Comments during city council meeting raise concerns about future of BC Transit in Dawson Creek The contract between the city and BC Transit expires in Spring 2026.

Could Dawson Creek, BC eliminate their transit network?

If you know anyone up there, please tell them to reach out to city council.

www.cjdctv.com/news/article...

“Homes for All” is the theme of this year’s Gingerbread Showcase

Lots of great housing messages and examples of homes that should be legal everything

Support our friends at Habitat for Humanity www.habitatvictoria....

There is indeed provision for bus-on-shoulder along Highway 17. But, as with all needed capex/opex investments in this region, no timeline.

I think it's illustrative that we're just now getting bus-on-shoulder on the busiest highway corridor at least 15 years after it was first discussed.

This is already in the plans. But some level of overlap Downtown is unavoidable unless the service is extremely fast + frequent. Many ferry buses need it (linear transfer sucks), and some other E-W buses do (otherwise we're looking at 2-3 transfers on many ~30min trips, worse than bigger cities).

On top of what others said, BC Transit has a tiny team for this (lack of corporate $), and BC is super stingy about transit investment in the CRD.

Even per-capita, BC Transit has a shoestring budget compared to larger Canadian systems. Also unfortunately why the opex of rapid transit matters.

Do you have an example of a place that's solved them? I've been scouring for global examples for the past couple years and come up empty-handed. e.g. so many places just cut off all cross street traffic.

It would be great to have one to show to local politicians, because that could be done now.

If only! But, per my note upthread: bsky.app/profile/bria...

Victoria has the same problem described in youtu.be/ObWf2SwO-OY, but worse. 3/4 of the big cross arterials run frequent bus service. With local leaders not even wanting a transit mall on Douglas, it's not clear how much TSP one can do.

Grade separation would work! But the proposals shot it down (for bus or rail) because of cost. I disagree, but this is what we're working with.

Unfortunately, transit already doesn't do well on the surface. I've seen so many buses wait 2-3 light cycles and behind 2-3 other buses for a stop.

This is on me and the bsky char limit, but "Downtown" covers all the way to Uptown, and BC Transit reports their ridership accordingly. Transit competes well with cycling at that distance, but not with driving. And once bus lanes are in, the very hard to fix bottleneck will be no/bad TSP.

Just like how you've pushed back on people who point at Toronto streetcar ridership to argue they are fine as-is, we will not induce enough mode shift if transit remains incredibly non-speed competitive in the city centre. Most people will choose to bike (good!) or continue to drive (bad!).

Important context here is that Douglas has multiple busy routes and already an average ~2min frequency. With frequencies guaranteed to increase over time and a high transfer penalty (Greater Victoria is compact), avoiding a future Ottawa-style bus jam will be incredibly difficult.

It's worth noting that BRT also enables growth when you don't need SkyTrain levels of ridership. That's not me saying this, it's TransLink! There's a reason they're building it instead of SkyTrain in places like Maple Ridge and Langley Township.

This takes into account future demand. We are unlikely to see a SkyTrain down to Tsawwassen before at least 2050 for the same reason: there is still so much growth potential elsewhere, and you'd have to sacrifice valuable farmland (which is extremely difficult in BC).

Figure 2.4 (Daily Travel & Major Origin-Destination Patterns) from the 2025 updated LRT report. It compares 2011 (left) and 2022 (right) travel data in the CRD. Major travel flows from the 2011 study map: 6,100 (Westshore to Saanich Peninsula) 60,600 (Core to Saanich Peninsula) 89,400 (Core to Westshore) Major travel flows from the 2022 CRD Household Travel Survey map: 8,300 (Westshore to Saanich Peninsula) 51,700 (Core to Saanich Peninsula) 96,700 (Core to Westshore)

Perhaps unintuitively, studies suggest it should be the other way around!

REM: carries 🧍🧍🧍🧍 but costs $$$$. Most competitive where there is slow traffic (e.g. Downtown, Colwood Crawl)

BRT: carries 🧍🧍 but costs $$. Most competitive where there is some traffic but few intersections (e.g. Highway 17)

Table 3.3 of the 2011 LRT report. Columns and data are as follows: City Line Transit Vehicle Running Way Latent Demand Calgary C Train LRT Exclusive at Grade 15% - 20% Minneapolis Hiawatha/Central LRT Exclusive at Grade 30% Vancouver Millennium Line Skytrain LRT Exclusive Grade Separated 32% Vancouver Canada Line Skytrain LRT Exclusive Grade Separated 80% Charlotte LYNX LRT Exclusive at Grade 110%

At this point, it's probably clear that this conversation is less about BRT vs LRT, and more about the challenges of surface-running transit. Does it still make sense in Victoria? Perhaps. But we are also seeing levels of ridership on Douglas around what justified the Canada Line and SLS.

