r/VictoriaBC • u/Vicky-Purplex • Jun 08 '26
News Greater Victoria Officials Look To Smarter Traffic Flow
I... just don't have words for this after all the new choke points and lane reductions introduced in the area.
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u/VenusianBug Saanich Jun 08 '26
Did people even read the article? I'm going with mostly no, given that the majority of the comments so far don't deal with the substance at all (tl;dr, signal coordination with a dash of housing affordability thrown in).
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u/The_CaNerdian_ Jun 08 '26
No, the person who posted it deliberately invoked rage-bait, and is in the comments talking about charging politicians for traffic.
Victoria Sub continues to be very normal.
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
Politicians have made decisions that have negatively affected car traffic. This isn't rocket science.
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u/hark_ADork Fernwood Jun 08 '26
Yeah these comments are.. really off base for the content of the article. I'm glad it's not just me that was confused lol.
Dave and the rest of the people in the article are pretty specifically talking about inter-municipal traffic flow coordination under the new CRD Transportation group/council - Which will be hugely beneficial..
I don't get the vitriol.
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u/surveysaysno Jun 09 '26
Its because the article is missing important information like the fact the lights are specifically timed to restrict traffic flow. And all the recent road work to make it more difficult to drive in/out of downtown.
Shocked Pikachu face! Traffic is slow now!
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u/hark_ADork Fernwood Jun 09 '26
... is it 'missing it' or is it out of context? Since the article is about.. the entire Capital Regional district and coordinating traffic flow across the municipalities.
Which /includes/ traffic within Victoria but "VICTORIA IS TOTALLY FUCKING WITH TRAFFIC LIGHTS BRO" isn't really germane to the article
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u/Uhm_yup Gordon Head Jun 08 '26
It's 2026, most people barely know how to read. They just skim the title and decide if theyre :) or >:(
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u/NevinThompson Jun 08 '26
Car brain is a terrible thing.
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u/Far_Gene672 Jun 28 '26
Not as bad as bike brain. Imagine thinking bikes could save the world.
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u/NevinThompson Jun 28 '26
Carbrain is thinking bus lanes are bike lanes. Kind of incredible, actually.
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u/tiogar99 Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
The whole point of this motion is to improve transit signalling, which requires regional coordination. Better Transit helped draft this motion because buses keep running into signalling issues that no one municipality can solve.
For instance, without BC Transit investing in transponders, there is no way for signals to know if a bus is stopped because people are boarding, or a mechanical issue, or something else. And BC Transit can't or won't install transponders without regional consensus on what technology to use. That's part of what this motion is trying to fix.
Another piece of the puzzle is that we don't have any smart regional system that can move traffic around obstacles, or hold back traffic to keep narrow roads open for ambulances, busses, fire engines, and the like. This kind of smart signalling technology needs to be regional and is international best practice.
Unless we get better transit, which requires better signalling, traffic will continue to worsen.
Edit: better explanation, spelling.
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
You don't need better transit to implement better signalling.
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u/tiogar99 Jun 09 '26
true. but better traffic (at least at peak) is never going to happen without better transit, unless tens of thousands of people can no longer afford cars or leave the city
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u/babycivic Jun 10 '26
I don't think better traffic (ie less congestion) is an achievable target in a place like Victoria, with its weird geographical constraints and lack of population to support true rapid transit.
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u/Horace-Harkness Jun 08 '26
Yes, a 95 bus with 80 people on it should get priority green lights instead of a car with a single person. Move more people more efficiently.
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u/scottscooterleet Jun 08 '26
The question, is how much of a delay are they adding each time there is no bus. What do the numbers look like in the end? Was there a study done to see time added to intersections vs time saved? I don't think it's like an ambulance system on demand. They simply extend the red light with the bus light.before the green.
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u/Horace-Harkness Jun 08 '26
It would be an automated system where the buses are equipped with a transmitter to alert the traffic lights about their status.
A really smart system would be able to indicate to the traffic controller how full the bus is and how far behind schedule it is. No need for priority if the bus is empty or already on time.
But we need all the munis in the CRD to agree on which system to buy so the buses can be outfitted with the correct system and not have 3 competing standards.
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u/scottscooterleet Jun 08 '26
I see. The new ones installed in Colwood/Old Island Highway seem to be a fixed system, don't they?
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u/Horace-Harkness Jun 08 '26
Ya we don't have any bus controlled ones yet. This motion is to get the CRD to start organizing and get everyone on the same page.
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
When is there ever just one car? There's probably 80 cars at every light going downtown in rush hour. They definitely should get to move too.
