Norm Reynolds

Greetings and thank you for your interest in more effective, economical, healthy and environmentally friendly transportation. My  response to your question on dealing with traffic volumes: 

We have many good reasons to recentre our transportation away from Car-centred.  Other communities have calculated the cost of roads  and parking (including the loss of prime real estate, the cost of accidents –dollars and suffering—the cost of policing, the infrastructure costs and—not least—the loss to our children and grandchildren if we do not bring global warming under control.

Smart communities are reallocating funds to healthier forms of transportation based on the cost benefits. We can do an immense amount to improve transit ridership(1 bus full=40 less cars on the road. Counting the cost savings of transit we should have free or very low cost monthly passes for Courtenay employers to issue to all their employees. Our City employees should automatically travel free on transit and be recognized for their citizenship in doing so. Ecopasses for day ridership should be very cheap. We should work with business to offer shopping discounts with the presentation of a bus pass.

As Boulder Colorado does we should employ the power of internet technology to allow pin point scheduling and booking of bike rack rides so that a cyclist could count on using a bike rack on the bus.

I believe that we could design a 15 minute interval NIC-Courtenay-Comox bus loop that didn’t come across the bridge but stopped at a bus centre where “yellow”—free—bicycles are available to pedal across a bike overpass to Courtenay.   We could include scooters for the mobility challenged. 

We need to rethink where we build so that our housing is clustered for easy access to bus and to established centres. The old Courtenay elementary would have been great for this—imagine 4 stories of residences would have not only saved vehicle usage costs, it would have secured downtown Courtenay as a walking centred vital commercial centre of the valley. WE need to look for other opportunities like that.    

Live/ work development would also reduce vehicle use especially if the development has limited parking so residents are encouraged to find alternatives to cars. Developers can be encouraged by incentives to include car share vehicles and parking spaces in new development.  WE need to begin a smart car program so that those who only need a car occasionally can rely on a vehicle for those times and rely on transit or cycling for the vast majority of their local trips.

I would want us to look at Boulder’s dial a ride that picks up people who are too far from a bus stop to walk and delivers them to a high volume transit route AND is there to pick them up when they return. There should be many more bike routes and bike racks. Employers should have incentives to have change rooms for bicycle commuters—could be a tax incentive. 

Happy Trails!