Former Saanich councillor aims to improve walking, cycling safety
A former Saanich councillor is asking parents for locations in the municipality that are dangerous for kids walking and cycling to and from school.
Dean Murdock says one of the concerns he heard about most during three terms on Saanich council was lack of infrastructure for people to safely walk and bike. He said the need for improvements became “starkly clear” during the pandemic, when he spent more time walking and biking with his children.
“There are some places with great infrastructure and then there are a lot of places that have virtually no pedestrian infrastructure,” Murdock said.
In the spring, he formed an advocacy group called Better Mobility Saanich, made up of residents interested in improving safety for vulnerable road users in Saanich. With the school year starting, Murdock put out a call to parents to share locations on their children’s routes to school where walking and riding can be dangerous.
Since he made an appeal last week on social media and in the Times Colonist, Murdock said he’s received about a dozen responses about unsafe areas — everything from residential streets with no sidewalks, to areas where parked vehicles push walkers to the middle of the road, and the need for safe cycling connections from Quadra Street to the Lochside Trail.
“It’s really all over the place in terms of the safety risk and the need for the kinds of infrastructure improvements. Some of those can be quick fixes and others will require more of an investment on Saanich’s part,” he said.
Murdock spent a lot of time preparing his 12-year-old son Caelum to ride his bike to school on his own, ensuring he’s comfortable with the route and knows how to pay attention to cars and the rules of the road, but he still worries because he knows there are sections that aren’t safe enough for kids on bikes. “As he makes his way home every day, I’m waiting to make sure that he’s going to come through that door safely,” he said.
Murdock said the city’s active transportation strategy — approved when he was on council — includes good goals for improving infrastructure, but it’s a 30-year plan, and he wants the city to make improving road safety a higher priority.
He plans on working with interested residents, community associations and the municipality to call attention to areas where improvements are needed.
Mayor Fred Haynes said he welcomes the feedback, acknowledging there is always more work to do. He noted in the past couple of years, Saanich has completed 150 upgrades on safe routes to 25 schools, with plans to complete another 30. Those upgrades include installing bollards to separate vulnerable road users from cars and painting bike lanes.
The municipality has also allocated $2.8 million annually to address active-transportation needs and climate-change mitigation, he said. They’re trying to stretch that money as far as it can go, with less-costly upgrades, Haynes said, noting every metre of bike path or sidewalk costs an average of $1,000.
“We’ve tried to come up with innovative ways to stretch the dollar even further, ways that were never done by any previous council,” he said.