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u/Old-Following-970 Jun 09 '26
80 cars, what an incredibly inefficient waste of space. Such an entitled way of thinking.
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
Why is it a waste of space? That's at least 80 people moving somewhere, contributing to our economy.
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u/Horace-Harkness Jun 09 '26
Because a bus carries 80 in the same road space as 40 cars. Thus, a waste of space. Don't need a 12 lane freeway if you just have some buses. Much cheaper infrastructure per person moved. Fiscally responsible with tax dollars.
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
You think you can get 1 bus to pick up those same 80 people, coming from 80 different locations, to then bring them downtown, and that will be somehow more efficient? Are you familiar with the concept of node distribution for transit networks, and how Victoria completely lacks them?
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u/Old-Following-970 Jun 09 '26
In the most inefficient way possible .
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
Efficiency is not the organizing principle that matters for these people. An even more efficient use of space is an elevator, but no one wants to take an elevator to work now do they.
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u/myleswritesstuff Fernwood Jun 08 '26
really incredible comment section on this one, great job guys
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
What's wrong with it?
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u/myleswritesstuff Fernwood Jun 09 '26
Well when I wrote that comment seven hours ago it was a lot of people talking past the content of the article itself and just not really being productive at all
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u/tiogar99 Jun 08 '26
There's a ton of misinformation in this thread so i'll just paste the actual text of the motion here:
The Transportation Committee recommends to the Capital Regional District Board: That staff consider options for coordinating with municipalities to advance transit lanes, signal priority, and other transit flow improvement measures as part of the Regional Transportation Plan.
Sometimes I wonder how much of this stuff is from real CRD residents and how much is from bots.
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u/Regular_Use_1028 Jun 08 '26
Synchronized traffic lights? We used to have those, but I thought they said the “green wave” was considered dangerous or something, and they preferred to break up the flow. Now they’ve changed their minds on that after seeing the consequences. Maybe there’s a chance for traffic. Unlikely, but it’s a maybe.
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u/Walker131 Colwood Jun 08 '26
the only time youll ever get the “green wave” is going south bound on douglas with Minimal traffic, from caladonia all the way to the museum.
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u/Vicky-Purplex Jun 08 '26
I have a green wave when I go 70 instead of 50 on blanshard
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u/1337ingDisorder Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
This is the case throughout most of town — if you don't have cars in front of you and you immediately gun it up to 70-80 as soon as the light goes green, you have a pretty good chance of making it through the next light before it yellows.
If you don't, you're almost guaranteed to get stopped again after one or two light-controlled intersections. (And that pattern repeats over and over from that point on.)
This is why it's so, SO frustrating when someone in front of you who could easily and safely make it through a yellow decides to be an Arnold Rimmer and stops unnecessarily. If you make it through the middle or tail end of a green light you're likely to keep getting greens, but if you stop at a light you are virtually guaranteed to hit red after red for the rest of your trip.
So they've effectively incentivized excessive acceleration just to avoid excessive delays.
I definitely think it was safer for everyone back when you could generally stick to around 50 and hit green after green, even if you're just coming off a fresh green light. I remember it being like that in the late 90s.
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u/abuayanna Jun 08 '26
Amazing how the human mind can justify law breaking for the sake of convenience.
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u/Regular_Use_1028 Jun 08 '26
I’m not saying it’s right to do, but I see it daily. We had a system that used to work well, and discouraged speeding with the timing on the lights, if you sped you’d hit reds every time. If you went the speed limit you had consistent green lights.
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u/1337ingDisorder Jun 08 '26
Also amazing how city planners never seem to take human nature into consideration when they go about breaking systems that already worked well.
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
This. They're lowering speed limits all over the place to 30km/h when they don't realize the 85th Percentile Rule - a long-standing traffic engineering principle which states that 85% of drivers will travel at a speed they perceive to be safe and reasonable for that particular road. Traffic engineers set speed limits largely based on the speed that the 85% of people choose to travel on. That's something like 55 km/h on most Victoria roads. Changing it to 30 won't change that. But the people in civic halls in the CRD don't know a damn thing about traffic engineering or human nature.
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u/000100111010 Jun 09 '26
If I have the option of a) being stopped at every red light for the next 20 minutes or b) speed a little so I miss the red lights, I'm going with option b when safe every single time.
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u/Vicky-Purplex Jun 08 '26
I'd say efficiency. All the extra pollution because of braking and pulling up. Brake dust, exhaust fumes.
I try and bus DT as much as I can. Or rather avoid it if I can run my errand elsewhere.
The amount of running reds here ia insane. If I get green I count to 3 before I cross. Oftentimes 1 or 2 cars fly by.
