Victoria council has opted to continue with an approved plan for a bikeway project on Richardson Street in a 6-3 vote that rejected a motion to delay for further consultation.
Under the plan, the physical road will remain mostly the same, with added on-street parking in some areas that will narrow the road, and five traffic diversions that will prevent through-traffic for motor vehicles. Cyclists, who are normally required to ride as close to the right as possible, will share the road with motorists, who can pass a cyclist by pulling around on the cyclist’s left, as they would on any local street.
Speed and traffic volumes on the 2.8-kilometre route that links downtown to the Fairfield-Gonzales neighbourhood, Rockland and Oak Bay will be reduced, as motor vehicles will need to turn off the street at five locations.
The turn-offs are intended to reduce volumes from the roughly 2,800 to 3,800 trips per day on Richardson Street to 500 to 1,000 trips per day. Emergency vehicles and transit buses will be able to travel the corridor freely.
The plan has generated opposition, with a flurry of letters to the editor, a petition and a social-media presence called Rethink Richardson lobbying for a revised plan. Concerns have been raised that diverting traffic from Richardson will increase driving time and snarl traffic on adjacent roads, but city staff say the five diversions — at Cook Street, Lotbiniere Avenue, St. Charles Street, Maddison Street and Foul Bay Road — are designed to avoid redirecting all traffic onto any one street.
Coun. Charlayne Thornton-Joe put forward a motion Thursday to delay the bikeway to allow for further consultation. Councillors Stephen Andrew and Geoff Young supported the defeated motion.
Thornton-Joe said council has received many emails and calls from people concerned about the plans and the level of consultation, and she wanted to give those groups an opportunity to have their voices heard.
“If Richardson then proceeded as planned, that’s the will, and if there were some changes that addressed some of the concerns, I would have been happy with that as well,” she said.
Mayor Lisa Helps said she voted against the motion because there has been sufficient consultation and many of the concerns raised recently had been brought forward by others. “Just because specific people weren’t involved in the engagement … their concerns were raised by their neighbours, by others who live in the area.”
The city received about 2,000 responses through an online survey, open houses, on-street information stations, four corridor tours, and meetings with neighbourhood associations.
Helps said she wanted to keep moving with the plans because she’s seen the success of other bike routes, and noted that she’s received many emails and been stopped on the street by people saying they’ve started biking because they feel safer.
“That’s why I voted to keep moving ahead with Richardson. It’s the people who don’t feel safe — the kids, the seniors who are starting to have that freedom of movement in the city without needing to get into a car,” she said.
Janice Williams, who lives in Fairfield and started a petition against the design that has just over 2,200 signatures, said she’s worried about a substantial increase in traffic on Fairfield Road, where there are two schools. “More cars on that road poses a risk to those students in those schools.”
She said consultation was inadequate and biased. The cycling community was aware of the engagement opportunities while she and others were not, she said.
Brian Kendrick, who lives near Richardson Street, said he found out about the engagement process in 2019 because he’s on a city mailing list, but when he went knocking on neighbours’ doors, few others were aware. Kendrick called the consultation inadequate, “as evidenced, by the number of people that I have talked to and others on Richardson I have talked to who have been completely blindsided.”
Sarah Webb, Victoria’s manager of transportation planning and development, said the city initially looked at bikeway plans for Fairfield Road, but Richardson Street was selected after community consultation made it clear residents wanted to prioritize on-street parking and frequent transit service.
The current design was also chosen after consultation indicated the neighbourhood did not support protected bike lanes or an advisory bike lane, similar to the redesigned Humboldt Street, Webb said. Protected bike lanes would have removed up to 300 on-street parking spaces, while advisory lanes were seen by the community as “too new or not widely adopted,” she said.
Fairfield Road has enough capacity to manage an increase in traffic from Richardson Street, Webb said.
“Even if every single person who was taking Richardson went on to Fairfield, we would still have lots of comfortable travel in terms of capacity on our network,” Webb said, noting city staff have measured vehicle speeds and traffic volumes on local roads near Richardson Street and will continue to monitor as changes are made.
The Richardson Street bikeway is part of the city’s plan to build a 32-kilometre cycling network suitable for people of all ages and abilities. By contrast, the city has more than 270 kilometres of roads for motor vehicles.
“So our goal is to put some extra energy and effort into some key corridors, but we’re always going to take road safety seriously, and that’s on every local street, it’s on our collector and arterial roads, and we’re going to make sure people have a way to get around safely and efficiently,” Webb said.
Corey Burger, policy and infrastructure chair of Capital Bike — formerly the Greater Victoria Cycling Coalition and the Greater Victoria Bike to Work Society — said he’s happy to see the bikeway move forward.
Burger said the area is one of the “bikiest” neighbourhoods in North America, with high rates of people cycling to work – about 15 to 20 per cent. “There’s already this huge pent-up appetite for biking in that area.”
A 2019 survey by Cities, Health & Active Transportation Research suggests more than a third of Victoria residents are interested in cycling but many are fearful of motor traffic and want connected bike routes. The survey received input from 1,000 respondents in Greater Victoria, with the majority living or working in Victoria.
About 40 to 60 per cent of traffic during peak periods on Richardson is a result of drivers choosing to use the street as a cut-through instead of adjacent collector and arterial roads, says a staff report that went to city council on July 2.
The design will redirect the majority of these through-trips to Fairfield Road, Richmond Road, Oak Bay Avenue and Fort Street. The staff report says the change may add four to seven minutes in travel time for someone driving from Oak Bay to downtown.
The plan includes on-street parking on both sides of the road in select areas, including about 65 additional parking spaces.
