While in Victoria last week I checked out progress on the city’s first on-road protected cycle lanes on Pandora Street. After public consultation last year, stakeholders approved this two-way, $2-million concept on the north side of the road from Cook Street in the west to Store Street/Johnston Street Bridge in the west – about 1.2 kilometres.
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2015 approved concept
After a public RFP process last year, the city commissioned Boulevard Transportation to deliver final designs, which are due this spring (Full disclosure: my transportation design team bid on this project and scored second. I’m 100 percent over it. Doing fine.).
The city ran a successful pilot project for this concept last year to test the idea out, both for operational logistics and public engagement. I’m a big fan of pilot projects; and am generally impressed with how the city got its ducks in a row, communicated its impact analyses, and delivered this initiative along a major arterial roadway with a loss of 75 on-street parking spaces. Commercial Drive cycle lane opponents take note: the world did not end and nobody was driven into penury.
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2015 pilot project – temporary lanes
At present, Boulevard and the city are working through the details; including what type of physical separation will exist. Two options are:
Planters
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Raised concrete curbs
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So what progress has been made? Designs are nearly complete. Construction is to start this summer. Ultimately, this stretch east of Blanshard Street will look something like this:
facing west toward Quadra Street
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And this:
Facing east toward Blanshard Street
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Council’s ‘sort of last-minute’ instructions that the cycle lane be “fully protected through intersections” is throwing a little kink in the designs and cost, but it’s nothing that can’t be overcome. As seen in downtown Vancouver, this means: 1) installing cycle signal heads and 2) replacing and redesigning all signal phases and signal heads to hold right and left turns when cyclists have the green.
It’s only money.
Planters are an option if and only if they could find a way to stop the waste water from the planters from coating the bike lane. During the Winter, this can cause problems with ice in the bike lanes when the temperature dips below freezing during the night. I have seen this happen a few times with the Dunsmuir bike lane.
This is really great! I remember staying in Oak Bay and cycling into downtown every day. It was scary in places and there’s a weird pinch point at Fort St. Victoria has some natural dispositions for cycling. Flat, dry climate, destinations close to each other.
I hope that they’re not going to paint the bike lane green along the length of it. The colour is to indicate a crossing, not to indicate the lane.
In my opinion if there has to be a choice between protected intersections or protected lanes between them my choice would be protected intersections. It costs more but that is where the conflicts can happen. And people when they drive just love the one at Cornwall and Burrard. Things are much more predictable, traffic flows smoothly when it’s their turn. They should be standard all over in my opinion.
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Good points. No, I doubt they’ll paint the lanes. I only showed it to accentuate the lanes. It was easy to do in powerpoint, but in reality that green stuff costs about $150m2 to lay down. Plus, there’d be no need in a protected area. It is more possible they’ll run paint through the intersections, though.
speaking of the green paint though … until it suggests legal protection in the manner in which a crosswalk does, it isn’t really all that useful, in my opinion.
Maybe not in a legal sense but it does indicate to someone that a certain intersection is different than others and that they can expect people to be cycling there. (Of course they should be expecting that everywhere but in these places it’s more likely.)
It also guides the people cycling to where they can go. Some intersections don’t line up precisely so there’s some diagonal going on. Things like this help you to see that.
“speaking of the green paint though … it isn’t really all that useful, in my opinion.”
I disagree. When I’m driving I find that the green paint stands out and reminds me to look around for bicycles. If there were green paint at every intersection in the city then it would just become part of the background and be less effective, but right now it seems to me to be working well.
The green colour is, I believe, a heat-applied material. It seems to be standing up quite well to all kinds of traffic. I agree with Sean, it should be used for intersections with bike crossings due mainly to its visibility. It is becoming a standard in several cities.
Victoria and its new mayor and council are to be congratulated for taking the decision early on in their term to develop a number of corridors of protected bike lanes before the end of the term: eight if I recall correctly, significant for a municipality of less than 20 sq km (less than 1/5th the area of Vancouver). Given that fewer than 25% of the population of Greater Victoria resides in the City, it will be important that these cycling corridors be extended into the suburbs. Their standard is fortunately becoming the norm even in North America.
The larger project is called Biketoria, which proposes 8 AAA bikeways in a minimum grid by 2018. This is highly ambitious, and as you can imagine, is already getting push back. But given this is the first time that serious money ha been put into biking in the city, it is quite exciting.