Victoria, B.C. Complete Streets and Mayoral Leadership

In 2021, I had the most amazing opportunity to host the occasional podcast episode for the BikeTalk advocacy show. I will be sharing a few quotes, with links to the full recording (and pasting in the transcripts) in blog posts as a way to archive them as resources for anyone in cities and bike advocacy or governmental leadership.

The first one I want to share is the incredible conversation I had with Victoria, B.C. Mayor Lisa Helps.

This quote early on really launched a lively discussion that gave me so much hope:

“So it’s been a real learning for all of us because I think the complete streets notion really is about the top of the street, right? It’s about the bike lanes and the benches and the crosswalks and the trees. So maybe we could call the approach we’re taking complete streets plus, because we’re looking at that underground infrastructure as well. So yeah, when we stopped talking about bikes and started talking about complete streets, I think that got people kind of more on board. But to be honest, what really got people on board and now really celebrating the bike network is that we just built it.”

And, this is *such* a clue for other mayors facing the need to “sell” bike infrastructure developments to their constituents:

“And some of the things we learned along the way is to get better and deeper at engagement. And actually, this is, I think, an interesting thing to talk about because the first two corridors, we did a pretty in-depth, detailed engagement, almost like block by block, parking spot by parking spot. The third corridor, we did the same. And then I think we maybe kind of loosened up a little too quickly on the engagement, and there were a couple of corridors that met more resistance because there wasn’t necessarily the same level of engagement. So then the corridor after that, we did tons of engagement, like just probably way too much. And those were the sections that were approved unanimously.”

If more North American Mayors got a bit more bold, just imagine.

Here’s the BikeTalk Soundcloud link. Below is the full transcript (shout out to the amazing REV service!) for those who want to study up, which I highly recommend.

***

Andrea Learned:
Bike Talk is here again, and I’m Andrea Learned, a climate-influence strategist and Bikes4Climate tag founder and fanatical user. And I am so excited today to talk with Mayor Lisa Helps, who I will be calling Lisa through this, because I’m a very informal person from Michigan, and I asked her permission, just so everyone listening knows. And I appreciate that. So welcome, Mayor Helps, Lisa.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Thank you. Yeah, a pleasure to be here. Thanks for the invite.

Andrea Learned:
I really appreciate your time. I have studied up by looking at a couple of your fairly recent video presentations, and so we’ll just dive right in, because I know we’re both really busy probably, especially you. So what I want to do is just start talking about the Go Victoria Mobility Future Plan, that I first saw a video of you talking about it a couple years ago. And I’m just curious how it came about and how it’s going, and I’ll have some other questions on that.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Sure. So yeah, Go Victoria: Our Mobility Future was a work in progress earlier in this term, and so we’re about… We’re the third year into a four-year term, and really to grapple with everything that every other city is grappling with. What does the future of mobility look like in cities? How are people going to use vehicles? Is everyone going to own their vehicle? How’s curb space going to be used with Uber and DoorDash and all those things? How do people want to get around that’s going to allow them to get around in a way that’s most life giving and most healthy? So it’s really reprioritizing public space in Victoria through a mobility perspective for the next 30 to 40 years. So really, it came about as a future-focused exercise so that we would be designing the future and not responding by default.

Andrea Learned:
Oh, wow! Who would have… I mean, that’s just such a brilliant idea that I just don’t ever hear spoken about much: designing for the future that you want. I really appreciate that. And the idea of reprioritizing public space. I sometimes feel that people who live in cities don’t realize that they actually… There could be a way that they themselves as human beings walking around and biking around could be prioritized. So that’s great. How is it going so far? How has the city responded and the constituents?

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Well, there have been a number of initiatives, everything from offering free public transit to kids 18 and under. So that was a big one.

Andrea Learned:
Yay!

Mayor Lisa Helps:
We committed to doing it, and we did it. And then actually, interestingly, the provincial government has made transit free for kids 12 and under. So we’re still 18 and under, and we just said this is… Because, again, that’s really… That’s literally our mobility future. If we get kids on the bus now, they’re going to be lifelong transit riders. So that was a pretty easy first or second deliverable. And of course, we’re working with the transit authority here in the region to expand access to transit, increase rapid-transit options, and so that’s going well. RapidBus launched probably about two or three months ago to make it easier for people to get from downtown out into the suburbs. And again, it’s a work in progress, but that’s been good.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
And then kind of our signature project, which is what we have direct control over as a city, is our bike network. We started it in 2016, and by the end of 2022, we’ll be finished with the first 32 kilometers. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but Victoria’s a very compact city. Our city itself is only 20 square kilometers. We’re a small city in the core of a large region. So the bike network, All Ages and Abilities bike network is so exciting. And every time a corridor opens, we see more people on bikes and more people getting excited about the network.

