Bike Sense
Bike Sense: the podcast of The BC Cycling Coalition.
Join Host Peter Ladner as he interviews guests to talk about all things related to cycling advocacy, education, and road safety in BC. Listen to stories that can influence changes that make active transportation and mobility safer, more equitable, and more accessible, so we can meet our climate, health, social justice, tourism and economic development goals.
Please visit our website at bccycling.ca to find out more about what the BC Cycling Coalition is doing and how you can join and support us.
Bike Sense
Lower Speed Limits, Safer Streets: Unleashing the power of 30 km/hr Zones in BC
What if a simple policy change could dramatically decrease road injuries and elevate community well-being? Dr. Michael Schwandt, Medical Health Officer for Vancouver Coastal Health, helps us unravel the transformative potential of a 30 km/hour speed limit on residential streets in British Columbia. We examine how this seemingly small adjustment could significantly reduce traffic fatalities and injuries, while fostering a safer environment for cyclists and pedestrians alike.
From debunking misconceptions about cycling to advocating for safer infrastructure, this episode reveals the multifaceted strategies essential for creating more inviting communities. We explore the implications of transportation policies, such as the often-overlooked dangers of right turns on red lights, and discuss the collaboration needed between local governments and public health authorities to champion safe cycling and pedestrian practices. Tune in to discover how these changes could not only revolutionize safety but also enhance mental and physical well-being across communities.
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The Bike Sense podcast with Peter Ladner is produced by the BC Cycling Coalition – your voice for safer and more accessible cycling and active transportation in British Columbia.
Membership in the BCCC is now FREE! To find out about BCCC's projects and add your voice to the chorus please visit BCCycling.ca
Welcome to Bike Sense, the BC Cycling Coalition's podcast, where we talk about all things related to active transportation advocacy in BC. I'm your host, peter Ladner, chair of the Board of the BC Cycling Coalition. I hope you enjoy the show. The BC Cycling Coalition has been working for some time with a number of organizations aligned with us on a specific safety measure that we think would be very important in making our province safer for cyclists and pedestrians, and that is a 30 kilometer per hour default speed limit on residential streets throughout the province, that's, streets with no painted line on them. And to put this in perspective, we've invited on our podcast today Dr Michael Schwant, who's a medical health officer for Vancouver Coastal Health. He's also a clinical associate professor in the School of Population and Public Health at UBC and he knows a bit about this topic. Michael, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1:Michael, you are a cyclist, I assume. Do I assume?
Speaker 2:that, yeah, definitely, and I think that's yeah, it's. You know, I think one thing, because I moved about a little bit as a like many have lived in Vancouver and Toronto, and from Winnipeg originally. So biking in cities that are quite different cycling environments over the years, it really drives it home in terms of direct experience of what a difference maker it is, and you'll know this well, of course, but there's been. You know, when I was in Toronto I happened to live in a neighborhood that had a bike lane. I was in downtown Toronto with lots of traffic, but I didn't have to really interface with it too terribly much. I biked every day and it was easy, very easy.
Speaker 2:In winnipeg I lived probably closer to my the hospital I was working at, never biked because it was a harrowing experience, and being back there visiting, they've actually put a protective bike lane in exactly my previous route I would have biked every day. But the thing is, as you know, it's like I've been the same person roughly the whole time, been into biking the whole time, but that environment that creates that space or that opportunity has been the difference maker. So when I think of times in my life when I've been a daily biker, for pleasure, for commuting or times in my life when the bike's been collecting dust.
Speaker 2:It's really just due to basically the local cycling environment and those things that mostly local and also provincial government can do about it that make all the difference I've found so yeah, so I think that, yeah, you're correct, peter, I do enjoy biking and that that sort of impact living in different neighborhoods and different cities really every time you and now, as you know, like nowadays, it's like, yeah, I think improving slowly but as well, when travel, you see how good it can be, so there's always that opportunity. You want to keep striving for better.
Speaker 1:Maybe we'll fundraise to send Doug Ford to Amsterdam for a week and he can see how good it is. Oh my gosh, general aim in life, as I understand it, is to work on preventing disease, injury and problems health problems up front, rather than just spending all our energy on better hospitals and better emergency medical service and picking up people injured beside the road. Could you talk a little bit about that, about the importance of prevention, and where active transportation in general and a 30-kilometer speed limit in particular fit into that picture?