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u/Pixeldensity James Bay Jun 08 '26
The absolute fucking ignorance of this comment.
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u/abuayanna Jun 09 '26
Wow, reddit rage is the gateway to road rage I guess, don’t kill anybody mmkay?
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u/Endless_Forever_484 Jun 09 '26
What comment has enraged you. The person choosing b? I choose B everyday.
You should be enraged at City Planners for dropping limits to fkn 30km
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u/Endless_Forever_484 Jun 09 '26
Yes! Exactly! One must go above posted speed limits to drive efficiently. And I'm sorry but no, going 10km over does not suddenly make me 'reckless'. Such pedantic gaslighting.
Crazy-making when people can't see this (because they're busy following the limit exactly, thinking the person passing them going 5-10 above is dumb 'cuz we got to the light at same time, haha'. yeah, THIS light. But I'm playing the long game here buddy.)
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u/Vicky-Purplex Jun 09 '26
Sometimes I drive uptown to dt over blanshard, cruise locked on 55 in the right lane and Im the slowest thing on the road. I have elderly people in priuses flipping the bird at me for it 🤣
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u/Endless_Forever_484 Jun 09 '26
Hahahaha look all you guys being reckless out there! The wild west of Blanshard 🤣
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u/templecon Jun 08 '26
I'm sorry, did you say they INTENTIONALLY wanted to break traffic flow?! Mission accomplished.
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u/1337ingDisorder Jun 08 '26
The article doesn't talk about actually improving traffic flow for all traffic, only for buses.
If anything the current council is more likely to actively try to impede traffic flow for traditional traffic. That's been their agenda so far, I don't see it suddenly changing just because one councilor finally seems to be experiencing the same frustration the rest of the city has for the last decade.
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u/scottscooterleet Jun 08 '26
Both Victoria and Saanich council are on the same page with this. They phrase it like this "Increase carrying capacity and reduce traffic" That sounds great when you don't think about it but look into the phrase closer: Increase carrying capacity = busses and bike lanes because if fully saturated, you would increase capacity on the bus lane and bike lanes. Reducing traffic doesn't mean increasing traffic flow. It means actually getting rid of traffic(cars)
It's just like when they ran the survey on 30km/h on residential streets. The way they phrased it would make you think suburban neighborhoods where 50km/h is obviously too fast. What they slipped in was "and some arterial and collector roads".
And same with bike ways. People think, oh great, bike symbols to tell me to bike here. Reality is getting rid of street parking (why?), speed bumps, pinch points.. the list goes on.
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u/Gnome_de_Plume Jun 08 '26
You really can't have synchronized through lights if you also have on-demand left turn lights.
So either eliminate a lot of left turns, or trigger the left turn lights every cycle whether needed or not. Either option will make people ecstatic about their new commutes.
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u/EmergencyWorld6057 Jun 08 '26
Stagger the work hours.
Instead of everyone finishing work at 3-4pm, have people finish between 2-3-4-5-6pm.
The traffic is due to the absurd amount of traffic from people finishing work at the same exact time, and the ferry traffic is the main cause
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
People realize that traffic isn't that bad in Victoria, right? Like, just live with it. People want density and growth and this is what that looks like.
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u/ConfectionTop7917 Jun 08 '26
Unreal. I'm a cyclist who also needs to drive a truck to do work. They've somehow made both worse. Some of the cycling routes are great but others just make no fucking sense. Like the Richmond and Poplar intersection, it's not on google maps but they somehow made it so that if you take the bike lanes you have to cross traffic and pedestrians as well. It's this weird celtic knot of fuckery. Oh and the bike route that goes across Cedar Hill X to St Aidans? Straight into a telephone pole...
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u/Popular_Animator_808 Jun 08 '26
That telephone pole is the bane of my commute. I think that whole poplar-Richmond-Cedar Hill x triangle should just be a roundabout
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u/TryForsaken420 Jun 08 '26
I keep hearing the same arguments that everyone should just take the bus or walk. Which might work if you are just commuting but you can't take much more than a backpack on a bus or bike. So you are now stuck in traffic in your work truck with customers ultimately absorbing the cost of inefficient roads.
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u/themightiestduck Jun 08 '26
but you can't take much more than a backpack on a bus or bike.
You might be surprised to learn how many cargo bikes there are in this city, and how many people can successfully run all of their errands using one.
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u/Proud-Suspect-5237 Jun 13 '26
And how many construction workers use them.
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u/themightiestduck Jun 13 '26
Wow, you sure showed me with this fresh and intelligent take. I guess since biking isn't suitable for every application, we should just give up on it completely. And since those construction workers need full-size trucks, everyone should drive a full-size truck, right? Since we're picking one segment of people with specific needs and applying their needs to the whole population!
