Spacing Toronto, an excellent blog by the equally excellent people who create Spacing magazine, is running a well written piece on new approaches to street design. The key point made is that what we have done in the past, both being car-centric and using cookie-cutter designs isn’t going to cut it anymore. They use the example of Annette St. in Toronto, which was to get bike lanes but then was downgraded to sharrows instead. Very much the Monterey Ave. controversy last summer (Committe of the Whole minutes: Aug 11 & Oct 6).
Complete streets are something I have mentioned here before and I truly hope they are catching on around here as well. San Juan Ave isn’t the only street that Saanich is working on and the CRD is working on their new Bike/Pedestrian Master Plan. Here in Oak Bay the Bike Master Plan a group of us are building is ticking along quite nicely, but we are always looking for more people. Email the projectteam if you want to help out with bike counts, mapping or anything else.