Speaker 2:That's exactly right, peter. As a public health physician, I work at the preventive side of things, looking at how we can protect and promote health and avoid some of the negative and costly health outcomes that could come down the road. So you'll know the old expression about an ounce of prevention, and this is really where we try to put our emphasis in public health programs and in my own role as a medical health officer in the community.
Speaker 1:But, michael, in my political experience a federal cabinet minister once told me the hardest budget to advocate for is prevention, because you get the money, you spend the money. You never have a tangible outcome necessarily. I mean, there are probably exceptions, but tell me how difficult it is for you to sell the concept of prevention and saving money up front against the pressures of doing all the necessary spending on hospitals at the back end.
Speaker 2:Well, it's an extremely major part of our practice because we see in the acute side of the healthcare system, quite rightfully, an emphasis on treating people's problems as they arise, making sure that people who are injured, for example, or suffering from the long-term consequences of chronic disease, are receiving appropriate medical care.
Speaker 2:And in the meantime we need to work upstream to try to prevent some of those outcomes from occurring in the first place.
Speaker 2:And it can be very hard from a preventive perspective to describe all of the negative health impacts that didn't happen because of our good work. So trying to make the case when, if things are going very well, we might not see any of those impacts, and trying to explain the issues that are averted rather than describing all of the, for example, patients that we've treated, all of the patients that we didn't need to, can be a harder case to make in many cases. So we really spend a lot of time working on our communications and our advocacy to emphasize the preventive part of the health care system. You know, depending how the arithmetic is done, usually people will quote numbers to say that public health is 3% to 5% of our health care spending in terms of that preventive side of things. So we do see an opportunity to do more on the preventive side and save those billion dollar budgets that come downstream of when we are unable to prevent negative health outcomes.
Speaker 1:But in the case of the 30 kilometer speed limit, I believe there is data that where municipalities have brought this in, there has been a reduction in fatalities and injuries to pedestrians and cyclists and other active transportation modes, and I wondered if you could talk a little bit about that, about the effectiveness of a very simple what seems to be a simple measure, on outcomes that can be measured.
Speaker 2:Absolutely the default 30 kilometer an hour speeds in residential areas or 30 kilometer an hour limits applied to specific areas have been increasingly studied and we've seen very positive outcomes right around the world. Certainly we've got examples from the US and from Europe and increasingly in Canada. Studies in Toronto and Edmonton have found decreases in both crashes and then also outcomes, including mortality, where these interventions have been studied, and I find that this is, you know, a really positive intervention because we often find, with public health, a lot of our preventive work you know vaccination programs and some of the work we do for clean drinking water or air quality, for example it's really invisible until it fails. If there's a problem with any of those things, then we know if we see illness and negative health outcomes, but we don't necessarily see the work going on.
Speaker 2:One of the things with these default speed changes is that people can really experience that right away. People in these communities describe not only just the data show less risk of injury, but people have a different experience of the communities when cars in a residential area are coming through at 30 kilometers an hour versus, say, 50 kilometers an hour plus which. Anyone who's been next to a residential street with a car moving through that quickly knows is a very tangible difference. So people's perception of safety and their experience of their neighborhood environment to cycle, to walk and to move about in really changes. So we actually have quite a visible impact on people's potential well-being and enjoyment of their community. Aside from that, longer-range impact on health too.
Speaker 1:But you must have been involved, as we are, with pushback from car drivers. From the point of view of someone driving a car, you do not want to be constrained. I mean, as a driver myself, I just want to go as fast as I can whenever I'm driving and everybody else get out of the way so I can get to where I want to go. From that point of view, having to slow down to 30 k's is a big frustration, and we have seen political parties cater to that driving mindset with great political success. However, as you point out, if you look at it from the point of view of people in the neighborhood, it's quite a different story, and some of those same people asked about in your neighborhood should cars slow down? In BC, a Mario Canseco survey found that two-thirds of the people throughout the province said they would like traffic to be slower in their neighborhood, and yet we still have this resistance from the provincial government to do it, because they say, well, municipalities can do it, we don't have to get involved.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there seems to be a real hesitation to move forward with some of these measures, even though, as you've described, researchers found that these are actually quite popular when surveyed. There are certainly interventions out there that public health recommends where we don't have a lot of public support and we could get into things like automated speed enforcement or even sometimes giving over space in the roads to protected cycling spaces, which can be very contentious, and we're seeing right across Canada a lot of debate around some of those interventions. Slower speeds is something where we actually find wind. Surveyed, many people, in fact the majority of people, actually promote that because we find that, as well as driving, most people do spend time walking about their own neighborhoods, and this focus on residential neighborhoods indeed does seem to be an area where we find more support than some of the other interventions for injury prevention and promotion of a safe act of transportation. And yet there is quite a major concern.
