Over the last 100 years technological improvements in urban travel in terms of
reliability and speed, has meant increased mobility for residents. This was accelerated with
the advent of the automobile. It allowed many to move to the suburbs that were typified
by less expensive lower density housing, and commute longer distances to their place of
work. Today, in urban areas, cars are the main means of urban transport. The problem
arises in major urban areas across North American when everyone tries to travel at the
same time (usually during to trip to and from work). Urban areas are faced with problems
of congestion (during rush hour) along with the lack of attractive transit alternatives.
One aspect of this problem is examined in terms commuting habits. The purpose
of this exercise is to examine the commuting habits of Justice Institute employees whose
place of work moves from the West Side of Vancouver to New Westminister. In the
postmove period employees made a number of decisions regarding their modal-type and
residential location. These decisions may have a significant impact on their activities and
travel patterns in the city.
The goal is to collect data that would indicate the place of residence of employees
before and after the Justice Institute move. It should also include employee modal-type in
the pre and postmove periods of the move. Such information is important in the
understanding the changes' employees make regarding their residential location and modal-type
and the reasons for these changes. As well, employee characteristics such as income
can influence these decisions. Such decisions are based on employee's preferences, likes and dislikes regarding their neighbourhood and modal-type. Within this framework, it is
the goal of this analysis to understand how employees make trade-offs between where
they live and the time they spend commuting to and from work. The correlation
parameter may describe the tendency for some commuters to locate themselves close to
their employment.
The analysis of the survey results will help planners understand more about the
urban transport problem. Within this framework, planners can learn why people choose to
travel by car instead of transit. This may be related to choice of neighbourhood. It may
be that employees choose neighbourhoods that they like to live in regardless of their place
of work. Thus, to understand more about the transport problem planners need to know
what kinds of neighbourhoods attract people.
If the quality of neighbourhoods is an important factor regarding employees'
choice of residential location, any transport plan must include land-use initiatives that
attempt to create neighbourhoods that attract people. The idea is to bridge the two;
otherwise conflicting land-use policies could easily undermine any transport plan. Within
this framework, policy must be geared to bring home and places of work closer together.
This means creating vibrant neighbourhoods that contain a variety of land-use that could
create more employment opportunities closer to home. Neighbourhoods should not only
create just residential uses alone. That would mean people would have less distance to
travel. This would also mean creating pedestrian and transit friendly neighbourhoods.
Less emphasis would be given to the car and more to alternative methods of transport.
Such policies can go along way in reducing the dependence on the car.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/5957 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Jones, Stuart |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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