Another chunk of on-street parking in downtown Victoria will soon be a thing of the past.
The City of Victoria confirms its current design for a protected bike lane on Wharf Street will see 21 parking stalls removed between Pandora Street and Fort Street, a 46 per cent loss of parking in the three-block stretch.
Although the city calls the loss “significant,” it is less than what previous designs called for and could still change.
“As we tweak our design it could swing by one or two stalls in either direction,” said Fraser Work, Director of Engineering and Public Works for the City of Victoria.
The protected bike lane will look similar to the lanes on Pandora and Fort streets and will be located on the west side of Wharf Street. All of the parking on the east side of the street will remain.
Work adds “this design is the most parking friendly cycle track option that we could have gone with along Wharf Street”.
The design of the Wharf Street bike lane is about 60 per cent complete. Construction will begin in September or October of 2018.
Recently city staff called an audible on plans for a bike lane on Cook Street, opting instead for the north-south lane to run along Vancouver Street.
Construction on the Vancouver Street bike lane is scheduled to begin sometime in early 2019.
A fifth bike lane is also scheduled to be built along Humboldt Street with work beginning sometime after the Wharf Street lane is done, however, Work says there is potential for the two projects to overlap.
The current cost of phase one of the city’s bike plan, which includes all five bike lanes, currently sits at just over $14-million.
The original price tag for phase one was half that in 2016, around $7-million.
