Bike lanes on Victoria Street — at the cost of some parking spaces downtown — are a possibility after District council approved a change in the municipality’s Official Community Plan.
If the proposal succeeds, these bike lanes would connect to the upcoming pedestrian bridge on that same street that will link the SEAandSKY, or waterfront landing development, with the downtown core.
That developer — a joint venture of a Bosa Properties subsidiary in partnership with Kingswood Properties — promised the bridge to the community as an amenity when its project was being approved by the District years ago.
In a Feb. 14 committee of the whole meeting, council voted unanimously in favour of updating the Official Community Plan (OCP) related to the routing of bike lanes on Victoria Street.
It was later approved on Feb. 21 at a regular business meeting of council.
As a result, this will allow for the process of concept design and cost estimates. The plan would then have to be incorporated into a future municipal budget.
“This is the most sensible link to our new … signature piece, I think, of our active transportation network,” said Mayor Armand Hurford about the bike lane connection to the bridge. “It's important that it’s as functional as possible as early as possible in its operations.”
District staff presented three options to council but ultimately recommended building bike lanes only on Victoria Street due to the lower cost. It also provides cycling infrastructure that is friendly to people of all ages and abilities that links to the upcoming pedestrian bridge.
A large portion of the council’s consideration during discussion of this proposal was about the number of parking stalls that would be affected. As it stands, after anticipated development, the parking stalls would decrease to 25, down from 45, with this change.
“We have to give some consideration to this. People living at Third and Victoria are presently parking their vehicles three blocks away,” said Coun. Eric Andersen. “We can't solve these issues one lot at a time, as was related last week by some of us, nor can we solve them one block face at a time. But we need to keep them into account in the big picture.”
Coun. Andrew Hamilton spoke in a similar vein to Coun. Andersen.
“Parking is a very real concern for our community and I think that we need to push forward our parking plans to make sure that our community sees what our plan is, as we keep removing parking from the downtown area,” he said.
All three options to council presented some reduction in parking.
The first option called for only a bike lane on Main Street, which would have resulted in 36 parking stalls.
The second option, which was chosen, was bike lanes on Victoria Street.
The third option presented a bike lane on Main Street and a woonerf (a Dutch design concept that eases traffic speeds with shared pedestrian use) on Victoria Street, resulting in 27 parking stalls.
Option one, however, did not connect directly to the pedestrian bridge and option three would have been more expensive for only two more parking stalls, said District staff to council.
In this meeting, District staff also relayed to council the pedestrian bridge was waiting for a permit from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) before moving ahead with construction.
“We're hopeful that we'll get a response from DFO this spring, which would allow construction to commence this fall with completion, ideally and hopefully, in 2024,” said David Marrow, director of major projects for the District.
Staff reconfirmed that the bridge project is definitely going ahead; it is just a matter of getting final authorizations in place.
If interested, you can view this committee of the whole meeting on the District’s YouTube channel: YouTube.com/@DistrictofSquamish.
~With files from Steven Chua
***Updated March 3, 9:10 a.m. to clarify that SEAandSKY is a joint venture involving a subsidiary of Bosa Properties, not a subsidiary of Bosa.
