Lanes dedicated to buses and more “queue-jumpers” — lanes where buses can pass stalled traffic — could help shorten travel times and increase ridership, says a report presented to the Victoria Regional Transit Commission.
The report considers bus lanes for the McKenzie Avenue corridor (Quadra Street to the University of Victoria) and Island Highway corridor (View Royal to Colwood). For the Douglas Street corridor (Tolmie Avenue to Humboldt Street), the report proposes dedicated bus lanes for peak travel times.
There is now a queue-jumper lane at McKenzie Avenue and the Trans-Canada Highway. Another is being built at Sayward Avenue and the Patricia Bay Highway as part of the upgrades being done by the province. The report looks at the potential for several more such lanes, including one from Six Mile Road to Juan de Fuca Recreation Centre.
Lanes in the Douglas corridor would be marked for exclusive bus use at key times, perhaps two hours in the morning and two in the late afternoon.
Saanich Coun. Susan Brice, who chairs the commission, said having part-time bus lanes on Douglas should make more sense to people than a full-time bus-way, an earlier proposal that drew considerable opposition.
Bev Highton, chairman of the Association of Douglas Street Businesses, said concepts such as part-time bus lanes have merit. “I think those are reasonable options to look at, doing things with what we have that are not going to cost [a huge amount]. Deal with what you have and make it more efficient,” he said.
The report’s three options for Douglas Street, which sees 500 to 900 bus trips daily, go from $600,000 for work on existing lanes to $5 million for widening to add lanes.
The cost of queue-jumper lanes varies depending on location, with three choices on the Island Highway corridor starting at $200,000 and topping out at $1.28 million for a lane from Six Mile Pub to the Juan de Fuca centre.
Victoria Mayor Dean Fortin, a commission member, said he is excited about the prospects — especially for the Douglas corridor. He said he hopes that time-limited transit priority lanes can be operating on Douglas Street in September.
“What it will do, if approved, is provide an opportunity to speed up the trip on transit.”
Time savings should increase as more spots are created to give priority to public transit, Fortin said.
He expects ridership to go up as bus times improve. “They did a bus priority lane in Kelowna. They were predicting a seven per cent mode shift [from cars to buses] and they got 14 per cent in the first year.”
The plan also envisions loading passengers through the front as well as middle doors of buses. Fortin said that would have a big impact downtown.
“You could load from both doors and have kiosks where you could buy your passes and pay your fares ahead of time. So it really speeds up. That’s the biggest issue in the downtown core: getting people on and off the buses. So that, too, would be an exciting opportunity.”
Ideas for improvements emerged from meetings involving transit and staff from Victoria, Saanich, Colwood and View Royal. Municipalities and the Capital Regional District will consider the options in May.
