An Exercise In Futility

As you know i get really annoyed whenever they do something dumb with the highway between Nanaimo and Victoria. For example, they just installed a new traffic light at the ‘exit’ to Nanaimo airport, instead of building an interchange. I realize that the traffic light is cheaper, but to me it doesn’t seem to be part of any plan for the future; the highway is going to get busier and more congested over time, and a traffic light just adds to the congestion. My view up until this weekend was that the route should be improved by making it a controlled access highway, replacing traffic lights at major intersections with interchanges, and removing all other unnecessary intersections. If this was done you could up the speed limit to between 100 and 120 for many sections of the highway, and probably cut travel time to Saanich from 90 minutes to maybe an hour. But now i’m reconsidering. What caused me to change my mind, i don’t know. I was at the train show this weekend, and was reminded again of my fantasy for high speed rail between Nanaimo and Victoria. I think about this every few months, but i always consider it in conjunction with a fast highway (whichever way you choose, it should be quick). But i have come to realize that while interchanges on the highway would be nice, they only solve one problem, and are only a short term solution. While improving travel time, the goal should also be to reduce traffic, not to accommodate it. So, the goal should be to move people more effectively, not just more quickly. People like their cars, but i am sure that they can be enticed to leave them at the station if there is a much faster alternative. For example, (based on rough calculations), you could take a limited stop high speed train (avg 300km/h when in transit) from Nanaimo to Victoria in something like 35 minutes (this includes 2 minutes per stop at 4 major stops). Even if the highway was improved, with bypasses around duncan, the malahat, etc, it is still around 120 km, and you’ll never see a speed limit of 120 in BC. I’ll have to talk more about my ideas in a future post.