Why did I bring motions:
- at Victoria City Council to have bus lanes on Douglas St.?
- at the CRD Board to have staff coordinate signals and other transportation improvement measures across municipal borders?
It’s about moving people efficiently, and making more room on our streets for vehicles that need it.
You may have seen images like these before:
They illustrate the obvious point that cars take up a lot of available space to move people.
And what don’t we have a lot of in cities?
Available space.
My car, which is pretty average, is about 4.5m long, and 2m wide, for a total of about 9 sq m (90 sq feet).
When driving at 40km/h, it needs 20m in front of it for safety, for a total of 24.5m in length (the car following needs the same), and the lane is likely at least 3m wide. So my car takes up about 74 sq m (740 sq feet) when travelling.
That’s a lot of valuable urban space I take up when I drive my car.
In case you missed it, there was a good article in the Globe and Mail explaining this geometry problem, and explaining why cities are creating bus lanes.
The article notes a common sight in cities – a bus full of passengers stuck behind a car with one person in it (or even a few cars). It points out that this causes a few different problems:
“We have an economic problem, because the whole point of cities is to allow us to reach opportunities – jobs, education, shopping, friends – that give value and meaning to our lives. Cities create prosperity by bringing people together, but only if they are easy to move around in. When one person’s car blocks a bus with 30 people, the total access to opportunity in the city goes down, and that makes the city’s economy measurably weaker.
We have an environmental problem, because the people on the bus are trying to travel in a way that is better for the environment and climate, but are being discouraged from doing so. Public transit is what allows us to build our cities more densely so that we sprawl across less precious land, but only if transit can operate reliably, so that people will want to use it.
But above all, we have a simple moral problem. We are not being fair in how we share the scarce space of the city street. Simply by driving a car in the city, you claim a large amount of this space for your private use, leaving not enough room for everyone else. A transit customer, cyclist or pedestrian, on the other hand, is trying to use only their fair share of space, yet the motorist is often obstructing them.”
Ouch. I need to drive less often.
The article then points out what City Councils need to do:
“Governing a city is an endless effort to help people share space more fairly, so that they don’t obstruct each other as much. This can only mean encouraging as many people as possible to travel in a way that uses less space: by walking, cycling or using public transit.”
Does this mean banning cars and forcing everyone to ride bikes?
Lol, no. (Not everyone can bike. Nor can everyone take transit, or drive.)
But it does mean reallocating the City’s shared public right of way more efficiently. We need to prioritize bus movement, especially on rapid bus routes, and frequent bus routes. And that’s what we will do. Because it doesn’t make any sense to have buses with dozens of people being blocked by a few people in cars.
Back to my earlier point about moving people efficiently, and making more room on our streets for vehicles that need it. 40% of commuters arriving in Victoria on Douglas are in 3% of the vehicles – buses. That’s efficiency.
If we make transit quicker and more reliable, we can entice more people to use it, and leave the car at home – making more space on our roads for those who need it: emergency responders, seniors, those with disabilities, tradespeople, delivery vehicles, etc.
First photo from Drangert, JO. Urban water and food security in this century and beyond: Resource-smart cities and residents. Ambio 50, 679–692 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-020-01373-1, citing figure adapted from Petersen and Wuppertal Institute (2004) Land use planning and urban transport. Module 2a of Sustainable Transport: A sourcebook for policy-makers in developing cities, rev. ed. Eschborn., as reproduced in H. Suzuki et al. (2010). Eco2 Cities. Ecological cities as economic cities. Washington DC: World Bank. Second photo from Australia’s Cycling Promotion Fund.