Million Dollar Traffic Islands
Once again the Northern Junk buildings have been relegated to a slow disintegration and despite what many will have you believe, this is because of opposition by some members of council, the Hallmark Society and the Downtown Residents Association. They have created a perfect trap in that they say the developer should develop them but not alter them and they can’t use any of the land outside of the property lines of the buildings to do so. I bring up the Northern Junk buildings again just to illustrate our love of traffic islands and the car is still so strong that we will happily throw away opportunities to preserve heritage and create homes to save it (under the guise of blaming the developer of course). If you want to know more about the Northern Junk Buildings, please read my posts here, here and here.
I have mentioned before the wonderful book Unbuilt Victoria, by Dorothy Mindenhall, this is where you can get a clear picture of the superhighway system that was to be built all over Victoria. We were luckily spared much of it but there are hints of it all over the place and the traffic islands on the east side of the Johnson Street Bridge are just one of the more notable example (This was not officially part of the same project as that one was never implemented but was inspired by it). This whole area was a complete set of heritage buildings that went right alongside the Northern Junk buildings that were bulldozed for the car. This is not the only place though, the other prominent place is the area just to the east of downtown where Fort and Pandora divide and divide again to create Johnson Street and Yates Street. These were the slip lanes and exits that were to make zipping into and out of downtown a breeze for commuters to the east while the freeways would alleviate the traffic to the north and west. What is clear now is that the city has changed and these traffic solutions are no longer necessary or required and certainly in a post-COVID world where we may be seeing far fewer commuters, they are possibly redundant. With that redundancy comes opportunity though!
Quick sketch of the opportunity at Pandora and Johnson
While I am certain that the area to the east of the Johnson street bridge does not have a return to the urban fabric in its future, other areas do. Let’s look at the massive potential that exists where Johnson, Pandora and Begbie come together. As I said before this was created with the idea of moving cars quickly and easily between downtown and Oak Bay. Apart from the fact that implementations like this are not safe because they increase vehicles speeds, in a city with a limited amount of space, high land prices and a housing shortage this simply does not make sense.
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Looking at the image above, it would seem that you could fit about 8 - 10 of those old houses on that space in yellow. That likely means you could build about 50 or 60 units of housing through apartments and townhouses. Maybe even add a commercial space or two to enhance the great start that has been made by Pigeon Hole. I know I said million dollar traffic islands, but in reality this land is worth likely far more than that and in its current form, it actually degrades the neighbourhood by encouraging increased vehicle speed. One of the best ways to slow down traffic is actually create a more dense built environment as that does not feel as conducive to speed. Okay let’s look at another one.
Cook and Maplewood
Please excuse my crude drawing, but I still think it gets the point across. Here for some reason it was felt that whether you were heading north on Cook or Maplewood in your car you should be able to sale through the this intersection as easily as possible. When you are actually standing here the space feels absolutely enormous. I am sure a nice well thought out townhouse project could go in here and it could really make this a nicer and slower space.
There are so many of these type of places around the city that you can’t enjoy because they are in the middle of the road. There is hope though. One of the worst offenders of terrible traffic islands, as it not only is it useless, but it is also on essentially a waterfront lot along Dallas Road, is being rectified.
As there was already some pipe work being done, the City of Victoria took advantage of Memorial Crescent being ripped up and is basically taking the space indicated above and turning it into some park space to add onto Ross Bay Cemetery. I have seen some preliminary plans through my work on the City’s Active Transportation Advisory Committee, but I can’t seem to find the plan on their site right now. Still this is taking something that has for years simply diverted a very low volume of cars and turning into something that will actually be used.
There are of course many many others to talk about. Near my house there is a cut out at the north west corner of Bay. There is the massive traffic island between the northbound and southbound lanes of Blanshard Street just south of Saanich Road. All these spaces just diverting traffic and rarely actually being used by people. This is a colossal waste of a valuable resource and the great thing is that they are all already owned by the public which means that they just need to be repurposed to either fund other projects through a sale or be turned over to a public use.
I would be interested to hear about some of the traffic islands that drive you crazy around Victoria.