A report to Vancouver City Council today shows a remarkable move to more sustainable transportation in Vancouver, with significant increases in local pedestrian and cycling trips.

The staff report on Active Transportation provides updates on a number of plans being reviewed or implemented to upgrade the scope and safety of Vancouver’s cycling and pedestrian transportation networks.

Here are a few of the highlights from the new data presented on how Vancouver gets around:

• From 2008 to 2011, the overall number of walking trips in the City increased by almost 50,000 trips, increasing the walking mode share from 15.4% to 17.0% of all trips.
• From 2008 to 2011, cycling was the fastest growing transportation mode with 40% growth in the number of trips, nearly 20,000 more trips citywide, increasing the cycling mode share from 2.9% to 3.8%.
• Overall, from 2008 to 2011, the total sustainable transportation mode share increased from 40% to 44%, moving Vancouver closer to its Greenest City and Transportation 2040 goals.
• From 2008 to 2011, motor vehicle trips fell from 57.9% to 54.3% of all transportation mode share in Vancouver
• Translink Trip Diary demographic data also shows a much higher proportion of girls and women walking and cycling, seen to be an indicator of the quality and safety of a city’s infrastructure.
• In 2011, 41% of all bicycle trips in Vancouver were by girls and women, up significantly from 30% in 2008. In comparison, the Canadian average in 2006 was 30%, while other North American cities, such as Portland measured 31% (2012) and San Francisco measured 28% (2011)
• Cycling trips by women and girls in Vancouver increased by 93% from 2008 to 2011, from 14,000 trips annually to over 27,000.

It’s an unprecedented positive shift to sustainable transportation, and the City of Vancouver is looking for your continued input in ongoing work to improve the safety of Vancouver’s transportation network.

For more details, the full report can be accessed at this link:
http://former.vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20130612/documents/cfsc2.pdf

“Vancouver’s supervised injection site was launched after extensive dialogue in the local area and with thorough city-wide debate, and its programming continues to be shaped with ongoing input from nearby residents, businesses, and service organizations.

“Especially in light of the Supreme Court’s affirmation of the program’s proven ability to prevent overdose deaths and the spread of disease, I am strongly opposed to any legislative or regulatory changes which would impede Insite’s successful operations.”

- Mayor Gregor Robertson

“Events such as Vancouver Pride, Vaisakhi, and the Chinatown Spring Festival Parade have become internationally celebrated Vancouver staples that contribute immensely to our economy and our City’s vibrant cultural character,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson. “These events attract hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world, and the new civic designation for large parades ensures that the City of Vancouver is investing even more strongly in their continued growth and world-class success.”

The new designation also establishes a stronger framework to broadly improve the financial stability of these large parade events, with streamlined and professional event planning, and consistent funding criteria. Criteria for support includes evaluation of the event’s economic impact, its reflection of Vancouver’s diversity, its recent average attendance, and whether or not it is a component of a larger city-wide event or celebration.

Annual funding support will be increased by an estimated 345% for Vancouver Pride, 272% for Vaisakhi celebrations, and 155% for the Chinatown Spring Festival Parade, with Pride funding taking effect in time for this year’s event. Funding for the 2014 Grey Cup Parade will also be grandfathered into the new designation.

Council is also establishing a fund with the aim of making all such parades “zero waste”. Up to $10,000 is available to each parade over a three-year period for the development and implementation of a green parade initiative to reduce waste and environmental impact.

Attendance at the Vancouver Pride Parade and Festival (the largest of these events) is now estimated to have soared above 650,000 people. An economic impact study of the 2001 Vancouver Pride Parade estimated its economic impact at over $21 million, at a time when the event’s attendance was estimated to be 140,000.

For more information and to read the full staff report, please click here:
http://former.vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20130529/documents/ptec4.pdf

“Our fiscal record over the past five years is one of the best in Canada, and hysterical claims by the CFIB have no basis in reality,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson. “Just this year alone, the City paid down its debt by $151 million. Our tax increase was just 1.3%, tracking at inflation and among the lowest in the region.”

The CFIB report claims that spending has grown excessively over the past 12 years in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, and says “the real problem is overspending.”

“The real problem isn’t overspending, it’s the continued downloading of senior government responsibilities onto local governments,” added the Mayor. “When our health care system fails someone with a severe mental illness, our police are forced to respond. When the federal government closes our Coast Guard base, it puts the burden of life safety on our police and fire departments.

“With low taxes and declining debt, Vancouver has one of the strongest fiscal records of any city in Canada.”

Vancouver’s fiscal record includes:

• The City’s net debt reduced by $151.4 million in 2012
• A 1.3% tax increase in 2013, below the rate of inflation and the lowest in Vancouver in five years
• A positive credit rating outlook from Standard & Poor’s in October 2012, the second upward revision since January 2009
• A new deal with civic unions that tracks below the rate of inflation for the four-year agreement
• Control of staffing levels, with the City employing just two more FT employees (6,639 to 6,637) than it did in 2008

A grant of $400,000 to the WISH Drop-In Centre will facilitate an expansion of their space and better accommodate services to vulnerable survival sex workers, while a grant of $8,000 to the Aboriginal Community Career Employment Services Society (ACCESS) will enable the continued operation of a Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB) in the Downtown Eastside.

