2020-DNV-Plan
DNV's 2020 Transportation workshop and implementation plan
On November 9th 2020, The Council of District of North Vancouver, DNV, held it's annual workshop on Transportation. In the workshop Staff provide and update and recommendations for major projects, and get feedback & guidance from Council. This information is used by Council when setting the annual budget and Staff for it's work planning. Workshops also allow limited public input, but only if time permits.
First a little history: At the 2019 transportation workshop Staff presented progress on bike infrastructure and recommend to council that they invest in a program to build a network, and to develop a plan to do so in a prioritized fashion. Just prior to this HUB North Shore's delegation to Council had presented our Goals and recommended completion of 3 prioritized bike route (coordinated between the municipalities). Guidance from the previous council year before had been to link the 3 town centres (Lynn Valley, Lynn Creek & Lions Gate Village). We requested they also include connection to the bridges and West Van. At the 2019 workshop, council endorsed this plan.
At the 2020 workshop Staff submitted several reports ([Reports] (p75-81), [Video of Staff presentation & Councils questions (starts around 2 hours in))]. In summary they presented a "10 year vision" for "Cycling Priority routes".
We had reviewed the plan with staff and had 2 main concerns: (see HUB's submission to Council)
- We felt that some of the projects planned for the next couple years were much lower priority than other projects that were 5 or more years out.
- The plan did not include the Town Centres, as infrastructure in these areas are redevelopment driven. This could result in very significant gaps that could take years to fill.
Councillors Bond & Back brought up these 2 issues and Council also found time (over-time) for me to share HUB's concerns. Mayor Little also mentioned that for the first time Active Transportation will be over 1/2 of the Transportation budget, and that this was necessary to address the deficit that had accumulated over the years. Generally Council was very supportive, though naturally concerned about the need to get 9.7M$ of the 17.7M$ (2021 for AT) funding from outside bodies (TransLink, Metro Van, BC & Fed Govt, ...).
In summary, I'm very happy with DNV plan. We may not agree with some of the priorities, and have concerns about gaps, but overall Council and staff are committed to funding & building a network of bikeways, most of which will be AAA (Comfortable for Most people). This is both a huge investment and significant step forward. It won't happen overnight and it won't be perfect, but compared to 5 years ago when much of the new bike infrastructure was fragments of non-AAA that came as opportunistic side-effect of other projects, this is great progress.