Thoughts on Douglas Street Transportation Futures

Note

On Thursday, May 16, Victoria's City Council will receive a Douglas Street Downtown Dedicated Bus Lane Update. For the central downtown section the report briefly presents options "A" through "F". Option "F" is recommended, and the report gives some additional detail.

Personally, I think Thursday's decision is extremely important, and I put the following together in an attempt to organize my thoughts about report and the choices is presents.

Unlike my other posts so far, I haven't even made an effort to be funny! This is pure geek. Consider yourself warned.

Executive Summary

There is a lot to like about the staff recommended Option F, Offset Dedicated Bus Lanes, and it may well be the best option, but the report does not provide enough information about the other options for Council to make an informed decision about which approaches best embody the city’s priorities. More detail is required, at least for options A B, and E. I'd also like to see feedback from BC Transit on the options under consideration. Furthermore, if option F is eventually selected, then Council should provide staff with direction to:

• Prioritize the pedestrian experience over car storage.
• Minimize transit delays caused by the offset design.
• Make sure that people using bikes, trikes, scooters, etc. have a place to park when they come to shop, eat, or access transit on Douglas.
• Make sure that the design will support programs such as Evo’s Evolve, that provide a last mile solution for public transportation users.
• Recognize that the decision to close Douglas Street to bicycles means that, irrespective of what we want, people will be riding bicycles on the sidewalk, and that steps should be taken to minimize the chances of someone getting hurt.

Background

Douglas Street is at the centre of the city’s public transportation network, and is a critical part of both our regional and local public transit routes. It is central to BC Transit’s Blink RapidBus initiative. Currently, Douglas Street supports a mix of part-time bus lanes and buses that share lanes with general traffic. This is not compatible with the city’s and the region’s transit goals.

The following is lifted from the Westshore Line 10 Year Infrastructure Plan of the Victoria Regional RapidBus Implementation Strategy:

City of Victoria staff, in collaboration with BC Transit, have looked at a number of options for bringing dedicated bus lanes to Douglas Street, and are presenting them to Victoria’s city council on Thursday, May 16, 2024.

The report identifies three segments of Douglas Street, and proposes different actions for each one:

• Segment A (Hillside Avenue to Herald Street)
• This section is characterized by existing, part-time, bus lanes.
• The report recommends a short-term conversion of those bus lanes to full-time, and that more significant changes be scheduled along with infrastructure and other major road work.
• Segment B (Herald Street to Humboldt Street)
• This section has a 20m+ wide right of way and no bus lanes.
• The report recommends Option F: Offset dedicated bus lanes.
• Segment C (Humboldt Street to Belleville Street)
• This section has a roughly 12m right of way and no bus lanes.
• The report recommends moving the transit exchange from Government Street near the legislature to the southern section of Segment C, making northbound traffic bus-only, and continuing the offset dedicated bus lanes on the souther section.
• Other changes to improve traffic flow are also envisaged.

The three segments are highlighted in red, green, and blue, below:

For Segment B, staff looked at six options:

• Option A – “Mobility mall” with widened sidewalks
• Option B – Dedicated bus lanes, vehicle travel lanes, and unidirectional protected bike lanes.
• Option C – Dedicated bus lanes, vehicle travel lanes and two-way protected bike lanes.
• Option D - Dedicated bus lanes and vehicle travel lanes.
• Option E - Centre running dedicated bus lanes.
• Option F - Offset dedicated bus lanes.

The report recommends Option F and, in fact, Option F is the only option presented in any kind of detail.

Scope of This Document

This document is looking primarily at the options for Segment B. The reasons are:

• The recommendation for Section A to quickly convert the part-time bus lanes to full-time makes total sense and will deliver substantial benefits at the cost of some paint.
• The recommendation to move the transit exchange from the BC legislature to segment C of Douglas has huge benefits. The only question is the treatment of the bus lanes, and the proposal inherits Option F from the Segment B choice.

The mechanism chosen to provide a dedicated right of way for public transit in Segment B is therefore key to the entire project. Since the recommendation for Segment A is just a signage change, it doesn’t preclude any future treatments. Similarly, Segment C is relatively short and needs to coordinate with Segment B.

Option Triage

Here’s a table going over the six options, all of which provide dedicated bus lanes.

