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Transportation and infrastructure

Protected bike lanes are necessary. So is a plan for the water mains, the emergency routes and the roads being dug up four times in one year.

Victoria needs change

What this council gave us, and what we want from the next one.

From

  • Growth approved first, infrastructure worked out later
  • Street changes made one project at a time
  • Roads dug up repeatedly with no shared schedule
  • Emergency access treated as somebody else's checkbox

To

  • Infrastructure funded and scheduled before approval
  • A network plan that the individual projects serve
  • One coordinated works schedule per corridor
  • Emergency access proven before a street layout changes

Why we are asking rather than telling

Several of these need traffic and engineering data the City holds and has not published in a form residents can check.

  • Bike lanes: necessary, and in places overbuilt

    Protected bike lanes are necessary, and that is our position, not a concession. People cycling need to be safe from traffic. The question worth asking is about scale and placement: where a protected lane on a major route has taken road capacity that the route needed, and whether a parallel secondary street would have carried the same riders at lower cost to everyone. Many cyclists already prefer those secondary routes.

  • Nobody is coordinating the digging

    Multiple developments, multiple utility renewals, and no visible shared schedule. The result downtown is the same corridor opened and closed repeatedly. This is ordinary municipal coordination and it should not be hard.

  • Access and egress for emergency vehicles

    As street layouts change and on-street width is reallocated, some neighbourhoods have fewer usable ways in and out. That matters for an ambulance on a normal Tuesday, and it matters much more for an evacuation. We would like to see the City publish the emergency-response modelling behind each change.

    Victoria's firefighters say the same thing from the driver's seat. Their union's 2026 pledge asks council for a standing consultative role for IAFF Local 730 and transit operators before any road on an emergency route is redesigned, and it points to the 2017 Pandora Avenue bike corridor, where lanes were built at 3.0 metres against the 3.3 metres BC Transit recommends, so a large vehicle has to straddle two lanes. Their statement, in their words.

  • Parking, for businesses and for people already living here

    Reduced parking downtown affects the businesses that depend on people arriving. New developments approved with little or no parking do not remove the cars. They move them onto streets where residents already park. Neither effect has been measured publicly.

  • Growth was approved without a funded infrastructure plan

    More homes need more water, sewer, roads and schools. Victoria 2050 sets the growth. It does not set out who pays for that capacity or when it arrives, and developers are not required to cover it before approval. That gap ends up on the property tax bill: see the real tax bill.

What the next council should do

  • Publish a funded infrastructure plan that matches the growth the OCP allows, with a schedule.
  • Require developers to contribute the infrastructure cost their project creates, before approval.
  • Run one coordinated works schedule per corridor, so a street is opened once.
  • Publish the emergency access modelling behind any change to a street's layout.
  • Measure the effect of parking changes on local businesses and on residential streets, and publish that too.

Questions on this issue

On top of the five questions for every candidate, these go deeper on this issue.

  • Will you require a funded infrastructure plan before approving further growth capacity?
  • Will you publish emergency response modelling before a street layout changes?
  • How would you coordinate roadworks so a corridor is dug up once rather than four times?

If you would rather not ask them yourself, see who we are voting for and why. We also send one short email when this issue moves at council.

Where the deep detail lives

What has been written about this

18 pieces

Our members have tracked 18 pieces on this issue since January, every one an opinion piece or a letter. The five most recent are below, and the notes are our members' own.

All 18 pieces on this issue

Most people who read this were sent it by someone they know.

The next council decides what gets funded, and when.

Election day is Saturday, October 17, 2026. See who we are voting for, make a plan, and we will email you when something changes.

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