Or An In-Depth Look at Transportation Policy Research, featuring research from Bike Ottawa VP Cassie Smith
In her 2024 Master’s thesis, What Will It Take to Make Non-Work Trips Sustainable? A Feminist Analysis of Transitions in Transportation Policies and Practice, author Cassandra Lee Smith (Cassie is currently the vice-president of Bike Ottawa) dives into a very in-depth look at non-work travel in Ottawa. This is an aspect of urban mobility that often gets the short end of the stick when it comes to transportation conversations, especially compared to the almighty commute.
As cities globally face the intersecting crises of climate change, housing shortages, social inequality, and inadequate transit networks, Cassie applies a feminist lens and the framework of sustainability transitions to evaluate how communities are adapting. Rather than focusing solely on the traditional daily commute, the research centers on the complex, varied trips that make up the rest of daily life—such as caregiving, errands, and socializing—questioning what is truly required to shift these essential journeys toward sustainable modes.
Using Ottawa, Canada, as a primary case study, Cassie evaluates both municipal transportation policies and interview responses from local residents. Her research reveals a distinct disconnect between the urgent necessity of overhauling the transportation status quo and the actual measures being implemented. Through her analysis, she finds that current approaches exhibit only limited signs of the “innovation” (adopting new sustainable methods) and “exnovation” (phasing out unsustainable practices) needed for transformative change. This hesitance at the policy level is mirrored in her interviews with residents, demonstrating how a timid municipal approach ultimately restricts meaningful shifts in everyday mobility habits.
Ultimately, she makes what I find to be a very compelling argument about how to effectively transform our transportation networks. There must be a much stronger, deliberate momentum directed toward sustainable mobility and actively away from entrenched car dependency. Incremental policy adjustments are simply insufficient given the existing deep-rooted reliance on personal motor vehicles for non-work trips. To better understand the nuances of her argument and how this tension plays out in both policy and practice, it is worth examining some of her specific observations in more detail.
To The Thesis
The following passages highlight my key insights from the research, illustrating the precise barriers—and potential solutions—in the transition toward truly sustainable urban mobility. As I’ll get to at the end, the whole thing is worth reading in detail.
On Short Car Trips
It should go without saying that the shorter a trip, the easier it is to complete it using active forms of transportation. However, I didn’t realize just how bad ‘cold starts’ are for producing air pollutants. This really highlights to me just how well-tuned the modern engine is during stable operating temperatures.
On Physical Locations for Communal Information
This doesn’t really have as much to do with transportation, but I find it alarmingly relevant to my own work in my community. Outside of extremely disparate community centres or schools (which tend not to be accessible to the public, despite being public institutions), public common areas are few and far between. In the suburbs, I suspect this problem is even worse than in the urban centre, but it’s a real challenge everywhere. Cars aren’t directly responsible for this, but a built environment that centres the car has the specific side effect of decentralizing public space, giving people much less incentive to spend time very near to where they live.
Great Ideas but Lack of Execution
Time and time again, whenever I hear that ‘Ottawa has really great, even world-class plans’ for good urban planning and development, I think of this passage. As we’ve seen in places like Montreal, Paris, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam, large-scale changes to the urban transportation landscape are possible within a very short period of time.
Ottawa’s urban planning policy on active transportation and centering individual neighbourhoods as key structures to build around could all be implemented within a year or two. With the right motivation and leadership, a few key shifts could have a massive impact on how we get around.
More on the TMP; Bold Leadership and Political Willingness
This passage is all gold and sort of explains itself fairly well. The analysis resulting in the author being led “to question the ability of the city to meet the visions they outline.” paints a pixel-perfect picture of Ottawa today.
On “The Decline of the Automobile Regime”
I find this fascinating because on its face, you can read it as a pretty great policy. But all it takes is a city leader or councillor making the case that they have tried to meet transportation demands with other mechanisms and failed, and you’ve got the green light to expand the road. I’m not super familiar with the file, but this seems to be exactly the case with Brian Coburn in the east end.
Brian Coburn is a 1-lane road being widened to 2 (which will be super expensive), and all that is going to result is 2x the traffic on roads downstream (west) during peak times, and congestion will quickly reach similar levels. This is especially true considering urban growth in that area, without an equivalent number of places of business (and job opportunities). It is a super expensive project that will result in years of construction, a few months or years of relative relief, and then congestion will be right back where it was.
On The Changes Needed (and Lack Thereof)
This extremely short passage pretty perfectly explains the situation Ottawa finds itself in when it comes to transportation. We as a city are willing to say that in theory we stand for change eventually, but today and tomorrow and next week we are not willing to do anything to change the future. We will never disrupt the status quo with that attitude.
