The Times Colonist has a great piece today about the Integrated Road Safety Unit using their empty cruisers to be phantom speed traps. Slowing down cars is all well and good; the problem is in the implementation. Specifically, the picture from the TC shows two cop cars parked on the shoulder. This is exactly where a bicycle would be, so these cars are actually making it less safe for everybody by forcing that bicycle into the traffic lane, endangering them and the cars coming up behind.
The much discussed rocks on the Tinto St. boulevard are again coming before the committee of the whole this Monday (PDF), after staff was asked to prepare a report into the following options for the area and council opted to defer to allow more time to consult residents. The three options mentioned in the report were:
The problem, ostensibly, is parking. The rocks were originally placed there to solve the problem of people parking on the grassy boulevard, something the Mayor raised at a September 2008 Council meeting. Fast forward to a June 2009 Committee of the Whole meeting (PDF) , where a resident approached council about said rocks, wondering why they had been placed there “without consultation with the residents”, in his words. His request triggered the creation of the report, which was given to council at a November 2009 meeting.
However, the story isn’t over. A different group of residents has created a petition to preserve the rocks, as they help preserve limited green space in the municipality. As of last night, the signatures were just shy of thirty, although it isn’t clear how many of them are direct residents of Tinto St or parents of students at the nearby Monterey Middle School.
I personally am in favour of retaining the rocks there. As Shannon Drew, the creator of the petition, pointed out to me in an email, Monterey has designated drop off zones on Monterey and Oliver, the former of which has had quite a bit of work done on it in recent years. Whatever your stance on the issue is, I encourage you to come out Monday night at 7:30pm. The meeting will be held at the Municipal Hall as per usual and with a light agenda save this issue, it should be a short night.
Yesterday I talked about some of the teething challenges that the new UVic/Downtown express bus, the 15, nee Dogwood Line, was having. Thankfully a lot of these problems have fairly easy fixes:
As a last note, I think BC Transit should break out its express routes, the new 15, the 28 Express, the 70, etc. and brand them differently, much like Translink did with the B-Lines.This kind of product differentiation is a great way to attract choice riders, people who could drive but choose to take a bus. Of course, it isn’t news that transit agencies are bad at marketing their own products, a fact which hurts their cause immensely.
(Aerial images are from the CRD Natural Areas atlas, with text and highlighting done with the GIMP and Inkscape)
Late last year BC Transit introduced a new express route to UVic from downtown, the 15 (previously called the Dogwood Line). While this is only the second week of the new UVic/Camosun term, the buses are very empty, with the 14 still taking the bulk of the passengers along their (mostly) shared route. Why?
None of these are intractable problems and they will be solved, one or another. Tomorrow I will talk about some of the solutions that I see. The addition of the 15 has been a long time in coming and I am glad BC Transit is finally starting to think more about express & limited stop buses.
Tonight’s council agenda (PDF) is very full and with the dual contentious issues of Uplands sewage and Oak Bay Lodge, it should be interesting. First up is VIHA with a presentation on what happens with Oak Bay Lodge, which is likely to be followed by some interesting debate amongst council members, who haven’t yet stated any formal positions on the matter.
This is also the night for deciding on Uplands sewage, after last Wednesday’s marathon until almost midnight. Councillor Cassidy has already stated his position on supported a gravity feed system over a low-pressure one, but none of the other councillors or the mayor have been that explicit. The choice is a tough one, because the gravity system likely requires a tax increase, ballparked in the neighbourhood of 10% per household for the entire of Oak Bay but the low-pressure system is nearly universally opposed by Uplands residents and requires ongoing maintenance.
Also up on the agenda are the transportation priorities committee, which Councillor Jensen has proposed, the usual host of property bylaw variances, a request from the Oak Bay Lawn Bowling Club for financial assisstance (something not likely to meet favour with Councillor Braithwaite, who feels Oak Bay gives enough to the club already, given it’s membership), and the potential of hiring a consultant to work with the school district on the Oak Bay High replacement project.
I suspect that it might just be a little busy tonight, so if you want to come, make certain you arrive early to get your seat.
Ten years ago today I stood on a beach on the island of Cousin (Wikipedia info) in the Seychelles, idly wondering if Y2K could bring down the global air traffic systems, thus preventing me from leaving five days later. Sadly it was not to be, so back I came to Canada to the relatively mild but still cold to me winter of Victoria.
This new years I have been nowhere so exotic, as I work through my Geography undergrad. The past ten years have brought a lot of changes. I still live in Victoria, although I have lived in ten different houses over as many years.