	Description	Cars	Micro Mobility	Pedestrian Impacts	Notes
A	“Mobility mall” with widened sidewalks	Limited	Yes	Better	Few details. There are many different types of “transit mall” treatments, and there is no evaluation of them. Issues include deliveries, accessibility, and the impact on driving.
B	Dedicated bus lanes, vehicle travel lanes, and unidirectional protected bike lanes.	Yes	Yes	Mixed	Pedestrian space is reduced, but people walking are, presumably, buffered from traffic by the bike lanes. It’s not clear how rapid buses pass local buses.
C	Dedicated bus lanes, vehicle travel lanes and two-way protected bike lanes.	Yes	Yes, but…	None?	Two-way bike lanes on a big road like Douglas are not a good idea.
D	Dedicated bus lanes and vehicle travel lanes.	Yes	No	Worse	Seems misaligned with city priorities.
E	Centre running dedicated bus lanes.	Yes	No	Better	In many ways, this would deliver the best transit experience and it minimizes conflicts with cars crossing the bus lanes.
F	Offset dedicated bus lanes.	Yes	No	Better, but…	The recommended option. Familiar boarding of buses from the sidewalk. Opportunities for better pedestrian spaces if parking is minimized. Pull-overs for local route only stops allow faster buses to pass without leaving the bus lane. But… Large number of rapidly moving loud vehicles adjacent to pedestrians. No micromobility on a major street. No discussion of how people using bikes/scooters/trikes/etc can access transit and services on Douglas. Likely conflicts with micromobility vehicles illegally using the sidewalks.

Given the above, I’m going to eliminate options C and D from further consideration in this document.

Why Not Just Go with the Recommendation?

The staff recommendation, “Option F” has a lot to recommend it:

• By moving many bus stops to the bus lane, it will increase pedestrian space near bus stops and make it easier to walk down Douglas.
• By allowing pull-overs for local route only bus stops, it will allow faster buses to pass without having to leave the dedicated right of way, which will improve time and predictability.
• To the degree that the city is willing to prioritize pedestrian space over car storage and widen sidewalks, it will improve the pedestrian experience on Douglas Street.
• It sticks with the sidewalk based bus stops that we are familiar with here in Victoria.
• It minimizes accessibility concerns for pure transit and pedestrian uses (but at the expense of people who use micromobility for accessibility).
• Bus right turns off of Douglas will be easy, but left turns will require either a shift into a general traffic lane or a dedicated light cycle.
• It keeps Douglas Street open for general car traffic.
• This maintains redundancy with Blanshard Street for the city’s highest volume north/south routes.
• Since Government Street is pedestrian priority, and Wharf Street is an unholy mess, this maintains a north/south car route for people and businesses that need to access areas west of Douglas such as Old Town.

On the other hand, there are some obvious conflicts between Option F and city strategies. For example, here’s how Go Victoria prioritizes the use of public space between property lines including streets and sidewalks:

Option F includes on-street parking (priority 6), delivery + loading zones (priority 4), and probably should include short-term + shared parking (priority 5), but excludes cycle tracks (priority 1).

Not every project can meet every goal, there are north/south micromobility lanes on parts of Government Street, and bicycles will be allowed in the pedestrian priority parts of Government. Furthermore, the staff report notes that the city is adding bike and roll lanes to Blanshard Street and Store Street. The choice to close Douglas Street to most people using bikes, scooters, etc. may be justified, but it also needs to be examined.

Let’s assume, for the moment, that Option F is wildly successful, that Douglas Street is thronging with people, and that businesses on or near Douglas are thriving. Even in this best case scenario, absence of micromobility lanes, on what is arguably Victoria’s “Main Street,” raises some serious questions:

• As the number of trips by bicycle, scooter, tricycle, etc. continue to increase, how will closing Douglas for micromobility play out?
• As more and more people use e-bikes, e-trikes, etc. as informal mobility aids, how will they access the shops and businesses on Douglas?
• This is a particular concern to me, because that is exactly how my wife uses her e-bike.
• We will undoubtedly be including accessible car parking spots on Douglas, so how can we accommodate people who use bikes that way?
• How will the decision to exclude micromobility vehicles from Douglas Street affect future “last mile” programs such as Nanaimo’s Evolve or Montreal’s Bixi. Cities around the world, of all sizes, have found programs like these to be an important complement to transit that helps solve the first-mile/last mile problem.
• To what degree will the heavy concentration of motor vehicle traffic on Douglas Street discourage walking and the valuable foot-traffic that brings to local businesses.

