pacific nw transportation consortium region 10 Pactrans

On May 2, Jeff Busby, Senior Manager, Project Development at TransLink in Vancouver, BC, came and talked to the University of Washington transportation graduate students at the graduate transportation seminar. He gave a very interesting talk about how areas in Metro Vancouver are using transit stations to stimulate better development and the relationship between development and transportation infrastructure. This is important because Metro Vancouver is projected to grow over the next 30 years, meaning that there will be an increase in the number of trips taken. TransLink hopes that the increase in person trips won’t result in an increase in vehicle trips. Achieving this goal involves everything from designing transit station access to choosing which benches to put at stations. The talk was an excellent opportunity for students to learn about issues in the transportation industry, and how those issues are being solved. One interesting thing about TransLink is that it is organized differently than many of its North American counterparts, as they fulfill the roles of both an MPO and a transit system operator, and also fund a lot of road infrastructure. This enables a degree of coordination that would be impractical in many jurisdictions. We would like to thank Jeff for speaking to our students, as it was a great experience for them.