Today is Earth Day! It’s a day where we take the time to talk about what our planet means to us and focus on measures we’re taking to protect our little rock in the wide-open universe.

 

 

Here at TransLink protecting the environment is one of our leading principles of operation and we always prioritize sustainability in all our corporate actions. We were named one of Canada’s Greenest Employers by Canada’s Top 100 and we were recently awarded a Clean50 award for our Shared Mobility pilot project. Despite the pandemic we remain focused on the environmental impact that we have on the planet and work diligently to mitigate it – here’s a look into what we’re doing to help Mother Earth.

Regional Cycling Strategy

 

One of the ways that we encourage sustainability is our development of a Regional Cycling Strategy to make it easier for people to choose cycling to get around. There are mixed-use paths such as the BC Parkway and Central Valley Greenway, as well as Bike Parkades that allow you to combine cycling with transit.

In June of 2020, Translink completed construction on the Maple Meadows Bike Parkade marking the completion of our Bike Parkade Expansion Project. There are now 11 total indoor bike parkades on the TransLink network making Metro Vancouver home to the largest transit-oriented bike parkade network in Canada.

Bike Parkades are just one element of our Regional Cycling Strategy which was designed not only with the idea of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but is almost meant to promote mental and physical health, as well as to help prevent congestion on our roadways. So far, we’ve has invested over $54 million in cycling infrastructure since implementing our 10-year plan in 2018, and we are just getting started.

Low Carbon Fleet Strategy

In Metro Vancouver, transportation accounts for over 35% of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. TransLink knows this and as one of the region’s largest consumers of diesel fuels and the leader in transportation across Metro Vancouver, we are taking responsibility for reducing emissions across our operations. In January we updated our plans for our Low Carbon Fleet Strategy to help reach our goals of reducing GHG emissions by 80% by 2050 while using only renewable energy. As a part of this strategy, TransLink has instituted plans to open an entirely electric bus depot in Marpole by 2024 and to exclusively buy electric busses to add to our fleet until at least 2029. The strategy is set to reduce 45% of TransLink’s GHG emissions by 2030.

Electric Bus Fleet Expansion and Promise

 

Speaking of electrifying our fleet, we are already well on our way. We have one of North America’s largest trolleybus fleets and we added our first battery-electric buses in May 2019, and in January we announced we would be adding 15 new fully electric busses to our operations. The acquisition more than quadrupled our fleet of battery-powered busses bringing the new total to 19! Each of the 15 newly acquired busses is expected to reduce 100 tones of greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere annually and save approximately $40,000 worth of diesel fuel per year. These busses are capable of up to a 470 KM range on a single charge and can be charged in five minutes while picking up passengers along the way. The acquisition made it so that over half our bus fleet now utilizes cleaner technology such as diesel-electric hybrids, compressed natural gas, and fully electric vehicles.

Green Bond Program

The Green Bond Program has become our way to offer environmentally positive opportunities to investors. We’ve been offering investment opportunities through bonds since 2010, but in 2018 we started offering Green Bonds to better support our environmental goals. The bonds come with a promise to investors: all proceeds will only be spent on our environmentally conscious projects such as renewable energy, pollution prevention, or the construction of green buildings. In late 2019 we opened the doors to investors for our second round of Green Bonds, offering $200 million in investment opportunities. Those bonds sold out in 45 minutes and we had over two times the subscriber base for the bonds! Investors clearly believe in TransLink’s green practices, just as much as we do.