Karin Kirkpatrick is the Executive Officer at the Real Estate Foundation of BC, a position she assumed in November 2008. She describes her role as "working closely with the Board, with staff, and with a number of NGO’s and government groups to try and prioritize how best the Foundation’s funding can be used." She adds that the majority of that funding goes towards projects that support responsible sustainable land use planning.
CITinfoResource editor hanspetermeyer interviewed Karin in February 2010. A few weeks before, Karin parked her car and started using public transit. She also decided to post regularly (as "Transit Girl") on Facebook about her experiences, making the switch from private car to public transit.
hpm: I'm interested in your decisions, to park your car and to begin posting as Transit Girl. What motivated you to do these things?
Karin: I’ve always wanted to be able to park my car, but I've always found excuses to stop me from doing that. I guess the Olympics forced my hand. I knew it was going to be a nightmare to try and get into my parking downtown, so I thought “You know what? This is the chance. Let’s just try and see how this goes.”
I started posting about it because – well I guess it’s like being a recovered smoker who’s discovered something that now seems really easy, and you want to just tell everybody else about it. So, I started having some fun by writing about it.
Karin: I’ve always wanted to be able to park my car, but I've always found excuses to stop me from doing that. I guess the Olympics forced my hand. I knew it was going to be a nightmare to try and get into my parking downtown, so I thought “You know what? This is the chance. Let’s just try and see how this goes.”
I started posting about it because – well I guess it’s like being a recovered smoker who’s discovered something that now seems really easy, and you want to just tell everybody else about it. So, I started having some fun by writing about it.
hpm: Are there many transit options where you live?
Karin: I live on the North shore, so there are lots of transit options from there to where I work in downtown Vancouver. With my car it's just a short drive over the Lions Gate bridge and come downtown.
Karin: I live on the North shore, so there are lots of transit options from there to where I work in downtown Vancouver. With my car it's just a short drive over the Lions Gate bridge and come downtown.
hpm: What is the cost, in terms of time and dollars, for you to use your car to commute?
Karin: Well, there is the extra insurance to drive to work every day. It’s probably $300 for monthly parking downtown. And there are all the associated costs with the wear and tear of your car, and the gasoline that you are consuming.
hpm: How long would it take to get back and forth?
Karin: It would only take ten minutes, which becomes an issue in two conflicting ways. First, it's pathetic that I would drive that short distance with all the costs associated. Second, it is a struggle to rationalize the difference in time between using my car and using transit: when you hold it in your mind that time is money, well, it’s just another excuse for getting into the car.
hpm: What type of transit have you been using, and how long does it take you to get to work using transit?
Karin: I’m taking the bus and sometimes I’m taking the Seabus. It depends where I’m coming from. Using the regular bus, it’s probably about twenty minutes to get downtown. Added to that is a 10 minute walk on both sides of that. So, I have gone from maybe ten minutes out of my garage to maybe forty minutes with transit, door-to-door.
hpm: Is there an upside to using transit?
Karin: There is a huge upside. And it’s not just the cost: It’s my physical health. This is "accidental exercise." I can’t say that I’ve regularly exercised for twenty minutes a day before this. Also, I'm walking more downtown. It’s embarrassing to say, but if I had a meeting that was on the other side of downtown, sometimes I would actually drive my car and park it in another parkade. But now I can’t do that. I am walking. So the amount of walking I’m doing has increased dramatically – and it makes me want to walk more and be outside more!
hpm: We are in the middle of the Olympics, so obviously traffic and congestion downtown is crazier than it normally is and yesterday you took your daughter to a hockey game via transit. What was that experience like?
Karin: That transit experience was fun. We got on a bus on the North Shore and we came downtown and hopped off. We walked around and looked at the flame, and then got on the Sky Train which dropped us off at Stadium station in Chinatown. From there we were able to walk a couple of blocks and get into the venue. My daughter had fun with that, and I felt like a tourist in my own city. When I went down into the terminal for the Expo line and the Millennium line I realized I’d never been there before. I’ve travelled all over the world and I’ve taken taxis and transit all over Asia, and I have a much better sense of what those terminals look like than I ever did in Vancouver. It was kind of fun because it was new.
hpm: So your experiences as Transit Girl are familiarizing you with the City's transit highlights you'll be trading your position at the Foundation for one as a transit tour guide?
Karin: That's it: I’ll be Transit Girl the transit tour guide. But it is true Hans, that I’m seeing places in my city that I’ve never seen before. When you are walking and when you are taking the bus you are looking around and noticing. Cruising by a store you think, “Wow, I’ve never actually looked in the window of this place before." And I actually stop enroute on the way home and I’ll buy a few groceries to take home. This is in contrast to before, when I would drive straight from the underground parking downtown to my house, and then if I decided I needed groceries I’d get back in my car and drive to the grocery store and drive home again. But now, because I’m already out and I feel way more connected to the community around me, I am actually stopping and doing those things enroute. It’s not just the transit to and from work; in general, I’m using my car less.
hpm: You live in an urban area where there are a number of transit options, but I’m interviewing you as part of the work that I do with the Communities in Transition program. Our focus is non-metro areas. For example, I live in the Comox Valley. We have a bus system, but we certainly don’t have a subway, SkyTrain, or even a ferry shuttle between Courtenay, Comox, and Royston. Like most non-metro BC communities, our transit opitions are much more limited than what you've been experiencing. Can you tell me what you are doing as the Executive Director with the Foundation that connect your experiences as Transit Girl with things happening in small communities.