Andrea Learned:
Oh my gosh, yes. I’ve visited Victoria a couple times, and I can tell you that just getting there by ferry, stopping, and then figuring out how to find a bike and going is… It’s heaven. It’s such a wonderful city. So I’m really excited to get back and experience it now with that.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
It’ll be transformed. If you haven’t been here in a few years, it really… Bike lanes are so simple, but it’s transformational infrastructure. And of course, we’re not just talking about painting lines on the road. That’s what’s been done for a long time. We’re talking about separated, safe infrastructure. So we’re seeing so many kids downtown, like five and six-year-olds riding their bikes right into the downtown, alongside big cars and trucks and buses, except they’re in their own lane. So yeah, it’s quite… So those are some of the early successes. There’s a lot more to do.

Andrea Learned:
Yeah. Oh my gosh, seeing kids downtown, that is just so exciting. One of the things that I sort of focus on in my work is the idea of climate influence, and so a lot of what I’m thinking is what you’ve learned, what you’ve experienced, how you’ve nudged maybe early naysayers or lawmakers in your area that you’re working with to get to this point to make this decision. I’m sure it’s been a challenge, and so I’m wondering if you have any insights as to things that worked in terms of sort of nudging folks along to go with this.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Do you mean specifically the bike network or the plan more generally or-

Andrea Learned:
Well, that’s a good question. The bike network is of most interest to me, but I will tell you something. I’ve talked with a political or a lawmaker from the Pittsburgh area before, and he said that there was something about talking about complete streets and not talking about infrastructure that got more people along. That was one thing I was kind of curious if you found the same. So I’m interested in bike infrastructure, but what I’m really interested in is moving the needle on all of this stuff, because I know bike infrastructure will come along.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Yeah, absolutely. No, that’s a great question. I think we made a mistake at the beginning of the project when we called the whole project Biketoria.

Andrea Learned:
Yes. Thank you. It’s great to know.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think it was… I can’t remember. I wrote an op-ed, an opinion piece for our local newspaper. I believe it might have been at the beginning of 2019 or, sorry, 2017, so some years ago, and asked everyone to make a New Year’s resolution to never say Biketoria again.

Andrea Learned:
I love it.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
And we just simply now call it our bike network. And to the Pittsburgh lawmaker’s point, we’ve taken a complete streets approach. And that’s really interesting because it’s not just that we’re planting trees and putting in benches, but we’re also looking at our underground infrastructure, our storm-water infrastructure, our pipes, all of those things. So each corridor, before we do anything on top, we say, “What needs to be done underground?” And if it’s not needing to be done for the next three to four years, we bump it up and do it now, so that we’re not putting bike lanes in now and then in three to four years tearing them up to create a construction site to put that underground infrastructure in.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
So it’s been a real learning for all of us because I think the complete streets notion really is about the top of the street, right? It’s about the bike lanes and the benches and the crosswalks and the trees. So maybe we could call the approach we’re taking complete streets plus, because we’re looking at that underground infrastructure as well. So yeah, when we stopped talking about bikes and started talking about complete streets, I think that got people kind of more on board. But to be honest, what really got people on board and now really celebrating the bike network is that we just built it. And there was some kind of conversation early on that we should just do one corridor or two corridors and see how it goes. Well, we know that that’s not going to go very well because it’s just like running electricity to a house. If you only put the wires 80% of the way there, you’re not going to be able to turn on your light, right? That concept of minimum grid.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
So we pushed ahead, and we knew that we needed to do proof of concept. And so our first two routes were east-west. And then when we put the first north-south connector in, we saw more people on bikes. And then we just, at the end of the summer, finished the second north-south connector that runs kind of all the way from the ocean all the way to the edge of our municipality. And again, that’s transformational. So it was difficult from a political point of view, but absolutely. So the way to bring people along is just keep going even when it feels difficult.

Andrea Learned:
I mean, that is just the key. If I just tweet that out a bazillion times, maybe some people will learn from that. I mean, that’s wonderful to know. And I also feel like that’s kind of the approach, though I haven’t spoken with her, of Anne Hidalgo in Paris, right?

