Comments on Saanich's Draft Quadra McKenzie Plan

This is the letter I recently sent to Saanich Council regarding the Draft Quadra McKenzie Plan. It's been lightly edited, but the points haven't changed. Also, I have no idea why I can never see typos until after I hit the send button! The illustrations are all taken from the plan.

Dear Mayor and Council,

I just finished reading the entire Quadra McKenzie Plan and filling out the feedback survey. I very much appreciate the thoroughness and quality of the Draft Quadra McKenzie Plan document; please pass on my appreciation to the staff who worked on it! Given that "pushback" has been in the news, I wanted to write to you directly as well. I live in Vic West, not Saanich, so I tend to reserve my land-use comments for City of Victoria issues. In this case, the Quadra Mckenzie plan is so central to the entire region, and I live so close to Saanich, that I wanted to respond.

First, I am strongly in favour of the plan, including the shift of road space to transit and active transportation. Your staff has done an excellent job, and has gotten many, many, things right. Some of my reasons for supporting the plan are:

• Regions around the world have discovered that the only way to prevent punishing congestion in growing areas is to move more people using space efficient transportation such as buses, trains, and cycles. Cars are simply too space inefficient to be viable in denser areas. It's clear that your staff realizes that transit and active transportation are a response to congestion, not the cause of it.
• One of the things that I like the most about Saanich is the way the urban containment boundary preserves rural areas. If Saanich doesn't find a way to allow more people to live in the urban region, and to get around using space efficient transportation for most of their trips, then the pressure to build low-density housing outside of the urban area will be intense.
• I love that the plan spends so much attention on making it possible to walk or cycle to schools. In fifth grade I could, and did, ride my bike to school, and I still remember the sense of loss when I switched to middle school and could no longer bike easily. But, beyond being a great way for kids to learn independence, people ferrying their kids to school in individual cars is one of the major caused of morning and afternoon traffic congestion.
• I also like that the plan envisions "hubs" spaced so that most people can get to many of their daily needs without driving. I live that way in Vic West, and I absolutely love it. It's a pattern that has worked for millennia all around the world, and there is no reason not to repeat it here.
• Dedicated bus lanes on McKenzie are desperately needed. People from all around Greater Victoria go to UVic to work or study. There is no reason why the people living near McKenzie should have to suffer congestion caused by commuters. But if the people riding buses, and that's a LOT of people even now, are stuck in traffic then taking the bus will always be slower and less predictable than driving, and we'll never get out of the hole we've dug for ourselves.
• A similar argument applies to cycle lanes on McKenzie. One of my neighbours is a professor at UVic, and rides their bicycle all year. When the weather is particularly bad they take the bus. But they can only do that because there are decent routes to the university from where we live! My wife and I are senior citizens, and though we could easily afford a car, haven't owned one for six years. The weather in Victoria is ridiculously mild, it rarely snows, and a mix of walking, cycling, transit, and the odd Modo or Evo rental is both practical and cost effective. Weather is not the issue; the lack of safe cycling infrastructure and nearby places to go to is.
• The plan's goal to make the Quadra and McKenzie corridors more vital places can only work if the individual automobile traffic on those roads decreases substantially. The reason is simple: it's deeply unpleasant to walk, much less sit, next to heavy traffic. That's why the design for McKenzie is so good. The sidewalks, cafe areas, etc. are separated from the car traffic by a verge, a bike lane, another verge, and a bus lane (buses are loud, but they're getting quieter as they go electric, and even frequent service involves much less traffic than is generated by cars).

In reading the document, I realized the Quadra McKenzie Plan is like a three-legged stool. The three legs are:

1. Allowing more people to live in the urban part of Saanich.
2. Giving those people the freedom to get to the places they need to go by transit, foot, cycle, or car.
3. Creating places to go that are close to where people live.

If you eliminate any of those three options, the whole thing falls over. Without more people, the "hubs" won't have enough business to survive. Without better transit and active transportation options, McKenzie will be a noisy, congested, place to visit and the area will be an unpleasant place to live. Without nearby places to go, people won't use active transportation, far more people will choose to drive, and congestion will be a nightmare.

Finally, the Quadra McKenzie plan opens the door, over the next twenty years, to a lot more housing. A big part of that increase is provided by allowing mid-rise buildings within a block of major roads. But this is only morally acceptable if those roads become far quieter and less polluting than they are today. If McKenzie remains four lanes of traffic, then the noise, brake particulates, and tire particulates from those thousands of cars will render the areas adjacent to the big roads unsuitable for dense housing. Children should not be forced to grow up breathing brake linings and tire tread for other people's convenience. It's just not right.

So, please, remember that people make the most noise when they're upset. The one's who agree are less likely to write to the TC. I understand that the Quadra McKenzie plan is a large change, and that change upsets a lot of people. That doesn't mean it isn't the right thing to do.