The draft plan includes 10km of new sidewalks and curb ramps. If you’re thinking that doesn’t sound very ambitious, you’re not wrong – by the city’s own estimates there are about 450km of missing sidewalks to complete. For comparison though, the 2023-26 Capital Plan allocated funding for an estimated 1.9km of new sidewalks, which grew to “roughly 4-5km of new sidewalks” to be completed by the end of 2026. The 10km plan picks up the pace and will make a real difference, but not dramatically so. Notably, $0 of the cash contribution for this will be coming from the city, with the budget split evenly between developer contribution and partner contributions (likely TransLink). 

With cycling connections named as the number one street priority from survey respondents, we were disappointed with the lack of investment in this area. The plan allocates funding for an estimated 20km of new or improved active transportation lanes in the city, funding for which comes from a developer and partner split with $0 cash contribution from the city. This is about the same or a bit worse than what the last Capital Plan allocated, though it’s hard to compare apples to apples because the line items change. The last plan included 20km of ‘active transportation and complete street improvements’, plus 4km in a line for ‘street improvements delivered through development (in-kind)’ which this plan does not include. In any event, this is a pretty status quo investment, if you can even call it that when the city isn’t fronting the cash.

The plan continues to fund a rapid transit office and bus improvements, with bus improvements actually getting a significant investment increase ($22M in this plan vs. $5M in the last one) coming largely from partner funding. The report discusses expanding bus priority with bus lanes and bus bulbs, increased amenities (we hope this means benches & shade) at bus stops, and continued planning for an eventual Skytrain extension to UBC. 

The plan includes funding for just 16 new signals over the next 4 years. This would not be anywhere near enough to cover installing a new signal in every fatality location, for example, nor would it begin to make a dent in the known signal installation backlog. The last Capital Plan also funded 16 new signals, but included an additional line item for 32 new signals delivered through development, which this plan does not. 

The plan also includes $10M in a line item marked ‘transportation safety’ with no further specifics. We’re hopeful that this could be a significant investment in infrastructure like flashing beacons, Leading Pedestrian Intervals, and the like. In the last plan there was $2M dedicated to this line item with a note specifying it was for 20 new flashing beacons.

For neighbourhood traffic management projects, which bring traffic calming into select neighbourhoods, we get a downgrade from 8 projects over 4 years to just 6 projects over the next 4 years. This work has also been very slow, with 3 of the previously funded 8 projects still marked as ‘upcoming’ on the city’s website.

In addition to this we have Vancouver’s School Travel Planning program, which works with schools over a 3year period to design safety upgrades. The program has been very successful, but funds are limited such that it only reaches about 4 schools per year. We advocated for and supported a motion to expand this program from Councillors Dominato and Meiszner, which passed last summer. The Capital Plan includes an unexpected budget increase for the program ($4M for the next 4 years, up from $3M in the last plan) but we’re concerned to see it still estimates a total of 16 schools (4 per year) will be reached.