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Yeah.

Andrea Learned:
She’s the one, right? She’s the mayor that everyone’s pointing to internationally, and I’m just like, “There’ve got to be some mayors in North America that have political will,” which is one of the reasons I really wanted to talk to you.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Yeah. It really has taken political will, and at the beginning of the project… There are nine people on my council. At the beginning of the project, the first corridor was nine in favor. The second corridor was maybe seven in favor. The third corridor was maybe six in favor. And you always need at least five to pass. And then now we just approved, in one fell swoop, the remainder of the network: nine in favor, zero opposed. And it’s because why? The public loves the network.

Andrea Learned:
I mean, that is incredible. One other question that I want to ask you about that is I was just on an eBike demo bike ride in Portland, Oregon, with some of their lawmakers. And it was really interesting. I’m wondering if your council have all taken a ride on a bike or an eBike. Are they aware of the experience of it themselves, or did you get them on the bikes as part of kind of moving them forward with this?

Mayor Lisa Helps:
That’s a really interesting question. I would say three of us out of the nine are bike riders as our primary mode of transportation, but the others drive cars, and the bike network has made it better for them too. So that’s how… We haven’t forced everyone onto a bicycle to go for a ride, but now when they’re driving on a downtown street or in a neighborhood, they either have the road to themselves because all the bikes have moved over to the bike corridor or there’s that safe, separated. So it’s been really interesting to hear car drivers say this is actually better for them as well. So, yeah, that’s kind of been our council’s perspective.

Andrea Learned:
That’s incredible, Lisa. One of the things I’m always saying in my Bikes4Climate work is there is no downside even if you want to-

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Yeah, there is no downside.

Andrea Learned:
… even if you want to keep driving your car. And usually, I mean, in my very cynical perspective, it’s older people that just are really kind of afraid of change and then driving around downtown in Seattle. There is no downside. If you get more people on bikes, there’s more room for you to be the traffic congestion you would like to be.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Yeah, well, or and there’s… Victoria has a number of residents who are older and also… I mean, but a lot of them are actually getting out onto eBikes. And there’s also considerations of people who have disabilities and can’t use bikes for whatever reason. So yeah, it really… I think people are starting to see the win-win of the bike network for everybody, whether you ride bikes, whether you take transit or walk or drive your car.

Andrea Learned:
That’s amazing. And you just mentioned, kind of as an aside there, that people are more interested now with the eBikes. So is that… I mean, the availability of eBikes is getting more people of all ages and abilities going. Yes? You’re seeing that?

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don’t have hard data, but anecdotally there’s at least one bike store in town… This is probably enough of a fact to be able to share. One bike store in town where 50% of their sales are eBikes. But what I’m hearing anecdotally from seniors, who just stop me on the street, is that they say, “I haven’t ridden a bike in years, and I bought an eBike, and I’m so excited,” because they can get out of their car. They can be… And eBikes are easy. I bought one too, right? It’s really… To me, that’s one of… I think we said it, but we didn’t mean it. Or we said it, but we didn’t know how true it would be, rather. Of course, we meant it, that when we were building the network, it wasn’t for your typical spandex-wearing cyclist. It was for the people who are not on bikes: the kids, the seniors, people who might be more tentative, women.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
So what we’re seeing, and again, we do bike counts, but we don’t do who’s riding, because how do you count that? But again, anecdotally, way more people who wouldn’t be out there who are now out there, and eBikes are part of it, and I think the network itself is part of it.

Andrea Learned:
Oh, that is fantastic to hear. And to your point, I really agree the people that are forwarding or the people that are bike advocates, if you will, tend to be the hardcore people. Well, like me, I’ve been riding for almost 30 years now in cities and stuff. And everyone thinks that it’s just our little cause. And it’s like, “No, no, no, you don’t understand. If we do this, you will ride.” I can-

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Yeah.

Andrea Learned:
And to hear that that’s actually coming true in Victoria is fantastic.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Yeah.

