Emergency Response and Street Design Initiative
Lead by the US Congress of New Urbanism(CNU), this report is a call to new urbanists and fire departments to talk more about traffic calming, especially street narrowing. Many emergency responders, including fire departments, oppose traffic calming because it is perceived to slow response time. Anecdotally, I know from speaking to residents along Hampshire Road that the Oak Bay Fire Department was instrumental in preventing traffic calming on that road, which is heavily trafficked, and has major speed issues. This report is part of CNU’s Emergency Response and Street Design Initiative. More information about the topic can be sen on the Strong Towns blog under “fire trucks“.
Emergency Response and Street Design Initiative

Transit Bus Life Cycle Cost and Year 2007 Emissions Estimation Final Report
This report, although 4 years old, looks at life-cycle costs of various types of buses, including compressed natural gas (almost unknown amongst Canadian transit agencies, but popular in the US), various types of diesel, and diesel hybrids. The biggest problem with the report is that it doesn’t account for the massive spike in fuel costs in 2007, which changes life-cycle costs considerably. Still, an interesting read.
Transit Bus Life Cycle Cost
(note: Although I downloaded the original report from Proterra, an electric bus manufacturer, the report is from the US Federal Transit Agency and the West Virginia University’s Center for Alternative Fuels, Engines & Emissions)

• Child care – How are you going to provide more spots?
• Secondary suites
• Traffic on the avenue – How are you going to deal with heavy traffic on the avenue and surrounding residential streets
• Young families – How do you attract more to Oak Bay
• Affordable housing – How to you provide more
• Town hall meetings – Why haven’t we had more?
• Oak bay lodge
• Smart meters, and health
• Deer issue – What is Oak Bay and the CRD doing about it?
• Community engagement young families – How do you engage young families in the community
• CRD accountability
• Sewage infrastructure
• P3′s water/sewage – Do you support keeping water and sewage infrastructure and operation public
• Composting -When is it coming to the rest of Oak Bay?

Thanks to everybody that came out. If you missed it, we have another opportunity next Tuesday, November 7th, 7-9pm, at Emmanuel Baptist Church. Thanks to the North Henderson Residents Association and the Community Association of Oak Bay for hosting these.

Bowker & Cadboro Bay Intersection. Photo credit: John Luton

The Oak Bay Police are claiming that the intersection of Bowker and Cadboro Bay Rd. isn’t a problem, because most people do the speed limit. Let me rephrase that, while the police watched, people didn’t speed. Colour me not shocked.

Having lived on Cadboro Bay Rd for just over three years, if most people are doing the speed limit, I would be truly surprised. I can definitely say that the width of the road encourages people to speed, as the picture to the right shows.

As I have mentioned before, pedestrian fatality percentage rises sharply between 30 and 60 km/hr. 5% to 85%, to be exact.

Looking north on Cadboro Bay Rd near Willows School. Photo credit: John Luton

So what can be done about it? A traffic circle is very needed, but before that there are three simple steps to keep speeds down:

1. Bulge out the sidewalk at the crossing near Willows School. This shortens the crossing and puts the pedestrian beyond the parked car and in the sight of any oncoming vehicles.
2. Bulge out the sidewalk at the two ends of the school zone. This narrows the roadway, slowing drivers down.
3. Add bike lanes. The road in front of my house is ~11m wide, which is enough for two 3m travel lanes, two 1.5 m bike lanes and one 2m parking lane on the west side of the road. The loss of parking on the east side is mitigated by the fact that few people park on the east side of the road most of the day anyway.

Will any of this happen? I hope so. It will take a lot of work to convince council that these steps are needed to keep kids and people of all ages safe. Maybe they should be reading this pedestrian injuries report from Safe Kids Canada.

• Packed in like sardines. It is a cliche and yet our buses (and public transit across the world) often feel more like a can of fish than a pleasant way to travel. To drum up political support for fixing the problem, a couple of Swiss decided to ride around dressed literally as sardines.
• After dropping off my grandmother at a ferry today I got caught by this accident on Cordova Bay Rd. Apparently the cause was an 82 year old man having a heart attack. Why are we still building cities that require 80+ year old people to drive?
• Speaking of my grandmother, two Saanich workers scared the crap out of her the other morning by walking into her back yard, looking for a storm drain cover. Turns out they were looking for the source of this oil leak into Douglas Creek, a salmon-bearing stream which runs through Mount Doug Park right behind her house.
• Arthur Erickson, Vancouver architect, has died. He had a bit a love for concrete and brutalist buildings but also did a lot of good work including a building in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.

