Vancouver leaders work toward a transportation transformationSubscriber Exclusive

It’s an ambitious departure for Vancouver. The city may have been incorporated in 1857, but the automobile fueled its expansion into a classic American suburb following World War II.

“The city of Vancouver is not going to rapidly become an easy place to get around without a car,” said Michael Andersen, a Portland-based senior researcher for Sightline, a regional sustainability think tank in Seattle. “The key is to let people find ways to do so if they want to. The more people who want to, the more they will invest their own time and money in making that possible, and they will pave the way for the next people. And it will snowball.”

Evolving, retrofitting

The city’s goal is to transform neighborhoods so they have stores, restaurants, parks, schools, transit stations and other essential services within a 20-minute walk.

“We can build neighborhoods so people have options for different trips,” said Rebecca Kennedy, Vancouver’s long-range planning manager.

This new idea in city planning is actually quite old-fashioned.

The old part of Vancouver — built before automobile ownership was widespread — is already configured this way, with short blocks, sidewalks and a mix of housing and businesses.

“In the closer-in neighborhoods, we’re still leaning on the architecture of our great-grandparents, because the buildings are still there,” Andersen said. “In the years Clark County was booming in the mid-20th century, the rules for how you design roads locked into this path of adding more and more turn lanes and shallower corners and more and more auto-oriented streets that made it unpleasant to walk.”

Decades of planning zoned swaths of land exclusively for one use or another, forcing people who live in a subdivision to get in their cars and drive several miles to the grocery store.

“In many cases, the reason things aren’t closer together is that we’ve made it illegal,” said Andersen, a former Columbian reporter who used to live in Vancouver.

The problem is, Vancouver’s neighborhoods are cast in concrete and asphalt; retrofitting them is difficult. That’s why city officials set aside the 205-acre Heights District for redevelopment. Tearing down Tower Mall frees up a big chunk of land to start from scratch.

Yet reorienting neighborhoods for the benefit of future residents doesn’t always sit well with existing ones.

Neighbors objected to density requirements and parking limits. In a letter to the city, neighborhood leaders protested, “It is one thing to buy a home in the city; quite another to have a city built next to your home.”

“Change involves loss of the way things used to be or were, and that’s really hard for people,” Kennedy said. “So how do we manage that growth in a way that reflects the values of the community?”

Room for cars or people?

Many Vancouver residents are wary of reducing parking requirements while increasing residential density, because in the past, more people has meant more cars. They want to be sure they can park their cars at their destination because other ways of getting there haven’t been feasible.

In the Heights District, residential density targets range from 30 to 75 housing units per acre, with between one parking space to 1¼ parking spaces per unit. By comparison, the minimum parking requirement for multifamily housing outside of downtown and a few other areas like the Heights is higher at 1½ stalls per unit. The idea is that residents in the Heights District won’t be as reliant on cars because they’ll have easy access to the Mill Plain Vine, the new bus-rapid transit corridor C-Tran is constructing, as well as close-by services.

Vancouver’s transition to a walkable and bike-able environment depends on shifting away from the old parking standards, which commandeered a lot of space to accommodate flocks of cars, said Rick Williams, the city of Vancouver’s parking consultant. To put it simply, big parking lots push businesses farther apart.

Vancouver has set a goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2040. Connected neighborhoods would reduce 2 percent of the city’s emissions, according to the draft climate action plan, while about 13 percent of the city’s goal would be met with a transition to electrified vehicles.

Proposed actions include expanding C-Tran’s fareless programs and improving corridors to allow for bicycle and scooter use.

“A huge number of people are getting around without cars today, just not for every trip,” Andersen said. “The key is more and more of our trips are going to be options between different modes, instead of being one mode.”

Like the Gills, who share one car and try to use it rarely, instead riding C-Tran or walking to accomplish their daily business.

“I like not starting the car and polluting the Earth,” said Dick Gill, a member of C-Tran’s Citizens Advisory Board. “I like walking to the bus stop. It’s good for me.”