Andrea Learned:
So God, this is wonderful. Congrats.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Yeah, it’s really exciting. And I think it really has taken a community effort because as people… I mean, and certainly our staff. I mean I was biking in the other day, and I ran into one of our staff also on his bike, and I was like, “How’s it going?” He’s like, “We’re deep into implementation,” because I’m like, “Okay, our decision’s made.” And he was like, “Yeah, but we’ve got to…” So it’s like we’ve got an amazing staff team.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
And some of the things we learned along the way is to get better and deeper at engagement. And actually, this is, I think, an interesting thing to talk about because the first two corridors, we did a pretty in-depth, detailed engagement, almost like block by block, parking spot by parking spot. The third corridor, we did the same. And then I think we maybe kind of loosened up a little too quickly on the engagement, and there were a couple of corridors that met more resistance because there wasn’t necessarily the same level of engagement. So then the corridor after that, we did tons of engagement, like just probably way too much. And those were the sections that were approved unanimously.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
But I think we do need to, not just for Victoria, but for other cities, if building bike lanes is going to be just like putting up stop signs, putting up red lights, putting up all the things that you expect to see in a built-out city, we’ve got to kind of normalize it and in the next phase not do so much engagement, because we don’t ask the public, “Do you want a stop sign here?” We don’t ask the public, “Do you want a traffic light here?” These are now normal pieces of city infrastructure. And I think we’ll be able to build more corridors more quickly if we don’t need to do all the engagement, because it just becomes normalized city infrastructure. I don’t know how close we are to that yet, but we’ll see over the next couple years.

Andrea Learned:
That is a really interesting point. It would not have even occurred to me, but that makes so much sense, by continuing to ask these questions. And the other thing is, do you find that the citizens or the people that are using the bike infrastructure are kind of helping you sell it all along the way? So the buzz and sort of the appreciation is something that you just go, “Well, hey, did you check out so-and-so just said…” It would seem like you don’t have to tell the story as much anymore because riders are.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Yeah, exactly. I mean, that was, for me, a real tipping point. I clip out all the newspaper articles that are of relevance, and they’re on my whiteboard, and I could dig through it to find it. But anyways, I think it was… But I really lost track of all time and all seasons because of COVID, but-

Andrea Learned:
Yeah.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
What month is it now? So probably early or maybe end of the summer, there was a fantastic front-page news story about how much everybody likes the bike lanes, how much everyone makes the… And it was something like, “Bike lanes mean I have no more fear.” That was the headline, something like that. So that was a tipping point. We no longer need to be the storytellers, and the media and the community are now the storytellers.

Andrea Learned:
And that is incredible. Wow! It’s so fun to talk to you because this is exactly what I want to share with other cities and make sure people hear, so thank you.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Yeah.

Andrea Learned:
One of the things related to that, having watched your recent APBP, and I don’t even know what that stands for, so you can tell us, presentation was your emphasis on that you’re encouraging the good stuff. I want to hear more about what encouraging the good stuff means in this plan of yours or this approach.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Sure. Yeah. And that comment was in reference to Go Victoria more generally, not just the bikes. But it’s really building on all the things that people want to have in their life. They want to have easy connections to the places they love, right? Who doesn’t want to be able to get to their favorite brunch place or their kids’ daycare easily, safely, and affordably? So that’s one thing. Making it easy for people to move around, that’s one of the focusing-on-the-good-stuff principles.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
The other is people in Victoria, but obviously in other places, we are very sustainably minded and very worried about the future of the planet. And again, the good stuff that comes along with thinking about future mobility means that you are, just by doing things that are kind of common sense and sensible, you’re helping the planet, right? Whether it’s that you’re taking transit instead of your car, whether you’re joining a car-share co-op, and we’ve just recently had a… We’ve got two car-share co-ops now in, or two car-sharing companies in Victoria now. And again, this is anecdotal evidence, but the one that just opened in August, they’re just doing such good business. So that’s another kind of encouraging or building on the good stuff or encouraging the good stuff. Cars are really expensive. If you don’t have to own one, you’re going to have more money in your pocket, and that’s a good thing.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
And then the other kind of focusing on the good stuff is really about health and wellness. There have been studies that have been done that you could probably cite, or I could, about the lower levels of heart conditions, less emergency room visits, and not just from biking, but from the ability to move around cities in a way that’s also going to get your heart rate up or also… And we found that taking that focusing-on-the-good-stuff and almost joy-based approach is much more enticing for people, because who doesn’t want that in their life, right? Who doesn’t want to have more money in their pocket? Who doesn’t want to be able to make it easier to get their kid to daycare? Who doesn’t want to make it easier to be healthy? So we’re really like, that’s kind of been the approach.