Google Maps screenshot of Downtown Victoria, showing average traffic levels at around 4:30 PM. Cross arterial streets like Bay, Johnson and Fort are especially busy at this time.

Now, the 2011 report highlights how TSP will keep rapid transit moving. This is a bit of a hand-wave, as short blocks with heavy cross traffic makes strong TSP measures difficult.

Calgary has this challenge on 7th Ave, and that doesn't even have to deal with extra delay from retained car lanes!

Next, we have some geometry problems. The 2011 study notes that blocks Downtown are incredibly short and can only fit one tram/long bus. This precludes running local service on Douglas to complement rapid transit, and is a reason why BC Transit doesn't already use articulated buses in Victoria.

Figure 5 from the 2025 LRT report refresh, showing capacity of various modes. Shared bus lane: ~1000 Dedicated bus lanes (urban): ~2500 (meets existing need of <2000 and just under projected 2038 need of 2400) Separated bus lanes (urban BRT): ~4000 (meets projected 2050 need of 3500) LRT: ~6000

First things first, both the 2011 study and 2025 refresh acknowledge that BRT would provide enough _capacity_ to fulfill future need. However, this capacity was based on pre-recovery 2023 ridership numbers and focuses on capturing people fed up with congestion on Highway 1.

While Reece is right that articulated trolleybuses could work for a number of routes in Victoria, the most pressing corridor for higher-order transit (Downtown to Westshore) is unfortunately not a great candidate. Why? See bettercolumbia.ca/2025/11/13/n... or 🧵⤵️

www.bctransit.com/wp-content/u...

TransLink had 11% weekday bus overcrowding in 2024, and they rolled out the biggest bus expansion since 2018.

Victoria had 8% weekday bus overcrowding in 2024, and our expansion funding was cut to the point where it doesn't even pay for schedule maintenance. 🙃

Grateful to receive support for Bill M216 from Homes for Living YYJ. A community housing advocacy group.

“To meet affordability goals, we must ensure that it is faster and easier to build dense infill housing rather than suburban sprawl.”

#bcpoli #Nanaimo #Lantzville #Victoriabc

Our letter to BC MLAs in support of @georgeandersonbc.bsky.social's private members' bill to streamline housing approvals.

We need your help to tell transit commissioners that airport service should come alongside all-day 71 service, which would give Sidney residents and ferry riders an all-day direct downtown connection. Transit doesn't have to be zero-sum.

See the proposal:

www.bctransit.com/wp-content/u...

We're happy to announce that we're looking for a volunteer to lead our advocacy efforts for the TTC Streetcar network. Our streetcars are some of the slowest in the world, and on time performance was just 61% last month. As our streetcar lead, you will have the responsibility of:
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New Study Makes Strong Case for Getting Westshore Rail on Track - Better Columbia The province quietly updated the 2011 Westshore Rapid Transit Study. They determined that we need transit investment, now more than ever.

Without fanfare, the BC Ministry of Transportation released a report that makes a strong case for a Westshore to Victoria rail line, writes Sam Holland

Transit rider @nottaylorx.bsky.social shared this video of a side-by-side comparison of a tram in Amsterdam and a streetcar in Toronto departing a stop.

Guess which one has fully active signal priority? A phase before left-turning cars?

West Vancouver mayor says he won’t back down from standoff on provincially mandated housing targets | CBC News The B.C. government says West Vancouver has shirked its responsibility to build housing and meet set targets. But the district mayor says he fundamentally disagrees with the province's approach. As th...

"[T]here have been 33 studies on Ambleside in the past 79 years. There has been such great engagement that I think it's disrespectful to those that gave their input to not push this forward.”

Good pushback to West Van mayor from both province & a local BIA voice. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

The Kingsway transit priority proposals are good, but we can do better - Better Columbia TransLink and the City of Vancouver are proposing transit priority measures and bus stop balancing along Kingsway, focusing on Route 19. And it’s a great place to start! The 19 is the 9th most used bus route in the entire region1, while also being the 4th slowest1, which means improvements that are made here will […]

Speeding up buses along Kingsway will have an outsized benefit for the network—but Vancouver and TransLink can do better than two minutes of time savings per trip, argues Ben Chang

But just to show how fraught these schemes can be and the difficulty of making things pencil (as mentioned in the parallel reply thread), I've heard the Victoria Superstore towers are on ice until economic conditions improve.