Karin: You’ve got to make it easy for people to get out of their cars, and that’s been my excuse: It’s always been "too far to walk." I can only imagine in a rural community, where there isn't an extensive or convenient transit structure, that "too far to walk" is both an easy and legitimate excuse. The distance you have to go to access transit is just not realistic.
Where I live, a bus comes every ten minutes. If you are in a smaller community where you are not supported with transit, it's a lot of effort to plan things out, to get where you need to get, and sometimes you can’t get there.
The answer? At the Foundation we think it's important look encourage others to look carefully at how they are planning communities, to be constantly looking at the sprawl that isn’t supported in the initial planning and finding ways to respond to that, to be asking of new developments, “What is the transit plan here? How can we make this a place where people don’t need to drive their cars? What kind of things can we do to be more creative about how we are putting public transit in?”
hpm: Does the Foundation look at applications from non-metro communities that deal with transit and transportation issues?
Karin: What we are doing is not necessarily specific to smaller communities but we believe it will have a benefit to them. In general terms, the Foundation is supporting and conducting research to identify economic and social values of good public transit and the impact that it has on the community. That is very broad, but we are trying to show that it is not just your carbon footprint you are reducing when you choose public transit, but it also makes for better communities where people are aware of each other and there is more social interaction. There is research that we are funding that we think will influence community planners in communities large and small, urban and rural.
Transit is important to us and it is on the radar. Even before I got on the bus I was a high supporter of transit. I personally have no issue with extra gas tax, and no issue with extra parking tax. I myself understand the importance of these measures. The irony is that even though I understood the importance and value of public transit, I was still not using it.
hpm: Was this because of your role at the Foundation or were you already heading in this direction?
Karin: I think I was already headed in this direction, I was very conscious of it. Also, I have a seven year old daughter who came home from grade 1 earlier this year and asked me to make her a "zero waste lunch." That was a very hard thing to do. So there was an "influence from below," in terms of the changes we have to make in our lives.
Another factor is a "mobility issue" I have related to a broken leg and a broken back. For me, this was a big concern: What will it be like, getting on a bus. I can’t stand for long period of time, but because I don’t have a cane or anything obvious, people don’t accommodate me when I’m on the bus in terms of sitting. These were huge reasons for me, as to why I couldn’t take public transit. Happily, these haven’t been issues at all and I just need to make sure I get on at stops when I am always going to get a seat and I plan it out.
I think this current transit experience is another example of "influence from below" from my daughter. I’m aware that if she can think about this, then I should be able to think about and act on this as well.
hpm: You’re comments on mobility are important also given the aging population in our communities, and particularly in communities with limited transit options. Let's talk about how someone with a good transit-related land use project makes an application to the Real Estate Foundation of BC. Where would I go to find out more information from the Foundation about that process?
Karin: Start by going to our website. We're updating the site, and there's going to be some new information. Our priorities have changed as well, but I’ll come back to that and tell you about the kind of applications you should be submitting, but our website is www.refbc.com. There is a section about grants and grant applicantions and the kinds of things that we are looking for in the grants.
In terms of our priorities, we are now specifically looking at projects that are going to be innovative. I know that's a big word that can be described in different ways. We are encouraging non-profits, municipalities, and communities to come up with different ways to solve some of those same problems. If you're challenge is transportation, we'd like to see a unique approach to that issue. It may be something that's been tried in larger communities, but never in a small community. We're also very interested in projects that could be replicated or modeled for other small communities. That would be very attractive to us in terms of grants.
And yes, we are very interested in transit, transit infrastructure, and how that can support a changing demographic in a small communities as well, because as you say, people are aging and there are going to be mobility issues. Things will be changing in our communities. Some things we've taken for granted – our mobility, for example – are going to become more difficult. We're going to find people who are living in a house that is far from services, and suddenly they can’t drive anymore. What kind of things can be put in place to make sure that those people don’t necessarily have to move out of their home, just because they don’t have access to transit?
hpm: Thank you very much for taking this call this morning. As Transit Girl, do you have any closing comments? Are you going to keep posting?
Karin: Here's a closing comment on transportation in the Vancouver area: We have so much water access, and I think we can certainly look at other ways, without building bridges and creating more car passenger access, of getting people around the Lower Mainland. There was a ferry that had been going from Bowen Island to the foot of 14th in West Vancouver, and then dropping people at the foot of Bute here downtown, and then going around to Granville Island. I was really excited about that. Unfortunately, due to some challenges related to parking among other things, it's been discontinued.
As far as Transit Girl goes, I am actually having fun on transit. Even on those bad days, when there is a big line up and I’m standing out in the rain, I’m still feeling really good about what I’m doing. It gives me exercise, and something to harass my driving friends about.
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Karin, it's great to learn about your transition to transit. I sold my car in early December and am based out of East Van - it's been great. I think we really take for granted that we have such a transit-accessible city and many people just aren't willing to give it a go.
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