BACCC asked all municipal candidates for their views on environmentally-friendly transportation options, presenting them with these three questions. Views expressed are solely those of the candidates and do not reflect the views of BACCC or its members. All responses have been reviewed to ensure appropriateness and relevance to the questions posed. We encourage you to make an informed decision by researching your local candidates.
Burlington Ward 5 Candidate Andrew Hall
From the recommendations in BACCC’s Options for Travel report, which would be your top priority to enact to ensure safe, reliable, convenient and equitable transportation options?
Anything that changes the proportion of transportation use away from vehicles is imperative to reduced communal carbon footprint. This transition will subsequently improve traffic congestion and active transportation (walking and cycling) safety concerns at the same time.
Given this report was the result of soliciting feedback from the community and experts in the field, I believe there’s no sense in delaying serious consideration for and prioritization of every recommendation. I intend to make the Environment and Climate Action key priorities in the next term both at the city and regional level because the future requires meaningful action today.
If environmentally friendly transportation options are not convenient, residents will be less likely to choose those options over driving.
What steps would you take to ensure environmentally friendly transportation options are convenient?
Identify every recommendation in this report that would improve awareness and eliminate barriers to access environmentally friendly transportation options. I believe perceived convenience will be a combination of simply knowing other transportation options can be convenient and experiencing them firsthand. Where these options are not considered convenient or our projections are not showing expected results, we should be soliciting additional feedback to continually improve wherever we can. A very impactful way to accomplish a lot of these recommendations may be through improvements of existing mobile-enabled websites and/or mobile apps. Leveraging credible data that has not expired should inform decisions and inform structure for measuring results.
Environmentally friendly transportation needs to be perceived as safe in order to be viewed as a viable option.
What steps would you take to ensure all users feel safe when using all transportation methods?
Safety should be a priority in every decision being made in this regard, especially in light of our current period of development and population growth. We have an opportunity to improve in a range of ways including physical safety but I believe it extends to feelings of inclusion in general. We need to be considering the needs and expectations of young and old people, including limitations with abilities and disabilities to encourage comfortable enjoyment of alternative transportation options. Inclusion does not stop there and we need to identify any other safety and inclusion limitations to expand adoption and usage in general. Similar to convenience, we should be leveraging existing communication channels, technology, and data to encourage continual improvement and measurement of progress.