Speaker 2:We see this pushback, whether that's at the local government level or at the level of provincial governments who could potentially enact these defaults. I think there is a major worry that things that are perceived as slowing down traffic will be received negatively and the political courage or the vision hasn't always been there to enact these things has been modeled out by transportation engineers. Slowing down from 50 to 40 or 30 kilometers an hour for that very short part of a commute getting out of one's own neighborhood and onto major arterials is only a small part of the commute and doesn't really significantly slow down commuting times. Uh, in any case, it provides a safer and hopefully uh uh more positive driving experience and walking experience and cycling experience for neighborhood residents, without really contributing to slower commutes the way gridlock does, for example.
Speaker 1:Could you give us the specifics of the difference if a pedestrian is hit, say, by a car going at 50 kilometers an hour and 30 kilometers an hour?
Speaker 2:Definitely, when somebody is struck by a car traveling at 50 kilometers an hour, studies have found that the risk of fatality can be between 80 and 90 percent.
Speaker 2:That varies a little bit depending on the nature of the vehicle.
Speaker 2:We see that even increasing with car bloat, larger and heavier vehicles that are on the road, Whereas when people are struck by vehicles, when this has been studied, at 30 kilometers an hour, we see fatality rates more in the range of 10% or so. So potentially a five to tenfold increase in the risk of fatality occurs just within that interval. Moving up from a 30 kilometer an hour speed to a 50 kilometer an hour vehicular speed at the time of contact goes from basically describing the change from somebody being most likely the vast majority of the time to survive, potentially with some injury, unfortunately, to being more likely than not to die, to pass away due to due to the injury sustained. So within that difference, which makes a limited material impact to the, to the piloting of a vehicle through a neighborhood, we see a great difference in the risk to the piloting of a vehicle through a neighborhood, we see a great difference in the risk to a person being struck who might be walking, cycling or rolling in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1:Well, in fairness to the perspective that I've been sketching out here, there are more than 60 municipalities in BC that have some form of 30-kilometer speed limit, so this is not an unpopular opinion or move by municipalities, but our ask is that it's made default province-wide and then the municipalities don't have to put special signs up and pass special bylaws and incur costs. It's just the way it is. Michael, could you talk a little bit about other measures for safety for cyclists and pedestrians that you are pursuing that are high on your list?
Speaker 2:Definitely, within our regional health authority, we really try to take the Vision Zero approach, promoting a safer overall, a safer system for transportation, including looking at the roadways, the speeds, vehicles and the drivers that are moving them about, and as well as limiting speeds in residential areas. I think that the actual environment that people are moving about in, that helps to affect both the speed and the nature of travel, is extremely important. So we see, oftentimes when people describe that a lower speed limit isn't necessarily going to slow down traffic, and people will say, well, you can lower the speed limit on this roadway, but if it's built more or less like an airport runway, people are naturally enough going to speed through it. And we say, yes, absolutely, that's the case. And this is why it's an all of the above approach and we really try to encourage some of the well, well described and well applied uh engineering interventions that are available to uh to slow down traffic, to make drivers more aware of their speeds and to make it uh to essentially, you know, add friction, whether that's visually or physically. Uh that leads people driving more slowly. And this could be uh traffic calming measures that we're familiar with, that narrow roads, things that create less rounded and more squared off corners at intersections, anything that can slow people down and add to a more safe driving experience. This is both for drivers and then also for vulnerable road users who are on the roads on foot or on bikes and other devices.
Speaker 2:So this is another approach we take, really trying to work with local governments to promote these.
