Metro Vancouver and TransLink: Regional Long-Range Growth and Transportation Scenarios

Looking to see what the year 2050 may look like in the Metro Vancouver region, Metro Vancouver and TransLink collectively pursued a scenario planning project led by WSP. Throughout the project, they explored possible futures, challenges and opportunities, which helped to better position the agencies to shape a more resilient vision for growth and transportation in the region.

Location

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Client

Metro Vancouver and TransLink

Aware of the uncertainty the future holds, the limitations of traditional forecasting methods, and the value of better integration across land use and transportation, Metro Vancouver and TransLink collectively pursued a scenario planning project led by WSP. Following the guidance provided by WSP’s consultants, the two regional agencies explored possible futures, opportunities and challenges, to identify scenarios that allowed their long-range strategies to be evaluated for resilience.

Why scenario planning?

As both Metro Vancouver and TransLink are in the process of updating their respective long-range strategies (the Regional Growth Strategy and the Regional Transportation Strategy), the agencies recognized the value in looking at alternative futures that could result from conditions beyond their control to help broaden the scope of considerations used to develop robust strategies and actions for the future.

What were the alternative futures considered?

For this project, the focus was placed on the analysis of external forces and how they interact to form robust scenarios for analysis. Upon identifying 25 external forces, otherwise referred to as disruptors or drivers of change, four scenarios were generated to highlight the opportunities and challenges that would arise in the future. The scenarios are as follows:

Trend Forward
Current economic growth and development trends continue
Automation-driven decline
Job losses and outmigration result in a regional economy in decline
Self-sufficiency
Barriers to global trade spur a more self-sufficient regional economy 
Automation-driven boom
Automation drives an economic boom led by creative and knowledge-based sectors

The alternative scenarios developed were then shared with a multi-disciplinary group of experts with extensive industry knowledge to be vetted to ensure the concepts were grounded in sound logic. This project has led to a follow-up piece of work focused on resilience analysis and evaluation for the two agencies, which will further assist the agencies in finalizing actions and strategies for the plan updates. .

The outcome

The focus of this project was placed on comparing the future scenarios to the present day and establishing changes in terms of key indicators such as population, unemployment, travel demand, income equality and environmental risk. Metro Vancouver and TransLink are now better positioned to shape a more resilient vision for growth and transportation in the region and to update the Regional Growth Strategy and Regional Transportation Strategy. Using the scenarios developed, the agencies can inform future transportation and land-use projects, policies and programs.