Focus Magazine, a local publication that has taken a strong editorial position in favour of preserving the Johnson St. Bridge wrote asking for information on how the numbers stack up for bicycling traffic on the bridge. Here's what I wrote to detail an engineering analysis of what the numbers are and how the bridge works for cyclists, pedestrians and other users.
Hi John,
I am writing a piece for the March edition of Focus magazine about the safety of cyclists using the Johnson Street Bridge.
I recently read an article about the Johnson Street Bridge on the cycling website Momentum. In the article, the writer, Kim Magi, wrote: "The bridge, which presently has about 4,000 cyclists riding over it each day, will be built in a rolling bascule style."
I wrote to Ms Magi asking where she got the figure (4000) for the number of cyclists using the bridge each day and she said that you were the source of that figure.
Can you confirm that figure for me? When was this measured? Has the City of Victoria done an analysis of the way in which cyclists use the bridge? Have there been any recommendations made to Council by City staff on ways that the flow of cyclists through the approaches and over the bridges can be improved?
My deadline for this piece is Wednesday February 17, so any information you could give me before that date would be very helpful.
Thank you!
Cheers,
Sam Williams, Focus Magazine
Hi Sam,
The source of the numbers is our engineering department. They usually conduct "screenline" counts at various locations around the city on a regular basis to update traffic flow numbers, particularly along major corridors. At key locations those counts, usually electronic, bicycle counts may also be conducted. Better counts are done, I think, with the human hand, a spread sheet and some tick marks, and the city does do some counts using summer students for various projects. The counts that have been accumulated for the Johnson St. Bridge may or may not be from that program, but the city will have had to do "before" counts along Esquimalt Rd in Vic West for the provincial funding program that is matching funding with the city for that project.
Under the provincial Local Motion and Cycling Infrastructure Partnership Program before and after counts are required for funding to determine shifts in bicycle travel facilitated by facility improvements. The older figures I have are usefully in connecting improvements to sometimes significant growth in bike traffic (and attendant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, etc, for federal programs in particular, which is funding some projects in Esquimalt and View Royal).
So to get back to that question, the numbers will be at a pretty high level of confidence and certainly consistent with the pattern of bicycle travel within the city and region, particularly along the Galloping Goose, where as an advocate in the past, I've worked on or designed count projects for various initiatives. The numbers on the trail are quite high and many of those end up on the bridge or have their origins on the other side. Cycling traffic, like most other forms, is, in this region, moving predominantly between downtown and other municipalities. If you are on a bus, you are on the Douglas St. corridor. If you are on a bike, the Goose is very attractive so it makes sense that the numbers are as high as they are on the bridge. More will be coming as the new E&N rail trail evolves. Numbers are consistent with patterns found by the CRD doing origin and destination surveys that show heavy concentration of regional bicycle traffic in core municipalities.
Analysis of bicycle traffic flow approaching and on the bridge has been done intermittently over more than a decade. The challenges of the crossing have been well known and various strategies have been employed to mitigate conditions cyclists (and pedestrians) face in order to use the bridge. The flow of bicycle traffic follows the path of least resistance, and that means different things for different cyclists. You might look into the work the Bicycle Transportation Alliance in Portland, Oregon did on cycling populations to get a sense of what the different market segments are for cycling trips and what various infrastructure treatments may be useful to better support bicycle travel.
For the more confident of the cycling population, the vehicle deck will be the route of choice. Moreso for outbound traffic than inbound for a few reasons.
Outbound cyclists have the "blue box" on Wharf at Johnson that puts them in front of traffic heading towards the bridge. That was a project I brought to engineering about 10 years ago to help sort out bridge bound bicycle traffic from vehicle traffic. Vehicles may be headed for the bridge or Store St. as the curb lane is an optional left turn or, through lane and had been a problem identified by both the city and cycling advocates as needing a fix. The bike box is very successful in advancing cyclists to the head of the queue and giving comfort to many of them to "take the lane" through the approach and across the bridge on the way to the trail. For motorists it has been a plus as well as it makes cyclists more predicatable in their movements. They feel more confident knowing where cyclists are and what they are doing and that is a pattern of interaction that is consistent across facility types (bike lanes, trails etc.) that provides safer conditions for cyclists and more comfort for motorists who are often trying their best to share the road.
There are still impatient drivers that sometimes block the box, pass cyclists through the approach or within their lane while on the bridge and that is a discouragement to other slices of the cycling demographic - the "enthused but concerned" segment identified in the BTA survey. The potential market for cycing (a bigger slice) simply won't ride the bridge as is, though some may use the sidewalk or rail bridge.
