The Leisure Access Program (LAP) provides low-income Vancouverites with access to basic recreation programs and services at Park Board facilities at a reduced cost.

This project is an investigation of the reasons why the existing Leisure Access Program users in the City of Vancouver are not fully utilizing the discounts provided by the program, and why there is a lack of new usage. We suggest three solutions based on the issues we found: (i) expand more facilities and LAP features by giving more flexibility in each area’s community center programs, (ii) conduct a marketing campaign to promote the program awareness and value creation, and (iii) reduce transportation barriers to increase transportation accessibility and mobility.

Our proposed solutions include how to give equal access to low-income Vancouver residents through the LAP. To better understand and provide feasible solutions, we narrowed our research into one area in Vancouver, Renfrew-Collingwood. Our research findings suggest that there are four reasons for the lack of LAP usage: (i) limited program capacity, (ii) limited program awareness, (iii) limited knowledge of value creation opportunities, and (iv) prohibitive transportation costs and fees. Our solutions are based on the Renfrew-Collingwood demographics, in which we targeted three different age groups: 13 – 18, 19 – 39, and 40 – 64 years old as LAP’s potential users. Through these solutions, we strive to provide more options, generate greater awareness and minimize the barriers preventing users access to recreation. The next actions of the project will be required to implement our solutions most practically and feasibly.