Speaker 2:So Vancouver Coastal Health, although we're a regional health authority providing acute care to over a million residents in our area, also provide funding to community-based organizations and even to some municipal governments to enact some of these measures to try to create safer spaces out in our transportation environment. I agree, peter, when we see so many different communities dozens now, as you said, over 60 that have implemented either slow zones or, in some cases, all of communities, slower cities, this is very positive, but we really need to, I think, socialize and promote the success of those projects. I think that in many cases it's not well understood that, indeed, one, there's positive impacts in terms of people's experiences of the roadways and two, some of the red herrings that we hear about the potential for negative impacts just don't come to pass. These are communities that end up being more inviting to people of all ages to use our street spaces, and it's, generally speaking, a positive experience when we're able to get feedback from residents of those communities.
Speaker 1:Michael, I want to switch gears, as they say, for a moment and talk about the other day. Somebody said to me they noticed I was riding my bicycle. They said oh how virtuous. And I said I am not trying to be virtuous, this is just fun and practical. I don't think that we can expect the nice changes that we all like and that many of us most of us would like to see, the people listening to this podcast would like to see. I don't think we can expect them to happen because people feel virtuous or want to do the right thing, even though it's awkward and uncomfortable or difficult for them. I think, and I think it's been proven and I'd love your thoughts on this that if you just build physical activity into day-to-day life in a way that makes it more efficient and practical for people to do it, they or do something to be virtuous and physically fit. They just worked into their daily life and thereby, therefore, they get healthier, just living, and we make that more able to happen.
Speaker 2:Well, we find that societies around the world that are healthier, where people live longer and have better health outcomes in terms of chronic disease, are exactly those that build physical activity, that build healthy living into day-to-day life. Without that requirement for day-to-day decision making. When we ask people to swim upstream and to go, you know, almost against the grain to make healthy decisions, we're really fighting a losing battle. I often say that we'd like to have a zero finger wagging approach to public health, so that people are taking on these healthy practices not because the doctor told them to do it or because I saw a TV commercial or a billboard saying it's a good idea, but because we've made the healthy choice, the easy choice, in the first place.
Speaker 2:So, if it's easier and more convenient and maybe even more fun to bike or to walk to work or to school than it is to get in a car and drive. People are more likely to do that and, you see, in societies where we have higher uptake of cycling, for example, it's in large part because it's been made positive, pleasant to do that, and sometimes as well because there's some friction to driving. Because we don't have necessarily a friction-free driving experience, there might be costs associated with it. Congestion charges in some communities globally have made a difference, and so changing that equation and that decision-making environment can be very helpful.
Speaker 2:Even where I work for Vancouver Coastal Health and the campus of Vancouver General Hospital, we see more and more work by our own health authority looking at our carbon emissions and trying to promote healthy practices among employees, trying to create better reception facilities for people who bike to work, because a lot of people say they don't mind biking at all. In fact they enjoy being on the bike, but it's arriving at work, finding a place to lock up that's safe, finding a place to change, coming into the patient care or first meeting of the day, having been off the bike and not had a place to shower, etc. That's the barrier. So again, I think that whether that's at the level of the city or town, or right down to the workplace or the neighborhood and housing. Design can all have an impact on people's decision making, at least as much so as simply being told it's the right thing to do.
Speaker 1:Great points. Have you got any thoughts about the effect of active transportation on mental health, which we're hearing so much about today, particularly with young people?
Speaker 2:Yes, there's more and more research on that. I think that the data the case has been in for some time on the impacts around chronic disease so whether that's blood pressure, prevention of heart disease and so forth, the studies have found that mental health impacts are very positive, whether that's walking or biking, and this could come through a variety of different pathways that have been postulated. So one, just that feeling of physical activity. Two, being outdoors. It's probably a cliche for a reason. It's a common experience, wind in the hair, as it were.
