I have seen the future... or a future. It is not what I expected.
Growing up, I—and I think I can safely assume you—saw tantalizing visions of the future. They were generally of two types: idealistic or apocalyptic.
The ideal vision of the future, for the sake of shorthand, may be described by the underlying “reality” of Star Trek. Life on Earth has settled into a pattern of peace and prosperity, with some amazing tech thrown in. There is no real want, people are able to pursue their passion, and the bad guys all come from other solar systems, parallel universes and times, and we try to reason with them before powering up our photon torpedoes.
The apocalyptic vision is, perhaps, that of Blade Runner. A dark, bleak, constantly raining—no cracks about our current ski season—dog-eat-dog world where amazing tech is just as likely to be a threat to your existence as a boost. Ah, dystopia, where art thou sting?
I’ve given up on self-driving, flying cars; robot maids; and food replicators. I’m pretty certain I won’t live long enough to see self-driving terrestrial cars that can, say, navigate the Sea to Sky highway in a blinding snowstorm, assuming there ever is one again.
And I’m increasingly convinced things will end, at least for humans, with a whimper, not a bang, although there are a number of countries in the world sorely testing that optimism, if you consider whimpering into non-existence optimistic.
But I have seen the future and, not surprisingly, it’s nothing like the future seen around the confines of municipal hall.
In a single word, the future is this: Automobiles. Private automobiles, if you’ll permit two words.
This is not the future envisioned by our local planners and leaders. If you don’t believe me, check out the muni’s Climate Action Big Moves. Big Move (BM) No. 1 is Move Beyond the Car. The goal of BM No. 1 is this: “By 2030, 50 per cent of all trips in Whistler are by transit and active transport.” While transit is generally understood, active transport is walking, biking, maybe e-scooters.
While acknowledging 33 per cent of full-time residents already commute to work by the preferred methods, averaging out summer and winter, there are several initiatives to persuade the other two-thirds to get with the program. These include keeping transit fares “affordable,” queue jumpers, bus acceleration lanes, and/or dedicated bus lanes. More about those shortly.
BM No. 2 is “decarbonize passenger and commercial transport.” The goal is, “by 2030, 50 per cent of all vehicle kilometres travelled are from zero-emission vehicles.”
And therein lies the ideology trap. BM No. 2 should be BM No. 1. No need to take my word for it. The federal government has regulated it. Their Christmas present to the country was the announcement of amendments to the Passenger Automobile and Light Truck Greenhouse Gas Emission Regulations.
Under the new regulations, 20 per cent of the vehicles—passenger cars, SUVs, pickup trucks—for sale in Canada in 2026 have to be zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs). That percentage jumps to 60 per cent by 2030, and 100 per cent five years later.
So what? So this.
The thrust of BM No. 1 is the commuting habits of full-time residents. By definition, very few are crawling to the resort every day, stuck in gridlock from the bottom of powerline hill to the village, and not a lot are going south in gridlock from Lorimer Road to well south of Function Junction later in the day. And while the flow of traffic is better outside of ski season, Highway 99 is still a well-travelled, north-south highway.
Many of those folks whiling away their time in gridlock are people coming to Whistler to do whatever they do here. Nothing in BM No. 1 is going to make that easier. Nothing is going to reduce their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions until more of them are driving ZEVs, which happily is now on an accelerated flight path.
But they’re still going to be disappointed, they’re still going to grouse about Whistler being too crowded—lookin’ at you, No. 21 in the west rating—if they can’t find a convenient place to park. Parking might have been a bit more convenient if council had held out and forced the additional parking required for Whistler Blackcomb’s new Fitz chair, but ideology trumped reality in that decision.
So let’s read this in conjunction with a study recently released by the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, their Canadian Suburbs Atlas. If you tend towards wonkishness you can find the study at schoolofcities.utoronto.ca/research/canadian-suburbs-atlas/.
Reduced to the executive version of even the executive summary, the study underscores the fact the vast majority of Canadians live in some form of suburbs and commute, at least to some extent, by private auto. It reinforces this by pointing out that’s where most of the growth in housing inventory is being created, and those realities are unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
Now, back to BM No. 1. Whether transit in Whistler is affordable depends on your own coefficient of affordability, impacted, naturally, by how much you pay for everything else, the logistics of you and your family, and other factors.
But, like flying cars, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to live long enough to see the quantum of improvement in the “overall transit travel experience” to have it make a big enough dent to take the No. 1 spot.
The reason is simple. As pathetic as Highway 99 is through Whistler—five traffic lights, single lane north, multiple sections of single lane south—the likelihood of it getting better before we’re all driving ZEVs is slim. Transit will never be an attractive option on a mass scale until it becomes efficient and flexible. It will never become efficient until there are dedicated transit lanes from just south of Function Junction where the northbound road chokes from two lanes to one, all the way to Emerald. Convincing people that sitting in a gridlocked bus is better than sitting in the same gridlock in your car is a losing proposition.
Dedicated transit lanes are the key to getting more people to use transit, and the only key to getting day trippers from the Lower Mainland to use satellite parking and transit to the Village.
The key to getting more locals to opt for transit in the winter—and keeping us out of the day skier lots—will be end-of-trip storage facilities. Even I would bus it if I didn’t have to schlep my gear.
So, let’s lose the ideology blinders, remember it’s the resort part of the Resort Municipality of Whistler that makes this place possible, and make nice enough with Victoria and MOTI to make transit a reality instead of wishful thinking.
