Downtown buildings need to be distinctive
If I were an architect, I would want to hear people say: “I’ll meet you outside the building with the fountain, or the vertical eco wall, or the mural, or the statue, or the stunning entrance way visible from the street, or the cornice” … or anything iconic at all, but we can’t say any of this about the featureless highrises springing up in downtown Victoria.
Could city hall not be persuaded to require developers to contribute, say, one per cent of their costs to a defining feature on their developments?
How sad is it that downtown Victoria is becoming so featureless, with people packed into boring boxes as if they were just another cornflake — although at least cornflake boxes have an attractive exterior.
Nicola Ferdinando
Victoria
Narrow two-way bike paths are dangerous
My wife and I cycled downtown to the Pride Parade to try the new bike lanes for the first time.
The two-way bike lanes with curbs are a disaster. The lanes are way too narrow. We could only go as fast as the slowest rider.
In our case it was a slow-moving family with children. They stopped for a minor emergency. This brought the entire lane of bike traffic to a stop.
If you try to pass slower riders you risk a head-on collision with bikes racing from the other direction. Or maybe that speeding unicycle. Do they even have brakes?
The curbs prevents cyclists from being able to swerve out of the way in emergencies.
Yet that didn’t stop cargo bikes loaded with toddlers from trying to pass with mere inches to spare.
On Wharf Street, a pedestrian abruptly took to the bike lane to use it as a sidewalk. With no place to go around I hit the brakes hard again.
What’s the protocol for making left turns? With the curb, it’s not possible to exit the path and get into the proper turn lane.
At crosswalks, it was impossible to know if people were simply milling about, or intending to cross. As a result, most cyclists slowed slightly, but didn’t stop. A protocol with signage is needed, otherwise cyclist-pedestrian collisions are inevitable.
In the future I’ll stick to the roads. Narrow two-way bike paths with curbs are accidents waiting to happen.
Mike Laplante
Saanich
Infill development will not bring huge benefits
A recent contributor argued that upzoning and infill contribute to more affordable housing.
On the contrary, nowhere in the quoted UCLA study do the authors mention that building new market rate housing “significantly” reduced nearby housing and rents.
In fact, they state that “the supply effects are not large.”
How not large? Overall, rents surrounding market rate development were found to stay flat, or decreased as much as seven per cent. In Victoria, where the average one-bed apartment is often quoted near $2,000 per month, seven per cent is a drop in the bucket of real affordability.
The UCLA authors further caution “[these findings] should not be interpreted as an endorsement of market-rate developments regardless of the project or neighborhood context.”
Some of these studies also discount the idea that building more market rate housing will only attract new residents from elsewhere because most moves are within region, not across regions.
Many of us have an intuitive sense that Greater Victoria is a particularly desirable place to live. Moreover, B.C.’s population is growing at its highest rate since 1996, with 150,783 new residents last year from international migration.
Many will surely make it to Greater Victoria, inevitably contributing to pressure on housing supply and prices even with substantial infill.
Filtering, where families ‘move up’ to newer and more expensive housing would open up more affordable apartments — were Victoria city hall not so ready to let these buildings be torn down to build yet more denser, taller, and higher rent buildings.
Finally, homelessness is simply a red herring. Yes, increasing availability of affordable housing will surely reduce homelessness. But neither a new $550,000 condo, nor the nearby apartment that will rent for a seven per cent “discount” will do much for those homeless and at risk.
There are reasons to support targeted infill development, but let’s be realistic about what it will help, and what it won’t.
Shaun Cembella
Saanich
Help provide surgery for those in great need
I don’t want surgery, I need surgery. I’ve been waiting about two and a half years for spinal surgery. In the meantime, every day, every week every month, I lose a little more of myself.
I’m like a glacier disintegrating into the sea. This would happen anyway, but climate change and a lack of surgical resources, is speeding up my disintegration.
I’ve had a severe form of autoimmune arthritis more than 50 years and osteoarthritis in my spine for more than 30 years. I worked for 30 years only because I could get knees and shoulders replaced and had numerous surgeries on my hands and feet.
I’m familiar with waiting for surgery.
This time the surgical wait time is harming me. I know from experience that if you wait too long for a surgery, your outcome will be poorer.
My surgeon told me two years ago he had the time to do the surgery but he cannot get enough time in a surgical suite and the resources and staffing he needs to perform my complex surgery.
Apparently, if my spinal problems were more straightforward and less complex, I might already have had the surgery.
Health Minister Adrian Dix, please help those of us who are high priority for neurosurgery.
Diane Guthrie
Victoria
Prime minister’s priority was not pancakes
While more than 7,000 workers are in limbo and billions of trade dollars are in jeopardy, our prime minister was flipping pancakes in Calgary. Go figure.
Rodger Darbey
Victoria
Don’t worry the petty, let’s call Taylor Swift
Here in B.C. we have the overpaid longshoremen on strike destroying our economy, one million people without doctors, gas and food prices destroying families, and a housing market and homelessness that have never been seen before.
What does Prime Minister Justin Trudeau think? He’s worried that Taylor Swift might not perform in Canada.
Dennis Bourne
Victoria
Check the math, Saanich, go for balance
Saanich claims it has achieved a “balance” between the people who want dogs on leash and those who don’t. But in PKOLS that is manifestly untrue, and if this were a math exam, Saanich council would fail.
Of 21 kilometres of trails, only 1.5 are allocated for off-leash, that’s seven per cent of the total.
Surveys show that 73 per cent of people using the park own dogs. Of the remaining 27 per cent there are many who couldn’t care less if dogs are off-leash, and many of them are delighted to interact with dogs.
Do the math. It’s not balanced; it’s demonstrably biased and unfair. PKOLS is a large park and there is room for everyone.
Council has created anger and divisiveness in the community when it should be providing even-handedness and good governance. A fair and reasonable compromise is achievable.
About 70 per cent of trails in the park should be off-leash, and about 30 per cent on-leash, with a variety of terrains in each category.
Go back to the drawing board.
Liane Ogrady
Victoria
Island cannot continue to keep adding people
Re: “Endangered species are disappearing on our watch, and saving them is within our reach,” July 10, and “Vancouver Island has plenty of room for more people,” commentary, June 19.
I hope the author of the June 19 piece, has kept reading the Times Colonist so that he now knows that, no, the Island can’t handle more people, at least not if they live the way we do now.
Besides the well-known climate change crisis, we are also in a biodiversity crisis. By pulling out the threads of individual species here and habitats there, we will eventually unravel the tapestry of life on Earth – potentially including human life.
To preserve biodiversity, we need to halt our destruction of wild areas. That means stopping the expansion of urban areas and protecting all remaining natural places. It means limiting development to already built-up areas.
By the way, this is the compromise position. As some sources report, humans are using at least 50 per cent more resources than is sustainable.
In other words, our best estimates show that we should stop doing much of what we do today and even start returning already developed areas to nature. Hitting “pause” is the least we can do.
And on the Island, with so much nature still left to enjoy, why destroy paradise so that more people can live in it?
Desmond Fisher
formerly of Cobble Hill
Gatineau, Que.
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