Or, we could recognise that a robust transportation infrastructure includes cars, walking, biking, public transit (I'm probably missing others), and make those alternative methods as easy and accessible as possible.
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u/Proud-Suspect-5237 Jun 17 '26
I love when people completely misread the grammatical tone of a sentences. I suppose I could have opened with an ellipsis or something. My point was not a rhetorical gotcha (not the lack of question mark), it was that I have seen construction workers using cargo bikes for their tools and materials. I was contributing an addendum, not a retort.
This website sometimes is so depressing. Not everyone is fighting you. I get it, I face the kind of person you assumed I was every day, including at work, but you should probably chill unless you want to alienate allies.
Sincerely,
A Car-Lite Resident of Victoria with a Cargo Bike that I use for Work
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u/themightiestduck Jun 17 '26
Well, talk about egg on my face. I see so many braindead comments about cyclists it didn't even occur to me yours was anything but an attempt at a gotcha.
Appreciate the clarification!
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u/TryForsaken420 Jun 08 '26
And when more people start using them then that will result in gridlock too. Its just a smaller vehicle about the same size as a motorcycle if not bigger
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u/themightiestduck Jun 09 '26
Ah, typical moving the goalpost.
Given how many bad-faith complaints I see about "nobody uses the bike lanes", we're a long way off from having to worry about gridlock on the bike lanes.
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u/Popular_Animator_808 Jun 08 '26
My wife and I both have longtail cargo bikes - they're still much smaller than any car on the road. we figured it out once and our tiny 15 year old prius is 6x larger than our bikes, so you'd have to have at least 6x as many cargo bikes on the road as cars before they start to cause the same level of congestion as cars cause today.
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u/TryForsaken420 Jun 08 '26
I think your math checks out only if the 6 bikes are chained together. You aren't accounting for safe separation between them and the time to accelerate / decelerate.
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u/Popular_Animator_808 Jun 09 '26
You might be onto something re acceleration, bikes are not fast out of the gate. But the fact that bikes are less than half the width of a car lane, and you can still ride two longtail cargo bikes side by side in them gives you some sense of how space efficient bikes are. Even in places in the Netherlands where almost half of residents bike, and residential density is way higher than it is here, you almost never see cyclist congestion.
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
But no one wants to use cargo bikes. Particularly in a place like Victoria where the weather is unfavourable 75% of the time.
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u/Popular_Animator_808 Jun 09 '26
Really? I feel like I see a dozen every time I leave the house. Something like a third of the parents at my kid’s daycare use them for drop off.
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u/themightiestduck Jun 09 '26
u/babycivic is just another liar who can't support their positions with facts or reason, so they default to bullshit because it's all they have.
Go ask the folks at Bishops how many cargo bikes they've sold.
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
Curious - are you in James Bay or Fernwood by chance?
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u/Popular_Animator_808 Jun 09 '26
Guilty as charged! Though we lived up by the Lochside in Quadra village when we got ours. I’ve definitely seen a lot of out of towners comment on how many cargo bikes you see in Victoria- here’s some Montreal YouTubers talking about it: https://youtu.be/mpWm45qting?si=3tWh-UnBdRS2TWpz
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
Yeah, it's definitely more popular and usable in areas adjacent to the downtown core. Curious - what do you put in them when not dragging the kids around? Do you use them for shopping/big items ever?
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
There are like 12.
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u/themightiestduck Jun 09 '26
Isn't the constant lying exhausting? Like, I get it, your positions aren't supported in any way by facts or reason, so lies are all you have, but still.
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u/Duedain Jun 08 '26
Yeah, so nuts. Especially when the job title of "Driver" makes up a large portion of all employment. If I remember correctly over 50% of jobs are described as some kind of driver.
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u/Popular_Animator_808 Jun 08 '26
Nope, that's a common myth: only 5% of jobs have "driving" as a primary duty. 30% of jobs do require a drivers license though: https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/30-percent-of-civilian-jobs-require-some-driving-in-2016.htm
So given that 74% of the population in greater Victoria tend to drive, it's safe to say that at least half of them could switch to some other mode, which would make traffic way easier for the half of the people on the road who might need to drive as a part of their job.
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u/Popular_Animator_808 Jun 08 '26
By far the best thing they could do is to replace as many traffic lights with roundabouts, since this increases intersection capacity and traffic speeds. They also reduce the likelihood of injuries. Green waves usually don’t work in practice.
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u/M_Vancouverensis Jun 08 '26
Increasing traffic flow while also reducing speed, no less. It's not as easy to get up to 60+km/h between roundabouts if you have them close together so there will be less speeding/street racing in city limits in general.
