Bowinn Ma Quotes (1985-)

“I’d like to talk very specifically today about the issue of urban congestion, as I recognize that rural and remote communities face and experience transportation challenges very differently. The issue of road congestion is really important to my community out on the North Shore. As congestion continues to grow, it impacts residents, commuters, businesses, student services and the quality of life. The member opposite has identified many of these challenges already. But on the North Shore and in many areas of Metro Vancouver, the issue of traffic congestion is intricately connected to other issues like land use and, in particular, housing affordability. For instance, as housing unaffordability increases, people are moving farther and farther away from where they were and thus spend more and more time in their vehicles on the roads to get to and fro in their daily lives. Increasing commuter traffic forms a huge part of our increasing congestion challenges on the North Shore, and that is actually a perfect example of how this happens. According to the integrated North Shore transportation planning project, or INSTPP, between 2011 and 2016 the North Shore grew by an additional 2,900 jobs, but its population only increased by about 900 working-age people. So the other 2,000 workers are being imported, for lack of a better term, from elsewhere in the region, and without viable non-car alternatives, commuters often end up back in their cars, adding to the already congested networks that exist. Certainly, I think we can all agree that congestion has been an ongoing issue for British Columbia and particularly the Lower Mainland, not simply for the last year and ten months or so since the last election. Now, the thing that’s always fascinated me about transportation engineering when I was studying at UBC is that it’s an engineering field that is almost entirely reliant on attempting to understand and mathematize human behaviour. Now, a piece of steel behaves in the same predictable fashion over and over and over again, but the same cannot be said about humans. What we do know, however, is that humans make decisions, at least from a transportation perspective, by weighing the pros and cons of a number of factors. “If I leave at 7 a.m. instead of 7:30 a.m., I’ll beat the rush.” “If I take the Port Mann Bridge instead of the Pattullo, I’ll avoid the New Westminster traffic.” “If the bus costs me $2.85 and gas, insurance and car payments cost me $10 a trip, it’ll be cheaper for me to take the bus. However, the bus takes me 30 minutes longer. So how much is my time worth?” Time, route and mode — those are three ways that people change their transportation behaviour in order to suit their commuting environments. So when you add lanes to a roadway, when you add lanes to a bridge, you actually end up inviting people to change their time of travel, their travel route and their mode to find the most efficient option, according to their tolerances for each kind of inconvenience. “Well, actually, traffic isn’t too bad at 7:30 a.m. anymore. I’ll sleep in another half hour.” “Actually, New Westminster added a few more lanes through the city. I guess I’ll take the Pattullo Bridge now.” “Well, actually, maybe driving now saves me an hour over the bus, and I’m willing to pay the extra money that it takes to get back into my car.” Before you know it, the roads are full again. What we have seen, time and time again, in growing urban areas around the world is that this means we never actually see our roads clear of congestion. It is a concept known as the law of congestion or induced demand, and it is a very well-understood concept amongst those who study urban traffic. It is, unfortunately, also a very difficult concept to communicate to the public and politicians looking to make political gains — quick wins, perhaps. They are trying to make political gains with bad decisions that will take advantage of that misunderstanding by promising monster highways that only ever make things worse. Brent Toderian, who is an international consultant on advanced urbanism, said that across the world, city builders who understand the complex relationship between land use, car infrastructure and road congestion struggle to communicate it in a simple way that resonates with the public. It’s now well demonstrated in transportation demand management research and practice that you cannot build your way out of traffic congestion by building roads. In fact, the opposite is true. The more freeways and car lanes you build, the more people drive and the more congestion and other negative results there are. What do we do then? We can’t simply allow people to languish in worsening congestion. Instead, we must start to work to build the housing that people can afford.”

“Over the last three years I have been thoroughly impressed with Bowinn Ma. There are few elected officials who work harder for their community and it is evident that she cares deeply about people. Bowinn has been a breath of fresh air in the Legislature and is one of our strongest voices in the fight against climate change. I certainly hope she is re-elected in North Vancouver-Lonsdale.”

“Like C.D. Howe, she's an engineer-turned-politician. I think she's one of a new generation of elected leaders who gets the climate crisis.”

“The way Bowinn comports herself is beyond reproach. She’s an extraordinary woman, a young woman of colour who has broken barriers as an engineer, broken barriers as a student at the Sauder business school, and also broken barriers as a compassionate, forward-looking member of the legislature. And she is now, again, blazing a trail for women around British Columbia and, indeed, around the world that you can do anything, and you do not have to tolerate sexist jokes. You can stand up to that, and I’m very proud of her and, quite frankly, proud of the hundreds of thousands of British Columbians who are responding positively to her message.”

“"Bowinn Ma is a legislator of singular democratic integrity. To thrive in the challenges facing the North Shore and BC — from a sustainable COVID recovery to climate justice — we absolutely need to re-elect Bowinn."”