Travelling by bicycle through the capital region’s 13 municipalities continues to get easier as local governments work together to link their bike-lane projects to neighbouring areas.
The most prominent connection in the works is on Shelbourne Street, where the City of Victoria has closed off a section of the roadway to speed up construction of protected bike lanes from Haultain Street to North Dairy Road.
Those lanes will connect with lanes on the Saanich section of Shelbourne that will stretch from North Dairy to Pear Street.
Completion of the lanes — and reopening of the Victoria portion of Shelbourne — is expected in the next couple of weeks, while the Saanich work is the second phase of an ongoing project and is set for completion this fall.
The third phase is scheduled to begin in early October.
Victoria has been prioritizing establishing a network of bike routes since 2016, and now has about 36 kilometres of lanes.
While lauded by cyclists, bike lanes have generated criticism from vehicle drivers, including lanes on Richardson Street that some said pushed traffic to adjacent roads, and lanes on Pandora Avenue that drew complaints they made adjacent vehicle lanes too narrow.
The longest stretch of protected bike lines in Victoria is 3.9 kilometres on Fort Street from Cook Street to Foul Bay Road, completed in January, although the eastbound bike and vehicle lanes are currently closed to traffic on Fort between Richmond Road and Foul Bay due to sewer work.
When one-way protected bike lanes are completed on both sides of the Victoria stretch of Shelbourne, they will help close what the city has called a “major gap” in the region’s north-south cycling route.
Protected bike lanes are physically separated from traffic by such things as concrete curbs or metal posts.
“At least there’s connectivity now, whereas previously there was not,” said Doug Baer of cycling advocacy group Capital Bike. “We’re quite appreciative of that, for sure.”
Protected bike lanes are also being installed on both sides of Gorge Road and Hillside Avenue from Harriet Road to Blanshard Street. As on Shelbourne, the bike lanes will link up with Saanich cycling lanes, Baer said.
Bus-stop improvements, upgrades to traffic signals and crossings, and water-main replacement are part of the Gorge project, with construction set to be completed in the spring.
Ross Kenny, Victoria’s assistant director of transportation, said the project won’t have a significant impact on access for area businesses, but there was a consultation process to deal with some of their driveways that have to be relocated.
“For a lot of the businesses their driveways are 50 or 60 years old.”
Gorge will continue to be open to two-way traffic as the work progresses, Kenny said.
Kenny said keeping in contact with other municipalities about their bike-lane efforts is an important part of the planning process.
“Right now we’ve been working closely with the two projects with Saanich,” he said. “And also Esquimalt’s reaching out because they have some upcoming work on Esquimalt Road.”
Kenny said he recently spoke with Oak Bay as well about bike-lane work on McNeill Avenue.
“It’s great to see the broader investment and regional connections.”
Bike lanes are part of a project starting this month on Caledonia Avenue and Chatham Street in Victoria, and a two-week project on Bridge Street between Bay Street and Gorge Road featuring painted lanes rather than protected lanes.
As for transit improvements, dedicated bus lanes have just opened on Douglas Street from Hillside to Herald Street.
Capital Bike’s Baer noted that long-term plans call for half of area residents not using vehicles for any particular trip within about 25 or 30 years. “To do otherwise means that the cost of motor-vehicle infrastructure would leave anything we’ve been spending on bike infrastructure in the dust.”
The latest data from Statistics Canada shows that people in Greater Victoria are the most likely in the country to bike or walk to work — with 18.7 per cent of commuters favouring some type of active transportation.
In the city of Victoria, 13 per cent of all resident trips in 2022 were on a bicycle, up from nine per cent in 2017.
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