Shelbourne solution deserves a chance to work

As the community planner assigned to the Shelbourne Valley Action Plan from its inception in 2009 to my retirement in April of last year, I believe I must respond to some of the comments by Mei Ang in “Shelbourne Valley as an ‘innovation district’ ” (April 23).

First, Ang was not engaged in the planning process since its inception. The action plan stakeholders committee held its first meeting in November 2009. Ang attended her first meeting in June of 2010. During that time, she missed two open houses that explained the purpose of the action plan, a vision survey that identified gaps and issues and a 30-year vision for the valley (articulated by 797 residents), a community mapping exercise (with more than 1,000 residents participating), and a number of stakeholders’ meetings where experts in sustainable transportation and development, public transit, transportation modelling and other fields made presentations to the committee.

Ang contends that “Saanich officials were trying to push through a status quo plan” for Shelbourne Street “that prioritized car travel over walking and cycling.” Such is not the case, as evidenced by the extraordinary lengths that Saanich went through to gather opinions on two-, three- and four-lane options once the transportation study by Urban Systems, which reviewed these options, was completed in 2012.

Ang states that a lot of time was lost during the first five years of the action plan’s development. This isn’t entirely true. During this period, transportation, land-use and urban-design studies were commissioned, completed and reviewed by valley stakeholders.

Also during this time, bike lanes and wider sidewalks were planned and constructed throughout the action plan area based on the vision and feedback of stakeholders, and the plan’s proposed land-use designations and urbandesign guidelines were used to inform new development.

Ang didn’t mention transit in her comments, a primary reason for retaining four travel lanes on Shelbourne Street, especially south of McKenzie Avenue, which sees on average more than 25,000 vehicles per day. Transit is key to increasing density in the valley’s four centres. It will be interesting to see if transit can be effective with a reduction in travel lanes.

The long-range plan for Shelbourne Street is four travel lanes, with two lanes dedicated to transit, in addition to cycle tracks, wide sidewalks and treed boulevards. Currently, this is impossible given the constricted right of way, which was always the crux of the plan.

The plan will rely on redevelopment along Shelbourne Street to expand the right of way and accommodate the ultimate concept for the street, which is likely to take a long time. The proposed short-term improvements will include some expropriation of property on either side of Shelbourne Street, not a consideration at the plan’s outset, to widen the right of way and incorporate cycling and pedestrian improvements.

The focus of the action plan is land use and transportation. However, consideration is given to social and economic factors and reference made to how they could be addressed throughout the plan, including the Shelbourne and McKenzie area, whose connection to the University of Victoria “will be strengthened through a range of commercial, institutional and residential uses developed in close proximity to the university.”

The plan recognizes the potential for employment beyond the retail sector through the provision of commercial space (including office uses) in the valley’s four centres, as well as institutional and potential researchoriented uses, a common activity for areas close to universities.

This plan was more complex than anticipated, with issues and problems that cropped up unexpectedly, which is normal for a plan of this size. Given that planning is a normative exercise, the biggest challenge is trying to achieve consensus among stakeholders.

To get everyone to agree on a plan for an area as large and complex as the Shelbourne Valley is as likely as getting everyone to agree that voting for one political party will serve all their interests. To paraphrase the noted planner Allan Jacobs, success is when no one gets everything but everyone gets a lot.

The purpose of planning is to create potential environments that can become effective only through the use of those who live and work in them. Let’s give the action plan a chance and see how effective it becomes. We’ve already seen improvements just by focusing on the area over the past eight years, with hopefully much more to come.