It took me 55 minutes to drive 12 km to work today from Langford. That’s an average speed of 11 km/hr, on a typical workday, without any accidents to slow traffic.
And yet in my community of Langford, apartment buildings containing 222 units are under construction on Jacklin Road, with at least 150 more units in the works on Sooke Rd. A 360 unit complex is already under construction on Langford Lake and another 440 living units are being built at the Belmont Market development. Add to this an 11 storey 90-apartment complex on Claude Road, to name only a few.
These projects alone will see an additional 1260+ living units created in Langford. Using the Statistics Canada’s average of 2.5 persons per household, we will see an additional 3350+ new residents in Langford in the next few years – almost a 10 per cent increase in our population, from just these projects.
The reality is that a large majority of these new residents will commute to Victoria, Saanich and Esquimalt for work – adding up to 2,500 additional cars on our main roadways, just from Langford.
So what is being done to provide transportation opportunities for these residents? The MacKenzie interchange will help somewhat, but it won’t carry all the increased traffic or do away with backlogs at other Hwy 1 intersections like Tillicum Rd.
There is also nothing in the works to address the massive traffic backlog on the Colwood Crawl. No new bus lanes or public transit projects are in the works. In fact, Colwood plans to eliminate the parking lot at Sooke Rd the bus hub, putting yet more cars on Sooke Road.
Simply put, our local governments – and especially my government in Langford – is being irresponsible by approving unsustainable development without proper transportation planning. Developers and the companies that service them are getting rich, but no one in government is making sure that local residents have a proper transportation network. It’s time our politicians realized they serve residents and taxpayers first, not just developers with deep pockets.
Chris Bradshaw
Langford