I am excited for the new year. The world is looking brighter now, with the finishing of the bike master plan coming this spring, another school term towards my degree and more. I will refrain from making any predictions, but I will say that I agree with the Oak Bay News editorial, especially the last line:
Will our so-called “green” municipality take steps to increase the number of designated lanes for cyclists in 2010?
Here’s to a new year!
While many transit organizations are in the middle of financial meltdowns, including the MTA in New York, BC Transit is set to buck the trend and expand bus service here in region (PDF) for the second time in less than six months. This fall brought (PDF) the new 12 and 13 routes out of UVic, some changes in service and more hours, while this January will bring two new routes, late night buses and the balance of the just over 40k more service hours.
The first of the new routes is the cross town 10 route, running from the Jubilee Hospital to Esquimalt Dockyard along Bay St. and Esquimalt Road. This hasn’t been without controversy, as residents along Bay St. expressed concernd about the narrowness of Bay St. and “buses backing up traffic”.
Joining the 10 is a new express route from Downtown to UVic. Route 15, nee the Dogwood Line, will shave 3 minutes off the current fastest route to UVic, the 14, with limited stops along the way. One of the challenges of running new buses to UVic is the lack of space in the current exchange, built in 1995, well before UVic’s student population hit nearly 20k, of which nearly 30% of which use the bus. To this end, the old bus exchange will soon become a new bus exchange, although it currently isn’t clear if the 15 will be using that space.
Also coming are late night buses (PDF), an oft-requested service for those of us who actually like to spend time downtown after the sun goes down. This service won’t be cheap, costing BC Transit about $7 for each of the nearly 17,000 estimated riders during the 3 month trial period. Earlier cost estimates (PDF) put each bus at ~$400/hr to run, vs between $60 and $93 usually. This is mostly due to the extra shifts needed in operating and maintaining the fleet. Amongst the future options for payment include a U-pass cost increase, given the expected ridership is mostly students.
Lastly and on the subject of fares, BCTransit has been looking for input on their fare increase plan, set to be implemented in April 2010. Currently they plan on removing the discount cash fare, addition of an off-peak pass and increasing nearly every other pass, ticket and fare. Full details in their press release (PDF). The date for feedback closed on the 15th of Dec and the transit commission will be voting on the plan on January 12th, 2010.
All in all, this is good news for transit riders, although maybe one of these days we might even get some rail transit here in the region, although I suspect it will be a long time before it comes to UVic.
Don’t believe everything you read. Despite a recent National Post story, taking transit is good for the environment. The story, which uses statistics in the damn lies mode, is very narrowly focused on the relative fuel efficiency of buses vs cars. It ignores the political realties of transit planning, something Jared at Human Transit does quite well. The story also gives voice to all the usual suspects with regards to anti-transit advocates, namely Randall O’Toole and Wendell Cox show up to spout their usual talking points.
One major mistake in the article is the failure to properly describe the link between transportation and land use. Walkable density begets transit use, sprawl begets automobile use. Both are self-reinforcing loops, something Todd Litman of the Victoria Transportation Policy Institute has effectively shown in a recent study (PDF).
The article mentions the Stockholm congestion pricing scheme, which was reimplemented after passing a public referendum in September 2006. A recent study, entitled Lessons from the Stockholm congestion charging trial, published in the Transport Policy journal, showed that nearly 25% of the work trips into the congestion zone switched to the “environmentally unfriendly” public transit. Given the only other change in work trips was departure time change, it is reasonable to assume that without public transit, the congestion charge would have had nearly zero effect on work trips, neatly defeating one of its purposes.
But beyond all that is the unavoidable fact that people in cars, no matter how efficient, will take up more road space than somebody in a bus. So even if buses are less efficient than the best cars, we are going to need more roads. Roads require a whole host of resources and are estimated to emit about 17 MtCO2e per 1000 sq feet (PDF). MtCO2e stands for Million tonnes of C02 equivalent. Lets see the anti-transit promoters talk away that inconvenient statistic.
Councillor Nils Jensen, a major sponsor of active transportation projects in Oak Bay, has decided to ask council to create a bicycle advisory committee for the municipality at this upcoming council meeting on Dec. 14th. Much like the City of Victoria’s Cycling Advisory Committee, the goal would be to help council with both policy and engineering direction for bicycling in the muncipality.
If passed, Oak Bay would join fellow municipalities Victoria, Saanich (combined bicycle and pedestrian), North Saanich & Colwood. Both View Royal and Esquimalt had cycling advisory committees as late as 2000, but I can find no record of them since then. The Highlands has a Trails Advisory Comm. (PDF), but no specific cycling one.
The meeting will be held at the Municipal Hall (2167 Oak Bay Avenue) at 7:30pm. It is important to show council how important many people support such a motion.