Another concern stems from the nature of micromobility vehicle users. In the USA and Canada, we tend to think of bicycles and similar vehicles as “tiny cars”. Much of the world, however, finds it more useful to view bikes as “fast pedestrians.” In many ways, people on bikes act a lot like people walking, and that’s driven by the nature of the vehicles.

For example, walking is slow, and people walking are exposed to the elements, so people walking tend to take shortcuts. One of the reasons why mid-block bus stops are often a poor design is that people walking are reluctant to go far out of their way to get to a destination that’s right across the street. For example, multiple people have lost their lives trying to get to the library across State Street in Springfield, MA, USA. The library is directly across a four lane road from a bus stop and the library parking lot, but there is no crosswalk.

People driving cars usually stay off the sidewalk, although experience suggests that has more to do with geometry than inherent rule following. Bikes, scooters, etc. fit on sidewalks just fine, and some people will ride on the sidewalk if the other options are unsafe or inconvenient. It’s no different than people crossing the street in the middle of the block, or people driving not coming to a full stop at a stop sign. We may not want people to do those things, it may not be safe, and it may not be legal, but public policy should deal with what people actually do, not just what we want them to.

Victoria city staff, in consultation with BC Transit, may have looked closely at all of the options listed in the report, but only Option F is presented in any detail. Concerns like the ones above suggest we need to look a little further. Even if we decide that option F is the best way to go, we should think upfront about the negative consequences, and take actions now to minimize the harm.

Mobility Malls

In many ways, my heart is drawn to option A, the “mobility mall with widened sidewalks”. The only thing the staff report says about this option is:

This design restricted private vehicle travel through the segment and removed all parking / loading. People on bicycles would share travel lanes with transit and commercial vehicles and additional pedestrian space would be created for new trees and amenities. General-purpose traffic would be required to use other parallel routes which caused significant network impacts.

It’s not clear what options were considered, because not all similar designs choose to eliminate all general purpose traffic. For example, in some cases (e.g., King Street in Toronto, or busways in NYC), cars are allowed on the street for local pickup and/or delivery, but are required to turn right immediately.

There are some externalities specific to Douglas Street that might pose complications:

• Significant parts of Government Street downtown are pedestrian priority, and some parts are not available to cars part of the time. That means that forcing southbound cars to turn right would not work well.
• If Douglas Street was not available for general car traffic, then most north/south traffic would have to use Blanshard, and would be a half a kilometer or more away from destinations in Old Town.
• Consider someone in a car traveling west on streets like Pandora or Yates who’s headed for a destination in Old Town. The only real option to turn left will be on Wharf, and Wharf is already very slow much of the day. This seems like asking for trouble.
• Douglas Street and Blanshard Street are our main, parallel, north/south routes for general traffic. If, in the future, Blanshard was closed for repairs or an incident, not having Douglas available as an alternate could be a real problem.

Unidirectional Bike Lanes

Option B also has a lot going for it, and I wish the staff report had provided more detail about what they considered. All the staff report says is:

Dedicated bus lanes, vehicle travel lanes, and unidirectional protected bike lanes. This option facilitated all modes of travel, however required a full reconstruction of Douglas Street, impacted boulevard trees, and reduced available pedestrian space. 

Here’s a rough example of how the widths could work out:

Type	Normal Width	With Bus Stop	With Bus Pullover	With Parking or Loading
Bike Lane	2	1.8		2
Bike Lane Buffer	0.6	0	0.6	0.6
Bus Lane	3.3	3.3	3.3	3.3
Car Lane	2.9	2.9	2.9	2.9
Center Lane	2.9	2.9	2.9	2.9
Car Lane	2.9	2.9	2.9	2.9
Bus Lane	3.3	3.3	3.3	3.3
Bike Lane Buffer	0.6	0	0.6	0.6
Bike Lane	2	2	2	2
Bus Pullover			3.3
Bus Island		3
Parking/Loading				2.5
Total	20.5	22.1	21.8	23
Right of Way	20.5	20.5	20.5	20.5
Normal Sidewalk	4.5	4.5	4.5	4.5
Available Sidewalk	4.5	2.9	3.2	2

These numbers are just a rough attempt at checking feasibility; they are, obviously, not a design! I took the sidewalk and road width measurements from Google Maps. The bike lane and buffer measurements are the same as what the city used on Government Street. Bus stops on our primary bus corridor would likely require the full 3 meter island width recommended by the new BC Design Guide for Bus Stops Adjacent to Cycling Infrastructure. In the case of a local bus pullover, I’m assuming that the pullover would block the bike lane, as it does on places like Fort Street.

