Transportation System Plan

Vancouver is a city on the move! We’re growing and diversifying, putting increased pressure and fresh demands on the transportation system. A new waterfront district, increased multifamily development, great parks and schools, and significant job and business growth continue to attract people and investment to Vancouver.

Following extensive planning and community engagement, we’ve developed a new Transportation System Plan that will prioritize how we invest in a safe, reliable and comfortable transportation system over the next 20 years.

View the Full Transportation System Plan

Background

The Transportation System Plan (TSP) was approved and adopted by Vancouver City Council on the 8th of January 2024.

The TSP is the broad vision for our transportation system – and a roadmap for getting there. The TSP guides investments in our transportation system for the next 20 years. Vancouver’s transportation system includes our network of streets, sidewalks, bicycle routes, bus routes, trails, and ADA-accessible facilities.

Since the last TSP was published in 2004, our city has grown, and more people and businesses now call Vancouver home. The TSP will help us address new transportation trends resulting from this growth while supporting the City’s broader goals around transportation safety, climate-friendly transportation, and equitable travel options for all people.

Most importantly, the drafting of the TSP was a community-driven planning process to shape the future of our transportation system for the next 20 years. Since the project launched in 2020, we’ve spoken and heard from hundreds of Vancouver residents, businesses, and organizations online and through in-person outreach at farmer’s markets, schools, and neighborhood associations. We collected public comment and feedback on the draft Plan in the Fall of 2023 and the final Plan is now complete.

The draft and final Plans underwent formal review and public comment periods in front of the Vancouver Transportation Mobility Commission and Vancouver City Council in December 2023. The plan was adopted by Council in January 2024.

TSP Goals

The TSP goals guide the plan’s policies, projects, and programs and include:

Safety: Our transportation system keeps people safe when they walk, roll, bicycle, take transit, or drive.

Equity: Transportation in Vancouver supports the needs of all and counteracts historic and current inequities.

Climate: Our transportation system helps to reduce our impact on the climate and natural environment.

Transportation Choice: People in Vancouver have multiple comfortable, convenient options to get where they need to go.

Regional Connectivity: People and goods flow seamlessly through the region, advancing our shared prosperity.

Maintaining our Assets: We take good care of our transportation infrastructure and invest strategically in new tools that help us operate the system better.

Improving the Transportation Network

We want everyone to be able to travel safely to their homes, work, schools, and anywhere else they go to meet their daily needs. A major element of the TSP is the identification of “modal networks” that connect streets and corridors designed for the safety and connection of different modes. While not every road in the network meets this definition today, the modal network represents the vision the City is working toward through project investments. For example, the low-stress bicycling and small mobility network will have infrastructure and design to make cycling or riding another small, wheeled device more comfortable.

The Enhanced Transit Network will focus on ensuring that roads with high frequency transit, such as The Vine, are supporting the reliability and quality of bus operations on the streets, while creating safe and accessible connections to the bus stops for riders.

The Transportation System Plan identified the following modal networks:

Low-Stress Walking and Rolling Network
Low-Stress Bicycling and Small Mobility Network
Enhanced Transit Network
Freight Network

Near Term Priorities

The TSP sets out our long-term vision for the next 20 years, but we will make immediate progress in the next two years by focusing on our top four initiatives.

Complete Corridors: The City’s complete corridors program will tackle a handful of important streets each year, to transform them into places where people want to walk, roll, or use bike or small mobility devices.

Leveraging Development: The new TSP encourages a shift in how Vancouver will measure the impacts of new development on the transportation system. The City has three existing processes that are triggered through the new development process-Concurrency, Transportation Impact Analysis (TIA), and the Traffic Impact Fee (TIF) program. Each of these will be updated as a near-term action of the TSP.

Vision Zero: A policy based in a belief that serious injuries and deaths on our streets are preventable

Developed in Sweden in the 1990’s, the movement gained momentum in the United States, where 45 cities have Vision Zero policies. These policies are rooted in safe system principles. Many factors contribute to crashes; therefore, a safe system builds in redundancy to minimize the chance of a crash occurring. At the national level, a safe systems approach has been adopted and tied to many federal grants such as Safe Streets for All. Cities such as New York, Hoboken, and Jersey City are seeing reductions in deaths through Vision Zero initiatives.

Safe Community Routes: Safe Routes to School and Safe Routes for Seniors

Vancouver is home to 80 schools that serve 45,461 students between Vancouver and Evergreen School Districts. Safe Routes to School (SRTS) is a nationally funded program to encourage students and caregivers to walk, roll, and bike to school along safe pathways.