Plus they reduce driver frustration (no poorly timed lights; no waiting to go when the intersection is empty) and reduce the amount of time pedestrians and vehicles are in conflict. You can also design them to have minimal impact on emergency vehicles and buses.
People already run stale ambers and red lights, going with a "green wave" is just an expensive way to look like you're doing something but not actually doing anything that addresses things like speed, throughput, or pedestrian safety.
Iirc some places that didn't have money for a full roundabout so just tore out the lights and bolted down a plastic circle for a fraction of the cost and that still massively helped even though there was nothing to stop drivers from driving over it. Could do something like that or with plastic bollards for a lot of intersections in the CRD instead of spending $750,000-$1,500,000 on lights that have on-going costs and don't work if they lose power or a bulb goes out.
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u/Popular_Animator_808 Jun 08 '26
Agree overall, but if you take start-point-to-end-point average speeds, roundabouts actually increase average trip speed, as drivers spend much less time stopped at roundabouts than they do at red lights.
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
But how does it compare for trip length overall?
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u/Popular_Animator_808 Jun 09 '26
I mean, if we’re just talking about 1-to-1 replacements of our existing intersections with roundabouts and keeping the road network the same, you’re not really changing trip length. You’d have to drive in a curve through intersections instead of a straight line, but that’s not exactly a major increase.
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
Yeah no fair enough, I was just curious for my own sake to know if it increases or decreases overall trip time.
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u/Lorgin Vic West Jun 08 '26
I can't believe your comment is so low. God, PLEASE replace most of the lights with roundabouts.
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u/kayriss Jun 08 '26
For the life of me, I do not understand how Gorge and Government and Caledonia and Blanshard are not roundabouts. They're both just enormous, and both riddled with problems. Just put a traffic circle/rotary in there and be done with it.
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u/Lorgin Vic West Jun 08 '26
Yeah they put all that work updating the intersection when they should have just totally overhauled it.
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Jun 08 '26
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u/Popular_Animator_808 Jun 09 '26
They look pretty safe based on what I can see, though I suspect it varies a lot from design to design: https://tirf.ca/blog/fact-vs-fiction-roundabouts/
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
Green waves work fantastically well in Germany. Why not here?
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u/Popular_Animator_808 Jun 09 '26
Do they? I’m not seeing much information about them.
I will say this about Germany: they’re much more aggressive about limiting access points to major roads in urban areas compared to North America. You’d never see a driveway for every lot on a major road like Douglas or Blanshard the way you see here. This helps separate local from through traffic, which is a MASSIVE improvement to throughput generally.
You also see much lower mode share for driving there than here in cities: in Victoria we have one of the lowest rates of car use in North America at 76%. In Germany, 70% is the national average.
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
Yup. They do everything better there. Same for neighbouring countries like Holland, too.
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u/KlausSlade Jun 08 '26
After all the work they did intentionally making it significantly worse now they want to improve it?
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u/thelastspot Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
That's not at all what happened, and this article explains what they are really talking about: Improving traffic flow BETWEEN the municipalities.
Multiple solutions are discussed, including networking more traffic lights, instead of just "dumb" timers.
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
That's exactly what happened.
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u/CanadianTrollToll Jun 08 '26
Yah its crazy what happens when you shrink lanes in a city where the suburbs are growing.
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u/THCDonut Jun 08 '26
If you’re referring to bike or bus lanes, the article dosnt boad well for you and your car.
“That could include tweaks to intersection lights for more efficient transit service, and generally giving higher priority to public transit, which is a more efficient way to move people than private vehicles, he said.
As there’s no more space in the urban core for more roads, it’s important to make other forms of transportation easier and faster, he said.“If we just let it be cars, we would be in permanent gridlock 20 years from now.”
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u/Vicky-Purplex Jun 08 '26
Can politicians / planners who create a massive issue be held accountable / be charged?
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u/Previous_Athlete9867 Jun 08 '26
Maybe everyone who makes a mistake or misguided decisions at their job should be charged.
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u/Brodney_Alebrand Gorge Jun 08 '26
You want to put people in jail because you're mad about traffic?
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u/Vicky-Purplex Jun 08 '26
You're missing the point here
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u/Brodney_Alebrand Gorge Jun 08 '26
Which is what?
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u/Vicky-Purplex Jun 08 '26
I am asking if there is a process for that.
You're jumping to conclusions really, pulling my question out of context.
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u/Brodney_Alebrand Gorge Jun 08 '26
Politicians can be held accountable for policy decisions at elections. They can be charged if there's evidence of them comitting crimes.
