Not many students gave feedback
Arguably students have already given their approval after CARSA went through a referendum. Still, the total number of students was very low.

Nobody is talking about how CARSA or the parkade are going to be funded.
CARSA itself will come from a whole list of groups, but the parkade will be funded by the parking fees (which will generate money for UVic once the debt is paid off). This is why UVic isn’t talking about a new sorely-needed transit exchange: they aren’t paying for the parkade, so there is no money to shuffle from one project to another.

The story of funding CARSA is even more convoluted, involving a 2009 referendum to raise student fees that the province rejected as being too high and a 2011 attempt to have another referendum.

The parkade is busy damaging UVIC’s green cred
Several of the attendees were concerned about how this fit into UVic and the region’s larger transportation strategies. (full disclosure: one of those people was me).

CARSA will make biking/walking to UVic less attractive
CARSA will take a major (12% of total people) and narrow the pathway and redirect bicyclists onto McKenzie.

The kicker here is that UVic already did this once already, with the new Social Science and Math building. Bicyclists used to be able to cross the Ring Road from McGill, never actually having to bike on the Ring Road. The New SS&M building closed off that access, forcing bicyclists onto Ring Road, which is narrow and has a lot of traffic.

So for me the take away is this: does UVic actually care about sustainability? I used to think so. Now I am not so sure. The CARSA April Open Houses Summary (PDF) can be read here or on UVic’s CARSA site.

For the next stage for teh CARSA project at UVic, including its parkade:

Saturday, April 28
St. Aidan’s United Church
3703 St. Aidan’s St.
noon – 3 p.m.

Monday, April 30
Mount Doug Secondary School, multi-purpose room
3970 Gordon Head Rd.
5 – 8 p.m.

Tuesday, May 1
UVic Student Union Building, Michele Pujol room,
University of Victoria
11am – 2 p.m.

Wednesday, May 2
Cadboro Bay United Church
2625 Arbutus Rd.
4 – 7 p.m.

And for McKenzie road rebuild (from Gordon Head Road to Cadboro Bay Rd.), we have an open house today:

The District of Saanich Engineering Department will host a Public Information Session on Tuesday, April 24, 2012 between the hours of 4:00 and 7:30 p.m. at the University of Victoria Student Union Building, 3800 Finnerty Road, in the Michele Pujol Room (A121).

Connect.Communicate.Collaborate

COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION OF OAK BAY

2012 Annual General Meeting

Saturday, March 31. 2012

Bamboo Room, Monterey Recreation Centre

Refreshments 3:00 PM

Annual General Meeting 3:30

Welcome Councillor Pam Copley

Guest Speaker Dr. Trevor Hancock

“Creating a Healthy City: A Quarter Century of Experience”

Guests Welcome

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)

They arrived at the table with set of requirements that left no room to move. To contrast, I find it instructive to look at Oak Bay High School vs the Lodge. Both are very large projects, both driven by replacement of long-standing community amentities, both with some very specific needs that meant that there was little “wiggle room”. But this is where the path diverges. The High School team arrived with a blank page, a list of things they needed, and a willingness to talk about it. The reality with the high school is that the end result, with the school along Cranmore St, was probably going to be only result that worked, once the need for the regulation-sized soccer and rugby fields, transforming the old gym into the new theatre, and protecting Bowker Creek were all taken into consideration. But critically different, that result came about because the neighbours and the wider community got to hear why the high school plan ended up like it did.

Contrast that with the Lodge, where the developer arrived with a plan for a building on a site and then told the community it had a very short time to decide. So they were already forcing the neighbours to accept something they had no insight or decision-making on, but also they are not being given the time to see why the Lodge ended up as it did. Further, Baptist Housing apparently spent years up in Saanich talking, but only weeks in Oak Bay. The very easy question then came up: Why didn’t we get the same amount of time? Nobody seemed to be willing to answer that clearly. I think that Baptist Housing should have come out and apologized to the neighbours for that even if it wasn’t their fault (I actually think the delay can come down to VIHA, whom I don’t trust).

In the end, the combination of mostly-formed project, with a big building, an apparent disregard for consultation in one community but not another, and a very short time frame doomed this project. I suspect this project is now dead. Baptist Housing’s media statement says this (emphasis mine):

Baptist Housing is extremely disappointed with Oak Bay Council’s decision to vote against our variance application regarding the proposed redevelopment of Oak Bay Lodge. Baptist Housing will be meeting with our partners, Vancouver Island Health Authority and Capital Regional Hospital District, to determine what our options and next steps are. Baptist Housing remains committed to providing resident-centred complex care and licensed dementia housing for the seniors of Greater Victoria.

Not Oak Bay. Hmm. Further, their project website is now offline, which is usually a pretty telling statement.

Well, that was a fun ride while it lasted. Hopefully other developers will take the right lessons away from this “community engagement is critical”, not the wrong ones, “Oak Bay doesn’t want development”.

But as I said to Michelle Kirby a few days before the election, win or lose, the sun will rise Sunday morning (Today is a little cloudy, however) and we will go back to work doing the great things we both do in the community. I am very happy that she is now lucky enough to be able to do that work at the council table, and I will continue to do good works with the Community Association, the Community Initiatives Committee with active transportation, with Rotary, and others.

Yours,

Corey

Thanks again to ModernDemocracy.ca and Jason Ross for videoing these.

Specifically:

- VICTORIA: the laneways downtown
- VICTORIA: pedestrian bridges
- VICTORIA: recent public art additions

The Deadline is Dec 1ST, 2011, and photos can be added either to their Flickr group or sent by email.