South Skirt Mountain Development - 5000 to 6000 more people within 20 years

There is a new proposal to develop the south side of Skirt Mountain in Langford - Skirt Mountain is where Bear Mountain Resort is located. The proposal seeks to develop some 84 hectares over the next 15 to 20 years. Many good details are at Inside Langford. The proposal to build about 2800 housing units speaks to about 5000 to 6000 people living in this area once it is built out.

In general the development is clearly well thought and environmentally friendly project. Locating this development close to the new Spencer Road interchange makes a lot of sense. The use of this land for housing also makes a lot of sense because it has no value for agriculture, industry or government. The value for forestry is also not high - I took a look at the forest cover maps and the area is not a high productivity forest, I would be surprised if the site averaged an MAI of 0.5 cubic meters per hectare.

The biggest concern could be ecological, but when one looks at the setting, this is not land of high ecological value. The location is a fragment that is badly isolated from other areas. This land is clearly not going to make a large difference to any environmental issues in the area.

In looking at the plans, there developer is going a long way in making the development green. 84 hectares of land in a typical suburb will provide space for about 800 to 1000 houses if the full footprint is used for houses and the related roads. This would house less than half the number of people planned for on the South Skirt Mountain development. The developer is also giving 40% of the land to the city to be park, including all the Garry Oak areas. This means the 5000 to 6000 people will be on only 50 hectares of land and make for one of the highest density areas in Greater Victoria - a higher density than James Bay by about 30%.

Zoe Blunt, who has strongly opposed the interchange at Spencer Road, is already raising strong concerns about the project, but it feels like NIMBYism to me.

My biggest concern is that this development continues a trend of moving people out of the core and to the edges. This means we will have more commuters going into the city. Of the people living there, about 3000 will be working and almost none of them on the Westshore. This will add another 2000 cars each way each day past Thetis Lake on Highway #1. This coupled with the Westhills development will lead to significantly worse traffic problems between the Westshore and Highway/McKenzie. The Westhills will eventually add another 5000 cars as well to the mix.

Yes, people will still be driving their own cars. If you do not believe me, check out the Mary Hill Bypass, Pitt River Bridge or the Deas Island Tunnel in the lower mainland to see what people are willing to put up with. We will not have rail transit, and even it were to exist, it would simply move existing bus passengers into the trains and not pick up much new traffic - see this earlier post of mine, and this, or this one. No one has made a business case for rail transit and I can not see how they would be able to.

The traffic capacity of Highway #1 is not going to be up for the number of people living out on the Westshore and we are going to have a horrific bottleneck at Highway #1 and Mckenzie unless the interchange is built there. Langford should put some of the money to build this needed road infrastructure.

The addition of people to the region should be done in the core. Saanich, Oak Bay, Esquimalt and Victoria should be looking towards dramatic increases of density in a lot of neighbourhoods so that there is no demand for housing on the Westshore.

Victoria Voters League

This is a new group that has been formed. The web presence is via facebook at the moment. Simon Nattrass, who ran for city council in the fall, is the man behind it.

McKenzie Overpass

If you are interested in this issue, there is a website for the idea here.

I believe that it would be beneficial for the region to develop the overpass. You only need to go through that area to see how important it is for traffic for Greater Victoria.

I know there are people that say if you built it, the problems will simply shift to Tillicum and Hwy #1, I disagree. A large amount of the traffic is to and from McKenzie to Hwy #1 which is why there are long storage lanes for left turns onto McKenzie.

The traffic delays at Tillicum and the highway would not become much different than they are now, though people would gain time getting there. People headed to the Tillicum Gorge Neighbourhood would see significant improvements in time, it also makes a big difference for commercial traffic headed to Esquimalt as they have to use Tillicum and not Admirals. For traffic going to and from McKenzie it would make a huge difference, though ideally there should be some changes to Burnside and McKenzie.

Long term I would like to see McKenzie from the Pat Bay highway to Highway #1 be made into a freeway, it makes the most sense to allow for the traffic in the region to move most effectively, especially all the commercial traffic.

There is another interchange/overpass I would like to see make a priority - the one at the Pat Bay Highway and McTavish. As our airport increases in traffic and traffic continues to increase on the highway, it would be beneficial to remove this traffic delay. Long term I would like to see the Pat Bay be a full freeway from the ferry to town.

Ultimately the traffic problems in Greater Victoria are not dramatic and we can live with the Colwood Crawl. When one looks over at the lower mainland, then one sees what traffic problems really look like.

Why do we have free parking?

All over the city we have lots and lots of free parking for cars. Lots of it is in parking lots, but not all of it. Why are the local governments providing free parking on the streets for cars?

We have the streets in this city to allow people to be able to move around, not to park their cars. Local governments should seek to assign real costs to on street parking. Here is what I suggest we should do:

• Extend parking meters along all streets with any commercial activity on them. This means other local governments need to bring in parking meters on their streets.
• Enforce pay parking 24/7 365 days a year.
• Raise the rates to $2.50 per hour for the whole region but further raise the rate in the highest use areas to $5 per hour. This may not be high enough.
  
• Make people wishing to park their cars on residential streets in front of their homes purchase permit to be able to do so. $600 per car per year would be entirely reasonable.
  
• Inform businesses of the intent to remove all parking along major arterial routes within five years. Douglas Street has no business having any parking on it.

This will raise more money for local governments that could then be used to improve the transportation infrastructure. I would split the net proceeds three ways - 1/3 for road improvements, 1/3 for transit and 1/3 for buying CO2 credits.

This would also level the playing field between businesses that have to use their land to park cars and those relying on the city to provide it.

The changes would also allow better traffic flows in the city. It would really help with the expansion of bike lanes and might even allow for some pavement to be taken up.

Finally, it will make some trips by car no longer make sense and get a few more people to walk, bike or bus.

Free parking on private land is something that could also be addressed by local government through the use of zoning and property taxes. Ideally some sort of reward for businesses that introduce pay parking.

I was at Cloverpoint just before the New Year - Max was asleep and I kept driving to keep him asleep. There were some amazing waves that day. I wish the picture quality was better, but that is life. You could have been surfing these waves.

Property Assessments - Should you Appeal?

I spent quite a few years sitting on a property assessment review panel, three of them in Victoria on the panel reviewing residential assessments in the area covered by School District #61 - Greater Victoria.

If you want some help to decide if you should appeal your assessment, drop me a line and I can give you some quick guidance. Email me at bernard at shama.ca.

If you are not sure if you want to appeal or not, file an appeal. You have to file by the midnight on Feb 2nd. Odds are that this year you will not have a strong case for an appeal because BC Assessment is using the lower of the values from either July 1 2007 or July 1 2008.

One of the biggest reasons you may want to appeal is if you were renovating your house on October 31st and not yet finished.

If you do chose to appeal, I can help you understand the process. It is not a difficult one to understand, but it is one that has a number of nuances that you need to know about to be successful.

Where I have been for the last while.

On January 11th my mother died and then on the 13th my father in law Scott Hobbs died. In a matter of two days Sheila and I became orphans. My father died in 2003 and Sheila's mum died in 1997.

Scott lived with us for 11 months, first to get treatment for his cancer but this did not work. Since early September we knew he was going to die. The last weeks he was getting weaker and weaker. He was finally too weak for us to care for him at home and he spend his last days at Victoria Hospice. Scott was only 65.

We had not expected my mother to pass anytime soon, she hosted all the family in BC at her home on December 19th and there was no real indication of any problems. She went into the hospital right after Christmas and they found she had very advanced cancer. She died only two weeks later.

Over the next few weeks I will get back online with my thoughts about the city and region.