Andrea Learned:
Oh, I love it. And one thing that you did bring up is this idea of climate. And something I’ve been wondering is, as you’re approaching this and sort of making these changes, and I’m not exactly sure how Anne Hidalgo did it in Paris either, but even talking about climate. You and I both live in cities that would seem to be fairly aware of climate action, et cetera, and the need for this. But I don’t know politically if you talk about how great this is going to be for the climate at the front end of this, but you just know it’s going to come through at the other end, and people will be happy that it’s happening. So I’m wondering, with your approach, was climate a selling point of getting going on this, or were you kind of softer on that and then picked up on it as the people picked up on it themselves later?

Mayor Lisa Helps:
That’s a really interesting question. We adopted a climate leadership plan in 2018, so probably about a year before we adopted Go Victoria. And in the climate plan, 40% of our emissions in the city come from transportation. And one of the climate goals is that by 2030, 85%… Sorry. I can’t remember if it’s 75% or 85%. By 2030, either 75% or 85% of people will be using walking, cycling, or taking transit as their main mode of transportation. And that alone will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 18%.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
That wasn’t what we went running out to the public with when we were doing Go Victoria, but we already had set those targets in Go Victoria. So in some ways… Sorry, set those targets in the climate leadership plan. And then Go Victoria was one of the first deliverables of the how. How are we going to reduce our transportation emissions? So I would say that Go Victoria is nested under our climate leadership plan, but we weren’t waving the climate-change flag. We were waving the, “Hey, look how easy it’s going to be to get safely into the downtown.” And now as the network’s building out into neighborhoods, you can go… I have a friend who lives in Saanich, which is a neighboring municipality. I can get all the way from my house to her house, probably about five or six kilometers apart, by only going on road without protection for probably maybe about 100 or 200 meters.

Andrea Learned:
Wow!

Mayor Lisa Helps:
And that was not possible five years ago. So that’s a feature for people. And of course, I’m saving greenhouse gas emissions, but that’s not what… Even like I’m a very, obviously, climate-friendly mayor, but I don’t think, “Hmm, I’m going to save greenhouse gas emissions when I go to Tracy’s house for brunch.” I’m like, “Oh my goodness, I can get there safely and comfortably.” So I think that’s been… And the climate benefit comes.

Andrea Learned:
That is so… I mean, I am such a firm believer of that. And I have to say that this joy, joy-based approach or sort of the joy-inducing versus the climate… One of the things that I think, because it’s in my work, it’s sort of the approach that I take, is you do all this stuff. You get people on bikes, and at the tail end, maybe like a year from now, you go, “Hasn’t that eBike been fun? Haven’t you been getting places faster? Don’t you love not having to deal with parking, whatever?” And then at the very end you go, “You know what? You actually, by what you were doing, saved this much carbon emissions.” People’s eyes will pop, and then they’ll be like, “I’m so in.”

Andrea Learned:
I don’t think people realize how great it is to feel good about not doing those emissions, not contributing to emissions. And they’re not going to believe it’s a selling point, but a year in, they’re going to be really proud of themselves. And as a community, I think you can elevate that and go, “Did you guys know that since we’ve done this, boom?” Anyway, kudos. More and more kudos to you, Lisa. This is amazing.

Andrea Learned:
Did you have any resistance to getting… As you were getting council people to sign onto it or whatever, was there any specific example where you knew that maybe a couple of them might be harder sells and you had some sort of strategy for getting them? Or did you just allow the process to sort of show those people that this was… I’m just kind of curious for other political leaders and city leaders if there are any tips about trying to start to convince or persuade the people that are not quite there yet.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
It’s a really good question. I think it depends on each council and how… I mean, it’s very political. I’m not a very good politician because I’m actually… I hadn’t been concerned about getting re-elected, and I did. I got reelected with a much stronger margin than I was originally, and that was after the bike network. So there are two ways to answer the question. One is if councils are really focused on the next four years, then I think it is important to take the time to build support in the community so that… because councils listen to the community… to build support in the community so that there’s not so much community resistance, which makes it easier to vote yes. So my advice would be spend the time to do the work in the community.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
But on the other hand, if you have a council, and huge credit goes to my council, where there are enough votes to move ahead sure about what the future looks like, irrespective of people kicking and screaming now, I would say it’s… Of course, we still need to do the work with the community and explain this network, and these parking spots will be lost and this and that. But it’s political courage that’s carried us through. It’s that we never… And I might have had to take a different approach if I got worried about going below five votes, but I never did. And I knew that there were enough councilors on board who could…

Mayor Lisa Helps:
And it’s really difficult as an elected official to just say, “I hear you. I understand you don’t like this right now. But my job as an elected official is not just to take care of right now. It’s to care of the future.” So I guess the advice I would give is assess the nature of your council. See how much political courage there is. If there’s a high enough quotient of political courage, forge ahead, and people will come along. If there’s not, you’re probably going to need to take a bit more time. But we don’t have time. I mean, we really need to hit net zero by 2050, so I don’t know how much time we have to talk about this.

