Turning the wheel on active transportation: Shifts in policymaking and planning for cycling and pedestrian infrastructure during the COVID-19 pandemic in large urban areas

The COVID-19 pandemic presented an opportunity to re-think how urban transportation policy and planning can address public needs through street reallocations for active transportation. Borrowing from Critical Junctures and Punctuated Equilibrium Theory, we propose a framework for understanding abrupt changes in transportation policy and to explain what may have triggered and shaped the actions related to pandemic-related street reallocations favouring active transportation. We interviewed 22 municipal employees in Canada’s three largest urban regions: the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, the Metro Montréal region and the Metro Vancouver area. Regarding the pandemic as a crisis, participants highlighted its power to disrupt the status quo and accelerate the rollout of active transportation infrastructure. With this window of opportunity opened, we identified several important factors that may have shaped the responses taken, including a supportive political climate, a politically charged need to compete with other regions and/or a delegation of authority to transportation professionals to approve new infrastructure. We also found the use of temporary materials and pre-existing transportation plans as key to a municipality’s ability to respond rapidly. These findings offer novel contributions to our understanding of how in the face of a crisis, major shifts in active transportation policymaking processes were achieved and how they may be sustained in the longer term.