Dallas Rd. storm. Photo credit flickr user dewolfe0001. License CC by sa 2.0
Tomorrow night the Oak Bay Sea Rescue Society, Coast Guard Aux. Unit 33, is up before council for a rezoning request for their new boat house. The Times Colonist has covered the story half-decently, but I thought I would point out a few more things
1. The $4,000/year they are paying for rent for their second boat could and should be used for rescue equipment, like an automatic debribulator that they want to buy.
2. If they don’t get it built this season, their new boat risks serious damage in the upcoming storm season
3. The Oak Bay Marine Group has never seen fit to actually attend any council/comm. of the whole meeting where this has been discussed in the past 6 months, despite being invited. In contrast the OBSR has been out at every meeting and sat patiently to get their turn to speak.
4. The new boat house will only be slightly larger (about 10′ longer and about 5′ wider) than the existing boat house. From Beach Drive I seriously doubt anybody will notice the difference.
Lastly and most importantly: This is an all volunteer outfit that protects you, the average user of the water. As Jeffery Dubney of the society said to me,
Members risk their lives for others and they should not
have to prepare for a mission at 2 AM in sub zero temperatures by being
forced to put on protective clothing outside in driving rain in 50 mph winds
because there is no room in the existing boat house.
It usually isn’t during the sunny, nice days they called out. It is times like this storm on Dallas Rd. in the picture that they go out and rescue people who have gotten into trouble. So come out tomorrow at 7:30pm at the Municipal Hall and support the Oak Bay Sea Rescue Society in their bid to provide better service for all users of the water.
The CRD is building a new bike and pedestrian master plan and to get the ball rolling, they hosted a launch & lunch party yesterday and they were kind enough to invite myself, Lesley Ewing and Gerald Smeltzer, all of us on the core team of the Oak Bay bike master plan. The event was well attended, with staff from every municipality save Colwood there, lots of CRD staff, and community activists from the Greater Victoria Cycling Coalition, the Saanich Bike/Ped Committee, the sadly non-defunct Parent Advisory Committee for the Safer School Travel Plan as well as us. (Update: Michael Baxter, the engineer from Colwood on the comm., was out of town)
We started off with an excellent lunch in the 6th floor boardroom of the CRD building. You can quite literally see for miles up there. To kick off the presentation portion, Tracey Corbett of CRD’s Regional Planning and View Royal Mayor Graham Hill both spoke briefly. Tracey spoke about how this grew out of the CRD’s Travel Choices work a few years back and Graham gave an excellent overview of the challenges we face, with the “perfect storm” of peak oil, climate change and growing health issues).
After Tracey and Graham, Mira Birk and the Alta Planning + Design team out of Portland, OR, Urban Systems from Vancouver and John Luton, their local advisor, got up to talk about what they were going to do and what tools they brought to the table. They spoke about some of the GIS tools they have developed over the years to look at quality of bike and pedestrian infrastructure and make it easier to plan a complete street. For more information about these tools, Birk gave a talk on the cycle portion at the 2008 ProWalk/ProBike conference.
She went on to make some interesting points of the challenges of planning for bikes and pedestrians, in that most models of transportation don’t yet account for how new bike lanes or sidewalks change travel habits or factor in the health and societal benefits to more people walking and biking. This makes it hard to “sell” these improvements to people educated in the old school of planning for cars and single family homes. She also pointed that until recently few universities in their planning depts had people that could teach the next generation about how to plan for bikes, walking or mixed use development.
So where do we go from here? Hopefully the website will be appearing online shortly, so that most people can learn about the project. There will also be a citizen’s advisory committee and a planners/engineers from each municipality committee. Alta is hoping to finish the 1st phase by the Fall of 2009, with the 2nd and 3rd phases late spring/early summer 2010.
Bowker & Cadboro Bay Intersection. Photo credit: John Luton
The Oak Bay Police are claiming that the intersection of Bowker and Cadboro Bay Rd. isn’t a problem, because most people do the speed limit. Let me rephrase that, while the police watched, people didn’t speed. Colour me not shocked.
