JOHN WILSON
VICTORIA – Victoria’s transportation choices are no longer just about urban design or mobility preferences. They are becoming a cost‑of‑living issue, and that reality deserves more serious and more honest public discussion than we are currently having.
There is an important conversation to be had about safety, cycling, transit and the kind of city we want to build. But there is another conversation that local government must also be willing to have: the economic impact of reducing road capacity in a growing region where, according to CRD’s Transportation Plan 2026, roughly 80 percent of people rely on vehicles to get to work, deliver goods, and access services.
At the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce, we talk every day with business owners, employees, tradespeople, service providers and visitors. We hear concerns about affordability, staffing shortages and the struggle to attract people downtown. What we do not hear is this: “I wish there were fewer lanes and less parking coming into downtown Victoria.”
Yet that is precisely the direction current transportation decisions are taking us.
The scale of lane reductions is no longer incremental. Two major corridors make that clear.
On Cook Street, a roughly two-kilometre stretch between Haultain Street and Maplewood Road is being redesigned so that motor vehicle lanes are reduced from two in each direction to one, with protected, raised bike lanes added. This is not a pilot project or a minor adjustment. It is a significant and permanent reduction in vehicle capacity on a key north–south route.
On Blanshard Street, between Caledonia Avenue and Kings Road, vehicle lanes have been reduced from three in each direction to two, again with protected bike lanes added. Blanshard is one of the city’s primary through‑routes. This is a deliberate reallocation of roadway space on a corridor that carries commuters, deliveries, trades and service vehicles into and through the city every day.
At the same time, Victoria’s cycling network has expanded rapidly. The city has built about 36 kilometres of bike lanes, and cycling volumes are real and measurable. At a single crossing on the Galloping Goose, more than 700,000 bicycle trips were recorded in 2022.
Cycling counts. That is not the debate.
The real policy question is whether vehicle capacity is being reduced faster than the region can realistically change how people travel, particularly for those commuting from outside the downtown core, shift workers, families juggling care responsibilities and the trades and service sectors that keep the city functioning.
Here is the uncomfortable economic reality: sitting in traffic comes with a cost.
Congestion is not just a quality‑of‑life issue. It is a cost‑of‑living issue. Time lost has value, and delays get priced into everything, from the cost of goods and services to the wages employers must pay to account for lost productivity.When a commuter loses just 10 extra minutes each way because of reduced road capacity and spillover congestion, that adds up to more than 80 hours a year. Those costs do not disappear. They compound, and they show up in prices, feesand operating costs across the local economy.
The lesson here is not “don’t build bike infrastructure.” The lesson is that meaningful consultation with those who rely on road infrastructure is essential. Partnership cannot be claimed while the people most affected are sidelined.
What we are hearing consistently from the business community is concern about Blanshard Street and, more broadly, about decisions being made before impacts are fully understood.
Downtown revitalization depends on access. Making it harder to get downtown is not a strategy for revitalization; it is a barrier to it.
The Chamber’s door remains open to Mayor Alto, City Council, and staff. But consultation must be meaningful, not symbolic, and listening must happen before decisions are locked in. If the goal is a vibrant, affordable, and accessible downtown, transportation policy must support that goal, not work against it.
John Wilson is CEO of the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce
