Not a friendly city for business or tourists

It’s been a slow rumble but now it’s official. Victoria is not business friendly, not car friendly, not tourist friendly either. Allow me to explain.

Not business friendly:

How can you run a successful business when there’s tenting outside your business premises? Better yet, how do you handle deliveries if the only access to your business loading door has been cut off? You pay hefty business licence fees to operate only to find out that the city is making your business harder to operate. Not car friendly:

Most urban planners look for efficient traffic flows and minimization of congestion. In Victoria, we look for how best to congest traffic in downtown. We add bike lanes to the busiest vehicle traffic corridors, because mixing cars and bikes is safe by design.

Never mind there are quiet corridors across Victoria where you could close the entire road to only bicycle traffic without impacting any arterial vehicle routes. Not tourist friendly:

In Victoria, driving to patronize your favourite business is a punishable act. Victoria will ticket when you pay for parking and will look for any excuse to remind you vehicles are not to be brought to the city.

Don’t forget about the unnecessary expenditure of public funds without prior consultation, for example turning Clover Point from a place for all to use to a place where only an exclusive few can.

How do you explain removing access to one of the most scenic views in the city, which was already accessible by bike, bus, car, walk, horse and carriage, and turn it into a space that hardly gets 20 per cent use and call that a good use of tax dollars?

But in Victoria, who needs sound logic in municipal planning? The will of a few will do.

The next election can’t come soon enough. A mid-term election would be a welcome respite.

Tony Bull Victoria