Tag Archives: mobility

Cranking Up Connecting Dots Again

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Well THAT took long enough. Forgive the egregiously long time between posts, dear readers, but I just wanted to let you know that the hiatus is over. I’m in the process of writing and cranking up Connecting Dots again. Over the last year, family concerns behind the scenes–plus many nifty new projects at work–meant that my focus needed to shift… Read more »

Integrating Urban Mobility Starts in Our Heads

For those of you keen on the next era of transportation, one more seemingly small but notable shift just happened.  And it didn’t start on a city street but in a change in mindset. Canadian Transit Forum, the respectable and somewhat traditional journal of the Canadian Urban Transit Association (CUTA), just relaunched itself.  With the Spring 2017 issue just released,… Read more »

Reprise: Highway 16 Transit and Fundamental Mobility

From the Vault: The following post was originally published on June 28, 2015.  It was one of the first things I ever wrote here at Connecting Dots, and for good reason.  The people and transit systems of northwest BC taught me much since I first started working with their region as a newly-minted transit planner in 1999.  And in particular–as… Read more »

On a New Job and the Undeniable Importance of 5 a.m. in a Bus Yard

Early morning at VTC

This past Friday I left my role as BC Transit’s Manager of Planning to take on new opportunities as a Senior Transportation Planner & Transit Lead with Calgary-based Watt Consulting Group. Understandably, this change has occupied much of my mind and presented a range of feelings. Gratitude for the opportunities I had to grow over the last 21 years with… Read more »

Snapshots from Vancouver’s CUTA Transit Conference: Integrating Mobility

CUTA 2016

The Canadian Urban Transit Association (CUTA) recently held its annual conference and giant transit trade show from November 5-9, 2016 in Vancouver, B.C. Billed under the title “Inspiring Sustainable Change,” the conference focussed on changing technology, climate, demographics and customer expectations when it comes to cities and how they move. I had an opportunity to attend part of the conference… Read more »

Going Less Loopy: The Transit Basics Behind TransLink’s SkyTrain Changes

TransLink SkyTrain Change

This past weekend, TransLink’s SkyTrain network in the Metro Vancouver, BC region underwent a pretty sizable series of route and platform changes. The changes are paving the way for the start later this year of service along the new Evergreen Extension and revised supporting bus routes. I thought it would be interesting to look at some of the transit planning… Read more »

Pro Walk Pro Bike Pro Place 2016: Links & Highlights

The 2016 Pro Walk Pro Bike Pro Place conference  happened in Vancouver, BC from September 12 to 15 and I thought it might be interesting to pass on a few highlights. With an event program the size of a heftier magazine and held in conjunction with the Project for Public Spaces and Placemaking Week, the conference felt somewhat like the… Read more »

Yes! The Long Form Census is Back: Now Could We Make it More Multimodal?

Our daily lives are increasingly multimodal when it comes to how we get around.  How might we shape our Census to better track how we are mixing and matching our transportation choices? This past weekend I sat down at our kitchen table and discovered that I had come out ahead in two uniquely Canadian games of chance*: Against all odds,… Read more »

Creating Beautiful Communities that Move Us: Thoughts on Ensuring Connection between Land Use Plans and Mobility

This article was published in Planning West magazine, Volume 58, Number 2 (Spring 2016), and is reprinted here with permission from the Planning Institute of British Columbia (PIBC), all rights reserved. Since Planning West is a professional planning publication, the article was written with that audience primarily in mind, one planner to another as it were.  However, I still want… Read more »

Of Federal Budgets and Kids in the Street

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This post started out as a reserved and detailed analysis of the 2016 Canadian federal budget through the lenses of mobility and place. And then I took a break from writing and went out with my five-year-old son to practice riding his bike.  And that’s when this post changed. On the fringe of downtown, our relatively quiet neighbourhood exists as… Read more »

Christmas on Two Feet

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I’ve been watching with interest Chris Bruntlett’s Twitter posts (@modacitylife) and facebook page of crowd sourced photos of Christmas trees being carried home by bike. What I like most about Chris’s posts are that they are bringing visibility to the different choices that people are making in their lives in terms of how they get around and the meaning they… Read more »