Metro Vancouver's economy more reliant on good transit than most cities
Credit to Author: Jennifer Saltman| Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2019 22:52:49 +0000
Metro Vancouver’s economy depends on good public transit — in particular, its ability to shuttle the region’s residents to and from work each day, according to data analyzed by a Simon Fraser University expert.
“Whether it’s the bread and butter of the hospitality business, to the aspirations of the technology industry, the numbers that I found were clear in terms of their dependency and interdependency,” said Andy Yan, director of the university’s City Program.
Yan, who presented his findings during a keynote speech at the RailVolution conference in Vancouver on Tuesday, used 2016 census information to find out more about the 20 per cent of Metro Vancouver residents who use transit for their commutes. Canada wide about 12 per cent of people use transit to get to work.
Yan said that what surprised him most was that Metro Vancouver commuters’ transit use wasn’t concentrated in one or two sectors.
Accommodation and food services workers topped the list, with 33 per cent using public transit as their main way of commuting in Metro Vancouver. Twenty-eight per cent of workers in both the professional/scientific/technical services and information/cultural sectors primarily use transit to commute.
Other industries, such as administration, natural resources, management, retail trade and finance and insurance, are all around 25 per cent.
“Those are big numbers,” Yan said. “You actually see part of understanding Metropolitan Vancouver is understanding the diversity of those who take transit to work.”
Manufacturing, wholesale, transportation, warehousing, construction and agriculture were among the industries that had lower transit use.
Yan said the industrial split in transit users means the region’s system has a level of support you wouldn’t see in many American metropolitan areas.
In the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward region in California, 18 per cent of commuters primarily use transit, dropping to 10 per cent in Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue in Washington, and seven per cent in Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro in Oregon. In the New York-Newark-Jersey City area, 33 per cent of people use transit.
Part of the reason more Metro Vancouverites are using transit to get to work could be related to the region’s focus on transit-oriented development or transit-oriented communities.
Yan’s presentation showed that one-fifth of all new housing built in Metro Vancouver between 2006 and 2016 was within 400 metres of a SkyTrain station.
However, another panelist pointed out that much of that housing is not geared toward the people who are most likely to use transit.
“We know that the people who are most likely, given the choice, to live near transit are renters, and particularly low-income renters, and yet we’re using this housing and transit to create money for municipalities to displace renters and build rental housing somewhere else,” said Andrea Reimer, a former Vancouver city councillor.
One example is Metrotown, which lost 931 purpose-built rental units lost between October 2010 and October 2018. The city has launched a new housing strategy.
Jay Pitter, an author, place maker and city builder from Toronto, said transit development has historically been shaped by people who have economic and political power, and those who have the least transit options end up with the worst networks.
“Transit-oriented gentrification and displacement is a phenomenon that is structural and systemic,” Pitter said.
However, Reimer said displacement isn’t inevitable — as long as governments are building or maintaining rental housing near transit and thinking about how they can build stronger communities.
Andy Yan in downtown Vancouver.