Musings on Oak Bay from a Green perspective
Victoria, at least the tourist parts, in a single image. We have the Legislature Buildings, Queen Victoria, the pride flag, palm trees, a totem pole, tourists, the harbour, and a bagpiper. All I am missing is a Kabuki Kab, a horse-drawn carriage, and the Empress.
The great disappearing bike lane on Foul Bay Rd.
It seems those bike lane improvements I mentioned the other day might not be as slow as coming as I had feared. At the time council hesitated, asking for more information about traffic counts and resident feelings. The counting of cars has begun with the engineering department deploying a vehicle counter just south of Middowne and notifying the residents has apparently already happened, as I received in my inbox this notice (PDF) asking for their opinion.
For a quick refresher, the proposed works are:
The deadline for getting information back to council is fairly short: you need to send in your comments by 4pm on Thursday, July 8th or by attending the meeting on the 12th of July at 7:30 pm. It will be held in the usual place at the Municipal Hall on at 2167 Oak Bay Ave. Thanks to Lesley Ewing for forwarding this on to me. Hope to see you all there.
Canada Day fireworks
A few days late, but I thought I would share a little bit of my evening on Canada Day. After my little walkabout to the various block parties, I braved the bus to head down to my brother’s for a bit of beer, pizza, and fireworks. While on the trip down I had a few deeply unpleasant experiences with a drunk girl who was extremely aggressive to both me and the poor lady sitting next to me. This made me understand why BC Transit chooses to ban alcohol on the buses on Canada Day, but I am very hesitant to support such a position given I believe it to be unconstitutional.
Interestingly, while the bus was emptied near downtown for a search for alcohol, I ran into Manuel Achadinha, whose day job is CEO of BC Transit. He was out being a transit supervisor for the day on the “worst night of the year” and ,according to another supervisor I spoke to just before midnight, he was still out there. Kudos to him for seeing and helping with what the front line staff (drivers and supervisors) have to deal with.
I got a few pictures of the fireworks and the masses of people (Government St. in front of the Empress was completely packed until about 11pm), so enjoy:
(These can also be seen in my flickr set)
Yesterday I went down to the Pride Parade but instead of merely watching, this year I decided to march with Heterosexuals for Same Sex Equality (HSSE). It was a great deal of fun, mostly thanks to Shona Crisp who did all the organizing and networking to get us all out. There are a great deal of other pictures out there on the internet covering the rest of the great parade, such as the Paparazzi float we were a few behind (that was the big truck with the bubble machine, DJ, and people dancing in front with large feather ensembles), so I figured I would put up the HSSE pictures only. Enjoy:
(You can also see them in the flickr set)
It may sound like the beginning to a great story, but it is really the intro to a series of pictures I took the last Saturday in June when I visited Saltpring Island with two friends. We hit the Saltspring Market, ArtCraft, and a pair of beaches (including one in Ruckle Park. All in all, a great day had by all. Pictures below and in my Flickr set.
I failed to notice this earlier this year, but as of March 2010, the Mayor of Langford, Stew Young, has got himself a blog. It is mostly puff pieces and is likely written by the City of Langford’s communications/pr department. This is marked difference to John Luton’s and Cairine Green’s blogs, which are both written by them. Another key difference: John and Cairine actually update their blogs. As of this writing, John updated his today, talking about 2-laning the Johnson St. bridge, and Cairine with an update on June 21st about a recent council meeting.
Yesterday I went for a bit of a walk around Oak Bay to 5 different block parties: St. Patrick, Byron St, Pacific St, the lane behind Dalhousie St, and Oliver St. While out for my jaunt I took a few pictures (see them all in my Flickr set too):
The guerrilla sharrows that have appeared on Lansdowne just south of Camosun College have made the news. A few days ago, the press release from OURS hit my inbox. I have been ruminating on what to do with it since then. I really don’t support what they are doing and I don’t really want to support their cause by publicizing what they are doing. But given the Times Colonist has now covered them, my little blog is small potatoes.
I do have one question however: Why are they attacking the City of Victoria when they painted the sharrows in Saanich? It isn’t like Saanich doesn’t also have a bicycle network plan (PDF, from the Saanich Official Community Plan site). That section of Lansdowne is even on it.
The E & N Rail Trail, boldly promised to be finished by “the 2010 Olympics” just a few years ago by the CRD (PDF), is now finally taking shape in Langford. I thought I would bike out there and see how it measured up.
For starters, this little section of the trail is tiny. Much like the Bowker Creek Greenway in Browning Park I talked about, network effects mean that both trails will get few users until such time as more of it is completed.
E & N Rail Trail Map. Map data: OpenStreetMap/OpenCycleMap
Starting for the westernmost side on Atkins Road, the trail starts with a very old pedestrian bridge over the trail, which was created for the students of Savory Elementary School. On the other side of the bridge you are dumped into the school yard about 50m from the actual start to the trail.
]The old pedestrian bridge
Mural, with parking to the right
The trail itself is straight and fairly flat, although immediately the potential for conflicts with the adjacent parking lots became apparent. Why the CRD/City of Langford didn’t choose to at least bollard off this I don’t know. As it is, it is far too easy to drive onto not only this section of trail but also one other section west of Phipps Road.
Murals, with parking to the right
After crossing Veteran’s Memorial Parkway at Goldstream you wonder where the trail went. I really hope this is a temporary thing (there were construction signs everywhere along the trail stating it wasn’t open yet) because you can see just how bad it is.
East of Veteran's Memorial Parkway, the connection to the trail is sadly lacking.
At the other end of this section, the section between the sidewalk and the trail is likewise unfinished. But that isn’t the worse part about the Peatt Road crossing. For some unknown reason, rather than just crossing in parallel with the rail line, you are forced to travel south to the intersection, cross Peatt there, then along the sidewalk, cross back over rail line (as of yet unfinished) and to the trail. Utterly ridiculous.
The Peatt Road crossing
The other end of the trail (and current westernmost end) just dumps you out onto the sidewalk. No indication where you could go next for another trail, etc. I realize that the trail’s costs ballooned, but still. A simple sign directing you back to the Galloping Goose would have been nice. At least it has a connection to the road.
Westernmost end of the trail
And thus we finish this section of the E&N Rail Trail. It is a great start but there are a few head-scratching decisions here and there. Hopefully these can be fixed but the it is better to do it right. Let’s hope the CRD and their member municipalities open up the design phase a bit earlier so that these mistakes can be caught and corrected before they are concrete (literally). To see larger versions of these pictures (and a few others) see my flickr set.
Sometimes you have to look at the bigger picture to see the absurdity of it all. The Times Colonist has a pair of stories today, both talking about long running issues that are plaguing our region. The first covers the loss of driver’s licenses by and how the choices left suck. Then we have an article saying that the City of Victoria may not run rail across any new and/or refurbished Johnson St. Bridge. Right, so we need better transit options but we should reduce those options by not running rail transit across the bridge. And despite what some commenters are saying, it is not about 300m of track. Once there is something useful running on those tracks, there will be pressure to extend the tracks, possibly to link into any light rail coming down Douglas St. Bah.