Andrea Learned:
Well, so this is… I mean, you’re making lots of points that I make too. It’s just, I think, the political will and this political courage. That’s why I’m asking you these questions. People aren’t finding it and leveraging and even thinking about it that way. And I think there’s another point to your saying that you aren’t really a politician, right? If the people that are in politics to really make a difference can just let go of whether they want to be re-elected and really help with the city and with regard to climate change, this is just me not caring about being a mayor or whatever, I feel like your vibe and sort of your… Things will change enough that you just sort of move forward with that political courage. It’s almost like, again, Anne Hidalgo being mayor, and now what’s she saying? She’s going to maybe run for President.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Yeah, that’s right.

Andrea Learned:
And it’s just like-

Mayor Lisa Helps:
I’ve heard that too.

Andrea Learned:
And I wonder if four, some six years ago, she was like, “I’m not really a politician.” And then it’s just like as you feel the momentum because people are responding to your not being a politician, there’s something to it.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Yeah. No, I think that’s a really interesting point. I think the bike network, the first corridor was built in 2016, the second in 2017. And then we’ve been accelerating since then. But again, I can’t remember all of it. And again, the world pre-COVID just seems like-

Andrea Learned:
A long time ago.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
But we were under construction of the first north-south corridor during the… either during or just right before the last election campaign. So I was elected in 2014, ran again in 2018. And really, I remember my campaign volunteers going down the Fort Street bike lane. There was bike parking embedded over, and they’d made these little flyers that hooked on really well to people’s gear. But yeah, it was so great. So when I was originally elected before the bike network started, I had 38% of the popular vote, and I won by 89 votes. And when I was re-elected in 2018, I had 43% of the popular vote and was elected by a margin of 3,700 votes.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
So to me, that’s just a sign that if you do what is actually the right thing in your heart and the right thing for the future, most practical people will respect that. They might not like it, or they might not even be able to see all the whys of doing it, but… And I don’t mean wise, W-I-S-E. I mean, like all the reasons why. So I think that says something about at least what people want in Victoria. I think that they want a leader and a council, a mayor and a council who are going to take care of the future as well as taking care of the present.

Andrea Learned:
Yeah, that is wonderful. And it’s sort of another point, and it’s kind of all related to what we’ve already been discussing, is from your, I think, your APBP thing was the idea that you would be bold and collaborate. So what surprised you that worked with the new ways you were able to build collaboration around this plan, if there’s anything that we haven’t quite talked about yet?

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Sure. Yeah. When we started, as I said, we did really, really detailed consultation on the first few corridors, and these are like high-traffic downtown streets, multi-residential buildings, businesses, parking, commercial loading zones, accessibility parking spots. Really, it was almost… It was kind of block-by-block, meter-by-meter engagement. Our staff would go into this coffee shop and say, “Okay, what do you need outside? How many?” And that was good and really worked.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
And then I think as we got out into the neighborhoods, maybe we thought, because there weren’t so many different uses competing, that we didn’t necessarily need to do the same block-by-block approach, and I think that we did get some pushback on that. And then as I said, in the third round, the most recent round, a number of corridors, we took a really… Like, we flyered every household along the corridor and invited them to meetings, and I think that’s really important to do. And I think we kind of ebbed and flowed in terms of our collaboration and engagement. And that’s been really important for the first 32 kilometers, but I would stress that, just going back to the point about traffic lights and stop signs, if we’re going to have sustainable cities with healthy people living in them, bike infrastructure, separated, safe bike infrastructure needs to be considered just as all other traffic measures, and we can’t continue at the depth and level of consultation.

Andrea Learned:
Another thing that you really speak to quite a bit that I wanted to make sure that I asked you a question about is the diversity and equity, and just getting this accessibility to this safe infrastructure. And I guess we’re really still speaking very much about bike infrastructure, but the diversity and equity related to this and what you found. Yeah, I mean, just has this been different than other things that you’ve done in the city and being able to tap and make sure that more people really get in on this?

