Abstract Manager

The continued growth of metropolitan regions throughout North America has created the need to coordinate planning initiatives across traditional municipal boundaries, where different land use and transportation planning initiatives may not address the broader challenges.  

A regional perspective is often necessary to understand the major issues and opportunities, and to identify the best way forward. Regional transportation planning is a powerful tool that can be used to bring independent jurisdictions together, align approaches and projects, and enable municipalities to collaborate with one voice for shared improvements and funding.

Our recent experience helping regions across Canada has educated us on how regional boards need to lead the way by bringing together municipalities with sometimes competing interests to develop forward-thinking transportation plans that benefit the region and, ultimately, the municipalities.

The first part of the presentation will highlight lessons learned from Edmonton Metro Region’s Integrated Regional Transportation Master Plan (IRTMP), which was designed to build consensus among the Edmonton Region’s 13 municipalities by providing an evidence-based framework to prioritize mobility, sustainability, and equity at a regional level. Our presentation will elaborate on the IRTMP Prioritization Framework (key inputs, outputs, etc.) and how it was developed to integrate the growth plan and IRTMP policies. It will show proof of concept through actual examples like projects funded (by rankings), provincial buy-in and validation, and member municipalities redefining their existing planning projects to align with IRTMP objectives and integrate land use (growth plan) and transportation for a resilient regional network.

The second case study we will present is the Regional Transportation Plan we developed for the Sustainable Transportation Partnership of the Central Okanagan (STPCO). The presentation will include the options developed and evaluated and how the final recommendation included a transit spine along Highway 97, instead of a significant highway upgrade, supported by station areas/mobility hubs at select locations on the Westside.  Since then, the BC MOTI (through their Central Okanagan Integrated Transportation Strategy), and the City of West Kelowna, through their ongoing Transportation Master Planning process (also done by HDR), are reinforcing and planning around this transit spine and the stations. The Ministry is considering significant Transit Oriented Development projects, while the TMP supports this transit concept through the development of mobility hubs, first and last mile connections, active transportation infrastructure near the stations, and policies to support more transit-supportive redevelopment in the area.