Outbound is a little easier because of the flat grade and second lane. Coming into town involves a modest climb, but that sucks enough speed out of most cyclists to elevate the friction with drivers impatient to pass coming into downtown. Both directions have another project we brought to the city - the sign package that instructs cyclists to "Ride in the Centre of the Lane" and another to tell motorists to not pass cyclists on the bridge ($144 fine the last I checked). Compliance is not bad but for the less confident, the instances where drivers sneak by, either at speed or too close, can be unnerving.
The grated bridge deck is not ideal as you can imagine, and it is predictably slippery in wet weather, but I'm not sure the improvements we have talked about over the last number of years will do much to improve conditions. Some early ideas were found to be not feasible (some sort of rubbery compound has, for example, been applied to utility covers to improve traction, but it gets worn off and for the bridge, there is not enough surface area on the grates to make much of a difference. The material for application is also toxic and would impact the marine environment on application. I suppose something could be put underneath to capture droppings, but wiorking through the Cycling Advisory Committee, both advocates and the city discarded that treatment as a useful option.
The fixing of some sort of plate on the bridge to provide a better surface would be expensive and a waste of money, in my estimation. Technically it is feasible, but costs go up quickly with high-tech, lightweight (but necessarily durable) materials and additional mass needs to be added to counterweights and new electrical/mechanical systems need to be designed to carry the extra weight when the bridge is lifting. What cyclists need more than a better surface, however, is space, which is in short supply on the existing bridge.
To get to the road on the west side, it is straightforward enough on Esquimalt Road and the downhill provides some momentum for some to keep up enough speed on the approach to confidently take the single, inbound lane. For those traveling from the Goose, taking the newly completed Harbour Road gives two options - climbing up on the trail, crossing the tracks, dog-legging back alongside the E&N and then turning uncomfortably onto the Ocean Pointe ramp, which then dumps you onto a narrow sidewalk, at a bus stop, and without benefit of a curb cut to slip back onto the road (engieers are very reluctant to give you a clean shot downhill straight into the path of an oncoming bus or any of the other meandering traffic negotiating the S-curve under the rail overpass and on to the bridge).
For those intimidated by traffic, the sidewalk on the southside is used, even if it is illegal. Likewise on the rail bridge, the other traffic free choice used by cyclists and pedestrians, and similarly challenged for space. It doesn't work well for cyclists, instructed to dismount, but who rarely do, or pedestrians who feel harassed. Outbound, fewer cyclists will use the rail in favour of the road to avoid that congestion. To get there they would have to slip through a gate that has now been left permanently open (it used to be closed to prevent this movement), to allow cyclists access from the road to the rail bridge. Inbound cyclists often "shoot the gap" from the rail bridge crossing outbound lanes to get to Johnson or across to Wharf if that is their destination.
Inbound cyclists also, if they are the more confident type, may follow a more typical vehicle path of travel on Harbour Road, turning left across Esquimalt Rd chancing the speed of traffic they can't see approaching from the bridge and around the curve under the rail crossing, and mindful for a gap in inbound traffic.
The same outbound movement is common enough too with some cyclists crossing the bridge, avoiding the Ocean Pointe ramp and heading through the S curve to Esqumalt, Tyee or back on to Harbour Rd to access the Goose. More cyclists nevertheless cross the bridge outbound and ride up the ramp and then do a neck craning dog-leg back onto the trail and ramp down to Harbour Road to head to the Goose. The convoluted trick is necessitated by grade differences, a retaining wall and the requirements of federal rail authorities for a right angle crossing of the tracks.
All of those movements have been exhaustively studied over numbers of years and all of the solutions for improving levels of service researched and implemented, where possible, save for two other ideas that have also been studied, but continue to be promoted as viable solutions to address the deficiencies of the crossing for cyclists and pedestrians.
The easier one would be to send the rail folks packing by moving the station to somewhere west of the bridge, perhaps as far as the Roundhouse. Technically this is certainly feasible, though it does nothing for that segment of commuter traffic who want to remain on the road, either because their speed is higher than is comfortable on a trail or it better connects them with their intended destination along Johnson or Wharf.
