It’s been 2 years since the current Vancouver City Council was elected so we’re going to see how their 2024 went! (See our Year 1 report card and our scoring criteria here.)
In 2023, there were 2 motions we were especially excited about – Broadway active transport lanes and intersection safety cameras – and both were defeated by the ABC caucus. This year, again there were 2 motions that stood out – reducing speeds on non-arterials to 30km/h, and adding dedicated bus lanes to all of TransLink’s priority routes. This time, both passed unanimously! This is big progress, but there’s still much more to do.
Here are all the motions we scored in 2024:
1. 30km/h on non-arterials (PASSED, impact = 4)
A great motion from Clr Fry. Reducing speeds not only lowers the chances of a collision, but makes them much less deadly if they do happen.
This would have a score of 5 if it was a direct implementation, but it’s only a request for staff to report back on feasibility. There were many other good things in this motion too, like adding modal filtering and other measures to reduce vehicle speed. We’re hopeful that when it comes back to council, it’ll be fully implemented. Stay tuned.
2. Adding dedicated bus lanes to TransLink’s priority routes (PASSED, impact = 4)
This motion, brought by Clr Boyle, built off the momentum of a 2023 motion from Clr Kirby-Yung. It will add dedicated bus lanes to TransLink’s 8 priority routes at a rate of 2 per year, making transit more reliable for tens of thousands of commuters and reducing traffic on our roads.
We’ve already said a lot about this; you can read more about the motion here, and what we had to say about it passing here!
3. Accelerating Pedestrian Safety Measures (PASSED, impact = 3)
We were very happy to see this motion from Clrs Dominato and Zhou. It committed funds to various pedestrian safety initiatives, such as additional crosswalks, flashing beacons, and leading pedestrian intervals. It’s a welcome sign that this came from ABC, a party that didn’t do anything positive for road safety in 2023. We hope they take this momentum from 2024 and up the ambition next year!
4. Water Street Car-Lite Pilot (MULTIPLE VOTES)
Breakdown of the 4 votes related to the Water Street pedestrian pilot
Sigh. In our first draft of this report card, we spoke glowingly about the summer pilot. Even though it wasn’t perfect – only one block was made truly car-free, and ABC defeated a Boyle amendment to consider extending the pilot into September – we were still very excited about the enthusiasm and momentum we thought it built for further car-free projects. We loved spending time here all summer!
And then came the vote on next year’s implementation. Despite overwhelming public support, with 84% of visitors reporting a positive experience and 59% of businesses on board, with many calls to have it expanded, council caved to the complaints of a small handful of businesses – ones which, quite frankly, were complaining about the 2024 pilot before it even began and clearly wanted it to fail. So, 2025 will bring a very scaled back version on weekends only, which means no enhanced patios and no street furniture (who’s going to install and re-install these every Saturday and Sunday?), while during the week Water Street will go back to being a rat-running route for commuters in and out of downtown. What a letdown.
5. Re-introducing 2-way traffic on Beach Avenue (Negative proposal; PASSED, impact = 2)
A silly and misguided motion, thankfully reversed by a later Park Board decision. The last thing we need on our beaches is more vehicle traffic, used almost exclusively by commuters from North Vancouver trying to cut through Stanley Park (although there’s at least one Vancouver councillor who would’ve benefited).
This motion was brought forward by Clr Kirby-Yung and supported by all of ABC, with the exception of Clr Bligh, who voted on Clr Boyle’s amendment to reverse the decision. The Greens were also on the right side of this issue.
6. Removing parking minimums city-wide (PASSED, impact = 2)
This recommendation was brought by staff and passed unanimously. Although it’s only tangentially related to Vision Zero, it makes so much sense and moves us in the right direction towards less car dependency.
7. Shared e-scooter pilot (PASSED, impact = 1)
Led by Clr Kirby-Yung, this introduced the first shared e-scooters to Vancouver. On the one hand, we always welcome more micromobility options. But we remain concerned that this pilot didn’t come with any investment or consideration of creating safe, protected routes for these e-scooter users to use. Indeed, the main action that the City took in conjunction with this launch was a “walk your wheels” campaign.
Drivers of motor vehicles kill 300 people a year in BC and an e-scooter on the sidewalk has never killed someone in this province. Don’t want scooters on sidewalks? Build protected lanes.
8. Using traffic cameras for police surveillance (Negative proposal, PASSED, impact = 1)
This motion, co-sponsored by Clrs Meiszner and Montague, will allow the VPD to use traffic-monitoring cameras for warrantless police surveillance throughout the city. The irony that Montague led the charge to block additional intersection safety (speed & red light) cameras last year based on “needing more studies” (despite ample evidence that they make streets safer), while sponsoring this motion to allow traffic cameras to be used for police surveillance despite no evidence of the effectiveness, is not lost on us.
Top: a traffic monitoring camera; bottom, a sensor-activated red-light camera.
Traffic cameras (the subject of this motion) record continuous video for traffic monitoring purposes, with stills posted to the city website every few minutes – and now the police have access to the video for any purpose. Intersection safety cameras are completely different. They take photos (not video), and only when triggered by a sensor detecting a violation (excessive speed or running a red light). The former have massive privacy and civil rights concerns; the latter do not. But during the debate around this motion, we heard first hand from many people who confused the two. This motion poisoned the well for any future requests for these life-saving pieces of infrastructure, and the hypocrisy involved hasn’t gone unnoticed.
Conclusions
As in 2023, 2024 saw Christine Boyle (OneCity) as the champion of road safety in Vancouver, with the Green councillors (Fry and Carr) close behind. But in a change, we actually saw some meaningful collaboration from ABC this year, especially from Clrs Kirby-Yung, Zhou, Dominato, and Bligh. On the other side of things, Mayor Sim scored the lowest of anyone on council, again showing a disappointing lack of leadership. And although Clr Montague managed to keep quiet and not defeat this year’s important motions, we would be remiss to not mention that he called our group “pathetic and disgusting” for calling out the consequences of his policy decisions last year.
Although 2024 was better than 2023, Vancouver needs much more infrastructure and pro-active transport movement in order to achieve Vision Zero. With the reigning champion Christine Boyle now on to bigger and better things with the province, who will take on the mantle in 2025? We’re still very far from achieving Vision Zero and despite small wins this year, people continue to be injured and killed on our streets at unacceptable rates. It’s time to up the bar!
Vision Zero Vancouver 