Link to letter on the Times Colonist website
Victoria council lacking due diligence
Victoria’s mayor and council will risk trashing their priorities at a meeting this Thursday when they consider a proposal to replace the Inner Harbour’s Admiral Inn with a larger and much less iconic multi-residential highrise building.
The various James Bay developments underway or being considered at this site, the Quebec-Kingston-Montreal parking lot, the Ogden Point expansion and the Belleville Terminal, plus-museums, all have serious consequences for transportation through that already heavily used corridor.
During the past couple of decades, council has been warned by residents of this neighbourhood and other users of its travel networks that trying to accommodate even one of these gigantic densification projects could overwhelm the limited existing infrastructure for traffic flow (human and vehicular) in that area.
Should this transportation capacity crash because of developments like that proposed for the Admiral Inn location, then most of the progress council espouses for our city will become unattainable. Housing supply, safety and security, mobility for all ages and abilities, strengthening of the small business sector, expansion of tourism, heritage recognition—all require functional transportation.
But astonishingly, councillors have not requested a professional, objective traffic engineering study of the likely impacts any of these developments would have on this crucial region of the city. Such neglect contravenes almost every principle in their code of conduct, so one wonders what it’s for.
Let’s hope that they correct this dangerous oversight prior to deciding on the Admiral Inn proposal now before them, with the results made public in time for this fall’s municipal elections.
—Fran Farquhar, Victoria