Walking regains recognition as a primary form of transportation

07. March 2015 · Write a comment · Categories: 14 Column Inches, Keiran's World, Victoria Times Colonist · Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Man walking at sunset. Photo © Giuseppe Milo, www.pixael.com, via flickr & Creative Commons
Man walking at sunset. Photo © Giuseppe Milo, www.pixael.com, via flickr & Creative Commons

Photo © Giuseppe Milo, www.pixael.com

Last year, Paul Glassen, of Nanaimo, wrote to me:

“We all walk in the first couple years of life, many start cycling and riding buses in grade school. We don’t drive the auto until we are in our later teens. Why do we call walking, cycling and transit ‘alternative transport’? Clearly, they are primary transportation, and the auto is the alternative.”

Glassen’s reasoning plays on the order in which people adopt ways of moving about during their lives. As such, walking—by itself—would indeed be the primary form of transportation. Cycling or public transit would be the secondary and tertiary modes of transport, and driving, the quaternary (car-tenary) form. Crawling, abandoned once we’re upright, loses its initial place in our early years….

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….

Panama Canal took time to affect B.C.’s coastal residents

16. August 2014 · Write a comment · Categories: 14 Column Inches, Victoria Times Colonist · Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
S.S. Panama in Panama Canal's Gatun Locks, ~1915. Photo via Richard (rich701), creative commons
S.S. Panama in Panama Canal's Gatun Locks, ~1915. Photo via Richard (rich701), creative commons

S.S. Panama in Panama Canal’s Gatun Locks, ~1915. Photo via Richard (rich701), creative commons and flickr

When the steamship Ancon entered Pacific waters on August 15, 1914, transportation between North America’s east and west coasts changed forever. The Ancon made the journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific in 70 minutes. The journey normally took months and risked unpredictable weather and currents.

The Ancon’s passage marked the long-anticipated opening of that engineering marvel, the Panama Canal.

From one day to the next, the sea journey from New York to San Francisco became 12,600 kilometres shorter. Steamships carrying goods from this coast to Atlantic markets could—and did—cut months off their journey.

The immediate effect of the canal’s opening on the day-to-day lives of most people living in Victoria and British Columbia, however, turned out to be anti-climatic….

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….

Building unpredictability into traffic design transforms
streetscapes into people places

15. February 2014 · Write a comment · Categories: 14 Column Inches, In the Field, Science Scribe, Vancouver Island, Victoria Times Colonist · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Quadra village street way—designed to slow traffic and encourage community. ©2014.

One of the buzzwords in urban planning these days seems to be “people-friendly streetscapes.”

The intent is to transform the car-centric corridors that crisscross our region into people-oriented spaces.

For example, Victoria’s new official community plan, unveiled last week, calls for transportation systems that prioritize pedestrians, cyclists and people using public transit.

You could consider Quadra Village as an example. As soon as you cross Hillside Road going south, the driving lane narrows, more vehicles are parked at the kerb, more street plantings, arty, low-hanging street lamps and banners change the feel of the street. They immediately shift roadway priorities away from traffic towards the people who live, work, walk, cycle, shop, and make the village viable.

Saanich’s draft plans for Shelbourne Street also call for improved focus on people. In the past, transportation planning along the corridor focused on vehicles, as many as 25,000 of which travel the corridor daily, en route from somewhere else to points beyond. Walking and biking routes are piecemeal. The plans recognize that communities along Shelbourne Street now need to be retrofitted to serve people and these multiple uses.

Brentwood Bay’s slower speed limits, and the Gorge–Tillicum area’s roundabouts also help refocus community throughways on people.

They manifest a paradox known as psychological traffic calming, or playing with drivers’ minds to slow them down….

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….