Active Transportation Plan

Join staff for a presentation of the Draft Active Transportation Plan followed by an opportunity to ask questions.

The event will take place on Zoom, Thursday, March 18, at 7 pm.

Please register here.

If you're not familiar with Zoom, or would prefer to dial-in to the meeting by phone, please call Municipal Hall at 250-652-4444.

The draft Active Transportation Plan and Summary Report are now published for community feedback.

The Plan includes infrastructure projects as well as policies and programs to encourage walking, cycling, rolling, transit use, and traffic safety.

Based on extensive public input, the Active Transportation Plan provides a course of action that reflects available resources and the community’s priorities, which include road safety, crosswalks, school zones, and addressing gaps in the network.

A long list of projects were assessed to determine the priority projects to fit the District’s financial capacity. Projects were selected based on a number of criteria, including community feedback, projected use, addressing gaps in the AT network gaps and connecting trip origins-destinations, and safety.

You can get involved by:

• Downloading the full plan or the summary
• Taking the survey
• Registering for an information session

What's next?

Active transportation is a new initiative for the District without an existing funding source. Therefore, as part of the District’s update to the Sustainable Asset Management Plan and long-term financial planning work scheduled for 2021, new active transportation infrastructure will be included, and financial plan changes and options will be brought forward to Council.

In the meantime, the District has included projects in the 2021 draft budget, including: $15,000 for the completion of the AT Plan; $22,000 for bus stop improvements; a grant-funded $322,800 multi-use path on Benvenuto from Wallace Drive to Butchart Gardens, and a grant application for $1,150,000 worth of improvements in school zones. The District plans to continue taking advantage of funding opportunities and applying for grants that fit projects in the plan.

The District of Central Saanich Council has endorsed a grant application for provincial government funding for active transportation improvements in four major school zones in Central Saanich.

On December 1, 2020, the Province announced it is accepting applications from local governments for nearly $136 million in infrastructure grants to help communities develop resilience in response to COVID-19 as part of the new COVID-19 Resilience Infrastructure Stream (CVRIS).

The District is seeking funding for improvements near the four schools in Central Saanich: Keating Elementary, Brentwood Elementary, Bayside Middle School and Stelly's Secondary School. The proposed work includes improving or adding crosswalks, enhancing safety and accessibility, and connecting walking and cycling networks near the schools. The projects are consistent with active transportation studies undertaken by the School District and with the CVRIS program goals, including supporting development of active transportation networks.

The improvements are identified as priorities in the District’s draft Active Transportation Plan, which will be released for public comment later this month. “Through the Active Transportation Plan process, the community has expressed connectivity as a priority, especially near locations of high pedestrian and cycling areas such as our schools,” says Central Saanich Mayor Ryan Windsor. “The Plan guides the District’s work on grant applications to increase active transportation infrastructure to improve community safety, support walking, cycling, and transit use.”

If successful, the grant will provide up to 100 per cent of eligible costs for the improvements, estimated at $1,150,000. Details of the scope of work recommended for the schools will be found in the draft Active Transportation Plan. If the District is unsuccessful with this grant application, staff will include the proposed upgrades as part of the active transportation, asset management, and long-term financial planning update to start later this year.

The District also recently applied for a grant to fund a multi-use pathway on Benvenuto between Wallace Drive and Butchart Gardens. The application was made to the Community Economic Recovery Infrastructure Program (CERIP), a one-time, 100% funded provincial grant developed to support post-pandemic economic recovery in B.C. communities.

Discussion Paper no.3 is now online! This is the preliminary framework for the Active Transportation Plan. It builds on earlier research and technical analysis contained in Discussion Paper no.1, and the summary of public and stakeholder feedback summarized in Discussion Paper no.2.

This paper is the final in the three-part discussion paper series before the District presents a draft Active Transportation Plan to the public and Council for feedback.

This framework sets the draft vision and goals, plan and priorities, as well as provides design guidelines and standards.

Our students are now travelling throughout our community to get to school safely.

Last fall we asked residents and visitors to identify priority improvements to improve road safety within Central Saanich.

Residential streets and school zones were identified as priority areas where speed bumps, chicanes, roundabouts or other traffic calming could make for safer streets.

Reducing speed limits was suggested by numerous participants as a quick and cost-effective method for improving safety.

We are heading into our final phase of the active transportation plan’s development and are excited to have a strategic plan to work to make our community a safer place to be.

“…START FROM SCHOOLS AND WORK OUTWARD TO THE SURROUNDING COMMUNITIES." ~SURVEY RESPONDENT

Throughout Phase One of the Active Transportation Plan process a need to expand and improve sidewalks and crossings around schools was frequently mentioned as a result of the experiences of students and families travelling to and from school. Key concerns related to school travel are both a lack of safe, continuous pedestrian facilities to/from schools, as well as concerns over driver behavior and vehicle speeds in the vicinity of schools.

Suggested improvements for walking and cycling to school within the Active Transportation Plan include priority given to enhancing intersections, crossings, sidewalk networks and lighting along routes regularly travelled by children and their families, as well as focusing traffic safety and speed enforcement efforts in these locations.

August is a great time to practice walking to school. Families can map out routes based on their walking and cycling priorities and travel together!

Travelling actively in a socially distanced way to travel to and from school and has the additional benefits of improved health and fitness and air quality and arriving at school refreshed and alert and ready to learn.

We are in the midst of designing the Active Transportation Plan and are using community input and road data to identify the priority projects needed to create networks.

We heard you clearly say there are gaps in our existing bike lane and sidewalk networks. Our plan will provide a list of priority projects to help us fill those gaps. Connection is key to creating routes people feel comfortable on.

Creating an overall build out plan for these projects will ensure a connected networks.

We must prioritize projects to ensure that the plan fit within our budget— as active transportation infrastructure can require considerable funding depending on their scope. For a small community like ours, the plan requires serious analysis and planning to ensure it is suitable. The financial analysis is underway and will be presented to the community along with the draft Active Transportation Plan this fall.

So far we have heard from more than 700 community member representing a range of abilities and ages.

Feedback from the survey and engagement activities highlights the need to address traffic safety concerns; this will also increase active transportation user comfort and safety and thereby encourage more people to travel actively. Specifically, people asked us to look at residential streets and school zones and an increase in enforcement.

Other top priorities for residents included more sidewalks, continuity in crosswalks, separated bike routes, improving the linkages to regional trails, and a call for more focus on access to bus stops.

Several routes, including school routes, locations for crosswalks, intersections and bus stop shelters were frequently mentioned; you can read about these in the full report here. It will be presented to Council at the Council meeting on May 25, 2020.

We have now moved onto the next phase of the project and are working to identify and describe the opportunities to improve active transportation conditions and present a report to Council and the community. The draft Active Transportation Plan will be available in the Fall 2020. At that time, further community input will be sought to ensure community priorities are reflected in the plan and to gauge the level of resident support for the action items identified in the plan. Please stay tuned for future community engagement opportunities!

Thank you to everyone who's shared feedback to help us design Central Saanich's first Active Transportation Plan. We have heard from hundreds of people so far and had the largest response to an online survey we've ever had! A summary of what we heard will be published here next month.