Light Bulbs and Protected Bike Lanes

 

A picture of a GU24 LED light bulb in it's package.

Setting the Stage

The light in our closet burned out the other day. My wife, Irene, and I live at Dockside Green in the City of Victoria, British Columbia. Dockside was designed as an environmentally conscious development in the mid 2000's. For more information on what Dockside aspired to be, see (Benfield, 2011). For the purposes of this post, though, all that matters is that Dockside is full of cutting edge 2007 vintage technology, and that includes fluorescent light bulbs with GU24 lamp fittings.

GU24 lamp fittings use a bayonet mount and were designed for energy efficient bulbs. In the mid-2000's they were the future, and were required for California Energy Code and US ENERGY STAR compliance. That requirement was dropped in 2017.

Why does that matter? It matters because when Irene said "Jim, the light in our closet is burned out" I got the ladder, accessed the fixture, removed the bulb, and exclaimed "Oh! A GU24 bulb! I'll run out and get an LED replacement." Conveniently, I live a six minute walk from a good hardware store. Inconveniently, they don't stock any GU24 light bulbs, much less the rather specific one I wanted.

Save-On foods didn't have any. Best Buy didn't have any. London Drugs had one, but it was too dim and "bright white". Home Depot had them, but only in a four pack. But I struck gold with Lowes! My next option would have been to order one online, but I felt silly shipping one generic light bulb.

So… off to Lowes Home Improvement!

Preparations

When we moved to Victoria we left our car behind. It made no sense to ship it, and we suspected we wouldn't need it here. Since the move, nothing has happened to make us want to own a car, so we've been living "car-less" (Bruntlett, 2018). We like living this way, and one difference is that we think a little more about how we get places.

My local Lowes is at the Tillicum Centre. The Tillicum Centre is a perfectly nice suburban shopping centre. It's auto-oriented, has big-box stores, and is located off two stroads (StrongTowns, 2018). Here's what the Tillicum Centre's home page says:

Located at the high-traffic intersection of Burnside and Tillicum Roads in Victoria BC, Tillicum Centre is a 476,000 sf enclosed regional shopping centre anchored by Lowe’s, Save-On-Foods, London Drugs, Cineplex, Winners and many more. Tillicum Centre sits in the growing Burnside neighbourhood and benefits from its central location, just 10 minutes from downtown Victoria, University of Victoria, Camosun College and the Westshore communities, and is located just one block from Highway 1, providing the centre with exceptional access and exposure. Tillicum is also located adjacent to G.R. Pearkes Recreation Centre and is bordered by beautiful Cuthbert Holmes Park, both serving as excellent amenities and further traffic generators.

That said, according to Google Maps my transportation options are:
  1. Walk. 45 minutes. Not for a stupid light bulb.
  2. Bike. 12-16 minutes. No problem.
  3. Bus. Around 25 minutes and $5.00. A bit long.
  4. Modo Car Share. 9 minutes and $4.40. Sure.
For me, and I think for a lot of people, anything under fifteen or twenty minutes is a short trip. I can and do go farther but I'll think about it first. So I'm not going to walk or take transit to Tillicum Centre unless there's a really good reason. That leaves biking or the car share. They're both really easy to access. Of the two, the car share costs $4.40 but, given how often Irene and I eat out, it would be hypocritical to argue that mattered. On the other hand, riding my bike lets me stretch my legs and feel the breeze, so it's my usual choice unless the weather is miserable or the trip feels unsafe.

If you ask people why they don't use bikes (Wilson, 2022), the top answer is "fear of motorist aggression" followed by "poor quality and condition of dedicated bike lanes". If you ask people who use bikes for transportation what concerns them, I'm pretty sure you'll get the same answers. That's true for me, and it affects my transportation choices.

Now, don't get the wrong idea about decisions like this one. It took WAY more time for you to read this section than for me to decide to ride my bike. Why? I've been there before, there's a safe 20 minutes route, and a glance outside told me the weather was tolerable.

But there was still a decision to be made!

Decisions, Decisions!

This is what Google Maps thinks the cycling options are:

A Google Map showing three routes from the start of the Galloping Goose to the Tillicum Centre.

Sadly, Google and I will have to agree to disagree on this. Their recommended route takes the Galloping Goose trail to Burnside Road East. No. Not happening. The person riding a bike in this Google Maps image is far braver than I am:

A Google Maps image showing what Burnside Road East looks like. Amazingly, someone is visible riding a bicycle.

