Clean Air Council

Equity in Transportation: Peel Community Cycling Program

This webinar shares the opportunities and challenges of creating a coordinated cycling program that leverages municipal government and local non-profit organizations and advances transportation objectives along with broader equity and community-building goals. Brandon Quigley from the Region of Peel discussed the history of the program, and how it has grown from a 2015 pilot into a multi-year program with partners across the Region. Rahul Mehta from CultureLink and Linda Wang from Peel Multicultural Council spoke about how they have been able to reach newcomers and other residents in northwest Mississauga through the Mississauga Cycles project.  Sonia Maset spoke about the Brampton and Caledon Bike Hubs, a partnership between Punjabi Community Health Services, Bike Brampton, the City of Brampton, and Town of Caledon.

Resources

Into the woods: A Black perspective

This webinar was part of the Urban Forest Knowledge Exchange: A Free Webinar Series, delivered by Ontario Urban Forest Council and hosted by Clean Air Partnership.

Jacqueline L. Scott, a Ph.D candidate at the University of Toronto lead the session – PDF Presentation

Recording of the webinar.

Applying and Equity Lens to Climate Action Planning and Actions

This workshop featured presentations from Theresa McClenaghan and Jacqueline Wilson from CELA and the Low Income Energy Network (LIEN), Randy Sa’d from REFOCUS, and Claire Bennett from City of Kitchener, who presented their upcoming research and collaborative partnerships to bring stakeholders (municipal, academic, equity groups, and social innovators) together to explore how to put equity goals into practice in climate action planning. This was an interactive webinar and all the feedback/input is compiled in the Proceedings from the Equity Workshop (PDF file).

Webinar Recording

Presentations:

Resources:

(additional resources can be found in Proceedings from Equity Workshop file)

  • VERiS Sustainability Justice Call for Partners:  Cities can join the project/partnership development process which will continue through 2020.  By signing up using the instructions within the attached, individuals will receive access to all of the materials REFOCUS has shared, and the opportunity to join the group of partners developing the project.  This includes the possibility of, like the City of Kitchener, becoming a case study participant in REFOCUS’s multi-year applied research program focused on integrating social justice and accessibility into Climate Action Planning through innovation in municipal planning.
  • The following are references to several management innovations central to the Enterprise Evolution program that were mentioned in Randy’s presentation.  The references themselves are all free to access and quite informative:
  • Kitchener Corporate Climate Action Plan- The plan includes the risk score findings, screenshot of which was presented in Claire’s presentation.
  • 2018 Healthy Environments and Climate Change Guideline – Ontario Public Health Standards require health units to assess health impacts related to climate change.
  • Climate Change Toolkit for Health Professionals- Module 7 of the Climate Change Toolkit for Health Professionals addresses the policies and programs that have been implemented by communities across the country to protect people from climate change impacts and/or to increase community resiliency. Vulnerable populations are considered throughout.
  • OPHA #MakeItBetter Campaign- This project by Ontario Public Health Association (OPHA) in partnership with leading health and environmental organizations is working to protect children’s health.
  • Energy Poverty by Canadian Urban Sustainability Practitioners (CUSP)- Energy poverty affects households with diverse income ranges, and individuals who live in a variety of housing types all across Canada. CUSP created Energy Poverty and Equity Explorer tool to help the understanding and addressing energy poverty, and support policymakers to progress on a number of these critical priorities and ensure we “leave no one behind” in the low-carbon transition.
  • Low Income Energy Network (LIEN) – This site is designed primarily to share information with the Network about LIEN’s activities, and activities of its members on issues related to addressing the energy needs of Ontario’s low-income households and energy issues. The low income energy programs’ design explicitly recognize that there cannot be upfront capital contribution requirements from the participants, and also that the programs need to be “turnkey” – the residents in these programs need to be left with fully functional results and not, for example, having to finish work such as wall finishes etc. Conservation programs reviewed at the Ontario Energy Board have adopted modified “total resource cost” analysis for the low-income programs in particular, in recognition of co-benefits like health and many others to accommodate this problem of how cost benefit is traditionally done.
  • Town of Ajax map on social vulnerability in relation to heat island and tree coverage- This study examined the relationship between tree stress and climate variables such as temperature and precipitation. These results provided city planners with tools needed to plan for the predicted increase in extreme heat events and mitigation of the effects on the community. The study used Stat Can and municipal data.