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Well, bikes are cheap compared to a car or… There’s that alone. If we create a safe infrastructure for people, then they don’t have to spend so much money. So that means if you’re a lower income person, you’ve got better access to the city, or if you’re a kid, you’ve got better access to the city. We’ve been quite deliberate about the how of building out our corridors and the network itself. It’s really meant to connect people to each other and to the services they need. So all of our community centers that are city owned but community run, most of them have childcare, and so we wanted to make sure that there were safe, accessible ways for parents to get their kids to childcare.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
The very first corridor we built goes right past the city’s biggest and most notable homeless shelter. I remember a very moving conversation with the manager of Our Place Society, and he said, “I just wanted to say thank you for putting the first corridor here because our clients are usually the ones who are an afterthought. And to have the bike corridor go right past their front door means that they can get to and access services.” So there are those kinds of approaches as well. We’re actually in the process right now of adopting an equity framework, so not only bikes, but all projects will be looked at through that lens. So I think there’s still more work to do, but certainly it was a bit of an influence.

Andrea Learned:
Wow! That is such a great story. Let’s see. So we are winding up a little bit. Related to the Bikes4Climate work that I’m doing, one question I would ask you is how do you suggest your peer mayors across North America, how can they set the stage or warm relationships to make things like this happen themselves and to help get these changes started knowing, as you’ve said, that even the immediate results will perpetuate, kind of self-perpetuate the continued support and good decision-making? So do you have any other suggestions that we didn’t talk about for other mayors across North America in kind of getting this rolling?

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Yeah. Well, I think just to emphasize a couple of things that I’ve already said. One is embedding a bike network in a larger plan. So our climate leadership plan is the overarching document, and the bike network is going to help us substantially achieve a goal that we’ve already all agreed to. So that’s key. The second, as we’ve already spent quite a bit of time talking about, is emphasize the joy. Take a joy-based approach. How is this going to make everyone’s quality of life better there, and again even for drivers? So I think not like we should have bike lanes because bike lanes are the right thing to do. No one wants to hear that anything is the right thing to do. People hate that. What they want to hear is how is this going to make my life better? And I would say that’s the approach.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
And the third piece that we haven’t touched on is make sure that there are staff champions. The woman who has really overseen this whole project, Sarah Webb, is amazing. She is just… If you ever want to do a follow-up interview with her, she-

Andrea Learned:
I do. I do.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Okay, perfect. [inaudible 00:30:42]. Yeah, she’s awesome. And she’s been… So yeah, for mayors, we can have all the good ideas that we want, but unless there are staff champions who aren’t… The worst thing would be like, “Okay, I guess we have to go build bike lanes.” But she’s like, “All right, let’s go get those lanes built.” She’s a force to be reckoned with.

Andrea Learned:
That’s amazing. Well, I think that’s a wonderful place to stop. The one thing that I’ll ask you at the end is do you have any announcements or reports or anything coming up or related or around COP26 that we should look out for or that I can help you emphasize moving forward? Are there any kind of pieces coming up in the next couple months that are part of this that we can all help amplify maybe?

Mayor Lisa Helps:
I will let you know. When would you need that for the show going live? Because we are… We’re doing a few things around COP26. The UK Consul General is coming. So I’ve got a meeting with staff, I think, maybe even this Friday afternoon to get briefed, so…

Andrea Learned:
Great. Well, you can let me know whenever. If I get it by the time this come comes out, I’ll include it with the notes. But no matter what, I will emphasize it via my own Twitter account and my Bikes4Climate and all the climate-influence stuff that I do. So I will get the word out there. So I need it no matter what. And if I can, I’ll attach it to the show notes for this.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Okay, perfect.

Andrea Learned:
So that’s it. And I will say thank you so much, Lisa. This has been amazing, and I’m looking forward to posting it. I will also get a transcript and write probably a blog post that goes with it and make sure that you get both of those eventually.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Awesome.

Andrea Learned:
Yeah, I guess probably in the next two to three weeks. So thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Yeah, you’re welcome. Yeah, me too. Yeah, great conversation, and thanks very much. And I’ll look forward to getting the notes and listening to the podcast.

Andrea Learned:
Sounds good. Bye. Take care.

Mayor Lisa Helps:
Okay. Yeah, you too. Bye.