“Council is strongly committed to protecting vulnerable residents in the Downtown Eastside and supporting low-income renters,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson. “These two grants reflect the City’s continued resolve to improve safety for women in the Downtown Eastside and help address challenges with affordable rental housing.”

Based at 330 Alexander Street, WISH serves approximately 400 women in the community on an on-going basis through the Drop-in Centre and other associated programming. Many of their clients are homeless or live in unstable housing; are marginalized within the community and often have serious health issues or addictions.

This City support aligns with the recommendations from the City’s Sex Trade Task Force and The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, the recommendations from which were adopted in January 2013.

The City also provides a $50,000 grant to WISH to support the Mobile Access Project, which provides overnight support to women engaging in survival sex work.

The grant to ACCESS for Downtown Eastside Residential Tenancy Branch services aligns with City’s work to end street homelessness by 2015 and to fulfill the City’s 2011-2012 Housing and Homelessness Strategy, which has a focus on supporting renters. Today’s grant builds on recent work to launch the City’s Online Rental database, a new Rent Bank to provide assistance to low-income renters in crisis, and the SRO Task Force.

The RTB shares space with ACCESS at 390 Main Street, a City-owned building which delivers vital services to low-income residents. Since 2008, the RTB office has helped more than 6,000 tenants and landlords and enabled over 1,000 applications for arbitration to assist low-income renters.

For more information on the grant to WISH, please click here:
http://former.vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20130528/documents/a6.pdf

For more information on the grant to ACCESS, please click here:
http://former.vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20130528/documents/a4.pdf

The Mayor and the Engaged City Task Force launched a new Online Ideas Forum where Vancouver residents can post ideas, make comments, and answer questions posed by the Task Force, with the input to be incorporated into the final report in July.

Click here to visit the new Online Ideas Forum

The Task Force also launched the new @EngagedCity twitter channel to solicit feedback and tweet ideas for discussion and commentary.

“In a time of fast-moving technological change, it’s important the City’s services and decision-making processes are made to be as open, accessible and engaging as possible,” said the Mayor. “Expanding the City’s engagement online and on social media will be a crucial component of our work to build a stronger and more civic-minded community, and I look forward to building on the input we receive from these important new tools.”

Today the Mayor also joined HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes for a live online Q&A at the company’s headquarters. HootSuite is a Vancouver-based tech company that has grown into a global leader in social media. The City of Vancouver recently signed a contract with HootSuite to use their HootSuite Enterprise software for the management of all of the City’s social media feeds. A Storify summary of the online Q &A can be viewed here and below.

The use of social media was a major theme of yesterday’s first report of the Engaged City Task Force, with short-term recommendations that also included bringing 3-1-1 online, creating an Engaged City Listserv, launching an Online Engagement Panel, and working to develop a new online crowd-sourced list of venues for arts & culture, community and special events in Vancouver.

To read the first report of the Engaged City Task Force, please click here:

http://mayorofvancouver.ca/engagedcity2013

#EngagedCity Town Hall at HootSuite

Today the Mayor joined HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes for a live online Q&A at the company’s headquarters, discussing how to make Vancouver a more #EngagedCity after the first Task Force report. It’s a conversation that trended nationally on twitter – Here’s part of the exchange!

“The City of Vancouver is a leader in a number of ways, but when it comes to civic engagement, we can do better,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson. “City Hall needs to adapt in a time of higher public expectations for access to City policy decisions, an increasingly diverse population and fast-moving technological change – the way people engage and want to communicate with each other and their civic government has changed dramatically in the past decade.

“Families and people of all ages work, live, play, go to school, and retire here – and we should be a global leader in how we work together and use innovative methods to seek out opinions, share information, and foster greater connection, trust and understanding between residents, and between residents and City Hall. The work and recommendations of this task force will help honour our commitment to bring City Hall into the 21st century and make it more accessible to everyone.”

The first report of the Engaged City Task Force released today contains an ambitious set of 16 recommendations for implementation within a six-month timeframe, focusing on engagement at a neighbourhood level, improving civic education, improving the development approval process, and using social media and new technologies for civic engagement. The recommendations include:

• a Mobile City Hall, which would provide basic city services in neighbourhoods distant from City Hall;
• participatory budgeting, where residents could make budget decisions on local neighbourhood improvements;
• redesigning development signage, to make it easier to read and understand
• a City of Vancouver Open Doors day, where residents could learn more about their city by getting to see behind the scenes of local facilities like City Hall, performance venues, or utilities
• a City-wide Block Party Day, to encourage neighbourhoods to hold block parties and get to know their neighbours
• bringing 3-1-1 online, starting an Engaged City twitter handle, and launching an Online Engagement Panel, where residents can provide ongoing feedback on civic issues to City Hall

The Task Force will develop a final report by the end of July, and over the coming weeks will be actively inviting more people into the discussion of ideas. Much of the Task Force’s work has focused on ways to better include Vancouver’s diverse communities in civic dialogue.

