URBAN TRANSPORTATION SHOWCASE PROGRAM

The $40-million Urban Transportation Showcase Program funds community showcase programs that demonstrate and evaluate ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and addressing other urban challenges, such as air quality, congestion, safety and rising operating costs.

The program was developed in consultation with provincial, territorial, municipal and other partners. Following a nation-wide call for proposals, eight municipalities were selected to showcase their strategies for dealing with these urban challenges.

Showcase proposals included: transportation services, infrastructure investments, demand management initiatives, land use strategies, pricing strategies, public outreach and advanced technologies.

The five showcases that are underway are:

• the City of Whitehorse’s "Whitehorse Moves" -A strategy to reduce automobile use through active transportation infrastructure, public outreach and transportation demand management;


• Halifax Regional Municipality’s MetroLink - An innovative Bus Rapid Transit initiative that includes two new bus rapid transit corridors, transit priority measures and multimodal stations;
• the Region of Waterloo’s iXpress -A high-quality express bus corridor featuring transit priority measures, advanced technologies, multimodal stations and community marketing;
• the Greater Toronto Area and Hamilton’s "Smart Commute Initiative" -An initiative that implements regional and local transportation demand management through a network to transportation management associations; and
• TransLink’s "Sustainable Region Showcase for Greater Vancouver" -A six part project that includes a bus rapid transit corridor, pedestrian priority, hybrid buses, a 24 km greenway cycling path, transit "station villages", household-based marketing and more efficient movement of goods.

Information sharing with municipalities and transportation authorities is an important component of the program, and includes seminars, workshops and regular reports on the implementation and results of the showcases. This approach lays the foundation for communities to adopt the most successful showcase technologies and strategies across Canada by 2010.

Detailed program information is available on Transport Canada's website at www.tc.gc.ca/utsp.

November 2006