The northern route takes Regina Ave (no bike & roll lanes) to Tillicum (former death trap). Immediately, no. Similarly, the southern route ran up Tillicum (former death trap). Also, immediately no.

Until recently, my preferred route was this:

A route from the start of the Galloping Goose to Tillicum Centre that takes the Goose almost the entire way, then winds through a park.

While twenty minutes long, this route is almost entirely on safe bike trails, and has an amusingly strange bit at the end on dirt trails through a park.

The world changes, however, and, last fall, the District of Saanich installed protected lanes on Tillicum Road. The Township of Esquimalt will be installing protected lanes on their part of Tillicum Road in 2023, but the unprotected section I would need to use for this trip is quite short. So, I had another option:


This route takes low-traffic side streets through Esquimalt to Tillicum (I add a little jog at the end to reduce my time on Tillicum). The protected lanes start on the Esquimalt side of the bridge, so my time on the busy road is minimal.

I wanted to check out the protected lanes that Saanich installed anyway, so I went with this route. It was great. Fast. Direct. Felt safe. As a bonus, much of it is quite pleasant. A keeper!

Victory!

Everything worked. I hopped on my trusty cargo bike, rode to Lowes, and bought a light bulb. I got back, Irene said "That was fast!", I agreed, installed the bulb, and now I have good light when I pick which pair of identical blue jeans to wear in the morning.

What's the Point Already?

Jarrett Walker is a public transit consultant, and the author of the book Human Transit. He runs a blog of the same name, and has interesting things to say about freedom. The following is from a post called Basics: Access, or the Wall Around Your Life (Walker, 2021):

What if we planned public transit with the goal of freedom?  Well, it’s hard to improve things that you can’t measure, but now it’s becoming possible to measure freedom, or as we call it in transport planning, access.

Access is your ability to go places so that you can do things.  Over the last few years, I’ve come to believe that may be the single most important thing we should be measuring about our transport systems — but that we usually don’t. Access isn’t a new idea, but as our data gets better it’s becoming easier to measure, and it could potentially replace many other measures that are groping toward the idea but not quite getting there.

I really like this idea. 

I don't care about light bulbs. I don't care about GU24 lamp bases. Yes, GU24 lamp bases are objectively superior. They are easy to use and allow lamp designs that don't need to dissipate as much heat. They're great. I don't care. I just want to be able to see my clothes when I'm getting dressed. It's not about the technology, it's about what that technology lets me do.

When my light burns out, I want easy access a new bulb in my preferred lumens, color temp, and smart home compatibility, so that I can see again. Therefore I want lamps that take boring screw-in bulbs  - because I can get those bulbs anywhere, and that's more important than how objectively good the technology is. 

It's the same with active transportation infrastructure.

There are a multitude of good reasons why we should make it convenient and safe for people to drive less. There's greenhouse gas emissions. There's mining for big EV batteries. There's having enough people living in a neighbourhood to support local shops. There's keeping the roads open so that people who need to drive can do so easily. There's keeping the roads safe for people walking, and making sure that public transit can operate efficiently. There's keeping space available for emergency vehicles. There's making room so that people have the freedom to access the goods and services they need whether or not they want to, or can, drive a car. 

I care about those things. But, mostly, day to day, I just want to easily be able to buy groceries, or go to my activities, or visit my friends. So, for me, and I suspect most people, the most amazing, beautifully paved, perfectly maintained, wide, safe, totally and indescribably awesome bike & roll path is completely useless unless it allows me to go places so that I can do things.

It's the network that matters. The ability to ride to Union Pacific Coffee, continue on to the Zero Waste Emporium, visit Market at Yates, and proceed to Farm & Field is what active transportation infrastructure needs to deliver. Not just downtown, but all across Victoria.

In the same blog post I mentioned earlier, Jarrett Walker also talks about time:

Whoever you are, and wherever you are, there’s an area you could get to in an amount of time that’s available in your day. That limit defines a wall around your life.  Outside that wall are places you can’t work, places you can’t shop, schools you can’t attend, clubs you can’t belong do, people you can’t hang out with, and a whole world of things you can’t do.

Every time we add a safe, direct, route that lets people bike & roll to the places they want to go, we expand that wall. And that's a good thing.

References











Location: Victoria, BC, Canada

Comments

Dave said…
good one Jim!
it will be good to see Esquimalt add to the AAA bike lanes on Tillicum.
Dave Lacey
February 5, 2023 at 10:22 AM
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