Open Collections

Bartos, Sydney

University of British Columbia

This thesis examines two policies within the City of Vancouver’s climate action strategy: The Climate Emergency Parking Program and Zero Emissions Amendments to the Vancouver Building By-law. As both of policies reached City Council for implementation, the Climate Emergency Parking Program was defeated while the Building By-law, though a delay was proposed, stuck to its initial timeline. With a focus on the Climate Emergency Parking Program, which sought to implement city-wide overnight parking permits on street parking and to enact a pollution charge on new, high emission vehicles, this paper examines five factors to explain why, although vetted by Vancouver City Council, this policy was defeated: (1) the City’s limited jurisdiction over vehicle emissions, which necessitated an indirect approach via parking restrictions; (2) the resulting visibility of the costs on the consumer and a disproportionate reaction to these costs; (3) different interpretations of fairness; (4) the salience of the private vehicle and the precedent of free parking; and (5) left-right divisions on climate policy. This thesis argues that both cases support the conclusion that left-right ideology is relevant in municipal climate decisions at the City of Vancouver, however in the case of the Climate Emergency Parking Program the city’s limited jurisdiction over vehicle emissions acted as an institutional barrier. With limited policy tools at its disposal, the City of Vancouver thus had to wade into the challenging politics of parking regulation in order to enact a pollution charge, resulting in a policy with visible costs to consumers, prompting different arguments of fairness being brought forward and accepted by different parties and members of Council. This was further amplified by the prevalence of the privately-owned car and the precedent of free parking.

Text

2023-08-24

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/85614

Political Science

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/