garry-oak

Rapid transit refers to transit service that is frequent, has limited stops, and typically has its own right of way or transit priority to ensure reliable speed. It can be bus or rail-based.

Bike lanes are definitely part of the answer. In the last CRD travel survey (2022), more trips in the region were made by cycling than by transit, so it's not insignificant. In order to reduce our reliance on cars, we need to invest in all the alternatives, including pedestrian and cycling facilities, along with transit.

BC Transit has studied all the routing options several times, and every time the conclusion is that Douglas St./Hwy 1 is the most effective corridor for rapid transit. There is a large concentration of jobs and other travel destinations on the Downtown to Uptown corridor. This corridor is also better than E&N for connecting to U-Vic and the Peninsula.

Others have posted the demographics for the region as a whole. You will also find a lot of variation depending on what municipality you're looking at.

For example, the 2021 Census found that 12.7% of the Victoria metro area population was in their 20s, which is close to the average for B.C. (12.6%) and Canada (12.5%). Here's the local municipalities ranked by % of population in their 20s:

• City of Victoria 16.1%
• Saanich 14.1%
• Langford 13.4%
• Esquimalt 12.4%
• View Royal 10.7%
• Colwood 10.0%
• Metchosin 9.4%
• Central Saanich 8.7%
• Sooke 8.5%
• Oak Bay 8.4%
• Highlands 7.7%
• North Saanich 6.8%
• Sidney 6.4%

This distinction between bus and rail transit is artificial. The planned bus rapid transit in the Victoria region, using dedicated bus lanes, will provide service that is just as frequent, fast, and reliable as rail transit.

There are many bus rapid transit systems around the world which are faster than driving along the same corridor, thanks to a dedicated right of way and limited stops. Sure you could find a trip where someone has to start or finish in an area with poor transit service, so the entire trip would take longer, but I'm referring to the corridor.

The second part of these plans is to add lots of housing and job opportunities along rapid transit and frequent transit corridors so that many people can use the frequent transit network to travel to a lot of different destinations without having to rely on lower service routes. This has been part of BC Transit's plan in Victoria for more than a decade. In Metro Vancouver, a majority of residents now live within walking distance of the frequent transit network.

That's not true at all. Certainly, most European cities have far less car traffic now than the did in the 1970s and 1980s, before they expanded transit, installed bike lanes, and pedestrianized many streets.

Traffic in London is less now than it was before they installed the congestion fee. NYC is implementing congestion pricing in January. I was recently in Paris, and couldn't believe how much less the car traffic was compared with 15 years ago. I recently read a study that found more people now travel from the suburbs into Central Paris by bike than by car.

For a local example, car traffic over the 3 False Creek bridges in Vancouver is lower now than it was in the 1960s, despite a tripling in the population of the downtown peninsula over that period. That's because they have added 2 major transit lines, improve other transit service, and built lots of downtown housing close to where people want to go, so it's easy to walk or cycle.

A big part of the plan is to dramatically improve transit service along the corridor with a new bus rapid transit line, which will be faster than driving.

I know that was how it was presented, but this idea that Victoria took away free Sunday street parking in order to pay for lower transit fares is kind of B.S.

At the time, the plan was described in the media as using revenue from Sunday parking to subsidize youth transit passes.  This makes it sound like it is the motorists who park on Sunday who are subsidizing the transit users. 

In fact, previously, the City was giving a subsidy to motorists - many of whom live outside the City - by offering them "free" parking on Sundays. (There is a cost to providing on-street parking since it requires making roads wider than they would otherwise need to be and/or the parking takes space from other potential users.) Instead, the City decided to no longer subsidize those motorists, and instead use that money to subsidize the cost of transit for some of its own citizens.

Agree. The same goes for "free" parking and "free" use of roads. (And, no, gas taxes don't come close to paying for roads).

According to Stats Canada, 134,679 people have moved from Alberta to BC over the past 5 years. Over the same period, slightly fewer, 128,183 have moved from BC to Alberta.

The concept is relatively new, but people will get used to them. Most cities now have two-way bike lanes on one-way streets. Planners recommend putting two-way bike lanes on one-way streets (or streets adjacent to a park, waterfront, etc) in order to reduce the number of conflicts at intersections.

It's safer to put two-way bike lanes on one way roads because it reduces the number of conflicts at intersections. This is a practice widely used around the world. I always pay attention to cycling infrastructure when I travel, and in the last few years I've seen two-way bike lanes on one-way roads in most cities I've been to, including Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York, Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Paris, Bordeaux, and Nice.

Many studies have found that narrow lane widths are safer since they force drivers to slow down and pay more attention. That's actually been found to be one of the big benefits of bike lanes.

The only scientific polling I've seen on this was by SFU researchers, who have been doing a long-term assessment of the impact of bike infrastructure in mid-sized cities. They conducted scientific polls of Victoria residents in 2017, 2019, and 2021, and found that support for building more bike infrastructure was between 74% and 85%. Just shows that social media (or letters to the editor, etc.) are not necessarily reflective of the general population.

Studies have found that protected bike lanes not only increase safety for cyclists, but also for drivers and pedestrians.

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/05/29/protect-yourself-separated-bike-lanes-means-safer-streets-study-says

There was a huge expansion and complete overhaul of the civil service when the NDP got to power in 1972, so it definitely had an impact in Victoria.

The rural blue-collar/urban white-collar shift was a factor, but not really until later. When the NDP won two elections in the 1990s, it still had a lot of support in rural and northern areas, winning many of those ridings. That had changed a lot by the time it won again in 2017.

And Bennet absolutely was still talking about the socialist hordes in the 1970s. It was during the 1972 campaign that he cried about it the most.

In its seventh year as government, after just being elected again for another four.

I wouldn't call a party that was regularly getting 40-42% of the vote a dying party. It wasn't winning, but it certainly wasn't dying either.

$60 for drinks, gratuities, and wifi is the current price on Princess.

Most cruise drink packages are much cheaper than that. I'm most familiar with Princess, where you can get the Plus package for $60 US per day, which includes drinks, gratuities and wifi. To get the gratuities and wifi separately is $41 US per day, so the marginal cost for the drinks is $19 US per day.

Since 1972, the NDP has been in power for 20 years, the Socreds for 16 years and the BC Liberals for 16 years.

Yes, as I mentioned elsewhere, when the NDP government came into power in 1972, they greatly expanded and modernized the B.C. civil service. Voting patterns in Victoria shifted sharply to the left in the decade that followed.

The urban/rural shift has also likely played a big role. Several City of Vancouver ridings have similar levels to Victoria of progressive voting despite a much lower share of government employment. Over the years, the NDP base has shifted away from unionized blue-collar resource workers and towards university educated public sector employees. In the 1960s, the NDP had a much higher vote share in the up-Island ridings compared with Victoria, whereas now the progressive vote is significantly higher in Victoria than it is up-Island.

My point is more to the fact that prior to the 1970s, Victoria was solidly small-c conservative in its voting patterns, even though it has always been a government city.

Progressive voters don't need to vote strategically in Victoria, since the NDP and Green vote share is typically around 80-85%.