Green Transportation plan in downtown Vancouver, Canada

Vancouver city, as a North American city, has faced a rise in its active modes of transport share in recent years, as a result of implementing the Green Transport plan. One of the targets of this plan was to “Make the majority of trips (over 50%) by foot, bicycle, and public transit” by 2020. Several instruments were implemented to achieve this target. As a result, in 2019, the share of walking, cycling, and public transportation reached 54%, which is 4% more than the target value (City of Vancouver, 2020c). While the City of Vancouver has been successful in achieving its transportation target, it is not clear how each implemented instrument influences this achievement. There is a lack of empirical study on how to explain the meaningful instrument implementation in practice towards a successful green transportation system. In this study, four instruments including transportation safety, network expansion, greenways, and bicycle sharing program were selected to explain their influence on the achieved target. So, this study aims to explain the extent to which the transportation safety, network expansion, greenways and bicycle sharing program developed by the Vancouver city municipality has influenced the achievement of the proposed green transport target. This explanatory research was conducted by collecting and analysing both qualitative and quantitative data, through semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, and secondary data. The findings of the research conclude that not all of the studied measures have been fully implemented in the studied area. Transportation safety measures still require improvements and in the studied period, they have slightly influenced the achievement of the target. This is while the multiple regression coefficient of this variable is not significant, which highlights the most limiting factor of this study, the small sample size. Expanding the network in Downtown and West End Vancouver, has also been influential in achieving the green transport target, although the cycling network is still under further developments. The greenways have influenced the achievement of the target positively, but their main function as recreational destinations must be taken into account. The bicycle sharing programs had a moderate influence on the achievement of the target, however, the statistical findings do not confirm this finding, as they are biased by the low sample size. To conclude, the identified instruments influence the achievement of the target by 14%, highlighting the existence of external influential variables, and the moderate influence of the studied variables.