{"id":1749,"date":"2007-04-10T09:15:47","date_gmt":"2007-04-10T13:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=1749"},"modified":"2007-04-11T22:36:39","modified_gmt":"2007-04-12T02:36:39","slug":"kingstons-plan-for-sustainable-transportation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/04\/10\/kingstons-plan-for-sustainable-transportation\/","title":{"rendered":"Kingston&#8217;s plan for sustainable transportation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/93\/224377144_3ca228c711.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>On March 22, I attended a great workshop on sustainable transportation put together by local organization <a href=\"http:\/\/www.movingtheeconomy.ca\/\">Moving the Economy<\/a>. I am going to post some of the interesting information and lessons gleaned from this fascinating workshop. As well, look for some inspiring insights from the workshop in the upcoming issue of <em>NOW<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n<p>Two of the speakers were transportation specialists dealing with issues in small university towns &#8211; Kingston, Ontario and Syracuse, New York. In both cases, a review of the city&#8217;s downtown transportation system began because the big institutions (universities, hospitals) went to the city and asked it to &#8220;solve our parking problems.&#8221; What they meant, of course, was &#8220;how do we squeeze in more parking,&#8221; but in each case the experts gradually persuaded them that the real problem was sustainable transportation &#8212; not where to put cars, but reducing the reliance on cars in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a good reminder that the problem with the automobile goes beyond pollution. Even if cars were emissions-free, their sheer size means they would still be an inefficient way to transport a single individual on a simple trip &#8212; even in a small town.<\/p>\n<p>The presentation about Kingston was given by Malcolm Morris, Director of Transportation for the city. Kingston&#8217;s downtown is successful, full of employment and entertainment destinations, and almost entirely built up &#8212; there&#8217;s not much room for expanding parking. So in its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cityofkingston.ca\/residents\/transportation\/ktmp\/index.asp\">2003 transportation master plan<\/a>, the city decided to focus on changing the direction of its transportation planning away from a car culture and towards walking, cycling and transit.<\/p>\n<p>It was interesting, after continuous immersion in Toronto&#8217;s big-city transportation issues, to hear the perspective of a small city. They have some additional challenges &#8212; for example, transit is usually poorly used in small cities, so Kingston&#8217;s goal is to increase transit&#8217;s share of total trips from just 4% to 11%. On the other hand, in a small city it is much easier to pay attention to the details, to make small gestures that have a significant impact, and to make some transformations quickly.<\/p>\n<p>So, for example, already every single bus in Kingston is outfitted with a bike-carrying rack, only a few years after the plan was prepared, and they are heavily used. And the city has also decided to no longer be constrained by its road rebuilding schedule when adding bike lanes &#8212; they will be added when and where they are needed to create a coherent network, not just when it&#8217;s convenient. Finally, the city is establishing bike-parking standards, so that a certain amount is mandated in various situations. It&#8217;s quite a contrast with the ad hoc nature of Toronto&#8217;s bike infrastructure implementation.<\/p>\n<p>In terms of transit, the city has arranged with the university that students can board buses for free with a student card (the cost is incorporated into student fees). And the city has integrated the VIA station (apparently Canada&#8217;s 6th busiest train station) with local transit, so that it&#8217;s now easy to get off the train and quickly arrive downtown.<\/p>\n<p>The city is also creating park-and-rides north of the city to intercept commuters coming in from outlying areas and get them onto buses. A significant problem, however, is that downtown parking passes are currently cheaper than transit passes. One of the key parts of the strategy, and most difficult politically, will be to gradually make it more expensive to buy monthly parking passes downtown than it is to buy a transit pass, so that transit becomes economically competitive.<\/p>\n<p>The city government is trying to lead by example. It is gradually removing the provision of free parking passes to its staff &#8212; a difficult task, as parking passes are seen by staff as an important job perk. To take their place, it is providing subsidies for transit passes for staff, and it has developed a daytime transit pass system for staff who need to travel for work-related reasons such as meetings. It is also considering buying a number of hybrid vehicles to be shared among staff as needed. The city has also relocated 125 staff from more inaccessible locations to its downtown offices, where it provides bike lockers and shower facilities.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, recognizing that placemaking is an important part of transportation planning (a key message of the workshop), the city took a <strike>dead<\/strike> space behind city hall and removed a bunch of parking spaces to <strike>build<\/strike> renovate a farmer&#8217;s market, with an outdoor skating rink in the winter. It also instituted traffic-calming measures such as narrowing the road and adding brick pavers. The result has been that car traffic has gone down, and a lively new civic space has been created.<\/p>\n<p>This final example provoked a revealing question from the only representative of the TTC to attend the workshop. With reference to the difficulties the TTC experienced with the St. Clair transit right-of-way, he asked how Kingston persuaded local merchants to accept the loss of local parking. Morris answered that they accepted it because the city was offering something to the area in return &#8212; a market that would attract more people, and therefore customers, and would make the area an attractive place to linger and shop. Basically, rather than seeing locals as an obstacle to their engineering plans &#8212; an attitude that was evident in the TTC person&#8217;s question &#8212; Kingston saw the local merchants as partners who needed to be shown some kind of benefit from the proposed changes.<\/p>\n<p><em>Queen&#8217;s U library photo by <a href=\"http:\/\/flickr.com\/photos\/udoschuklenk\/224377144\/\">Udo Schuklenk<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On March 22, I attended a great workshop on sustainable transportation put together by local organization Moving the Economy. I am going to post some of the interesting information and lessons gleaned from this fascinating workshop. As well, look for some inspiring insights from the workshop in the upcoming issue of NOW magazine. Two of<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/04\/10\/kingstons-plan-for-sustainable-transportation\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;Kingston&#8217;s plan for sustainable transportation&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4006,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[457,856,2045,5165,5285,5284,634,1635,4957,5286,469,636,21,316,1287,36,1740,5281,19,849,5282,5283,5287],"class_list":["post-1749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bikes","category-transit","tag-canada","tag-car-culture","tag-car-traffic","tag-coherent-network","tag-director-of-transportation-for-the-city","tag-downtown-transportation-system","tag-farmer","tag-kingston","tag-malcolm-morris","tag-moving","tag-new-york","tag-ontario","tag-other-cities","tag-queen","tag-representative","tag-resources","tag-sustainable-transportation","tag-syracuse","tag-toronto","tag-transportation","tag-transportation-master-plan","tag-transportation-specialists","tag-via-station"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Kingston&#039;s plan for sustainable transportation - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/04\/10\/kingstons-plan-for-sustainable-transportation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Kingston&#039;s plan for sustainable transportation - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On March 22, I attended a great workshop on sustainable transportation put together by local organization Moving the Economy. I am going to post some of the interesting information and lessons gleaned from this fascinating workshop. As well, look for some inspiring insights from the workshop in the upcoming issue of NOW magazine. 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