The New Bus Rapid Transit Plan in Victoria
It’s funny when I wrote the title for this article, I was just being boring and factual. What occurred to me right after that was that this could have been written at almost any point in the last few decades and it would have been a believably boring title. That’s because the plans for a rapid transit system of some sort have been talked about for at least the entire time I have lived here, and I would bet, since the day after the last trolley rode down tracks in Victoria.
I am going to look at the latest 2021 iteration of rapid transit that is being proposed, but before we do that, I thought that I should discuss a few (because I am sure to over look some) of the ideas from the last three decades.
Much like creating plans for Ship Point, we have become experts in laying out elaborate transit networks, while not actually building any of them. Some of the key ones that I have been interested in are the streetcar plan for Victoria on the early 1990’s; the bus rapid transit plan of 2006; the light rapid transit plan of 2011 and finally our current BRT plan. I am sure that this list leaves out quite a few even in the last three decades but they are the ones that I can remember clearly.
Street Car Plan (1992)
So this is going back to the early 1990s and as such is in that odd space of both being too old to have much information online and at the same time still too young to be in the free Times Colonist archives. Still I remember the plan clearly. It was a simple plan and I really not rapid transit per se but there were thoughts of having it be the first part of growing a system once it was built. The central idea was to take advantage of the growing cruise ship passengers and at the same time provide a useful transit service. The initial line would run from Chinatown to Ogden Point. The idea was to use at the time the new Bombardier Flexity streetcars. I remember seeing the city promotional materials that showed a train travelling southbound on Government that was meant to show just what a change it would have been. I am fairly certain that what did this plan in, more than anything else, was that it was a city plan and was not done in conjunction with BC Transit.
The Douglas Street Busway (2006)
I still hold a lot of fondness for this proposal. It was light bus rapid transit with a real emphasis on the light. At the time it was only projected to cost about 20 million dollars which is obviously very cheap. The plan drew inspiration from a lot of the BRTs that had been created around the world in the 1990’s and early 2000s. Essentially, the plan focused on Douglas Street from Downtown to Uptown. The plan was to provide the busses a dedicated centre median right-of way from Uptown to Pembroke Street. There were a number of stations in the middle of the road at the logical locations like Humber Green and Mayfair. What I loved about this plan was how easy it would have been to build and at some future point convert the right-of-way to LRT when the time and ridership was right. Sadly, the cult of the car won out on this one. A dedicated opposition grew, led by the owner of the now defunct Pantry Restaurant on Douglas Street. Given that the route went down the middle, it meant that people would no longer be able to turn left off Douglas into all the commercial parking lots. The opposition won and the plan died. I am certain that if we had built this one, we would already be talking about changing the line over to rail… This was a BC Transit proposal but they seem to have made any mention of it disappear from their website.
The Victoria Regional Rapid Transit Project (2011)
That this plan was only ten years ago seems odd as it was such an important piece of recent Victoria history. The plan had links to the E&N, the Johnson Street Bridge, a mayoral re-election campaign and was a real joint project between BC Transit, City of Victoria and the CRD. Because it was recent and had such collaboration means that you can still read the plan online here.
If the 2006 plan was “transit light”, this plan was the complete opposite. The proposal here was to create a real rapid transit line between Victoria and Langford. The plan was so ambitious that I knew it was highly unlikely to actually happen. It was the creation of this plan that in some ways also led to the demise of the E&N train service and the loss of the refurbishment option for the Johnson Street Bridge. As had long been pointed out before this LRT concept, the E&N had the possibility to be a Langford to Victoria rail link and with the exception of rail from Store Street to Government Street (1 block), it already existed. The 2011 LRT plan showed that we didn’t need the E&N (and therefore the rail link on the Johnson Street Bridge) to have great rapid transit. The fate of the old bridge had been killed in the previous year in a by-election but rail didn’t disappear until after that point.
The plan itself was for LRT to run actually along the eastern side of Douglas out to Uptown and then to move to the centre median along the Trans-Canada. It had a similar amount of stations to the 2006 plan and had it been built, it would have been expensive and likely underperform on passenger counts for a few years, but certainly by now it would be a well used part of our city fabric.
Victoria Regional RapidBus
That brings us to the current plan. The latest plan, called RapidBus can be read here. It shares a lot with the 2011 plan from a layout perspective for the route to Langford and clearly identifies a plan for expansion to Sidney/Swartz Bay and UVic. The earlier plans always hinted at eastern expansion but never wanted to commit to it until the first portion had been completed. Overall I think the plan has some good aspects to it and some significant challenges.
For things that work in the plan, it has a clear layout and route. The plan follows the LRT plan from 2011 almost exactly for the route and has a similar list of stations (though not entirely…). I also think that the plan is simple enough that it should be able to be implemented in the relatively long three year timeline they have given themselves.
The problems are going to be tough to overcome though. There is still a long commute; there are interaction problems downtown and way too many stations. The estimate for the plan is to have the buses travel from Langford to Downtown in 30 minutes. Keep in mind that is just a 13.5 km distance. As the buses need to still interact with vehicle traffic in a lot of spots that is pretty slow for something called RapidBus. One small part of the problem is that there are simply too many stations. Just between the Legislature and Downtown there are 9 stations when there should be maybe 5. The other issue which will continue to cause the buses to travel slowly is the interactions. Through downtown and north to Saanich the bus lanes will continue to be shared with bikes which of course means that if a bus is behind a bike, it will move that fast. While I think we need to have quality bike lanes north / south through the midst of town, perhaps we need to improve the bike experience on Blanshard and Government so that we can leave Douglas just for high speed buses.
I remain ever hopeful for the implementation of rapid transit in Victoria, even with our current lackluster plan. So maybe it will finally come to fruition this time! I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the current plan or any of the old ones! Leave a comment below.
Also while I have you, please remember that if you are in Oaklands between September 26 and October 10, stop into Koffi at Haultain Corners and check out my photography show.
