This past Friday, I stared an internship as a part of my program at Niagara College. I’ll be working in Grimsby, Ontario, helping to design an active transportation plan for the town. It got me thinking about the role that transportation plays in how cities and towns are designed, so I decided that I should write down some of my thoughts on the matter.

First, the obvious: in Canada and the United States, cities are built with the car in mind. Period. Even urban areas known for their transit, cycling, and pedestrian infrastructure fall into this trap, as they will almost certainly have auto-oriented suburbs. It’s a challenge faced by many cities, which makes Grimsby an interesting example to me.

A little context: Grimsby is a small town of about 24,000 people, on the eastern edge of Hamilton, and squeezed between the Niagara Escarpment and Lake Ontario. The town is bisected on the east-west axis by the Queen Elizabeth Way, and contains a small but pleasant downtown core, as well as a variety of subdivisions, commercial, and industrial zones. A significant percentage of the town’s residents also commute to Hamilton to work.

So what makes Grimsby an interesting example? Well, it’s small and not particularly dense, but as you can see on the map, it’s relatively compact; the town is about six kilometres from end to end and no more than two kilometres across at any point. In other words, there’s almost nowhere in town that’s not within reasonably easy cycling distance from any other point. It also has a good network of wide arterial routes that can easily be adapted to include physically separated bike lanes.

Beyond all of these points lies some interesting implications, as well. If Grimsby can successfully implement a town-wide cycling and pedestrian plan that reduces the local population’s reliance on private vehicles, then it can be done almost anywhere in North America. Big cities with central urban areas are slowly coming around to creating these kinds of plans, but smaller cities, towns, and suburbs need to get on board as well if we’re going to make any kind of societal shift. Not only would be it be good for the environment, but it would be good for people, too—there’s a solid correlation between cities with happy, healthy citizens and good biking infrastructure.

I’ll try to post updates about the work I’ll be doing in Grimsby throughout the semester when I have the chance. Hopefully this introduction has given you cause to think about how we plan for transportation here in North America.