August 2009 – Corey Burger

Come to Velo Victoria

This weekend in Centennial Square the Greater Victoria Cycling Coalition and a whole host of community partners, including Safer Cycling Oak Bay, are hosting Velo Victoria: a celebration of bike culture. The festivities start up at 7pm on Friday night, with movies and music. Saturday morning comes the kids bike decorating event followed by a bike parade for kids, a place to get your bike fixed up, consignment sales and more. Check out the schedule for full details.

Safer Cycling OB will be there to talk about our upcoming bike master plan, which we are still deep in data collection for. We are still looking for volunteers to help with counting, so if you are interested, drop us a line.

Spencer Road interchange useless

The dirty little secret about Spencer Road interchange being useless is now official. Interchange project manager Tim Stevens told Saanich News that,

There is no functional urgency at this point. The Spencer Road intersection at the highway is still working

Of course, the slow down in the housing market has nearly stopped development on Bear Mountain and Skirt Mountain developments, but even so, this giant white elephant is a lovely reminder of how useless new highway development really is. Now hopefully we can kill the McTavish Rd. interchange before if even starts construction.

The pending Jordan River disaster

The long struggle over the future of Jordan River is nearer to a conclusion after a court ruling in favour of Western Forest Products, the development company masquerading as a forestry company. Gordon O’Connor, forest campaigner with the Dogwood Initiative quite rightly says,

a step backwards for this area and everyone who cares about the future of our wild coast.a step backwards for this area and everyone who cares about the future of our wild coast.

WFP is already restarting plans for 319 subdivisions in the area, with public hearings in the fall. However, all is not lost, as the CRD can still reject the developments on an individual basis, but this is going to cost a lot of money, something that Geoff Young, CRD Chairman and City of Victoria Councillor, would love for the province to help pay for.

Beyond the loss and degradation of habitat through the building of new homes and roads, any new development is going to be low-density sprawl, furthering car use and unsustainable living. The best part is that because these developments cannot pay for themselves due to low tax base, we, the residents of the core municipalities are going to be subsidizing them while watching our roads, schools and sewers crumble.

Grab bag o’ Links

Treadmill by Josh Keyes

Saltspring Island Coffee Roastery runs into difficultly getting a new factory zoned (Times Colonist). I am deeply suspicious of statements by the proponents that appear to be ultimatums, such as Mickey McLeod who said that “the operation might move off-island”. However, given Saltspring Coffee’s track record, I am inclined to believe them. Hopefully a compromise can be reached.
Every single time the cops do a sweep of trucks on the road, they pull a lot off. Victoria Police found exactly the same a few days ago (Times Colonist). Until such time as they start cracking down on the companies that own these trucks, don’t expect the story to change. Also expect more people to die, like those poor farm workers in the Lower Mainland who died when their van rolled over (CBC) a few years back.
Milwaukee is considering putting residential/commercial on its library sites (Library Journal via Planetizen), something Toronto has been also been working on (Town Crier.ca). GVPL has also worked on non-traditional branch locations, with the recently-opened Goudy Branch in Langford, which is located in a strip mall (Times Colonist). Expect to see more of this, especially given how valuable the land that a lot of libraries sit on.
The TLC’s little internal feud will hopefully be over with a vote tonight, although I doubt it. Infighting of this size usually either takes a split in the organization or many years to heal.
Lastly, on a lighter note, a look at “Art for Urban Planners” (Planetizen), including the work of the almost-surreal Josh Keyes, whose work is shown on the right.

Saanich police jaywalk

Buried in a Times Colonist article about the shiny online stuff the Saanich police is doing, is this little gem:

One motorist was upset at having to brake for uniformed officers jaywalking across Vernon Avenue from the Saanich police headquarters to go for coffee.

As the photo shows, the police HQ is actually quite a pedestrian unfriendly place. There is no crosswalk on Vernon Ave north of Saanich Rd. But the real irony is that the police HQ is right on Lochside Trail, which runs directly under Vernon.

I am not blaming the cops for jaywalking, because they are merely trying to save time. It is another merely amusing and sad example of how not to build for people.