There are a lot of observations one can draw from the CRD's origin and destination household travel survey... comprehensive results just out this week. The one that leaps out at me is this: despite all the talk; all the lobbying; for better transit; all the additional bicycle lanes; all the urban planning buzzwords like "walkability"...the proportion of all trips taken by car has barely changed from ten years ago. And even within that number there's a discouraging observation...slightly more people actually driving; slightly fewer travelling as automobile passengers. You might not know that's actually the second largest mode share, at 13 per cent...twice as large as the 6.4 per cent of trips that are taken on public transit. And it offers the single greatest potential for growth.
Every day there are 656 thousand automobile trips in the Capital Region...and 134 thousand automobile passenger trips. Assuming one passenger seat per vehicle...which is wildly conservative...there are more than half a million empty seats travelling in the region every day. And we never hear about it. How do get this potential into the discussion where it belongs? It's at least as important as special bus lanes and more accomodation for bicycles.
This is Frank Stanford
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