Having lived on Cadboro Bay Rd for just over three years, if most people are doing the speed limit, I would be truly surprised. I can definitely say that the width of the road encourages people to speed, as the picture to the right shows.
As I have mentioned before, pedestrian fatality percentage rises sharply between 30 and 60 km/hr. 5% to 85%, to be exact.
Looking north on Cadboro Bay Rd near Willows School. Photo credit: John Luton
So what can be done about it? A traffic circle is very needed, but before that there are three simple steps to keep speeds down:
Bulge out the sidewalk at the crossing near Willows School. This shortens the crossing and puts the pedestrian beyond the parked car and in the sight of any oncoming vehicles.
Bulge out the sidewalk at the two ends of the school zone. This narrows the roadway, slowing drivers down.
Add bike lanes. The road in front of my house is ~11m wide, which is enough for two 3m travel lanes, two 1.5 m bike lanes and one 2m parking lane on the west side of the road. The loss of parking on the east side is mitigated by the fact that few people park on the east side of the road most of the day anyway.
Will any of this happen? I hope so. It will take a lot of work to convince council that these steps are needed to keep kids and people of all ages safe. Maybe they should be reading this pedestrian injuries report from Safe Kids Canada.
This isn’t the only place Bixi is spreading its wings to. Ottawa and Gatineau are also getting pilot projects, albeit a slightly more substantial one. This is run by the National Capital Commission (NCC) and comprises only 50 bikes right now. It is expected that if the pilot is successful, a larger rollout could come as early as 2010.
Given we have our own version of the NCC here in Victoria, the Provincial Capital Commission, and we such a tourist destination, where is the bike sharing project for Victoria? A few stations around downtown including at the cruise ship docks would allow tourists to discover all the great biking facilities here in Victoria and also maybe help the poor James Bay residents sleep better at night by cutting down on the diesel exhaust from buses.
According to the Oak Bay News, a cyclist was hit at the corner of Beach Drive and Estevan Avenue on Friday. Given the claim of the vehicle running the stop sign, it must have been on Estevan, not Beach Drive. The 32-year-old man apparently tumbled over the hood of the car. This likely means that he was right in fromt of her when she accelerated. Thankfully he apparently wasn’t seriously hurt, although who knows what kinds of long term injuries he might have sustained. As per usual, the drive got off nearly scot free:
The woman, 32, was ticketed for failing to stop.
Image courtesy Streetsblog New York
How about driving without due care? I guess you need to kill somebody before you get this one. As light bedtime reading, I suggest Death of Cyclists in BC, by the Helmet Safety Institute. The report was written by the Chief Coroner of BC’s office and covers accidents from 1986-95. Wonder if the numbers of deaths has gone down since then, given that more cyclists equals less deaths in total. I think I would have to plumb the byzantine depths of ICBC or maybe WCB to get that info. Maybe another day.
For the second time in a row, a report from the council meeting last night. The meeting was the usual grab bag of stuff such as variance and bylaw approvals, plus the latest chapter in the ongoing saga of the new Sea Rescue boat house. Also discussed but not on the agenda was the latest on sewage treatment. The bench was shy two last night, with both Mayor Causton and Hazel Braithwaite away, leaving Nils Jensen as acting Mayor.
Rough map of Island View Park acquisition
First up was a presentation by the CRD on their acquisition of a piece of land to attach to Island View Park, as they announced last month. The plan involves the piece of land seen on the right, which will then be split up. In very crude terms, roughly the red portion west of the ridge, which is in the ALR, would be sold and the yellow portion added to the park. The total cost would be $4.7 million, of which about half is expected to be recouped via the sale of the western half. In the end, the council voted for the acquisition.
Next up were block parties. There were quite a few of them. I plan on having a full post with all the upcoming block parties, including maps later this week, but the interesting bit for those wishing to host them is that getting approval might be about to get a whole lot easier. Councillor Jensen asked if staff could handle these requests in the future, which would require rewriting the bylaw, so don’t expect this done until the fall at the earliest.
