Abstract Manager

The Village of Lumby is a small municipality in the North Okanagan of BC that is home to 2,014 people (2021 Census) who love it for the rural countryside that is rich with natural amenities and located close to major employment areas.  In 2022, the Village embarked on developing its first Active Transportation Network Plan (ATNP) to look at how it can effectively prioritize improvements to walking and cycling conditions.  Lumby worked with Urban Systems to design a planning process for informing and creating the ATNP.

The Village’s key objectives for the ATNP are to promote safe and well-connected opportunities for AT users and provide accessible and affordable options for residents.  The process needed to review existing gaps, issues and constraints so that realistic and feasible improvement options and concepts could be developed in the context of the community’s size and financial capacity.  Furthermore, the Village wanted to investigate preliminary design for a new Grandview Multi-Use Pathway, currently an informal footpath used regularly by residents to get to and from the Village’s main street on Shuswap Ave.

Through the existing conditions assessment, the GIS datasets for sidewalk, cycling, multi-use pathway, staircases, and supporting AT infrastructure were updated and evaluated to identify key gaps.  The public was engaged through an online open house where a community survey was distributed and where residents could add notes to a web-map to provide geo-referenced input.  From this, an AT Vision and set of Goals were defined, which directed the identification and multiple-criteria evaluation of 64 improvement projects and actions that cover infrastructure, services and operations, policies, and amenities.  A prioritized and costed plan of infrastructure projects was developed to support the Village’s budgeting.

After distributing the plan for public information and following Council’s adoption, Urban Systems supported the Village’s successful application for capital grant funding for the Grandview Multi-Use Pathway project, a 750 meter long pathway within the Highway 6 right-of-way.  This pathway has been fully designed according to the BC Active Transportation Design Guide, has received MoTI approval, is tendered and awarded, and is slated for construction from March to June of 2024.  The Presenter of this Abstract intends to showcase the ATNP and the finished pathway, and describe lessons learned and unique ideas applied to demonstrate the process of how AT infrastructure is implemented from early stages of Network Planning through to Construction and opening for public use and benefit.