Our fine municipality got money for the Uplands sewer upgrade. The joint storm/sewage sewers are the main reason behind our eye-popping $700/yr property increase for the new sewage treatment, so this money, an even matching grant between the municipality, the feds and the provinces, will help all of Oak Bay taxpayers.
The Kinsol Trestle rehabilitation in the Cowichan Valley got almost $6 million to complete this link of the Trans-Canada Trail.
This is a bit belated, but I did managed to get over to Vancouver for the opening of the Canada Line, the newest addition to the SkyTrain network. First, a little bit of history. The Canada Line is a Public-Private Partnership, something that the BC Gov forced onto Translink as a condition of provincial funding. This means that it is actually operated by ProTrans BC and was built by InTransitBC, both largely owned by SNC Lavelin out of Montreal. The federal government demanding Translink call it the Canada Line as a condition of their funding.
That being said, Vancouver is the first Canadian city to have a direct rail link to the airport, something common in Europe as well as a few US cities like Portland.
Given I was coming from across the pond, I ended up starting at the Marine Drive station, just north of the Fraser. This turned out to be a good decision, because lines for northbound (Waterfront Station-bound) trains were fairly quiet, at least in the morning.
Lines at Marine Drive station
The Marine Drive station is pretty indicative of the elevated stations on the line. Lots of wood and glass. They were attractive, but the platforms were short, as can be seen in the second photo down, coming into one of the underground stations.
Marine Drive Canada Line stationComing into station
The stations also seriously lacked amenities. There were no bathrooms and few chairs in most of the stations. The stairs were narrow, with only escalators going up. Overall, the stations felt quickly built and cheap, as attractive as some of them were.
The cars themselves were fairly spacious, wider than the newer Mark II cars on the Skytrain. The had a single space for a bicycle and another for wheelchairs, both in one of the two cars.
Lone bike space on the train
The ride was smooth and fairly fast, especially compared to the old 98 B-line “bus rapid transit” or the even older Expo Line. The Expo Line now has some sections of track cause a lot of noise and sway, especially with the older Mark I SkyTrain cars.
One of the challenges with connections was that the bus lines haven’t yet been adjusted, something is coming with Labour Day. Both the 98 B-line and the 424 to the Airport are going away, while the 620 from Tsawwassen will be routed into Bridgeport Station. This is just some of the large number of bus changes coming, some of which are not making people very happy. Many people are now going to have to take both a bus and the Canada Line to downtown, as opposed to a single seat bus ride.
As can be expected for the opening of a major new transit line, the lines were crazy all day. Waterfront Station was especially bad, with waits running past an hour, from what I understand.
Overall, I am glad the Canada Line exists, but I think there are going to be serious capacity issues in the future. With the short platforms leading to inability to run larger trains, unlike the Skytrain system, expect crush capacity cars of 400 people very shortly. The real test will come this fall, so it should be interesting to see those numbers. To see more pictures, see my Flickr set.
This weekend in Centennial Square the Greater Victoria Cycling Coalition and a whole host of community partners, including Safer Cycling Oak Bay, are hosting Velo Victoria: a celebration of bike culture. The festivities start up at 7pm on Friday night, with movies and music. Saturday morning comes the kids bike decorating event followed by a bike parade for kids, a place to get your bike fixed up, consignment sales and more. Check out the schedule for full details.
Safer Cycling OB will be there to talk about our upcoming bike master plan, which we are still deep in data collection for. We are still looking for volunteers to help with counting, so if you are interested, drop us a line.
The dirty little secret about Spencer Road interchange being useless is now official. Interchange project manager Tim Stevens told Saanich News that,
There is no functional urgency at this point. The Spencer Road intersection at the highway is still working
Of course, the slow down in the housing market has nearly stopped development on Bear Mountain and Skirt Mountain developments, but even so, this giant white elephant is a lovely reminder of how useless new highway development really is. Now hopefully we can kill the McTavish Rd. interchange before if even starts construction.
One motorist was upset at having to brake for uniformed officers jaywalking across Vernon Avenue from the Saanich police headquarters to go for coffee.
As the photo shows, the police HQ is actually quite a pedestrian unfriendly place. There is no crosswalk on Vernon Ave north of Saanich Rd. But the real irony is that the police HQ is right on Lochside Trail, which runs directly under Vernon.
I am not blaming the cops for jaywalking, because they are merely trying to save time. It is another merely amusing and sad example of how not to build for people.
…and not soon enough. For the past several decades crosswalks have been scraped up under the misguided assumption that it causes “pedestrians to act recklessly“. Even the US DOT Federal Highway Administration has changed its tune:
Pedestrians are legitimate users of the transportation system, and they should, therefore, be able to use this system safely and without unreasonable delay.