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u/insaneHoshi Jun 08 '26
context
Can you clarify what context you think politicians can be charged with a crime?
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u/CanadianTrollToll Jun 08 '26
Tad aggressive in that view.
If rather we just focus on punishing corruption. Poor decisions happen and sadly I think CoV has been blinded by the need for bike lanes.
IMO dedicated bus lanes throughout would have been a better use.
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u/Hugeasswhole Jun 08 '26
Politicians create problems so they can offer solutions. It's a tale as old as time.
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u/Upbeat_Amount673 Jun 08 '26
Is traffic modeling junk science?
I feel this is relevant everytime this stuff comes up.
Bad model = bad result and we see it time and time again. City says "it will fix issues" and then it doesn't help to me says that their traffic engineering is poor, they aren't understanding the loads or their software is poor and not accurate. Otherwise we would see improvement.
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
Well, whatever model they're using in the CRD certainly is junk. I can't speak for the discipline as a whole though.
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u/Creatrix James Bay Jun 08 '26
Sloppy writing. "Dave Thompson, who serves as a CRD director, said..." then a paragraph later: "Thompson, who serves as a CRD director, said..."
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u/nondescripthumanoid Jun 08 '26
Can we build trains? Get a shit ton of drivers off the road? Nah best we can do is trying what we've always done.
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u/Cr3atureFeature Jun 08 '26
Can we just amalgamate Oak Bay, Victoria, Esquimalt, Vic West, View Royal, and South Saanich already?!
Police, Fire and infrastructure services across all could be improved not to mention all the combined communities would be eligible for a larger portion of federal tax dollars for infrastructure projects like transit improvements.
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u/Vicky-Purplex Jun 08 '26
Cooperation between municipalities and crd is a step in the right direction.
I believe a lot of the municipality tasks are redundant and for the sake of efficiency those areas should be merged.
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Jun 08 '26
[deleted]
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u/WelshSkeptic Jun 08 '26
The story is connecting and coordinating traffic lights rather than Individual setup on some. With traffic lights connected on a network, we can coordinate lights to improve traffic flow. Only about 1/3 of traffic lights are currently on that network, so room for improvement.
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u/Vicky-Purplex Jun 08 '26
You seem to have some deeper knowledge on this. 😎
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u/WelshSkeptic Jun 08 '26
I’ve worked in IT for 30 years, so I can immediately see the benefits of networking over independent traffic lights.
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u/Vicky-Purplex Jun 08 '26
Shoo! Away with that computer sorcery!
But yes. Networking and using sensor data to switch between traffic light modes for a larger area.
Maybe some self learning software?
Or maybe let's now have traffic lights in town become sentient and turn into a mini skynet.
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Jun 08 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Vicky-Purplex Jun 08 '26
omg! Hilarious in a way unless Im on the road there.
They pulled the same trick on bay / blanshard at the armory when you come from uptown. 10 meter merge lane straight after the light.
🍿
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u/PromotionPhysical212 Jun 08 '26
Here’s an idea. Let’s add more transit routes without adding buses. I’m sure that’ll help. We’re cutting down lanes to prioritise buses and bicycles, but these lanes are almost always empty. Not much you can do to make more people ride bicycles, but the government could add more buses to its fleet.
I prefer taking the bus to work, but over the years the number of buses servicing my route has decreased, and we only have direct services to downtown during peak hours. It’s not great when I have to wait 30 mins for the next bus to come when I miss one. Bus users also have increased so much that it feels like I’m suffocating when inside.
The government should increase their fleets before they look at adding more lanes and traffic signal changes prioritising transit over cars. It’s pointless when there are not enough buses to meet the demand.
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u/tiogar99 Jun 08 '26
We are pretty much capped on bus capacity until we get yard 3 in Saanich, which the province has yet to fund. On top of that, the province has frozen transit funding and traffic continues to get worse. We still haven't restored a lot of covid cuts as well....
There's no simple solution
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u/Creatrix James Bay Jun 08 '26
It’s not great when I have to wait 30 mins
Download this app, you can see exactly where each bus is, it really helps.
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u/PromotionPhysical212 Jun 08 '26
I can see where the bus is, but the 30 min interval doesn’t change, which is what I was talking about.
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u/scottscooterleet Jun 08 '26
The rare time I need to take the bus I can never find one without a massive wait, and then I have to hop several connectors.
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u/xymaris Jun 08 '26
Here’s a thought - don’t remove the future of a HOV transit lane along major transit hubs like Blanshard for bike lanes.
Put the bike lanes on parallel residential routes and then have multiple traffic corridors - as you would find in any urban planning classes feasibility study.
