This month, we’re excited to welcome Roy Symons, a local urbanist and cycling advocate, to our monthly meetup. Roy is a Sustainable Transportation Specialist with ISL Engineering and Land Services Ltd. where he works with cities to plan and design better active transportation facilities and safer streets. Roy also founded rollinginthecity.ca as an avenue to share lessons from his travels through blog posts, books and photography. Roy will be sharing stories from his travels in the Netherlands and exploring innovative solutions not yet widely adopted in Canada but with potential to create better, safer, and more sustainable ways to get around any city.
- Time: 11:00am-1:00pm
- Date: Saturday March 8th, 2025
- Location: Vancouver Island Regional Library, Downtown Nanaimo
Roy’s journey into Dutch design began with a trip to Amsterdam nearly a decade ago. While that visit planted a few seeds in his mind, it wasn’t until a few years later—working with the City of Nanaimo—that these ideas truly began to take shape. While helping the City update its engineering standards, the idea of continuous sidewalks and bike paths arose. To the team, it was an obvious choice: safer for everyone, more comfortable for pedestrians and cyclists, and a natural fit for a forward-thinking community. The industry agreed.
As continuous sidewalks and bike paths became the new standard and were applied to Metral Drive, the City earned several prestigious awards for its efforts. Encouraged by this success, Roy wondered what else we could draw on from the Dutch and has spent about a month each of the last few years cycling through the Netherlands, experiencing what makes it one of the safest and most comfortable places in the world for biking. In this talk, Roy will share stories from his travels and explore innovative solutions not yet widely adopted in Canada but with potential to create better, safer, and more sustainable ways to get around any city.