The prisoners of the Colwood Crawl can dimly see hope through their windshields, now that the province has chosen a design for the new interchange at McKenzie Avenue and the Trans-Canada Highway.
While the project should uncork that notorious intersection and give welcome relief to many drivers, it’s unlikely to be a complete solution, as it will push the bottlenecks farther down the road.
The new interchange will be a partial cloverleaf, Transportation Minister Todd Stone announced Tuesday. After open houses, about 75 per cent of the people who gave their opinions backed that design.
By late 2018, the $85-million project should be open for traffic, and Stone estimates it will cut about 22 minutes off the commute time. That will be joyous news for West Shore residents who have spent years crawling to and from Victoria at rush hour.
Stone expects it will be safer, as well, as it will reduce the number of accidents and injuries.
Some neighbours, such as Rob Wickson, president of Gorge Tillicum community association, are unhappy with the effect it will have on their communities and on Cuthbert Holmes Park, which will lose 1.4 hectares. That area is supposed to be replaced, with an opportunity to improve trails and water flow in the area.
The plan does offer improvements for pedestrians and cyclists, who will get better and wider overpasses over the highway and McKenzie.
For those with their eyes on the future, there is a corridor on the north side of the Trans-Canada that could carry light rail transit if such a dream is ever realized. That dream, or some other form of mass transit, is the only way to truly fix the Colwood Crawl and other bottlenecks.
When the new interchange opens, cars coming into Victoria will back up at Tillicum Road, while those heading to the Peninsula or the University of Victoria will idle at Burnside Road, Carey Road or Glanford Avenue. At least initially, those jams will likely be less acute than the current one, but it’s an inflexible rule of highway construction that new roads always fill with traffic.
To get around that rule, planners have to give commuters alternatives to the car. With the distances to the West Shore, that means mass transit, whether it’s rapid buses or light rail. The latter requires high passenger numbers to be viable, so it could be years away, but buses are within easy reach.
“I don’t think we’re really going to be addressing the issues of the congestion problem until we give motorists and folks living in the West Shore a better alternative for getting downtown,” said Edward Pullman, president of the Greater Victoria Cycling Coalition, who generally likes the design. “I would say this project is incomplete without a rapid-transit component.”
To its credit, the province has acknowledged the need by setting aside the corridor for a transit line. When the next bottlenecks begin driving drivers to distraction, the solution should focus on that option and not another cloverleaf.
The only way to cure big traffic jams is to put fewer cars on the road.