Speaker 2:People describe actually having fun when they bike, which is not a common description of driving through traffic or a lot of other modes of transportation. People look forward to that part of their days in many cases. Exposure to green spaces in many cases, depending on the nature of the route, there's that opportunity for being around green and blue spaces. Moving around trees or next to bodies of water can be very positive for mental health. There's lots of evidence to that effect. Then finally, social connection people describe being more amidst their community and their community members when they're at ground level, moving through, moving through neighborhoods on foot or on a bike, than they do when they're enclosed in a vehicle. So people have that opportunity to, at whatever the level is right for them to talk to or so much as nod to a neighbor, duck into a local store, and so forth. And so there does seem to be a very positive mental health impact on the use of active and sustainable transport as opposed to vehicular transportation.
Speaker 1:I noticed you mentioned drop into a local store because that, aside from the kind of community interaction that is involved in that, it's also a benefit for those stores. And, of course, the data is there that shows that if you have a bike route or more pedestrians outside your store, you'll have more business. Michael, do you have any thoughts about compulsory helmet laws? Are you a fan?
Speaker 2:This is a perennial question to your local public health official and right now, the position I would take is that in an ideal state, we wouldn't need to have compulsory helmet laws. And there are places, there are cycling networks and environments on Earth where I think that it's quite reasonable for people to bike without a helmet, and people are doing that in great numbers, relatively safely For the most part. Within our North American context, I'd say we're not there yet. In our North American context, I'd say we're not there yet, and so the presence of the use of bicycle helmets is, I would say, a good idea in the current environment that we have. So that's to say, in shorter terms, that when we don't have separation of bikes from cars, when we do have that need to move in and amongst vehicles, I would say, from a public health perspective, need to move in and amongst vehicles. I would say from a public health perspective, as the saying says, nine out of 10 public health physicians, if not more, are going to say you should probably wear a helmet when you're biking anywhere near vehicles, when that risk is there, and even sometimes in environments without vehicles, where there might be some risk.
Speaker 2:Now, in terms of actual laws and enforcement of those. I think that we need to be very mindful of the fact that these policies can promote use of cycling. It sends a message that this is a good practice and something that's advisable. We need to be very mindful that the enforcement isn't punitive in a way that discourages people from riding. So if somebody is interested in riding but they haven't managed to access a helmet, they, due to convenience or due to other barriers, don't have one on. We're not really doing anything positive in the longer run, with appropriate car seats for infants and young children, enforcement being not a matter of fining and punishment, but actually saying what's the barrier here and, in fact, providing people with uh, with the helmet in some jurisdictions. So we've seen some positive examples in canada of that.
Speaker 2:Say, if we're going to have a jurisdiction where we have mandatory helmet use and people aren't using it, what can we do to make that easier? What are the reasons that people might not? So is there the possibility of discounted use? But I would say, overall, we want to get to a place where helmet use doesn't need to be necessary. I think that the environments that we're trying to create are environments that are safe enough that, as we've seen in other jurisdictions around the world, that a person can bicycle essentially as comfortably as they can walk about. I mean, that's the end goal, but I think that for the most part we're not quite there yet and it's again. Would highly recommend, for the most part, using a helmet if you're biking about Vancouver, for example.
Speaker 1:I do feel compelled to note that it does send a signal that this is a dangerous undertaking and if you actually looked at the risk of head injuries, the people who are wearing helmets should be seniors walking across streets and passengers in the cars of people being driven by young men. But we don't enforce those and make those helmet issues but we leave that. We don't have to get into that.
Speaker 2:Uh, unless you had a comment on that yeah, you know, I do think that again, it gets back to this idea of you know, the status quo transportation that we need, that uh, we'll see, uh, policymakers creating and maintaining rules for cycling that aren't necessarily applied to to other modes of transportation, and I think that this is that's consistent. Unfortunately, we still see the language describing cycling as quote, alternate transport. This is something that's different than the norm, and that we have that sort of differential risk evaluation that you're describing and policies around it are not the same as what we apply to other modes of transportation, and I think that that's, you know, continuing to bring an evidence-based approach to policy and to communications on the topic is really important.
Speaker 1:Well, speaking of evidence, there's one more thing I want to ask you before we wrap up here Right turns on red. This is something that I understand was not the common policy in years past, but was brought in to move traffic along during the oil crisis of the 70s, and now there is, I gather, pretty strong data that shows these are very dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists. Do you think we should not have right turns on red lights?
