A Personal Dillemma.

Throughout the month of June I was faced with the dilemma of driving to work or continuing my routine of taking public transit. Over the last month a friend of mine went back to Ontario for a family visit, leaving her car with me. I have not had access to a car for some time now and I thought that this car sitting in my drive way would not change my daily routine. I was unfortunately mistaken; access to a car provided a convenience which public transit could not. Most notably access to car allowed me to get to work on time or gave me an opportunity to come in early or stay late. When it comes to public transit I have a much smaller window for gaining those much needed extra hours. If I wanted to go in early my only option would be to jump on to a bus at 6:30am in order to arrive at 7:30am (almost 3 hours early), with the next bus not arriving until 10:00am. Similar problems arise when I have an opportunity to stay late, with the last bus of the day leaving at 6:30pm, allowing for only a half hour of overtime. I instantly realized the tough uphill battle which public transit faces, competing with the private automobile is a near impossible task it would take an unrealistic budget for a public transit system to become that efficient in Kelowna.
In cities around the world the word sustainability is starting to take precedence within city councils. Nothing impacts the development of cities more then the private automobile so I wanted to look into what the city of Kelowna and others are doing to beef up and promote the use of public transit.
The city of Kelowna has laid out plans in their 2007 financial plan to introduce a two phase project which introduces a Bus Rapid Transit line that will provide high frequency travel between downtown and UBC-O. The second phase of the plan is directed at increasing the efficiency and flexibility of bus routes already in place which provide service to the university. This most certainly is great news for those who work or go to school at UBC-O but what about those who work in other areas of town? The city has made no mention of improving bus routes except for those which service the university, instead they have put tens of millions into road projects that are meant to provide smoother driving and reduce drive times. In my opinion the city really messed up on this one, the recent U-pass referendum will pump millions into public transit which usually wouldn’t be there. So instead of taking advantage of this extra funding by implementing the first steps in a highly efficient and sustainable mass transit system, the city takes this money and makes improvements to a bus route that needed little improvement, while at the same time pumping extra money into projects which benefit those who own a private automobile. When is the time going to come where this city realizes how important a system of public transit truly is? (Information can be found at: http://www.kelowna.ca/CityPage/Docs/PDFs/%5CFinancial%20Services%20Division%5C2007%20Financial%20Plan/City%20Managers%20Memo%20-%20Volume%201.pdf )

So what are other cities doing to promote their systems of public and mass transportation? The city of London, England is charging a $15 per day toll for those who choose to drive into the transit friendly CBD, traffic delays are down 22% and carbon emissions have been cut by 16%. Not only is the city lowering its carbon emission but they also need to spend much less on road projects meant to deal with the issue of congestion. In Paris, along highly congested routes special lanes have been dedicated for busses turning their system of public transit into a fast, efficient and first class mode of transportation. There are ideas that make it possible for systems of public transit to compete with the private automobile’s convenience and flexibility; people just have to be willing to change. (Information can be found at: (http://www.liveearth.org/news.php)