The City of Victoria will look into creating a safe crossing for pedestrians and cyclists at Kings Road and Douglas Street, addressing a gap in the city’s cycling and walking network.
There’s currently no crosswalk or lights at the intersection, although there are lights and a crosswalk where Douglas meets Bay Street to the south and Hillside Avenue to the north.
Councillors voted unanimously last week to approve the creation of a safe crossing in the location, with details and design to be determined by staff. The motion by Coun. Ben Isitt directs staff to report back during the 2023 financial planning process on the implications of proceeding with design of the crossing.
Douglas is one of the busiest roads in the city with six lanes of traffic, and foot and bike traffic is likely to grow with the redevelopment of the former Times Colonist building into commercial and residential space, Isitt said.
Crossing Douglas at Kings Road is like playing a game of “Frogger,” he said, referring to a game that involves directing a frog to cross a busy road without getting hit by bouncing between lanes and moving forward and backward to avoid cars.
“Having a safe pedestrian crossing there without having to go up to the quite complicated intersection at Hillside and quite inhospitable intersection at Bay, from a pedestrian standpoint — that’s a major objective of this proposal,” Isitt said.
Isitt said he wanted council to provide clear direction to staff that the intersection is a priority, having seen that it took a push by council for a pedestrian and cyclist crossing nearby at Kings and Blanshard Street to move that project ahead.
“It’s a major infrastructure project. So in some ways, it’s easier to just keep kicking the ball down the field and not addressing it. And so the motivation behind the motion was to address it, and provide clear direction on the city’s intent to move forward,” Isitt said.
Amanda Macdonald, chair of pedestrian advocacy group Walk On Victoria, said the stretch of Douglas around Kings Road has a lack of crossings, and there are a lot of people who use the road. “It’s one of the worst areas, probably, adjacent to downtown Victoria for pedestrians,” she said.
Sarah Webb, the city’s manager of transportation planning and development, said it’s great to see council’s support for a crossing in the location. It was already part of future city plans, and the motion by council will mean it’s brought forward as part of the 2023 financial planning process.
The intersection is part of an important connection between two stretches of the city’s cycling network expected to open this spring, although Webb said it’s too early to say what the connection might look like. Work started last September on Government Street from Pandora Avenue to Hillside Avenue, where protected bike lanes are going in on both sides of the road. The project also includes replacement of an aging water main, road paving and new traffic signals.
An east-west corridor on Kings Road and Haultain Street, running from Blanshard Street to Richmond Avenue, with a focus on traffic calming through speed humps, is also expected to open in the spring. A crossing at Douglas will build on improvements at Blanshard and Kings, where a new crossing has been well used, she said.
“We heard loud and clear right away from the people living in that neighborhood the importance and value of having that crossing installed,” Webb said.
The light is co-ordinated with lights at the intersection of Blanshard and Bay to avoid impacts to drivers, so they don’t hit both lights when red, she said.