Speaker 2:Overall and I'll note first of all that depending on the city or town that you're in, context does matter, so I won't make this as a prescription for every community in British Columbia, but, again, overall, to give a simple answer, I'd say that, yes, we should be looking to limit this practice where possible. When we see evidence from other provinces, like Quebec, where, generally speaking, that's prohibited, these intersections become much safer. This is a very dangerous moment in our driving spaces and we see, as you described, this was largely put into place to allow people to roll through without needing to start and stop to save fuel. Then it might be good from that, might be useful from that perspective. I think less so in terms of modern technologies and the current state of our driving environment. It's probably less important from that perspective, but it's very uh in terms of the risk that's there, especially, as I mentioned earlier, when we see roadways with these, um, these turning areas, right, turning areas that are almost designed for speed. So, even where we see, um, red lights or stop signs, but we see these corners that are rounded off a lot, facilitating even encouraging uh, facilitating, even encouraging that continuous motion, failing to slow down, sight lines that don't really encourage or even allow people to have a sense of what they're driving into.
Speaker 2:It's very risky and I think that we would do well from an injury prevention perspective and from the perspective of promoting walking and cycling, creating environments where people feel and are safe to do so, limiting that in many places.
Speaker 2:You know, as you said, from right off the top. I think that some of the pushback that we see, we're always trying to look at what's the ideal state and then what's the pragmatic next step. I think that if we could at least look at certain high-risk intersections and start to intervene there, eliminating right turn on red and we do see this in some cases but trying to do this without wanting to become, as we're often accused of being in Canada, the land of the pilots starting to actually intervene, demonstrate where there is success, study these errors and then proliferate that practice, would be a very positive move. The opportunity is there. I don't think that necessarily it's going to be immediately accepted to go across the board to ban right turn on red, but to apply this more broadly, especially to known high-risk intersections where we even have risk, not only in general but specifically observed, with right turns on red. I think that we have an opportunity to intervene and again study, demonstrate the practice and expand it.
Speaker 1:Michael, given the close alignment between active transportation advocates and public health advocates, what would your advice be to people championing active transportation in the smaller communities around BC to partner up with their local public health authorities? Are there forums where you can do this? Are you willing or interested in joining in with active transportation advocates and helping campaigns or speaking to their members, or whatever it might take? How can we make your interests and our interests more closely aligned and working more closely together?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a strong yes, peter.
Speaker 2:I think that public health authorities right across the province are very interested to hear from community members and organizations on this topic.
Speaker 2:Speaking for Vancouver, we've had a very positive relationship with Vision Zero Vancouver, as well as Hub Cycling and other local organizations working on some of the topics we have discussed today, and I think that that's really crucial when we go to advocate for these healthy policies to local government decision makers and to provincial government decision makers.
Speaker 2:Oftentimes the health case, though we'd like to think as a health authority that that might carry the day Oftentimes it's some of the other benefits, the co -benefits of these policies that really seem to be influential. So, depending which city councillor you're speaking with, the language of health might be the most effective, but then oftentimes the benefits for local business that you described, for having a safe recycling environment, maybe the climate benefits or some of the improvements to air quality. There's different things and I find that the broad coalition of advocacy with people who are looking at the issue through different lenses could help oftentimes to be more successful in bringing out all of the different good reasons to pursue these policies rather than, for example, a local health official going in and saying do this because it'll limit injuries and take the load off of the emergency room. I would say yes, and you know, the local cycling organization, provincial organization like yours, might bring other cases that might resonate differently, and even more so, with decision makers and with the public who need to support these policies.
Speaker 1:Terrific advice to end on. Thank you so much, michael. It's been very helpful and I love to hear perspective from people who aren't always described as avid cyclists, who bring other interests and very important outcomes to this discussion. So thanks so much for joining us and I look forward to working with Vancouver Coastal Health and all of our members working with their local public health authorities to further these goals.
Speaker 2:Really great talking with you, Peter. Thanks very much.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to Bike Sense, an original podcast from the BC Cycling Coalition. An original podcast from the BC Cycling Coalition. If you like the podcast, we'd be grateful if you could leave us a rating. On whatever platform you use, you can also subscribe, so you don't miss future episodes. If you have comments or suggestions for future episodes, email me at peterladner at bccyclingca. You can help us amplify BC Cycling Coalition's voice. Thank you.