On the Risks of Waiting
This is still happening, in the present and in the near-to-medium future, as new suburbs and developments are being planned in the exact same way as they have in ways that are detrimental to good urbanism. The items listed in this passage are all symptoms or indications that the city is digging itself into a deeper and deeper hole.
On the Political Appetite for Change
Yeah. There is a lot more really insightful analysis in the thesis about what is needed to move the needle on policy like this, and the interviews pretty much say it all. Again, lack of vision is not the issue.
The fact is that we need to find every single dollar for projects that are politically challenging years in advance. But we have no issue pushing through road widenings, suburban and exurban developments, and Lansdownes (yes, plural), and finding the money for it later. This is a matter of priorities, and the mayor has made it clear he will only dig this hole deeper.
On the Differences Between Road and Other Transportation Funding
This is probably the single most frustrating section of the entire paper to need to read, because it so perfectly encapsulates the things advocates end up endlessly circling on in emails to and meetings with city staff and elected officials. The things we bring up in committee meetings and in board meetings and on the street when we’re talking with friends, neighbours, and strangers.
Every dollar spent on roads and other infrastructure for cars (parking lots, driveways, highways, intersections, allllll the road signs) is just part of the deal of living in a North American city. There’s very little debate, no shortage of money, no settling for less. Every dollar that could be attributed to an active transportation or traffic calming budget has to be fought for over and over and over, pulled from other levels of government, bargained and compromised and conceded.
If we could spend just one term of council with a majority of councillors who could truly push for progressive transportation policies, actually engaging with the idea of the ‘decline of the automobile regime’ in our city, the effects would be massive. Right now, even the suburbs are only car dependent only because we have built them this way, it would take the wave of a council wand to reverse the decades of decisions that led us here. Start making our neighbourhoods safe and easy to get around without a car. Make it legal to actually have places of employment and of business in and around residential communities. Do both of those, and traffic will actually start to get better without widening a single road. Diversify transportation options and give people places they want to go close to where they live, and the car’s strangehold on our lives can slowly be loosened.
On What’s Needed For Change
This is totally clear when you look at the through line from planning documents to the projects that actually get executed that would do anything to touch road capacity for cars. Even our massively expensive and problem-plagued LRT had to fit within and around our existing road infrastructure, I am not sure a single parking space or traffic lane was lost in the end.
On An Actual Active Transportation Network, and Active Mobility
This strikes me as a great encapsulation of the way most active transportation infrastructure gets built in Ottawa, and is especially true the further you get from the core. The vast majority of the bike lanes and MUPs in the city don’t really do a very good job of connecting places people live with things people want to do.
You really have to make a concerted effort to take back streets or side streets and connect the dots to navigate from the typical residential area to run errands or get to places of business. And anytime such infrastructure is built, it’s typically in relatively small pieces that are very unlikely to be connected to anything else. It’s all baby steps, such that in 20-30 years we might look at our network and say that it’s noticeably better than before.
On a shorter timescale, like 5 years, you probably wouldn’t notice any change aside from maybe one new active transportation project in a given community that still probably doesn’t connect to anything else.
Conclusion
I think much of what I would say about reading this is adequately stated above, but I want to make sure you (the reader) are aware that I strongly recommend you all read this thesis paper. It’s not particularly long, and it really does an incredible job of capturing what is really good about Ottawa’s approach to coming up with long-range and large-scope plans. It also discusses and dissects in minute detail exactly where these plans fall completely flat, and gets into exactly why that is so frustrating and disheartening.
It took me about 2 hours to get through this paper, in consecutive evenings, and honestly it should be required reading for anyone who wants to advocate for transportation policy in the city. It should also be required reading for councillors and the mayor (candidates too; hello election year!). I should also point out that though most of the paper focuses on active transportation (cycling and walking), the ideas are just as applicable when it comes to public transit funding and lack of political will.
Don’t forget to download What Will It Take to Make Non-Work Trips Sustainable? A Feminist Analysis of Transitions in Transportation Policies and Practice, written by Cassie Smith, you won’t regret it! You can also read an executive summary of her thesis here: Thesis Executive Summary, and her less formal summary and thoughts here: E-cargo bikes: The secret tool to building 15-minute neighbourhoods?. By the way, Cassie is currently vice-president of Bike Ottawa, and she is one of the most dedicated cycling and active transportation advocates I’ve had the absolute honour of meeting and working with.
The next meeting of the Eastern Ottawa Urbanism Club is on June 10 at the Bad Alibi at Youville and Jeanne d’Arc Blvd S.
Join the mailing list below to get the invite.
Leave a Reply