Rapid implementation of bikeways for healthy, safe, equitable and more sustainable communities

Over the past several years, cities across Canada and throughout the world have increasingly shifted their approach to delivering bikeways by following a rapid implementation or quick build approach. This approach enables the delivery of safe and comfortable cycling facilities—as well as comprehensive cycling networks—all at once and at a lower cost compared to  traditional methods. The flexibility embedded in this process also enables fast and responsive design adjustments, ensuring that as facilities are made permanent over time, they meet the needs of a broad range of users and contribute to the creation of vibrant, prosperous, and resilient communities.

Rapid implementation facilitates an urgent response to a range of critical issues facing our communities, including public health, the climate emergency, social inequity, road safety, congestion, and increasingly constrained municipal budgets. For this reason, this approach became a key strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic, with cities around the world re-allocating road space to meet physical distancing requirements and accommodate changing mobility patterns. The COVID-19 pandemic has created generational changes in how people move around urban areas with a significant increase in active transportation in communities around the world. 

TransLink, with the support of Urban Systems, recently developed the Rapid Implementation Design Guide for Bikeways in Metro Vancouver. This session will provide an overview of the Guide and how rapid implementation of cycling facilities can help create more healthy, equitable, and sustainable communities.

Matt Craig – Director, System Planning, TransLink

Matt has been a transportation planner for 20 years, and currently leads TransLink’s multimodal System Planning team in Vancouver BC.  He’s been involved in nearly all aspects of our field, from detailed transit service and street design planning to regional system-level strategy development with decision-makers. He loves being involved in a good, structured planning process. Matt and his family live in a walkable, transit-oriented community in Vancouver.

Brian Patterson, RPP, MCIP – Senior Transportation Planner, Urban Systems

Brian is a senior transportation planner with Urban Systems and specializes in multi-modal transportation planning, active transportation planning and design, healthy and complete communities, and road safety.  Brian has nearly 20 years of experience and leads Urban Systems’ active transportation practice across Canada.  Brian has led of 100 plans, policies, and studies and was named the 2019 Private Sector Professional of the Year by the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals (APBP)