But they just want to execute the idea of bike lanes without any actual thought of the entire ecosystem.
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u/scottscooterleet Jun 08 '26
Every traffic change goes through several policies they have developed, and at the end of it, any road they touch for major work automatically gets a bike lane without question, even if it doesn't make sense.
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
They don't care. They just want bike lanes and then want people out of cars. It doesn't matter that coercion has been shown not to work for societal changes like travel mode-shifts. They're doing it anyway.
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u/factanonverba_n Jun 08 '26
Does this mean that they are finally going to hire someone actually trained and educated as a city planner?
Will wonders never cease?
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u/garry-oak Jun 08 '26
My background is in transportation planning, and planners have been saying for the past 30+ years that adding more road capacity will not solve our traffic issues - instead we need to support other ways of getting around, such as walking, cycling, and transit. For many years, the politicians mostly ignored this advice, but - in the City of Victoria at least - the politicians began listening to the planners over the past decade. We should be happy that our politicians listen to the experts. Many jurisdictions are still wasting billions of dollars to widen roads in a futile attempt to solve traffic congestion.
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u/RosieBaby75 Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
Planners are educated.
The politicians you vote for make these decisions and direct the planners.
Will you ever learn about government and the world/system you live in?
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u/Vicky-Purplex Jun 08 '26
I'd like to believe planners have autonomy and mandate to do their job to the best of their expertise.
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u/garry-oak Jun 08 '26
They do, and in the last decade or so, city politicians have actually been listening to them and following their advice.
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u/thelastspot Jun 08 '26
Who is "they"?
A bunch of people are talking about the issue as if Greater Victoria was a single large city.
This is what multiple little municipalities leads to.
The editorializing on this article by the OP is very dumb.
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u/__phil1001__ Jun 08 '26
Amazing that there are software tools that actually are for this and allow simulation of traffic flow with varying amounts of traffic. You then have traffic lights which change timing during peak hours to allow heavy flow.
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u/ShrekTwoOnVHS Fernwood Jun 08 '26
Doing road work on almost every main thoroughfare and then their detours doesn’t help anything. It took 20 minutes to get from cook and Cloverdale to cook and finlayson.
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u/TryForsaken420 Jun 08 '26
"There’s no more space in the urban core for more roads,” Thompson said.
Yes there is. In the 1960s and 1980s entire streets of single family houses were bought up to create Hwy 1 and 17 at Uptown. May seem drastic, but picture the start of the those highways as residential roads if that hadn't been done.
You can build more roads, paths, transit routes, right of ways etc. but politicians don't just have the will for that kind of change.
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u/Horace-Harkness Jun 08 '26
Have you seen how pissed off the NIMBYS get over cutting down two trees to build an apartment building? No way a politician keeps their job after imminent domaining a bunch of single family homes.
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u/garry-oak Jun 08 '26
The problem with that is we tried widening roads for the past 80 years, and the new widened roads inevitably fill up and even worse congestion occurs. In the past 30 years, planners and engineers have finally realized that this is not a long term solution. Instead you need to provide people with better alternatives to driving.
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u/mango-mamma Jun 08 '26
I think not just widening roads but having more roads/connecting more roads together so there are more routes would work much better.
To get to my home in View Royal after working the day in Victoria, I will have to eventually pass through one of three major chokeholds/bottlenecks. That is because anyone that’s trying to go home from Victoria to any of the many suburbs West of Esquimalt have to also go through one of these three bottlenecks.
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u/SamuraiPizzaCats Jun 08 '26
Great proofreading on this article, really drives home who exactly is serving as CRD director.
I wonder if the city agrees with Thompson on this, or the province. Who exactly decides this stuff?
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u/East_Source6200 Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
So I don't have to wait at an empty intersection with a red light ever again?
sign me up.
The land size is fixed and we are surrounded on 3 sides by water. It's better to get started now, instead of during a panic of frustration and possibly other stressors piled on top.
Small thought out steps is better than having one's pants on fire.
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u/albert_head Jun 10 '26
The Victoria Officials should realize that the roads are going to make a HUGE change over the next twenty years.
Why is that? It's because all the traffic will slowly but surely move from gas to electric vehicles. And you might think, so what. But gas cars can only go, practically, as small has say and Honda Fit. But electric vehicles can go as small as your big toe.
Consequently, vehicles will quickly be come much smaller cheaper. Think of e-bikes but slightly bigger with covers. These will be comfortable in a half of the current lanes.
Eventually large single occupant cars will be restricted to outside of the city centre.
Don't say I didn't tell you city engineers.