“Vancouver is known worldwide for our multicultural mosaic, but we need to be working to ensure that people and neighbourhoods do not feel isolated from each other or their government,” added the Mayor. “That’s why we’ve assembled such a diverse team of engagement leaders to help make the City more focused on connecting with its residents. We can’t solve our toughest challenges as a City without an engaged and civic-minded community. These recommendations are an exciting step toward building a stronger, more connected Vancouver.”

To view the full first report of the Mayor’s Engaged City Task Force, please click here or see below:

Engaged City Task Force – First Report by Vancouver Mayors Office

Engaged City Report – Quick Starts – Full Text by Vancouver Mayor's Office

A five-storey mixed-use building at 3302-3036 W Broadway will offer 83 units of affordable rental housing as part of the City of Vancouver’s Rental 100 program, which aims to enable new rental housing construction in Vancouver. In addition, a new 15 storey building in Downtown South (1107 Seymour) will offer 81 units of social housing and four floors of social service space for Positive Living BC and AIDS Vancouver.

“Vancouver has a pressing need for more supportive housing and more affordable rental housing, especially for seniors, students, and young families,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson. “These projects build upon the City’s consistent work to support Vancouver renters, provide urgently needed housing for our most vulnerable residents, and make Vancouver more affordable for residents of all backgrounds.”

The 83 new rental units follow a record year in 2012 for new Vancouver rental housing, and City Council’s unanimous decision earlier yesterday to move forward with 355 new units of affordable rental and co-op housing on four City-owned sites. The project’s target rent of $1,325 for a one bedroom is considerably cheaper than average rents for similar new apartments in Vancouver ($1,517).

The project on West Broadway aligns with the recommendation of the Mayor’s Housing Affordability Task Force to enable projects with 100% rental housing in neighbourhoods well-served by transit.

50% of the units in the 15-storey Downtown South development will be targeted to those on social assistance, with the other half of units serving the low-end of the market with rents geared to income levels and based on need.

For more information on the project at 3302-3036 W Broadway, please click here:
http://former.vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20130423/documents/p4.pdf

For more information on the project at 1107 Seymour, please click here:
http://former.vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20130423/documents/p3.pdf

“I would also like to thank Adrian Dix for his ongoing service and contributions to British Columbia and our democratic process. Vancouver owes its gratitude to candidates of all backgrounds for advancing their ideas on how best to keep improving our great city and province.”

“On behalf of City Council, I would also like to offer the City’s congratulations to all of Vancouver’s 11 elected or re-elected Members of the Legislative Assembly on their successful campaigns, and I look forward to working with them all as they strive to provide the best possible representation for Vancouver.”

The proposed new affordable housing will include a minimum of 273 units with rents significantly below market rates, with priority for all 355 units going first to those who currently live in Vancouver. 48 units will also primarily serve persons living with mental illness.

“Vancouver has an urgent need for more affordable housing that fits with our neighbourhoods and makes our city more livable for seniors, students, and young families,” said Mayor Robertson. “With 355 new units of secure and affordable rental housing, this proposal represents a significant step toward meeting that need. It’s encouraging to see such strong and early progress after the work we’ve done to enable innovative affordable housing solutions throughout Vancouver.”

After a comprehensive, public procurement process initiated in August 2012, the winning bid for the partnership to build and operate the new affordable housing units is a consortium of non-profit partners led by the Land Trust, a non-profit charity established by the Co-op Housing Federation of BC. The investment of four City-owned sites – provided to the Land Trust for a long term lease – has leveraged $76.2 million in capital funding commitments from the non-profit partners. The City will not provide any operating subsidies or property tax exemptions.

Leasing land at a nominal fee to facilitate the creation of new affordable rental housing was a key recommendation from the Mayor’s Task Force on Housing Affordability.

The Land Trust’s average rent is planned to be $769 per month for a one-bedroom unit, 20% below the Housing Income Limit metric established by BC Housing. Part of the affordability is generated by an internal subsidy which redistributes the operating income from 82 units of market rental housing at one site to the below-market units at other sites. Construction is targeted to begin in March 2014, with residents moving in by the end of 2015.

“Confronting the challenge of housing affordability has been a top priority of my work as Mayor, and I urge all of City Council to join me in supporting this unique opportunity to make our city more affordable for those who live and work in Vancouver,” added the Mayor.

The City of Vancouver has taken a number of steps to make housing more affordable in Vancouver and to support renters and residents in need. These include:

• Approving a record 1,021 new rental housing units in 2012
• Launching a Mayor’s Task Force on Housing Affordability
• Approving the development of an arms-length Affordable Housing Authority
• Approving Vancouver’s first-ever co-housing project
• The opening of Vancouver’s first Rent Bank, to support renters in crisis with short-term loans
• The creation of the Rental 100 Program, which provides incentives for the development of new, 100% rental buildings
• The launch of the online Rental Standards Database, which will enable renters to search out buildings that have current safety issues
• Hosting the ‘re:THINK Housing’ international ideas competition to solicit ideas from around the world on how to create new affordable housing

The full staff report and recommendation can be found here, including details on the locations of the 4 sites:
http://former.vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20130515/documents/rr1opt.pdf