Douglas Street Transit Tunnel
Sometimes I like to dream up things for the city that I am fairly certain will never come to pass, but they pop into my head and Sidewalking Victoria is a convenient way to get them out into the world. One of my biggest issues I have with Victoria, or maybe Victorians rather, is a difficulty to dream big. It wasn’t always this way, at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries Victorians did dream big and thought that someday their city would rival many of the world’s greats. Due to that optimism and dreaming we have the Legislature, the Empress Hotel, Beacon Hill Park, the Inner Harbour Causeway and many of the great buildings of Old Town.
Somehow over the years with the shadow of Vancouver and Seattle stretching across the Salish Sea, Victorians now see themselves as undeserving of big dreams because those are only for big cities. It is this frame of mind that makes people uncomfortable with big city buildings downtown and likewise makes it hard for us to have big city solutions to problems like homelessness, traffic or housing affordability. The underlying message always seems to be to think of a solution; just not one that is too big or too long term. We are just a small town after all. I am a fervent supporter of amalgamation due to this reason alone, we use the individual size of our municipalities to pretend that we are not a city of 400k people (which we most definitely are).
Perhaps there is no better example of how Victoria punishes itself with services designed for a much smaller city than with our transit system. While we have had the occasional big city plan for LRT come to light, we haven’t even really implemented proper express buses on major routes (let alone BRT…) and many of our core area routes don’t have the frequency to attract the ridership they could. The one thing that does mean is that anything that we do will have a big impact.
In 1990 Seattle opened a 2.1 kilometre long transit tunnel under downtown from the Convention Center to the International District. Adjusted for inflation it would have cost about $900 million US today. The idea was that the tunnel would take a large amount of the buses off the street, hopefully improving traffic. The tunnel is actually now closing for bus traffic and becoming an entirely LRT tunnel.
So what if we had a transit tunnel under Douglas Street? If we had a one kilometre tunnel from Discovery Street to Courtney Street we could take a ton of buses off the road but I don’t think we should be doing it for improving the traffic. If we took the buses off the street we could easily reduce the amount of lanes on Douglas, adding AAA bike lanes and widening the sidewalks for pedestrians. Also buses would be able to move easily through what is the most congested part of their routes. While the urbanist in me can appreciate the loud traffic buzz that exists along Douglas, if you spend a bit of time along the sidewalk it can become a little overwhelming.
Car Free YYJ
If you compare the tiring traffic noise of Douglas on a regular day to Car Free YYJ in June, we can see the opposite ends of the spectrum. Having the opportunity to increase the pedestrian and bicycle space along the street while not slowing down transit is a great option. One of the reasons that this could work is the topography. If you look at this great topographic map here, you will see that downtown Victoria, at least that part that is beneath Douglas Street is significantly higher in elevation than either the northern or southern approaches. Where the transit would open at either end the elevation is about 18 metres while the majority of Douglas Street in-between sits at about 30 metres above sea level. With a height difference of 12 metres there would be easy clearance for a tunnel that could accommodate the double-deck buses which sit at about 5 metres in height. And since lowest point in any part of the tunnel could still be above 15 metres elevation, the construction would be climate change resilient.
Southern Entrance Slope
Northern Entrance Slope
So in my transit dream world the tunnel would have two stations; one by the Bay Centre and one near Centennial Square. The remaining length would be just travel tunnels for the buses. I think I would also have an exit tunnel onto Fort Street for all of those east bound buses. There would still have to be a few routes that would move along the ground level streets but that could be significantly reduced or they could possibly be moved to Blanshard Street. With the buses virtually gone, the car lanes could be reduced to two lanes with a commercial stopping lane. The remaining space could easily accommodate a generous bi-directional AAA bike lane and a widening of the eastern sidewalk. Of course there are a million other things you could do to this new public space, from public art to food stalls. The outcome of this unrealistic dream would be likely one of the most exciting and livable main streets in North America.
I would love to hear your thoughts or even better your crazy ideas for the city!