Author: corey.burger

Beyond the Haultain bikeway is the rest of my route to work, along the City’s of Victoria’s bikeways through to Vancouver St.

@Bay St.

Like the other busy road without an barrier, Foul Bay Rd., Bay St. badly needs a barrier. There is enough road width and the hill just to the west makes the sightlines terrible here.

along Walnut St. and Chambers St.

These are nice quite residential roads with a few small pavement issues, so not much needs to be done here. I would mention that in the spirit of small details matter, I want to give a shoutout to the City of Victoria Engineering Department. They added small ramps at the northern end of Chambers St. where it is closed off to remove the bump that comes from crossing the two sidewalks. A nice little touch!

on Caledonia from Cook St. to Chambers St.

Another place of truly terrible pavement. This stretch rivals Haultain St. in Oak Bay for sheer terribleness.

@ Cook St.

Another challenging road crossing due to the number of vehicles that travel through this intersection (although I suspect a full intersection count would show most of them turn left and travel northbound on Cook St.)

on Caledonia from Cook St. to Vancouver St.

There is a lot of bicycle traffic and a lot of car traffic too. Lots of vehicles head north Vancouver St. and then turn east onto Caledonia St. and a fair number are already travelling along Caledonia. A few speed humps might make the traffic a bit calmer (although the major issue is actually the narrow roadway and the traffic is already moving pretty slow anyway)

@ Vancouver St.

Given the City of Victoria is discussing a plaza on Vancouver St. beside Royal Athletic Park anyway, fully closing this intersection to all through motor vehicle traffic might just be the thing needed. A less radical solution would be close this intersection to east-bound traffic. This would allow people to drive right up to the southern entrance of Royal Athletic Park but remove the commuting traffic onto other streets.

There is one possible unintended consequence of this: increased motor vehicle traffic on Vancouver St. This would need to be carefully monitoring and mitigated for if it does appear.

I plan on doing a similar set of posts for the Vancouver St. bikeway, so stay tuned!

Today we deal with the section fully within the City of Victoria. There are two distinct pieces to this section. The first runs from Richmond to Shelbourne and is typified by narrow roadway with diverters at either end and very low traffic volume. The section further west from Shelbourne is quite different. The roadway is wider, there is a bus route running down this section (Route 22), there is more vehicle traffic and in the middle, Haultain Corners, a commercial village.

@ Richmond Rd.

The through bicycle traffic here is rising and the barrier is just too narrow here. It only allows a single bike through in either direction and badly needs to be widened to allow a second crossing space. The major challenge is lack of road space to widen it properly.

@ Shelbourne Rd

Like the barrier at Richmond, this one is just too narrow for the peak hour bicycle traffic through it. A third opening through it would make a big difference (especially as cyclists have very different travel speeds).

@ Fernwood St.

This is a busy four-way stop with a fair amount of traffic in both directions, which makes it hard to do anything.

0n Haultain from Shelbourne to Cedar Hill Rd

This is the least pleasant part of the whole trip (save the crossing) because of the higher number of cars and occasional bus. There isn’t much that could be done here due to the space rquirmenets of trucks and buses. Sharrows might help, but research on them has shown them to be mixed and most of the time there are at least two or three cyclists on the road already.

 

 

Biking to work on Friday morning I saw a cop car with a non-cop bike in the trunk and an officer with an accident kit talking with somebody. I immediately knew that something had happened, but wasn’t sure what until the Oak Bay News article. Unclear exactly who is at fault yet, but the article does imply that the driver backed into the path of the cyclist. Given I am busy talking about the Haultain bikeway, this is sort of timely (in a potentially-tragic way).

(h/t to Lesley Ewing of the ATAC and Safer Cycling Oak Bay for forwarding the news article to me)

After a short mistaken detour yesterday to the section further west, today we head east and let’s look at its easternmost section (actually Estevan Avenue).

This section needs to have a few pieces added:

@ Beach Drive

This is the crossing with the Seaside Touring route which runs through Victoria, Oak Bay, and then Saanich. At a minimum needed here are signs. You can’t really close off this intersection to through motor vehicle traffic as Esplande is one of the few ways to access Willows Beach and Willows Park (just off the picture to the south)

@ Musgrave St.

A horrible 5-way intersection, there isn’t much that can be done here save a very expensive traffic circle which would seriously cut apart Lokier Gardens (the park at the intersection) which is actually heritage designated by Oak Bay.

@ Cadboro Bay Rd

A slightly easier intersection. There is a fair amount of traffic on Cadboro Bay Rd and it might be possible to add an intersection barrier, although the challenge is narrow road width on Cadboro Bay Rd.

@ Eastdowne Rd.

A very easy intersection. The large traffic island with the oblique angle make this an easy conversion to a traffic circle.