In new business, Herbert gave a quick update on the sewage treatment. As was covered in the press, the sewage treatment committee has recommended that the CRD go for the 3 site option. Due to the byzantine politics in the region, this doesn’t mean we are necessarily getting 3 plants. The sewage committee only recommends a solution to the whole CRD board and they make the final decision.
Haro Woods - Photo courtesy Cadboro Bay Residents Association
Adding to the fun are 3 public hearings next week on the potential Haro Woods station (schedule of meetings). Officially these meetings are to discuss a sewage plant in Saanich East or North Oak Bay, but given the CRD already owns the Haro Woods lands, this is kind of a cart/horse thing. Of course, if enough people bitch, another site might get considered. This means that North Oak Bay could get a treatment site and have no public hearings, a fact that made more than one councillor quite annoyed. This isn’t the first time that Oak Bay has been ignored, this happened during the last round as well. In fact, the last time the sewage people were in Oak Bay was in April and over the history of the project they have only come to Oak Bay a half dozen times.
Onwards from sewage brings us to variances to construction bylaws, of which only 2218 Central Ave raised major issues. This is a request to reduce the number of parking spots from the required two to just one. Given parking’s generative effect on traffic, this is a good thing. Sadly, Allan Cassidy didn’t see it that way, asking “what is so wrong with the current bylaw that we keep granting exceptions?” In response, both Jensen and Ney thought that the whole bylaw should be reconsidered, given that we should be reducing car use and encouraging gardens, not asphalt. We can only hope that this happens. In the end, the variance passed 3 to 2, with Herbert and Cassidy opposed.
During the last council meeting while discussing 2218 Central, it was discovered that any councillor can bring back any motion for reconsideration at the next meeting. This time it was the potential tree bylaw amendment which was defeated on a tie. It allows removal of trees that damage significant structures as well as a blanket provision for council to allow removal of a tree if they feel it harms a residents way of life. Herbert thought that council should have a “sober second look”, which led to much back and forth about “opening the floodgates” for reconsidering bylaws and talk about a general review in the fall. In the end, the whole matter was deferred until they have a whole council there. I predict this isn’t the last time that a councillor brings back a motion for reconsideration and thus won’t be the last time we get to hear Cassidy talk about the “slippery slope”.
Which brings us to the last item of the evening, the new boat house saga. The basics are that the Oak Bay Sea Rescue Society needs a new boat house for the new, bigger boat that they just got. However, given provincial law and zoning, they need a new water lease to build the bigger boat house. The major sticking point is the ability to dock either Sea Rescue’s older boat or a rescued vessel alongside the new boathouse. OB Marine Group doesn’t like because they claim it will constrain their ability to dock vessels near the boathouse. At the end of the night, after discussing and rejecting a compromise that would just allow construction of the boathouse without the mooring, the whole issue will end up a public hearing on June 22nd. Expect a longer piece from me about the whole issue later this week.
There was actually a Times Colonist reporter in the audience last night, a realitive rarity. Apparently this whole boathouse issue is big enough news to get coverage. Given the rumours of the demise of the Oak Bay News, the future of reporting in Oak Bay looks bleak.
There are a few interesting announcements today from the CRD and the Federal Government regarding communities, planning and green space.
The CRD is looking for people to sit on their Regional Parks citizen advisory panel for the new Regional Parks Strategic Plan. If you are interested, the site has documents with more information and the deadline for applying is June 12th, 2009.
The new CRD Pedestrian and Bicycling Master Plan has its launch event next week. Curiously, it doesn’t have a website yet, so to get a better idea of what this plan with entail, see the Request for Proposals (PDF). The CRD has selected Alta Planning & Design out of Portland to do the initial stages of the work. Alta has done some great work all over the US and Canada and they are very focused on planning for bicycling and walking, so I look forward to they can bring to our great region. The initial report is due this fall with the larger plan including network maps done by Spring 2010.
The federal government also dropped another tiny little bit of money in the bucket today, with a $4.2 million announcement of the EQuilibrium™ Communities Initiative. And yes, they did trademark the name. So sayeth the press release:
The new $4.2- million, EQuilibrium™ Communities Initiative will seek to improve community planning and develop healthy sustainable communities that are energy-efficient, economically viable and vibrant places to live.
