City Councillors Matt Dell and David Thompson brought a motion before their colleagues this Thursday to engage in “high level exploration” regarding the amount of traffic in the downtown core.
The aim of the motion is, in essence, to build a parkade—or some other parking option—somewhere just north of downtown in order to provide people the opportunity to avoid the downtown traffic congestion and promote active transportation in the area.
“We’re not asking you to do anything, we’re not asking you to build something or spend any money,” said Dell.
“Let’s discuss this as a group and explore this as a group about the future of our city as it grows northward, as we’re building more housing in the future of the city, as we are trying to create ways to bring more people and support our small businesses in downtown and as we’re trying to create a downtown environment that’s more pedestrianized and has less vehicles.”
Dell says he imagines a future in downtown Victoria with more transit and active transportation options and this could be a way to work towards that goal.
“We’re so focussed on what’s going on, what’s happening in the city right now, what’s happening this week,” he continued.
“We don’t really talk about what’s happening 10 years, 20 years, 30 years or 50 years and I think it’s critical we do that, because some of the decisions that we make are really going to be looked back favourably by future generations.”
He says the motion was meant to be extremely open ended, and it could come in the form of a parkade, a park and ride or any other idea that will move vehicles out of the downtown core.
“It’s been an interesting week,” said Thompson.
“I’ve had people come at me for adding parking, I’ve had people come at me for reducing parking—this isn’t about either of those, it’s about shifting the location of the parking.”
Thompson echoed Dell in saying that this isn’t about spending money or building a parkade, it’s simply about having City staff create a report on options they could explore in the future.
Councillor Jeremy Caradonna supported the motion and said he agrees with exploring numerous options, but if it were up to him, he would put a parkade on an existing parking lot to avoid removing green space.
Caradonna said that the parking lot at Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre is the obvious choice for him.
Councillor Gardiner says she would like to see the motion expanded to bring more parking both west and north of downtown.
The motion was unanimously successful, so now the matter is in City staff’s hands as they will put together a report for council’s consideration sometime in the future.