 

Road Space Reallocation Webinar Discussion

Below is a  summary of the discussion as well as next steps and upcoming actions on the Planning for COVID and Climate efforts to bring all your amazing thoughts and insights together. Just as a reminder some of the hoped for outcomes of this effort include (but are not limited to):

  • Ensuring that there is a Sustainability/Climate Lens applied to municipal COVID Response and Recovery Teams (we recognize that this is only one a number of lenses that will need to be applied to this);
  • Ensuring that who ever is designated on the team to enable the team as a whole to apply that lens is supported in the ability to know how and when it makes to apply it and how they can help their other team members to consider it;
  • In order to achieve those above goals there is a crowd sourced collective effort to explore and summarize opportunities and consideration for how to apply that sustainability/climate lens;
  • There is also an effort to get feedback/input from municipal politicians involved in the new Municipalities Acting Together on Climate (MACT) Network CAP is helping to facilitate so that both a staff and politician perspective is taken into account;
  • Identification and advancement of messaging to other levels of government re municipal input on the need to bring together our COVID and Climate goals (longer term hoped for outcome and success of this hoped for outcome will largely be based on municipal alignment between their COVID/Climate Emergencies response.

Here is the link to the most up to date power point slides compiling input thus far: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1SRG-h1xY24uxT1-olX67wmA7zqzKJjuyh_PHfUKk33o/edit?usp=sharing

Re updates to messaging. This was not discussed during our call but was discussed in the afternoon during the MACT Network discussion but just wanted to highlight this update to the messaging:

Just as a summary

POSSIBLE ACTION ITEMS

  • Identification of where physical distancing space is limited (anecdotally, community input, crowdsourcing a map/pinch points,  street/sidewalk width analysis)
  • How to apply an equity lens to COVID response re road space reallocation. CAP will be undertaking some research to learn how others are applying an equity lens to their COVID/road space re-allocations). Future sharing on this. Feedback/where a municipality has experience on this please send an email to gkalapos@cleanairpartnership.org
  • Priorities re decision making: conversations within municipalities related to prioritization (physical distancing; more space for outdoor exercise; increasing access to outdoor space especially where green space is not as accessible; bringing people to businesses (ex. downtown); what is the most important considerations, for where and why?

Gaps in Messaging Identified Thus Far

(May still be premature for this discussion. While we may be worried about this taking place, we should not assume that it will take place. Thankfully there are far more calls for ensuring we continue to address our climate change emergency as part of our COVID Response and Recovery).

  1. How to respond to possible arguments re: that we don’t have money for climate because we spent too much on COVID?
  2. One could also say that we didn’t have money for COVID but we found it because we decided that it was worth investing in saving people’s health and lives.
  3. If we are okay investing in saving lives as a result of COVID what about saving lives and protecting our economy from Climate shocks?
  4. How come it is okay to invest/go into debt to save our older and vulnerable populations but we can’t afford to invest in reducing the risks future generations will experience from climate change impacts?
  5. Especially since we know that the younger generation will also be key to paying back these debts?
  6. Climate presents greater and longer term risks to our economy and public health than COVID.

Motivations for Reallocating Road Space

#1: To safely provide adequate space for physical distancing.

#2: To provide an alternative to transit.

#3: To support residents’ physical and mental health.

#4: To build a more sustainable post-COVID city.

Types of Road Space Reallocations

  • Temporary Health Corridors
  • Pilots
  • Pinch Points
  • Curbside Queuing
  • Open Streets/ Slow Streets

Considerations for Road Space Re-Allocation

  1. Emergency vehicle access
  2. Local business/resident vehicle access
  3. Waste services access
  4. Transit vehicle access
  5. Risk of encouraging people to leave their homes or congregate
  6. Equity across mode users considerations: How to apply?

Some Additional Longer Term/Enabling Considerations 

  1. E-Mobility considerations (regulations re children on e-bikes, safety re different speeds) this is a future topic area)
  2. Increased bike parking requirements/theft of equipment/Disinfection guidance
  3. Weather condition consideration

If you can let us know about the following questions and feedback that will help us build upon where we are at present

  • What are some of the conversations occurring within your municipality related to road space reallocations?
  • What are some of the pros/cons/issues for consideration that are being raised?
  • What supports would be of value to facilitate these conversations within your municipalities?

Energy Poverty and Application of an Equity Lens into Municipal Energy and Climate Action Plans

The Canadian Urban Sustainability Practitioners (CUSP) network has developed an Energy Poverty and Equity Explorer Tool. Abhi Kantamneni from CUSP and the University of Guelph and Allison Ashcroft from CUSP presented the tool followed by participant use of the tool and online discussion on its ability to answer municipal questions and its application into plans and programs.