Colour me not impressed. $4.2 million is nothing. The new CRD plan above will cost $20,000 – $30,000 just for the inital report with the 2nd and 3rd stages being considerably more. I suspect this might just be a feel good thing for Lisa Raitt, better known the whole Chalk River “sexy” isotopes statement, bad-mouthing a fellow minister on tape and leaving documents behind at a newspaper issue.
I am off to council tonight, where the agenda pretty normal. It is the season for block party requests and there are the usual rezoning requests. Also up is a letter from the Oak Bay Marine Group regarding the ongoing saga of the getting the Sea Rescue Society a new boathouse.
Managed to finally get to the Tea Party today, after being quite busy yesterday. Even though I arrived after 3 and after the airshow, there were still tonnes of people there. I did see large numbers streaming up Estevan Rd to their parked cars on Musgrave and nearly all the streets between there and the water. But then again, I don’t blame them for driving. The bike parking situation at Willows Park is quite abysmal, even on non-busy days. There is exactly one bike rack there, as can be seen to the left. It was full. This meant that bikes spilled out and where parked everywhere.
When I arrived, I ended up having to raft my bike up with a very nice gentlemen by the name of Terry who was similarily looking for a spot. We ended up parked near the toilets, right near the giant mess of bikes seen below. You can see the rest on in my 2009 Tea Party flickr set but there was one other picture that amused me. That was this one of two bikes locked to an Oak Bay Works flashing sign.
Hopefully for next year, there will be more bike parking. Maybe if we get organized soon enough, Safer Cycling Oak Bay and/or the Community Association could get the portable racks that Chain Chain Chain have. It would be nice if Shooting Star Amusements could provide bike parking as well, just like they provided the lone bench seen below.
Bikes locked to Oak Bay Works signShooting Star Amusement's portable benchMass of bikes locked to rail
One of the most persistent problems facing non-car drivers is that complete auto-centricity of directions listed on most websites, of which sports teams and their stadiums seem to be especially bad for. Take the new Highlanders FC team. For starters, they choose to play in car-happy Langford rather than Royal Athletic Park or UVic’s Centennial Stadium, but take a peek at the image on their page of directions:
Yes, that is a picture of an empty parking lot. And yes, they have transit directions, stuffed alongside parking under the heading “Park & Ride Locations”. No link to the schedule of either the 50 or the Langford Trolley and absolutely no mention of whether they have bike parking of any sort or even the best biking routes (like say, the Galloping Goose). And a map? Nope.
If they want a half-decent idea of what their directions site should look like, they should take a look at the San Francisco Giants baseball team’s page, which lists transit first. They even have maps at the bottom, both of the local area and stops and a larger route map. Sadly their page lists the truly excellent bike lockup facilities provided by the San Francisco Bike Coalition at their games under “Getting there by car”, but not everything can be perfect. How good are these valeted bike spots? Streetfilms, out of New York, was there and shot this video:
Interestingly, the new FitinFitness program, which consists of Greater Victoria recreation centres, along with BC transit, the CRD and the Y, lists bus route information, with links to schedules on their page, but nobody but the CRD have any bus information on their facilities websites. The CRD’s SEAPARC leisure centre in Sooke’s page even lists biking via the Goose.
Looks like we in the livable streets community here in Greater Victoria has some outreach to do.
One of the great myths running around is that if we only switch all our vehicles to electric, hydrogen or another hypothetical cleaner fuel, all will be good. Aside from the major issues with the creation of the fuel for these vehicles, they ignore the reality that building auto-centric infrastructure is damaging our health, our communities and is ultimately financially unsustainable. Thankfully, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson gets it (emphasis mine):
“We want to make Vancouver the greenest city in the world, and supporting this early adoption of plug-in electric cars is one way that Vancouver is becoming a leader in green technology. Electric vehicles are an important way to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions when combined with improvements to transit, biking and walking.”
By this time next year, we should have quite a few production electric vehicles on the road, including this MiEV, the Telsa Roadster (although small quantities are available now) and the Chevy Volt. We do live in interesting times.
