This session had an amazing cross-section of participants, who would have been ideal for deliberation if the facilitator had so wished:

• an employee of Black Ball, the company that runs the Coho and Clipper ferry lines to Washington state
• a planner for BC Transit, well-versed in the Regional Transit Master Plan
• a member of the Island Corridor Foundation, who are lobbying for a commuter rail service that ends in downtown Victoria
• a bicycling advocate, who kept refering to the various cycling utopias of Europe
• a highschool student, who was chiefly interested in late and cheap bus service
• and me, who lives downtown within walking distance of most things

Instead, we each independently presented our agendas to the group with little discussion.

My big beef is that transit isn’t that big of a deal within the municipality, and it’s not the Official Community Plan’s place to include a transit plan for the region. I noted that most people are bad at reasoning about transportation. For example, few participants believed BC Transit’s claim that only 5% of trips originating in Langford end in downtown (although it’s obvious when you include dog walks and neighbour visits).

The Black Ball guy, in a very polite and subtle way, raised an issue I have with the OCP: if the engagement is mostly with residents, who represents the needs of tourists and businesses? Is council and staff expected to take the OCP as only one set of guiding priciples?

But what really blew my mind was the community feedback (presumably from youth engagement) that Victoria should have longboard-friendly streets. Longboards! It never occurred to me that longboards are a form of green transportation, and now I’m considering learning how to ride one. This also poetically balances the ways the city is bending over to accomodate mobility scooters (including the armoured ones). Just as it was suggested that cities would be redesigned for Segways, we can’t even conceive of the personal transportation options of the future!