Ditching the rial bridge could be an entirely separate conversation about why it is important to bring rail into downtown and what sort of configuration and system planning supports a rational use of that asset, but suffice to say it is not an option anybody involved with rail operations supports and it is not a good solution for the city. Of course, if the rail is dispensable, we don't need a bridge for them and could save $15 million or so by eliminating it from the replacement option as well.
That "solution" could provide benefits to cyclists and pedestrians on the Goose and the E&N trail, less so for others, and the terminus downtown would remain less than an ideal connection to the downtown streets network, though that is a design issue that is common to both refurbishment and replacement. The Citizens Advisory Committee on the bridge has been wrestling with that one. Moreso than inbound traffic, outbound cyclists would still suffer some of the friction along the approach that curves from Wharf alongside the orphan greenspace between Johnson and Pandora where too many vehicles pass in tight quarters and less confident cyclists hug the curb to get away from them.
The most appealing, but least functional fix, would be to drop an outbound vehicle lane and give it to cyclists like they've done on the Burrard St. Bridge in Vancouver. This has been discussed at length over the last number of years but traffic volumes make it unworkable. We did put the research on lane reduction designs to good use however, when the "road diet" was applied to Fort St. The road diet concept has been more extensively researched by Pete Lagerwey, formerly the bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for the city of Seattle, and Dan Burden, a consultant with Walkable Communities in Florida. Their analysis of projects around North America has found that lane reductions (from 4 to 3 like Fort St.) have an upside limit of under 25,000 vehicles a day (the bridge carries about 30,000). Beyond that they create problems that radiate beyond the site of the treatment application. It would be much more problematic to go from 3 to 2 lanes with the volumes and confgurations around the bridge.
Inbound traffic is a "drinking straw" feeding a "garden hose" - the single lane opens up to disburse traffic along numbers of streets (Johnson, Store, Wharf, Fort etc.) and traffic doesn't back up. (It's also a.m. peak flows, which are lower than afternoon rush hour when more discretionary trips are added to commute traffic.)
Outbound it's the garden hose feeding the drinking straw; the two lanes of traffic have few options, and are trying to drain more traffic from more sources (Yates, Wharf, Pandora, Store) and back ups would likely impair the function of nearby downtown intersections. That is, at least, the conclusions we found working through options at the Cycling Advisory Committee, appointed to provide advice to council and supported by engineering staff.
By comparison, Fort St. has outlets for some of the traffic bottled up into the single travel lanes in the new configuration. A two way left turn lane moves vehicles out of the flow and keeps traffic moving, albeit more slowly (a good thing), but steadily. There is no such release option on the bridge. Either you are on it or not. Keep in mind also that the bridge carries almost twice the traffic of Fort St., and that kind of volume can't be accommodated in a two lane facility. Design issues would be a problem in any event as access to the Ocean Pointe would be cut off and channeling bike traffic into or out of the dedicated facility would need to cross opposing vehicle traffic at some points.
Burrard St. works partly because excess capacity for vehicles is available nearby on Granville, the design keeps cyclists moving with the flow of traffic (so there are no problems crossing opposing traffic), and there is robust physical separation provided by no-post barriers on the bridge (they wouldn't fit on the Johnson St. Bridge because the lanes are too narrow to lose any of the physical space the barriers would occupy (probably a metre or so).
Related to all these traffic issues and often touched on in Focus (but not in your questions), are the issues of sustainability and climate change, something numbers of editorials have repeatedly identified as important to our community and to our future. It has been suggested that preserving the bridge is more sustainable, but that is only plausible if your forget that it is a bridge and it needs to carry traffic. It is poorly equipped to support alterantive modes at present and it will be increasingly problematic as we work to feed more cyclists and pedestrians into the traffic mix.
Looking out to the horizon of our Regional Growth Strategy, the bridge might need to accommodate as many as 10,000 bicycle trips a day. The old bridge can't handle those volumes. Given that the most successful of transportation investments in the capital region over the last decade have been those that support cycling, and that more than 60% of emissions oin the region are from mobile sources (mostly cars and trucks), we have an imperative to choose the best option for shifting people to more bicycle trips (and it will work better for pedestrians as well). Only the purpose built designs incorporated into the new bridge are capable of realizing that objective and helping us meet our targets in reducing emissions and converting trips to sustainable modes. Band-aids on the old bridge, however much we cherish the icon, will do little more than preserve an advantage for cars and truck for decades into the future.
Excuse me if y answers are a little lengthy or stray off topic, but I do have some experience in helping along numbers of cycling projects around the region, and my interest in this one goes back years and I'm just thankful to share some of my homework.
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