6 Oct 2025 Council meeting Transportation

Active School Travel Program Implementation

Motion

That Council: 1. Select Option 1 of Table 1 of the 2025- OCT-06 Staff report entitled “Active School Travel Program Implementation” for year 2026 of the 2025 – 2029 Financial Plan, contingent on a successful grant application; and, 2. Fund the projects as follows: • $245,000 from the 2026 Pedestrian Unallocated budget • $125,000 from the Active School Travel grant

Minutes, page 9

Sources

Agenda itemCity agenda, whole meeting

Staff reportPage 1

Purpose

To provide Council with an update on Active School Travel initiatives and program development; and to request Council’s endorsement to apply for a grant to assist in Active School Travel plan implementation.

Staff report, page 1

Staff recommendation

That Council: 1. Select Option 1 of Table 1 of the 2025-OCT-06 Staff report entitled “Active School Travel Program Implementation” for year 2026 of the 2025 – 2029 Financial Plan, contingent on a successful grant application; and, 2. Fund the projects as follows:  $245,000 from the 2026 Pedestrian Unallocated budget  $125,000 from the Active School Travel grant.

Staff report, page 1

DocumentsStaff report about Transportation & Mobility

Tyler Brown Yes

It, I would just say. Sometimes I get frustrated when it's just a lot of planning and no implementation dollars, so.

Ian Thorpe Yes

Very briefly, through you, if I may thank you for the presentation and the report. I'll just comment that as somebody who has worked at both Chase river and Sinnebar valley. I'm well aware of these. Locations, and I think these are excellent projects. So thank you for bringing them forward, and I will be supportive of option one, I think.

Questions and answers

Councillor Erin Hemmens
Yes

asked

Forward, these funds will look at non-engineering fixes. Engineering fixes tend to be more expensive. I can find you the implementing recommendations within the engineering category has proven more challenging due to significant costs. So ast planning is going to focus on non-engineering fixes, is that correct? And if so, crosswalk paint and stuff like that be included. I understand. Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. So with

City staff answered

the active school travel program, we use a holistic approach, so we call it the five e's. So engineering is one aspect of how we implement the plans. But encouragement and education are other ways we do that. Typically, those action items fall on the school district, the school communities, to really drive forward. Challenges incorporating things into the curriculum and getting active school travel activated that way. So this is specific to engineering implementation items, which is the costly ones, which is why it's. More difficult for us to implement those and. As far as things like crosswalk paints, that would fall into the engineering category because it is affecting our streets and how they're designed. Okay. Thank you.

followed up

Regarding the expression of interest that we are going to ask schools to submit as part of this process, I think that's a great process. My question for you is around equity. I've observed that some packs have a little bit more capacity. And equity is at play in small community schools, in working class neighborhoods. So how will that play into our ability to receive and rank expressions of

City staff answered

interest from schools. So something that we're working on is a very internal document. It's kind of alluded to in here is how we will be looking at certain data to inform the selection process as well. And part of that. Will be equity data. I know the school district also has some information. Through their data that they have through enrollment that would have also be able to inform that and I think we had drafted. This. Maybe that didn't make it into this draft, but to also ask the question of equity to the schools themselves, because we do recognize that some schools may be very interested in this. May benefit from it a lot, but they're being pulled in so many different directions because they may have equity concerns. So allowing schools to have the opportunity to let us know if that's a factor for them. And then allocating resources accordingly. Thank you. I appreciate that answer.

followed up

And finally, the pedestrian unallocated. So if we use this as recommended tonight, that will be our pedestrian unallocated for 2026, I think we would have about 50,000 leftover. Okay.

Councillor Ben Geselbracht
No

asked

Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Gusselbrook. Thanks. There's just a couple of questions. It's good to see these projects moving forward. Just in terms of dedicated budget mentioned that there will be a decision point for the next budget. On having sort of continuous funding for these active school grants. And just a question. I know we had a presentation of finance and audit last year about. More funding as well. For active transportation in general. Sort of a dedicated annual fund. Was being proposed, a subsection of that, like, will we be seeing something coming for the budget? For broader than just the active school programs as well. I think I'm going to have to turn to Mr. Sims

Bill Sims

answeredGeneral Manager, Engineering and Public Works

For this one, you, worship. Through you. To Councilor Guestbrok, I think yes, the answer this would be. A subset of an act of transportation program, but it would be specifically, I think, we'd want to show it as a separate line item so that it can evolve over time,

followed up

if necessary. So larger. Something else to be coming in the budget broader for the active transportation as well. Okay. Great. Thank you. And then specifically from the funding location. I'm 100% in support of this. I prefer to see option two. Just because. Our pedestrian allocated budget. There's huge demand for that fund, and it always gets used up. And we never have enough, and I think that we should be funding this out of. The strategic infrastructure reserve and that other fund and not use that pedestrian allocated and then just do more programs, and so I'm not supportive of this funding pot being used. But I'd like to move option two in case this does fail. Thank

Councillor Hilary Eastmure
Yes

asked

Councilor Eastmeer: Thank you. I just wanted to ask about the status of an active school travel and Vision Zero grant application for Quarterway. I know that there's a lot of demand for these kind of projects, and was that potentially considered to be part of this one? So we

City staff answered

did receive a vision zero grant last year in support of a raised crosswalk project. Near quarterway. So that school actually doesn't have an active school travel plan in place. That was a little bit of. A side step project that we were able to do given the situation at the time. So for this. We were recommending projects that were identified in our recently completed plans. So that project

followed up

is to come, though. We got funding for it, but it hasn't been. Implemented yet. That's right. We're still working

City staff answered

Through some of the details, but we have the funding from vision zero. The wheels are in motion for sure.