I don’t know how much space is required for a pull-over bus stop, but presumably the 3.3 meters of a full bus lane would be enough.

Even when we narrow the bike lane at the bus stop to 1.8 meters, the required right of way would be around 22.1 meters, which would reduce the 4.5 meter sidewalk width to 2.9 meters.

The 3.3 meter width of the bus lanes is the minimum recommended by BC Transit. Going smaller seems problematic on our major transit corridor. The 2.9 meter general purpose lanes are also tight, but NACTO suggests they could work given the presence of the center turn lane. One could also eliminate the center turn lane, but that seems incompatible with the need for people to make left turns off of Douglas Street.

The worst case scenario for pedestrians is where one might include loading zones or parking spaces, because that would reduce the available sidewalk space to 2 meters. Adding accessible parking spaces would present additional challenges, and I’m not sure how to resolve them.

All in all, it’s not completely impossible, especially since at bus stops people would be waiting on the platform, so the remaining sidewalk space would all be available for people walking. It feels tight, though.

Centre Running Dedicated Bus Lanes

This is option E. The short description reads:

This design removes a general-purpose travel lane in each direction and introduces transit service into the centre of the corridor with boarding islands. The approach prioritizes transit service and amenities, frees up additional space on sidewalks, but substantially restricts vehicle circulation and eliminates existing bike lanes. Accessibility concerns along with potential underground utility conflicts were highest in this design.

There are no other details provided. Significantly, centre running bus lanes are known to minimize conflicts with cars or commercial vehicles turning across the bus lane, or blocking the bus lane while parallel parking. If the intent is to prioritize transit on Douglas, then it would be worth hearing more about the strengths and weaknesses of this design.

I also have some questions about the way similar sounding issues are worded for this proposal and for the Offset Dedicated Bus Lanes proposal. For example, this proposal says “substantially restricts vehicle circulation”, but the Offset proposal says “retaining some vehicle circulation”. To me, these two phrases seem to have the same semantic meaning, but the latter comes across as a positive, while the former is a negative.

Offset Dedicated Bus Lanes

This is option F, which the staff report recommends. The short description reads:

This design removes a general-purpose travel lane and introduces dedicated bus lanes while retaining some vehicle circulation. The approach provides for added pedestrian amenity space in select areas which can be used for transit amenities and public realm enhancements and eliminates existing bike lanes. Curb side loading, parking, and local bus stops out of the bus lane would be accommodated at key locations along the corridor.

Unlike the other options, the report goes into more detail about how the offset lanes would work, and I will not try to repeat that. I did not find any BC specific guidance on offset bus lane streets, but there is some guidance from NACTO. Notably, the NACTO guidance says:

Providing dedicated bikeways improves the overall function of the street for transit, especially on neighborhood and corridor streets. On arterials where high traffic volume degrades transit service quality and creates safety challenges for active users, pairing transit lanes with protected bike lanes provides comfort, convenience, and safety for all modes.

I just finished reading the new, revised, edition of Jarrett Walker’s Human Transit. The book classifies routes as class A, B, and C, where “A” is like a subway or skytrain, “B” is like a dedicated bus lane, and “C” is where buses are mixed with other traffic. Chapter nine is called The Obstacle Course: Speed, Delay, and Reliability, and has a section called THE SEVEN DEADLY DELAYS. One of those is Friction, and it says (italics mine):

Friction is delay caused by individual vehicles making movements in an adjacent lane but affecting the lane that transit is using. Common causes of friction include delivery vehicles, taxis, and ridehailing cars making stops, as well as cars engaged in parallel parking movements and car doors being opened into the lane. On busy streets, and advantage of putting transit lanes in the center, rather than on the side, is that it eliminates most friction. A transit lane along the curb might be called “B-minus,” because although the lane is mostly clear for transit, cars do merge across it and may block it during pickup and dropoff activity and turns.

