A $95-million rapid-bus-lane project will allow buses to travel faster between the West Shore and Victoria when it’s completed in the fall of 2027.
The project involves widening about 3.8 kilometres of the Trans-ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ Highway between the McKenzie Avenue interchange and the highway off-ramp to Colwood for both northbound and southbound “bus-on-shoulder” lanes.
The lanes will allow buses to travel on the shoulders along designated areas of the highway.
Transportation Minister Rob Fleming, speaking at Adams Storage in View Royal, said the Blink RapidBus route between the West Shore and downtown Victoria — which makes fewer stops and travels more frequently than the previous Route 50 Langford/Downtown route — had an “incredible” first year.
“Bus ridership is up something like 24 per cent in just one year to the West Shore — people are making the shift to public transit,” Fleming said.
“That’s why this project comes at just the right time to add even more incentives, even more reasons to use public transit.”
The province will spend $67 million on the project, with $28 million coming from the federal government. The project will go to tender in the fall, with construction planned to begin in early 2025.
“So it’s coming fast [but] not fast enough for some of us,” Fleming said. “It’s really going to be transformative to move more people onto public transit to reduce emissions into our environment and to be able to support the kind of growth and job creation what we’re all interested in on the south Island.”
Construction will take the better part of two years due to traffic-management considerations, Fleming said, stressing “we don’t want to snarl traffic.”
Langford-Juan de Fuca NDP MLA Ravi Parmar, who was at the announcement Monday with several other NDP MLAs as well as municipal politicians, transit officials and business representatives, called it one of the largest investments in transportation and infrastructure in the West Shore’s history.
“This is a big day for the West Shore, a very big day for the entire south Island,” Parmar said. “We can look forward to a faster, simpler commute, and taking the bus will become one of the most appealing options to get from the West Shore to downtown quickly.”
Plans include converting and widening the existing shoulders on Highway 1, as well as realignments to ramps and ramp-terminal intersections, installation of roadside barriers, additional signage, warning flashers, and construction of a new pedestrian-cycling bridge across Craigflower Creek.
Improvements to date, including dedicated bus lanes from Fisgard Street to Tillicum Road, have saved the average transit commuter travelling between the West Shore and downtown Victoria 20 minutes, Fleming said, adding the expanded bus lanes will save even more time.
Work to widen and seismically upgrade the twin bridges on the Trans-ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ Highway over the Colquitz River and Burnside Road is already underway. A bus-on-shoulder lane will be added to each bridge, connecting and extending the bus lanes in both directions from Tillicum Road to the McKenzie interchange.
That $35.5-million project is expected to be completed by the fall of 2025.
Langford Mayor Scott Goodmanson said the enhanced express-bus service is something that Langford, one of the fastest-growing municipalities in the province, has wanted for many years.
“This is fantastic — this is just a win-win for all of the West Shore,” Goodmanson said. “Hopefully years from now we get buses all the way up to Veterans Memorial [Parkway] on the side of the highway, but for now I’m happy to take this.”
Aaron Lamb, ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ Transit’s vice-president of asset management, noted that Douglas Street in Victoria — which becomes the Trans-ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ Highway in Saanich — is the busiest transit corridor in the capital region, with 140 buses per hour moving 36,000 passengers each day.
“ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ Transit represents three per cent of the traffic while carrying approximately 40 per cent of the people,” said Lamb, referring to traffic along Douglas Street south of Hillside Avenue.
“Now if we can have those numbers … out here in the West Shore, through View Royal and Saanich, and on our future lines out to the Peninsula and to UVic, we’ll be a lot closer to our RapidBus line vision of providing a transportation service that out-performs the personal automobile in speed, comfort and reliability.”
All the upgrades are what’s called “light rail transit compliant,” Fleming said.
“In other words, none of the improvements we’re making on the highway forecloses LRT opportunities — in fact, they enhance them.”
All highway overpasses give proper space and clearance for LRT, he said.
