Douglas Street Unimagined
Two weeks ago the Victoria City Council finally had their first presentation on the plans for the redevelopment of Douglas Street to accommodate the bus rapid transit lines. I thought I should provide a few thoughts on what I think of the proposal. Though it may help to think about the current state first and how we got here.
For those few of you that don’t know, we now have a bus rapid transit service running from Victoria to Langford. You can read my article about it here. Part of what I say in that article is that the new service is anything but rapid, especially downtown. That post highlights that the buses are the same buses and the stops are still the same bus stops we already had, so there has been little change from the previous service. If you don’t know you are on the rapid bus, nothing about the trip is going to tell you that you are.
Douglas Street through downtown Victoria is likely the biggest pinch point in the whole transit network and for the last year we have been waiting on what the plan for Douglas Street look like. When I was on the City’s Active Transportation Advisory Committee, the fact that there was ongoing work on this was well-known. A year ago, I thought I should get my thoughts out ahead of the plan being finished and published what I hoped would be the direction we would go, a complete redesign of the space. You can read that article (and see my bad drawing skills) here.
I know I set myself up for disappointment all the time in this city, but I have to say, watching the May 16, 2024 Committee of the Whole meeting about this plan is one of the bigger ones in the last couple of years. You can watch the meeting here. The plan as proposed can be reviewed in two documents provided by staff here and here. As the planners pointed out numerous times, they were looking for Council’s support to move into the detailed design phase, so there may be a fair bit of changes with the final plan. Still, the basic choice was in my mind the wrong one. In the presentation, city staff briefly describe the six options that were considered, and goes into more detail on the one that was chosen, Option F. If you read my previous Douglas Street article, you will see that the closest option on the list was likely Option A, though perhaps with elements of Option E as well. Essentially a vehicle restricted option that had centre running bus lanes. From the very brief descriptions of the other options, it sounds as though Option A also limited commercial vehicles and possibly taxis, which my option did not. Essentially what staff presented to staff was Option F which states:
This design removes a general-purpose travel lane and introduces dedicated bus lanes while retaining some vehicle circulation. The approach provides for added pedestrian amenity space in select areas which can be used for transit amenities and public realm enhancements and eliminates existing bike lanes. Curb side loading, parking, and local bus stops out of the bus lane would be accommodated at key locations along the corridor.
This option, as is alluded to multiple times in the presentation was the easiest implement and could be built with the most minimal changes to the road. The argument being that if and when the city finally gets LRT, the whole street would need to be redesigned to accommodate it and so really why bother doing more than we have to now. There was no discussion of whether you could build the road to be “LRT ready” now by preparing the space, apart from laying rail, once. Nor was there mention of doing nothing now, and save the money for when the city is going to proceed with LRT. As you will see if you watch the portion of the meeting on the plan, Council seemed singularly focused on the fact that the proposed option would remove bike lanes and would require cyclists to share the space with buses through downtown. This simple fact seemed to create a tunnel-vision that crowded out further consideration as to whether the rest of the proposal had merit at all. There was one exception though. Councillor Thompson asked the best question of the presentation and got an answer that should have been dug into deeper by Council, but it wasn’t. I would encourage you to go and listen to the recording available on the City of Victoria website here. The specific point is at the 1 hour 47 minute mark.
Essentially what Councilor Thompson asks is this: With right-hand bus lanes as designed in the recommended option, you will have multiple activities still occurring in the bus lanes that will slow the buses down. There will be cars moving through the lane to make right-hand turns; cars pulling out of parking spots into the lane; cars stopped and reversing into a parking spot; delivery trucks doing all the same things; and bikes using the bus lanes. Given all of these interactions, how much of a difference in speed will be gained by all of this work. The City Staff answer this question very honestly saying that they have been trying to model the proposed option, but it is difficult to determine what times savings there might be. City Staff go on to say that the new layout of the rapid bus stops will make it easier for bus drivers as they will not need to pull over. Again I would encourage you to listen to this, as it comes down to the most important aspect of implementing rapid transit. Will it be faster? And staff are clear at this point that they do not know. Earlier in the presentation staff showed a graph (shared below) that they used to narrow down the options, while I can’t read the smaller text on it, I couldn’t see increased service speed as one of the criteria that staff were even looking at, if it is in there in the smaller text, it is clear that Option F did not win out due to this criteria, as staff say that they have not been able to model any time savings for buses.
Courtesy of City of Victoria - Original document available here
While I know that City Council has to review a significant amount of documents in a given week, and not all of the nuance of each question or answer is considered by the rest of Council during a meeting, it still seems as though this was a moment where someone should have asked for a pause, or at least have asked staff for some follow-up on this aspect before proceeding. If we are going to redesign Douglas Street now at considerable cost (whether that is City money or BC Transit money is not important) and then again when LRT finally comes to Victoria and in the meantime lose bike lanes on Douglas Street (and private vehicle capacity by 25%, though I am not really concerned about that), there should be a measurable benefit to service, but as staff said, they just don’t know, which should mean that the plan isn’t ready until they do know that.
There is still a chance that there will be some reconsideration before the full plan is drafted and construction started though. At this point with the exception of the most northern section, which really just requires some changes to signs and some road painting, we will be well into 2025 before anything gets put on a project list. I just hope that some reconsideration of the plan happens before then. That said, I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Is it worth making all of these changes to Douglas Street without gaining any speed improvements to the rapid bus service? Let me know in the comments!