Every weekend, residents along winding Finlayson Arm Road brace themselves for the onslaught of cars that go down their road as a shortcut to the Malahat.
Ben Gill, who lives just next to Finlayson Arm Road, said that about 30 per cent of cars he sees when it’s busy have Washington state plates.
“Most people are coming down here without really knowing what they’re getting into. It’s the bypass that maps are taking them on,” he said.
In some ways, Finlayson Arm, when approached through Millstream Road, is deceptive: the road starts off as a marked two-lane road — freshly paved by Highlands contractors this summer — but quickly narrows into a largely single-lane, two-way-traffic road filled with surprise inclines and a hairpin turn or two after crossing a narrow bridge across Millstream Creek.
Patches and potholes are frequent on the stretch of the road under Langford’s jurisdiction, and there’s often only inches between cars travelling in opposite directions.
Mark Zorn, a Highlands resident for the past 20 years, said he’s also noticed the uptick in Friday evening traffic on Millstream Road, which feeds into Finlayson Arm Road’s eastern side. “I thought it was a party the first few weeks,” he said, laughing. “But it’s getting worse.”
Sometimes, cars are backed up on Finlayson Arm Road for as much as two kilometres.
Retiree Ross Munro has been keeping track of the number of cars going past his home just off Finlayson Arm Road every Friday since the July long weekend.
Armed with a $17 clicker from Staples and a notebook, he notes each passing car from his hidden perch on Falcon Heights Road from 11:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
This Friday, he counted 1,920 vehicles, a slower day due to drivers leaving on Thursday for the Sunfest music festival at Lake Cowichan, he said.
The Friday before saw 3,120 vehicles crawl through, which included large motorhomes and trailer-towing dump trucks, he said.
“Traffic was backed up from the highway up Finlayson Arm to Falcon Heights,” he said. “What if someone needs an ambulance?”
A comprehensive rework of Finlayson Arm Road would involve multiple jurisdictions as the Highlands, Langford, B.C. Parks, and First Nations all hold claim to stretches of the former logging road.
Eric Doherty, a Victoria-based transportation planning consultant, said that widening Finlayson Arm Road would only bring more traffic. “You can either try to kind of do this patchwork increase of road and highway capacity — which actually makes the problem worse — or you get to the root of the problem.”
The congestion of Finlayson Arm Road is a symptom of automobile dependency in a growing region, he said.
Doherty recommended hourly buses — or trains — from Victoria to Nanaimo as a solution to Malahat congestion. “It’s something that is cost-effective and feasible, but it requires a shift in thinking.”
Caleb Glass, who has been an on-and-off Finlayson Arm Road resident since the age of 13, said he remembers how the road used to be when it was just locals driving it.
“People used to drink and drive on this road like crazy, going 120 miles an hour,” he said. “It was never a problem, because that’s how dead this road was.”
“It’s straight up a population-to-services neglect problem,” Glass said, adding that there should be more ways for people to get from the South Island to Mid Island, such as ferries, trains, and high-speed rail instead of a dozen people almost dying on Finlayson Arm Road because of GPS algorithms.
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