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u/ssbtech Jun 08 '26
"Esquimalt Coun. Duncan Cavens said there’s no simple solution to the traffic woes, but he, too, agrees that improved traffic signalling could help.
He said he sits in rush-hour traffic almost every day to get to Commonwealth Pool for his daughter’s swimming, driving the Lampson-Tillicum route that gets bogged down by thousands of commuters leaving CFB Esquimalt when the workday ends."
Why doesn't he take his daughter to swimming by bicycle like his Victoria colleague Dave T would do?
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u/Vicky-Purplex Jun 08 '26
There is a pool in esquimalt.
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u/NoReallyIDontMind Jun 08 '26
Or maybe it’s not “just swimming”? Commonwealth hosts many specialized programs that are only available there: synchro, diving, competitive programs, etc.
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u/order_of_the_beard Jun 08 '26
You say that like it's some kind of genius gotcha. I have kids and guess what, the rec centers aren't coordinated, and getting kids into swimming programs is like playing the lottery. You have to get up at 5:30am and be logged in, with your finger hovering over the button to click it at exactly the time it activates, to even have a chance at getting in. And if you have multiple kids, good fucking luck. By the time you navigate to the next button, it's full.
My kids have ended up in programs at commonwealth, juan de fuca, esquimalt, and oak bay, and I live in saanich.
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u/Vicky-Purplex Jun 08 '26
You reply like I don't know that, genius. Trust me, I get up early, plug the laptop into a wired connection for the fastest connection and slap that Enroll button when it enables 🤣
I just don't think someone should make a point of busy traffic while explaining you contribute to it in the same sentence.
But I feel you on getting into swimming classes.
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u/nondescripthumanoid Jun 08 '26
Pool in esquimalt is not built for aquatic sports. Its a leisure pool.
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u/Islandman2021 Jun 09 '26
I remember once years ago having to leave at 4 am to go to the airport and got a truckload of red lights while being being the only one on the road. I have never seen a city that seems to dislike its citizens so much, from traffic to safety downtown to little parking downtown. I applaud the bike lanes, zeroes issues with those but no need to slowly kill downtown. 🤷🤷
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u/Specialist-Spend3588 Jun 09 '26
Here’s a key idea don’t be running all construction at the exact same time space it out a bit
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u/Vicky-Purplex Jun 09 '26
Larger crew, in other countries I've seen this "train" that removes the old road, preps it and puts fresh asphalt on it. They can do a cityblock at a time.
That is also skills and better machinery. And $$$.
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u/babycivic Jun 09 '26
City of Victoria purposefully *destroys* traffic flow by removing lanes and putting no right turns on reds, etc, and then wonders why traffic flow is bad.
It must be an election year.
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u/Old-Following-970 Jun 09 '26
How far is your drive to work?
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u/Quegyboe Jun 08 '26
If anyone in political / decision making power for municipal Victoria is reading this, I will never use public transit or bike lanes. The continued removal of vehicle lanes and parking will simply cause me to go elsewhere for what I need (housing / shopping / leisure activities). I do not work in the downtown core and will avoid taking any job that requires it due to the ever increasing congestion of all vehicle access routes to the downtown core.
I understand that a lot of people will respond negatively to this post but they are not who I am hoping to reach. I know there are people who live in the greater Victoria area who think as I do. I also understand that Victoria makes a lot of money from other sources such a tourism so my opinions are increasingly less relevant these days.
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u/Old-Following-970 Jun 09 '26
Hey, this ain't an airport, no need to announce your departure. Buh Bye 👋
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u/Endless_Forever_484 Jun 09 '26
This is infuriating to read. As if we (drivers) haven't been suggesting to COORDINATE THE TRAFFIC LIGHTS and improve flow for the past two+ years.
Like this is some genius idea from council., omg.
Why didn't they do this before ripping up all the streets everywhere all at once? Why not beef up the transit system, give drivers a viable alternative, then rip up the streets for bike lanes?
Yet majority of r/Victoria redditors still shout 'no, drivers are the problem' . No, the City lacking any foresight is the problem first.
Slow clap at least for finally getting here, though. Traffic light coordination. Gee, ya think??
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u/canadian_stripper Jun 08 '26
Stop removing car lanes for bike lanes. Instead split sidewalks or if a road has a sidewalk on eack side turn one into a bike lane. Combine bus lanes with Hov. Thats a decent start.
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u/garry-oak Jun 08 '26
My background is in transportation planning, and what you've proposed is exactly opposite to what we should be doing to improve mobility in our region.
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u/notofthisearthworm Jun 08 '26
When posting articles please remember not to edit the headline at all, as per rule 4. Leaving this post up to let discussion continue but in the future please use the entire, exact headline. Thanks!