A Fair Share for Non-motorized Transportation
Wheel Life column - 19 February, 2000
by Todd Litman and Suzanne Kort - Victoria Transport Policy Institute

Today's recommended ride illustrates one of our preferred cycling routes between downtown and either Camosun College or the University of Victoria. It follows streets with bike lanes, such as Fort and Henderson Blvd., and lower traffic streets such as Haultain and Dean.

This route crosses the city while avoiding busy, narrow arterials such as Shelbourne. This is particularly important for less experienced riders, or when you are simply not in the mood to endure the stress and noise of bicycling in heavy traffic.

There is much that can be done to create better cycling routes in our city. There are many corridors where cycling and walking conditions range from bad to terrible, resulting in more driving, making traffic conditions even worse. Reversing these trends will require thoughtful planning.

We are glad to report that Victoria's new city council is considering reestablishing a bicycle advisory committee. Councillor Denise Savoie is particularly keen, and has support from Jane Lunt, chair of the transportation committee. This bodes well.

However, some officials express concern that the city can't afford to devote significantly more resources to non-motorized transportation, which raises the question as to what constitutes our fair share. Keep in mind that local and regional transportation expenditures come from local taxes that we all pay regardless of how we travel. "User fees," such as a fuel taxes, do not fund these expenditure.

One criterion might be our portion of total travel. According to the 1996 Canadian Census, cycling accounts for about 5% and walking about 10% of commute trips in the CRD. This portion more than doubles in areas such as downtown Victoria and Oak Bay.

These non-motorized trips tend to be shorter than car trips and so account for a relatively small portion of total mileage, but we believe that a trip is a trip. It is unfair to allocate local tax dollars according to how many miles a person travels, which rewards and encourages inefficient travel patterns, and results in cross-subsidies from households that travel less than average to those who travel more than average.

This suggests that 15% of regional transportation expenditures should be devoted to cycling improvements, and more in urban centres. This would result in more than a ten-fold increase in funding for non-motorized transport. However, there are some good reasons to devote an even greater share of resources to cycle and pedestrian projects:

• Cycling and walking provide both transportation and recreation. This suggests that these modes should receive transportation funding in proportion to their share of transportation trips plus funding for recreation services.
• The actual amount of non-motorized trips is far higher than indicated in conventional travel surveys. Most trips involve non-motorized links, often on public sidewalks and roads. You walk to your parked car, or walk or cycle to a bus stop, and then walk around at your destination. Most travel surveys treat these as simply "auto" or "transit" trips, ignoring the non-motorized components. One recent study (Piet Rietveld, "Non-Motorized Modes in Transport Systems," Transportation Research D, Vol. 5, No. 1, January 2000, pp. 31-36) found that the true number of non-motorized trips is about six times higher than recognized in conventional transport surveys and models.
• Funding should not simply reflect past travel patterns, but rather what we want in our future. If we want more walking and cycling we must be willing to invest in improvements that help achieve these goals.

Anybody interested in non-motorized planning can obtain our latest document, "Bicycle and Pedestrian Planning; A Guide to Best Practices," available free at the Victoria Transport Policy Institute's website: http://www.vtpi.org. We developed this guide with the help of experts from all over North America. It contains information on all aspects of non-motorized transport planning.