This change in thinking is hitting close to home, with the addition of two new crosswalks with a curb cut for wheelchairs at Bowker and Hampshire. This is immediately to the east of the dangerous Cadboro Bay Rd and Bowker Ave intersection that may get a traffic circle.
Will we get any more of this in 2009? I haven’t had a chance to ask David Marshall, head of Oak Bay Engineering yet and the 2008 Municipal Report (PDF), which just came out, makes no mention of any crossswalk or sidewalk works in 2009. Guess we will have to enjoy at least this victory.
It has been a long time since I last posted, but I haven’t been any less busy. Today was case in point, as I helped out with the Greater Victoria Cycling Coalition‘s “booth” at the MEC Bikefest in Market Square, one of many that MEC plans to hold across the country. Aside from the GVCC, on hand were the Pedal to Petal composting people, Moksana Yoga, South Island Mountain Bike Society (SIMBS) and bunch of smaller outfits.
Like any good bike event, free tuneups were had, this time by no less than three different groups, including MEC itself. This begs the question whether MEC will get into selling bikes, to which the answer is “it depends”. Speaking with an MEC staffer, here in Victoria we are unlikely to see MEC enter the market anytime soon, due to lack of staff and space, not to mention the massive amounts of competition already here. However, you can already buy bikes from their Vancouver & Toronto stores, with more on the way.
If you are looking for something interesting to do this summer, why not volunteer? There are a lot of places that you can do it, but here are a couple that might strike your fancy:
The GVCC is looking for people to help at their mobile information booth, otherwise known as “the whale”, probably because it handles something like one. At least 4 volunteers are needed, although the more the merrier.
July 4th – MEC BikeFest in Market Square with the GVCC – 10:00pm – 3:00pm
As with the Canada Day event, they are looking for people to help out at with “the whale”. This is MEC’s first event of its type and is designed to attract the bicycling members of MEC. This is a great opportunity to connect with this potential membership base. At least 4 volunteers are needed, although the more the merrier.
If you are interested in helping out with either of these events, contact Darren Marr at dkmarr@shaw.ca by Saturday the 28th.
The Luminara people are looking for more volunteers to help out with setting up and taking down the lanterns as well as other work. If you can’t volunteer on the 25th, there might be spot still available in the days before. Contact Audrey Deutschmann at volunteer@luminaravictoria.com or 250.388.4728 ext. 130.
They are looking for people to marshall foot and bike races. You need to be there by 7am, so this is one for early birds. Email info@scmt.ca or call 250.592.6211 for more information.
If these events don’t do it for you, Volunteer Victoria’sVolunteer Database is the clearinghouse for all sorts of interesting volunteer jobs, both this summer and ongoing. Have fun and happy volunteering!
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.
The latest in the seamingly endless studies about rapid transit is entering it’s public consultation and thus BCTransit is holding a series of open houses.This one is called the Victoria Regional Rapid Transit plan and managed the first open house yesterday at the Legion Hall on the Gorge. I doubt this will be the last study. If you want a good idea of just how often this has been studied, see page 2 of this PDF. I must confess all this leaves me just a little jaded.
Potential corridors for the VRRT project
This specific plan is an outgrowth of the recently-failed Douglas St. busway, which did yield one concrete result: BCTransit now owns the right of way to the centre 2 lanes of Douglas St. north of Fisgard. Unlike the Douglas St. plan, this one doesn’t presume the use of specific corridor, rather they are looking for input on what corridor they should be using. See the map to the right or the full PDF for the options.
For the Downtown to Uptown route the logical route is Douglas St, as we already own the corridor, it would require less work than Blanshard St and the potential, with the right technology (ie. rail), to stimulate a lot of needed development in the north Douglas area.
From Uptown I think we should run with the Trans-Canada Highway and the Galloping Goose. Between those two alignments there should be plenty of room to run two full tracks while keeping the existing trail and the highway. It also passes right by the Victoria General Hospital, a major employer.
It should then shift to the E&N Railway when it nearly joins the highway in View Royal, because the corridor is already publicly owned (by the Island Corridor Foundation) and it runs straight into downtown Langford, where they have just finished building a beautiful new transit station.
As for technology, they claim that they have no bias one way or the other, but as I have pointed out before, I really doubt that. Maybe by picking at least part of the E&N, they will be forced to use rail.The plan is for the prelimiary consultation to be done by the this fall with the larger work starting in 2010. Implementation is 2011 or later. Likely later, given there is no concrete funding from any level of government. Interestingly, this timeline aligns very neatly with the new CRD Bike/Pedestrian Master Plan. I wonder if they have been talking with each other…
But don’t take my word for it. There are two more consultations: one tomorrow in Colwood and next Monday at Victoria City Hall. See the schedule for more information as well as PDFs of most of the handouts. As an aside, this also the 100th published post on this site.
