Lon LaClaire manages Vancouver’s Strategic Transportation Planning Branch, providing leadership and direction for eighteen transportation engineering and planning staff working on some of Vancouver’s largest transportation projects.
Lon has an unusual mix of creative and technical skills. Using his high-school scholarship, he started his education in Fine Arts in College before switching to Engineering. After completing his Civil Engineering degree at Concordia University in Montreal, he discovered that his true passion was in urban and transportation planning. He went on to complete a Master of Engineering Degree in Transportation and Structures at the University of Calgary. To finance his studies Lon worked in construction and painted murals.
When Lon first joined the City of Vancouver, in 1997, he worked in the Neighbourhood Transportation Branch were he learned how to develop and implement neighbourhood traffic calming plans and new bike routes. He then moved on to the Strategic Transportation Planning Branch where he worked on the larger transportation projects in the city. In 1999, he worked in the City’s Rapid Transit Office planning the Millennium SkyTrain Line. Between 2000 and 2002 Lon was part of a team that developed the City’s award-winning Downtown Transportation Plan. He then went on to play a key role in the planning of the Richmond/Airport-Vancouver Rapid Transit Line (Canada Line) and recently co-managed the 2012 update to City’s transportation plan – Transportation 2040. This plan recently won both planning (CIP) and engineering (ITE) awards for excellence.