By Mo Bot, Senior Planner.
Rail~Volution celebrated its 25th anniversary in September 2019 and for the first time in its history came north of the border to beautiful Vancouver, Canada. This conference is one of the go-to industry spaces for practitioners, community members, and political decision-makers to engage in thoughtful dialogue about the future of land use, transit, and development in our cities. There is a strong focus on equity, affordability, and racial justice.
Access Planning teamed up with the Rail~Volution program to co-host and facilitate multiple mobile workshops, sharing our intimate knowledge of Greater Vancouver’s transportation system and development realities. This focus on offsite mobile tours is a unique feature of Rail~Volution conferences, providing the opportunity to get out on the street, talk with the people who make these projects happen, and experience the local transit system and surrounding community context firsthand.
Ride the Rapid Bus
Access Planning team member, Mo Bot, collaborated with TransLink and City of Vancouver to lead a "Ride the RapidBus” tour with conference participants. The RapidBus program is a new express bus service being launched across Metro Vancouver that was under construction during the conference and that Access has had the great privilege to work on. Mo co-led a tour that showcased the initial transit priority infrastructure being laid down in Vancouver. While the corridor was not yet complete, we were able to share stories about the challenges and opportunities of connecting Joyce-Collingwood Station and the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus.
City builders talking transformation and learning about the different development opportunities adjacent to the RapidBus corridor. Photo Credit: Mo Bot.
We stopped in at the Oakridge Centre redevelopment showroom to discuss the scale of change coming to this busy corridor in south Vancouver. Oakridge Centre sits at the intersection of the R4 RapidBus corridor and the existing Canada Line SkyTrain and is envisioned to become a secondary urban core with residential, civic, green space, and employment components within the development. Photo Credit: Mo Bot.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Vancouver mobile tour without a little rain. Red paint indicating dedicated bus lanes at the UBC campus provided a glimpse of the new transit infrastructure being implemented to improve bus speed and reliability, allowing vehicles to bypass congestion. Photo Credit: Mo Bot.
A Tale of Four Cities on the Expo Line
Next up was a tour of the SkyTrain Expo Line. Tamim Raad and Mo Bot brought together planners and engineers who have helped implement transit-oriented community planning in a wide variety of contexts across the four municipalities along the Expo Line – Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster and Surrey. For context - the Expo line was built in three phases, first opening in 1986, with extensions completed in 1990, and 1994 and a new service line added in 2016.
Inner City – Broadway-Commercial Station
The infamous Grandview Cut at Broadway-Commercial station – where multiple SkyTrain lines and an old freight rail line coexist within the urban fabric. Photo Credit: Mo Bot.
This stop highlighted major station retrofits to expand capacity, and discussions around how the local community is challenging conventional models of density. Planners who worked to develop and implement the Grandview-Woodlands Community Plan engaged in a discussion about the differences between mission-driven and profit-driven development and the role cities can play to facilitate community land ownership delivering more affordable projects near stations.
Middle Suburb – Metrotown Station
Bird’s eye view of the Metrotown neighbourhood. The first wave of intensification is the brown towers and the second wave is identified by glass construction. The roof in the lower right is the largest mall in British Columbia. Working with the mall owner on the redevelopment of this area is critical for success. Photo Credit: Mo Bot.
This stop focused on what happens when you build tons of density in a walkability challenged context surrounding a mega-mall environment. The City of Burnaby has a vision for this central city core that involves gradual re-development and intensification of the Metrotown mall site, maintaining retail uses, while bringing more housing and employment within steps of the SkyTrain.
Historic Old Downtown – New Westminster Station
New Westminster Station, boasting a first floor bus loop and third floor rail platform, all in the base of a mixed high density residential and commercial building. Photo Credit: Mo Bot.
The third stop on the tour was to see the revitalization of the region’s first station-integrated transit-oriented development, located in the first provincial capital city of British Columbia, New Westminster. Planners showed us New Westminster’s solution for intensifying development when the available land base is small and constrained: layer everything up and reduce those parking requirements! '
Suburban Retrofit – Surrey Central Station
Surrey knows that the edges matter when it comes to creating enjoyable urban spaces. New urban design standards are supporting redevelopment around the urban SkyTrain station by softening the edges of public and private space along the base of tall tower developments. Photo Credit: Mo Bot.
Final stop: the Surrey Central Station to the southeast of Vancouver. This tour stop focused on how the City of Surrey is transforming its urban core from a suburban space to a more walkable, vibrant, transit-oriented downtown. Relocating civic uses, including City Hall and the library, along with integrating new institutional campus uses into the downtown has been a key catalyst for this transformation. The City is also breaking up car-oriented super blocks to create a finer grid of walkable streets with improved sidewalks and bicycle facilities along with transit infrastructure.
The New Revolutionaries join the UBC NOMAS Lecture Series
Mo Bot also joined the New Rail~Volutionaries Giveback Event where a panel of planners, engineers, and urban designers spoke with Architecture and Planning students in the University of British Columbia’s chapter of NOMAS (National Organization of Minority Architects). The panel shared perspectives on city building, supporting sustainable and equitable communities, and the need for architecture and design lenses within the transportation planning and engineering fields. Connecting with students and thinking about the future is always a delight and it was great to help kick off this new tradition of hosting Giveback Events at the conference.
Meeting transit enthusiasts at UBC. Photo Credit: Ernest Bellamy, New Rail~Volutionaries
Participating in the Rail~Volution conference was an incredibly energizing experience for Access Planning. The attendees demonstrated how important it is to have difficult conversations about affordability and privilege and provided so many inspiring moments that reinforced why we love the careful and important work we do. It was great to meet so many passionate city builders and we look forward to continuing the conversation with these dedicated practitioners.