Editor:
On Feb. 23, the City of Burnaby released for public review and comment its 2021 – 2025 Provisional Financial Plan. Citizens had until March 12 to provide feedback on the city’s planned operating and capital expenditures over the next five years.
HUB Cycling Burnaby has been the only organized voice of the cycling community in Burnaby for well over a decade, and has consistently attempted to engage meaningfully with the city for improvements and expansion of the cycling infrastructure in the city. However, this has been a very frustrating experience as the city has consistently not consulted with or not responded to HUB on major cycling infrastructure projects and issues, such as the planned $21 million pedestrian and bicycling bridge over Highway 1.
In preparing to provide feedback on the city’s provisional financial plan as it relates to cycling infrastructure, HUB Cycling found this to be virtually impossible because of the way in which the capital budget is constructed and the lack of information on planned active transportation spending in it. Specifically, the five-year provisional financial plan does not clearly identify the amounts budgeted for active transportation infrastructure.
It obvious to HUB Cycling that the provisional financial plan does not address the bicycling infrastructure priority that the city has adopted within its Climate Action Framework in June 2020. The Climate Action Framework describes a commitment to the build out of the city-wide cycling network, as follows:
Burnaby’s city-wide cycling network would include all long distance, town centre and urban village cycling routes, to ensure a complete all ages all abilities network across the city. As an anchor to the larger cycling network, the core cycling network will provide consistent and clear connections for neighbourhoods across the city, and is the priority cycling infrastructure to be built over the next decade.
Within one of the seven big moves of the framework, number four “accelerated mode shift, one of the quick starts is a detailed design for the cycling network and to begin construction within the next three years. According to the framework, “the Accelerated Mode Shift requires commitment to and rapid implementation of active transportation infrastructure, to ensure a continued and successful transition to active transportation through 2050.”
HUB Cycling Burnaby wholeheartedly supports these objectives, commitments and plans to accelerate improvement and expansion of cycling infrastructure in the city, and it is in this context that we find the 2021 – 2025 Provisional Financial Plan completely lacking. In other words, the City of Burnaby has failed to incorporate into its five-year capital budget implementation of its Climate Action Plan.
In an attempt to persuade the city to correct this deficiency, HUB Cycling Burnaby has provided the city with a comprehensive list of cycling infrastructure improvement projects for inclusion in the city’s capital budget plan.
While Mayor Mike Hurley has met with HUB members a number of times and committed to working on these cycling infrastructure issues, it remains to be seen whether the City of Burnaby will respond positively to any of HUB’s cycling infrastructure recommendations in it finalized 5-year financial plan to be adopted by council in April.
David Fairey, member, HUB Cycling Burnaby