There has also been a whole host of news about community planning today:

• Victoria is updating its community plan and is going out to non-traditional places like coffee shops to gather feedback.
• Saanich is considering how to deal with slipping voting numbers and general disengagement, watching how Victoria succeeds or fails in its efforts to reach out.
• Engaging citizens also is a two way street, something Vancouver might be discovering as they potentially embark on the open data bandwagon. The motion (PDF), put forward by Vision Vancouver’s Andrea Reimer, has been read into the record (YouTube video) and is up for debate tomorrow night. For a good idea what freeing the city’s data might allow, the Vancouver Freebase page might enlighten you.
• I saw in a notice in the Saanich News that Saanich is also looking at expanding its Local Bike Connector Routes and is seeking community input, as it requires an amendment to the Official Community Plan, but I cannot find the notice on the municipality’s website. I will keep digging but in the meantime, a quick look at the minutes of Saanich’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Mobility Advisory Committee shows just how quickly a well organized government can move.
• Esquimalt is the latest municipality to consider legalizing secondary suites.

And lastly,Transportation Alternatives, a bike and ped advocacy group in New York City that has gone from guerilla activism to advising the city’s Department of Transportation, has launched “Biking Rules: A new street code for NYC Bicyclists” campaign that is coupled with a slick website that also allows users to show safe biking routes they have found (via Streetsblog). The map is driven by data from OpenStreetMap. More of that free data empowering people and communities again.

Long shot of celebration station from the north

To celebrate the first day of this years Bike to Work Week, I made the trek up to the most northerly celebration station in south Sidney. Today’s big story ended up being the weather, with a little bit of rain, sun and just about everything in between.  We were right along the water near the Anacortes ferry terminal. This meant there was a very stiff breeze from the south, so much so that at several points the half dozen of us all had to hold down the tent to literally keep it from blowing away.

I ended up staying just over an hour and in that time we saw about a half dozen bicyclists. Amongst that group was a recumbent, who along with his partner, were on their way to Tijuana and a tandem heading south. I am not certain if it was the distance or the cold weather but every cyclist we had come was seriously equipped. Hopefully we get some better weather over the next few days to get those occasional riders out.

See you all tomorrow at the UVic fountain between 6:45 am and 8:45am.

Tent of the celebration station in Sidney

Tandem riders leaving celebration station

Pumping up the tires on a recumbent

But there are mistakes and there are mistakes. Getting underwear pulled at a party is not the same as getting behind the wheel of a deadly machine and driving away while drunk. And getting a simple parking ticket is not the same as willfully ignoring traffic laws merely because you are “busy working”. It seems that some of Liberal candidates haven’t yet learnt that (CBC). Even the Solicitor General, the person in charge of ICBC, is getting in on the act (CBC).

The sad reality is that because of Entitled Driver Syndrome or the so-called windshield perspective, these people won’t drop out of the race. Part of  the blame for this can be laid at the feet of the journalists. They are often just as guilty (Streetblog), if not more so. It is ultimately a societal flaw. We let people get away with things behind the wheel that they never would be able to do outside a car. We invent cute phrases like “road rage” or explain away blame by using terms like “accident” rather than crash. Maybe somebody that will change. I guess I can only keep hoping.

You can’t build your way out of congestion. There is even a fancy term for this: induced demand. Essentially, if you provide it, they will use it. Grocery stores understand this perfectly well. Why do you think all those candy bars in their shiny wrappers are right at kid height at the checkout aisle? This coin has two sides and if adding roads adds traffic, then removing them will reduce it. Sounds crazy, right? This isn’t just conjucture, both Seoul and San Francisco have both removed major roads and have reaped the rewards.

For more information, the Victoria Transportation Policy Institute‘s Todd Litman has a excellent summary report: Smart Transportation Investments: Reevaluating The Role Of Highway Expansion For Improving Urban Transportation (PDF).

Now what about closing connective roads to reduce congestion? This works on psycology of human driving behaviour: provide fewer choices and you will have an easier time choosing. Not only that, people instinctively choose the “fastest route”, which has predictable results. A little bit of mathmatical modelling and suddenly you can see what roads you need to keep, what ones can be cut and what roads should be cut. Sightline Daily has a good story and for the mathmatical modellers in the audience, the paper can read online: The Cost of Anarchy in Transportation Networks (PDF).

What does all this mean for Oak Bay? We need to be proactive. We need to figure out what streets are actually critical for traffic flow and which we can sever without causing major issues. All this would allow us to have the seeming paradox of safer streets with increased traffic flow and making Oak Bay a better place to live.