This is part of a series of posts on where we should be building more homes.
The first post – an overview of building in the right places – is here. The second one, focussing on transit-oriented development (TOD), is here. This post focusses on building near protected bike-and-roll routes.
Of course, we should be building homes in many places. But where do we build extra homes?
As I mentioned in the TOD post, City staff have come up with some very helpful slides as part of their Official Community Plan Update engagement. Here is the slide showing the distances to the City’s existing and future protected bike-and-roll network, with 200m, 300m and 400m distances shaded.
As with the City’s TOD slide, this one includes both the existing network (solid) and future additions (dotted), based on Victoria’s Official Community Plan, map 8.
How important is this, compared to transit?
Is housing near protected bike-and-roll routes important, compared to housing near transit?
They’re both important.
At the regional level, in 2022, bike and micromobility trips were 79,000 per day, compared to transit at 61,000 per day. (CRD Origin Destination Travel Survey p.xi)
Focusing on Victoria, the number of daily trips either in or out of the city is about 14,000 for transit and 12,000 for bike and micromobility, and within the city it’s about 10,000 for transit and 22,000 for bike and micromobility.
How did the pandemic affect those numbers? Overall, regional trips in 2022 were down about 10 percent from 2017 levels, and down across all modes except walking. Within the City, all modes were down except cycling.
So to sum up, the numbers for transit trips and cycling/micromobility trips are on the same order of magnitude regionally and within the City. Both are important.
What radius around protected routes?
How far will people ride in order to reach a protected route? Will they ride 200m? Will they ride 300m or 400m? It depends, of course. There are many factors, for example:
- the quality of the protected route (e.g. well-protected, clean, efficient rather than meandering)
- the quality of the streets that have to be travelled in order to get to the protected route (e.g. risks, perceived risks)
- the individual (experienced cyclists may be willing to travel far on streets to get to the protected route, while the majority may not – see figure below)
From City of Victoria, “Go Victoria – Sustainable Mobility Strategy”
We want the network to be attractive to the majority – including potential new cyclists – not just experienced (“avid”) cyclists. And we have bicycle counts indicating that Victoria’s protected routes are attracting more users.
When it comes to building homes, we need more homes close to the routes in order for new users to feel safe getting to the routes – especially in areas where street conditions are not great for reaching the protected routes.
This doesn’t mean putting all new development right on major streets that also happen to have protected routes (like Pandora and Fort, for instance). Major streets tend to have higher levels of air pollution; homes can go on nearby side streets.
Conclusions
Enabling more homes in areas near protected bike-and-roll routes can help residents with affordability (car ownership is $10,000 per year, or $800 per month). It also can help reduce overall GHG emissions from transportation. Of course not everyone can be car-free, or wants to be. However, 25% percent of Victoria households are already car free – up from 20% five years ago. For those worried about needing a car for various trips, Victoria also has two car-share networks, taxis, ride hailing, and rentals.
As noted earlier, this is just one part of building in the right places, and the proximity to transit stops and walkable destinations will also be factors in where additional homes are built.