this motion. It's a very reasonable motion, well thought out. And also thanks, Councillor Kurian, for the amendment.
It will strengthen this motion, make this motion even better. Yeah. So, you know, I think we are all passionate about transit, especially, you know, as the population grows, as my son grows up, so I really hope that he can take more transit rather than driving. You know, I just want to say that, you know, I said the same thing as our pedestrian safety motion. I think it's the starting point for our collaboration.
So this motion will be another collaboration. I think our collaboration will be just even more in the future. So just less judgment, but more communication We'll bring more reasonable motion to the to councillor like this, and we'll bring the real solutions to the, the the the transit issue. And, also, I want, you know, I think we had some discussion with some community group regarding our regional transit or railway system. So I really want to encourage our staff and also the different municipality to think about that.
How can we collaborate as as a region to have some regional railway system that was, you know, really, really a big benefit to the residents across the region? Yeah. So I'll leave that there. So, you know, let's celebrate how the success of transit today. So I think, more good stuff will be coming.
Thank you.
Speaker 0:
Great. Thank you very much. Councillor Kerr?
Speaker 7:
Yep. I'll just echo thanks. Thanks, Councillor Boyle, for the, for good work on this, and the outreach. We did get a lot of emails. So thanks to everybody who wrote in emails, and thanks to all the speakers.
Very articulate, like, almost everybody on the list came, which is, like, not very usual. So it was, I think, a real, show of dedication, to the issue. So thanks for that. Lifelong transit user. Times I have to use car.
I do now use car more than I have in my lifetime. And if you've used the car recently, it is horrible on Vancouver Street. It and just to pinpoint that, I was with my family attending a family event in Burnaby, and we were sick because of the traffic that was diverted to the 2nd narrows bridge from the Lions Gate Bridge, and we took 3 hours in the car to go 10 blocks. It was unbelievable. So time to get those lanes, dedicated lanes, throughout the city, every major route.
So appreciate it, greatly.
Speaker 0:
Great. Thank you very much. And Councillor Boyle closing on your motion.
Speaker 1:
Thanks. And again, just wanna say, thank you for, the huge amount of support, and, to encourage people to stay involved. This is great work. It's ambitious work, and I'm glad to see us all being so ambitious. And, it will be important that we implement it.
And so, great to hear from, so many people, and I hope that you stay, in touch and stay on top of this and make sure that we are following through so we can make all of these, changes that we have all agreed, will make such a big difference for our city. Thanks.
Speaker 0:
Great. Thank you very much. That brings us to the end of the speaker's list, so we can move to a vote on the amended motion. And that motion passes with unanimous support. K.
Really not. Supposed to clap in chambers, so thank you, though. Okay. We're gonna be moving on. That's a, completes motion, motion 2.