So, what, exactly, is our priority for Douglas Street, and how is Council to make that decision based on the information provided in this report?

If we decide to move forward with offset dedicated bus lanes, as staff recommends, then I hope we look at options like the following to address the concerns listed in the Why Not Just Go with the Recommendation section.

Maximize Space for People

The NACTO guidance talks about a “parking lane”, but beyond providing accessible parking spots and loading/unloading zones, general purpose parking may be problematic on Douglas Street:

• Bus traffic on Douglas is very frequent, and every car that uses a parking spot will have to cross the bus lane. Even worse, the cars will be blocking the bus lane while they parallel park, which seems to take a lot of people a long time.
• A parking lane will also take away space from pedestrians that could be used for street trees, planters, etc.

Opening up more space for planters, etc. will help buffer people walking from the sound and intimidating presence of the large buses using the road. They will also help make Douglas Street a more inviting place to be, which will help generate foot traffic.

Minimize Transit Delays

There are some inherent problems with Offset designs like option “F”:

• Every time a car turns off of Douglas it will have to cross a bus lane.
• Every time a car or commercial vehicle stops on Douglas it will have to cross a bus lane.
• Every time a car parallel parks on Douglas it will potentially delay buses.
• Any time a wide van or pickup stops on Douglas, buses may have to move into the general purpose lanes to get by.
• Any time a bus turns left, it will have to cross multiple lanes of car traffic.

If the City’s priority for Douglas Street is transit, then the city should make sure that parking and legal turns from the general lanes are minimized as much as possible, that buses have dedicated signal cycles so they can turn left without having to merge into car traffic, and that signal priority is implemented to minimize transit delays at intersections.

Minimize the Harm to People Using Bikes, Scooters, Etc.

Since the offset dedicated bus lane design basically closes Douglas Street to bicycles, tricycles, cargo bikes, scooters, etc., and since substantial numbers of people use micromobility vehicles as mobility aids, the city should take steps to minimize the amount of walking required by people coming to Douglas Street that way.

Towards that end, the city should provide ample bike parking near east-west intersections with Douglas Street, and especially at those intersections near transit stops. In some cases, this could be combined with daylighting to improve safety. For example, here’s View Street with some daylighting opportunities highlighted in red:

Yates and Johnson offer similar opportunities. I’m sure there are others.

In other cases, bicycle parking could be provided on Douglas Street itself by widening the sidewalk near corners.

Maximize Opportunities for Last-Mile Innovations

Similarly to the daylighting opportunities, the city should make sure there are places near bus stops where “last mile” solutions such as Evo’s Evolve service can store their vehicles.

This would be particularly beneficial where major bus stops are close to AAA bike lanes, such as at Fort Street. As we currently don’t have the Evolve service, the spaces could initially be used for bicycle parking.

Recognize the Inevitable

If we don’t have bike lanes on Douglas, then some people will ride their bikes on the sidewalk. That may be wrong. It may be illegal. It is inevitable, and it would be bad policy to pretend that it won’t happen.

Posting signs won’t help, and our police have better things to do with their time.

So, given that people will be riding bikes, scooters, etc. on the sidewalk, wiser heads than mine should consider how to design the space to minimize the chance of someone getting hurt.

Conclusion

It is possible, even likely, that when all is said and done, that a modified version of option F may be the best that we can do at this particular location and time. That said, I don’t think that the report provides enough information for Council to make that evaluation. The report mostly says “trust me, this answer is correct”, but it doesn’t show the work.

I would like to see Council ask staff to do the following:

• Flesh out option A to the same level as option F in the report.
• Flesh out option B to the same level as option F in the report.
• Flesh out option E to the same level as option F in the report.
• Solicit feedback from BC Transit about the options and provide it to Council.
• If option F is the final choice, then make sure the detailed design (as presented above):
• Maximizes space for people.
• Minimizes transit delays.
• Minimizes the harm to people using bikes, scooters, etc.
• Maximizes opportunities for last-mile innovations.
• Recognizes the inevitability of people riding on the sidewalk, and incorporates design elements to reduce the chances of injuries.