I’d like to talk very specifically today about the issue of urban congestion, as I recognize that rural and remote communities face and experience transportation challenges very differently.

The issue of road congestion is really important to my community out on the North Shore. As congestion continues to grow, it impacts residents, commuters, businesses, student services and the quality of life. The member opposite has identified many of these challenges already. But on the North Shore and in many areas of Metro Vancouver, the issue of traffic congestion is intricately connected to other issues like land use and, in particular, housing affordability.

For instance, as housing unaffordability increases, people are moving farther and farther away from where they were and thus spend more and more time in their vehicles on the roads to get to and fro in their daily lives. Increasing commuter traffic forms a huge part of our increasing congestion challenges on the North Shore, and that is actually a perfect example of how this happens. | According to the integrated North Shore transportation planning project, or INSTPP, between 2011 and 2016 the North Shore grew by an additional 2,900 jobs, but its population only increased by about 900 working-age people. So the other 2,000 workers are being imported, for lack of a better term, from elsewhere in the region, and without viable non-car alternatives, commuters often end up back in their cars, adding to the already congested networks that exist. | Certainly, I think we can all agree that congestion has been an ongoing issue for British Columbia and particularly the Lower Mainland, not simply for the last year and ten months or so since the last election. | Now, the thing that’s always fascinated me about transportation engineering when I was studying at UBC is that it’s an engineering field that is almost entirely reliant on attempting to understand and mathematize human behaviour. Now, a piece of steel behaves in the same predictable fashion over and over and over again, but the same cannot be said about humans. What we do know, however, is that humans make decisions, at least from a transportation perspective, by weighing the pros and cons of a number of factors. | “If I leave at 7 a.m. instead of 7:30 a.m., I’ll beat the rush.” “If I take the Port Mann Bridge instead of the Pattullo, I’ll avoid the New Westminster traffic.” “If the bus costs me $2.85 and gas, insurance and car payments cost me $10 a trip, it’ll be cheaper for me to take the bus. However, the bus takes me 30 minutes longer. So how much is my time worth?” | Time, route and mode — those are three ways th