As some cities find a way to avoid a spike in car ownership, they offer lessons for others — and hope that British Columbia’s transportation sector can still combat rising greenhouse gas emissions.
Over a quarter of a million vehicles have been added to British Columbia’s roads in the past six years. But more than half of them hit the pavement in 2021 — a jump that has affected almost every community in the province and threatens to undermine emissions reduction targets.
The jump in vehicle ownership in 2021 outpaced population growth in dozens of British Columbia communities, according to public data from ICBC and the Canadian National Census
“Overall, this level of adoption of private vehicles in such a short period of time is very bad news,” said Alex Bigazi, head of UBC’s Active Transportation Research Lab.
“Definitely a big step back from our climate goals.”
By 2019, several medium-sized and large cities in the province had made slow but significant gains, reducing the number of cars on the road even as their populations grew.
In 2020, the pandemic hit and vehicle ownership declined, reducing the number of cars in dozens of British Columbia municipalities to negative growth. But nearly all municipalities have erased those gains in 2021, according to public records.
The province’s largest city, Vancouver, has long aspired to be the greenest in the world. But in 2021, residents registered more than 29,000 new vehicles, more than double the previous five years combined.
That means since 2016, the number of vehicles in Vancouver has grown threefold relative to its population, said Bigazzi, who reviewed the Glacier Media analysis.
In almost every large and medium-sized city in British Columbia, the number of vehicle owners jumped in 2021 — dozens by double digits.
On Vancouver Island, in the five years ending in 2020, several medium-sized and small cities saw their car populations decrease or decline.
Langford jumped from a 1.49% increase in cars over the five years ending in 2020 to a nearly 24% increase by 2021.
The municipalities of Sooke, Lake Cowichan, Cumberland, Tofino, Golden and Pemberton saw their fate similarly, with vehicle counts jumping between 20 and 25 percent over 2016 levels.
Victoria added over 2,300 cars to its roads in 2021, more than the previous five years combined.
And in Kelowna, where the number of new car registrations increased by just over one per cent between 2016 and 2020, the number of vehicles grew by more than 14 per cent last year.
It’s not hard to see why, experts say.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many employees to work from home, and telecommuting has meant many can work further away from the city centre.
And while commuting plummeted, camping registrations skyrocketed. Without international travel, many turned to exploring places closer to home.
“[They’re] somehow baked in, these changes, so they will be with us in the long term, which in the world of transport is more than 10 years,” said Bigazzi, who himself registered a vehicle for the first time during the pandemic.
Increase in car fees
There are many good reasons for cities to want to reduce the number of cars and trucks on their roads.
Vehicle collisions kill approximately 280 people each year in British Columbia, and over the past five years, an average of almost 1,400 bicyclists and 2,100 pedestrians have been injured annually in such incidents.
This is exactly what the average person can see. In the Lower Mainland, the most urbanized corner of the province, road traffic is among the leading causes of air pollution.
A recent long-term study in Metro Vancouver found that noise and air pollution from traffic can reduce a child’s chances of reaching developmental milestones; another found air pollution and a lack of green space make children more likely to develop attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.
And according to a landmark national study led by Michael Brauer of the University of British Columbia, even low levels of air pollution from trucks and cars kill almost 8,000 Canadians each year.
Then there’s the role vehicles play in changing the planet’s climate system.
In British Columbia, emissions from cars and trucks have been rising steadily over the past few decades, so that by 2019 – the latest year for which data is publicly available – more than a quarter of British Columbia’s carbon pollution came from road transport.
“Let’s be honest: transport was the worst climate-performing sector before the pandemic,” Bigazzi said. “And that makes it even worse, much worse.”
Until now, solutions to reduce emissions have focused on getting people out of cars and onto buses, trains and bikes, or shifting them to electric vehicles.
At all levels of government, this means investing in rebate programs for electric vehicles, funding the expansion of bike lanes, and major public transit construction projects.
In cities, transforming the way the average person gets around is an incredibly complex task that involves reimagining neighborhoods as dense urban complexes, well-connected to public transportation and close to all the essentials of life.
On one level, the pandemic threw those plans into disarray. After years of steady growth, public transit trips in Metro Vancouver plunged 51 percent in 2020.
ICBC data shows that many of these commuters have turned to cars.
Studies show that when a person buys a car, they are much less likely to bike, take the bus or walk.
Meanwhile, a significant proportion of city commuters have turned to active transport such as bicycles or electric scooters, or decided to buy an electric vehicle.
But how long will the shift to gas-powered cars last? When will people go back to public transport? And will the rise of electric vehicles and active transportation make up for lost ground?
In cities around the world, these questions divide transportation experts.
“TransLink has had record year after record year over and over again,” Bigazzi said. “Until 2019. Then it dropped significantly.”
“I wouldn’t want to bet that I’m getting out of it.”
Why some British Columbia cities seem to be winning the car battle
Not every municipality in British Columbia saw a spike in new vehicles in 2021.
In West Vancouver County, the number of cars on the road has dropped by more than five percent between 2016 and 2021.
How West Vancouver has managed to reduce the number of vehicles on its roads may seem counterintuitive in a community that has historically rejected mass transit proposals in favor of on-street parking.
But consider his starting point. In 2016, West Vancouver had the highest rate of car ownership per capita of any major municipality in the metro region. Only the villages of Lions Bay and Belcarra have higher levels of car ownership.
And while six years later the percentage of car ownership has decreased, it still leads the rest of the municipalities.
“The more affluent you are, the more likely you are to have a second car, and that’s what we’re seeing in West Vancouver,” said Werner Antweiler, an economics professor at the University of British Columbia who is currently studying the barriers to EV adoption in BC
“The bad thing is that people just don’t own a second car anymore.”
Population and relative wealth could also play a significant role in making the area a state of emergency.
While West Vancouver’s population has grown by 3.9 per cent since 2016, it still ranks among the region’s slowest-growing populations, adding just 146 more homes in five years.
“The demographics of West Vancouver also reflect the housing affordability crisis. There are fewer affordable options in West Vancouver and, as a result, fewer young families,” said district spokeswoman Donna Powers.
“Young families often rely on cars to manage busy family schedules. Older professionals without young families have more time for active transportation.”
E-bikes, Powers added, have allowed a relatively older population to get out of their cars and still navigate the hilly terrain of the North Shore.
Antweiler says there are three main factors that influence whether someone will adopt an EV: money, access to charging and mileage.
None of these things are a problem in West Vancouver, a relatively affluent city where most residents can plug in an EV in front of their single-family home and where downtown Vancouver is in some cases less than 10 kilometers away.
The result: over six percent of vehicles registered in West Vancouver are electric, giving the city the highest share of EVs in the province.
West Vancouver isn’t the only city bucking the rising tide of car ownership.
By 2021, Port Moody had reduced the number of registered vehicles in the community by 324, despite having zero population growth and added SkyTrain access during the same period.
Perhaps a better plan to help turn the tide of car ownership lies on an island south of the Fraser River.
Between 2016 and 2021, the population of the city of Richmond increased by 11,628 people. Yet during that period, the number of cars registered within its borders remained largely unchanged until the end of 2021 — an “impressive” achievement, as Bigazzi put it.
Both Antweiler and Bigazzi say Richmond has done a good job of concentrating new housing in dense, transit-oriented apartments along Canada’s SkyTrain line, put in place in the run-up to the 2010 Olympics.
Most of those residents are younger people who have made the decision not to own a car, Antweiler said, pointing to census data.
The City of Richmond was also an early supporter of electric vehicles. In 2017, it was the first jurisdiction in North America to require all local parking lots in new buildings to have electrical infrastructure to install…
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