When are we getting a train?

A BC Transit double-decker bus serves a busy stop on Douglas Street in downtown Victoria. More than 20 transit routes share portions of the Douglas corridor, which BC Transit says is expected to eventually exceed what can be practically delivered through conventional bus service alone. (Photo: Josh Hylden/CFAX 1070)

For anyone who has spent time inching along the Colwood Crawl or waiting for a packed bus on Douglas Street, the question can feel almost inevitable.

When are we getting a train?

It might come from a driver stuck in traffic. It might come from a passenger squeezing onto a packed double-decker bus, or from someone returning from a trip to Vancouver, Calgary or Europe, where fast, frequent transit is a familiar part of getting around.

The short answer: not yet, and possibly not in the form of a train at all.

Greater Victoria is planning for higher-capacity transit between downtown Victoria and the West Shore, with the draft Victoria Regional Transit Plan envisioning that service entering operation sometime in the 2040s.

But before planners choose what that service should look like, they have to answer a more fundamental question:

How far can the region push its existing bus network?

Douglas Street is already under pressure

The answer starts with one of the region’s busiest transit corridors.

More than 20 routes can operate along portions of Douglas Street at the same time, carrying passengers headed to downtown, the West Shore and communities throughout Greater Victoria.

That can make the obvious solution to a crowded bus, just add another one, considerably more complicated.

“When you start to get upwards of 20 routes on a corridor, you’re reaching the practical limits of what you can operate,” said Levi Megenbir, BC Transit’s manager of service planning.

Signs a corridor is reaching its limits

Every transportation corridor has practical limits, including those used by buses. As demand grows, transit planners eventually begin running into operational constraints.

The first is reliability.

As congestion grows, buses move more slowly and schedules become harder to maintain. Megenbir said bus travel speeds across the region have been declining for years. Slower buses mean more delays and less predictable service for riders.

Congestion also consumes resources. BC Transit estimates traffic delays consume about 150,000 service hours each year, roughly one-sixth of the system’s annual service.

As delays increase, more buses, drivers and operating hours are needed to deliver the same amount of transit service, reducing overall efficiency.

Capacity is the final constraint. Updated provincial modelling points to the same problem as ridership continues to grow.

“The level of ridership and service on Douglas Street will exceed what we can operationally feasibly deliver with bus-based transit,” Megenbir said.

That doesn’t mean buses are going away. It means there comes a point when adding more of them is no longer the most efficient way to move more people through the same space.

A train is only one option

That is where higher-order transit comes in. Despite the way the debate is often framed, BC Transit isn’t planning around a predetermined train.

The draft regional plan identifies several possibilities, including RapidBus, trackless trams and rail transit.

A specific technology has not been selected. Trackless trams are one of the newer options under consideration. Megenbir described them as essentially a light-rail vehicle on wheels, noting that the technology has been introduced in cities in China and Australia.

For planners, however, the vehicle itself is not the starting point.

The first question is how many people the corridor will need to move and how much capacity will be required to do it reliably.

Once that is known, planners can determine whether buses, rail or another technology is the right fit.

That distinction matters. The region isn’t necessarily deciding whether it wants a train. It’s deciding what kind of transit system it will need when buses can no longer keep up.

Why does it take until the 2040s?

For many residents, the 2040s can sound less like a transit timeline and more like another generation.

But the 2040s is the proposed operating timeline, not the point at which planning begins.

Before a higher-capacity transit line can open, planners need to determine its route, protect or acquire land, complete engineering and design work, develop a business case and secure funding from senior governments.

Then comes construction.

“We need to be thinking about this now,” Megenbir said. “These projects take a really long time.”

That’s also why BC Transit says waiting until the bus network is already overwhelmed would be too late.

The planning has to begin years before the existing system reaches its ceiling.

Some advocates want to move faster

Not everyone believes that target is ambitious enough.

Sam Holland, chair of Better Transit YYJ, said projected growth and congestion along the Highway 1 corridor make the case for moving more quickly.

“If we aren’t ambitious enough about opening that sooner, we might end up in a situation where we have just crippling traffic in our region,” Holland said.

For transit advocates, the concern isn’t whether Greater Victoria needs more capacity.

It’s whether the region can build that capacity before congestion and ridership growth make the existing system increasingly difficult to expand.

That creates a difficult balancing act. The region needs to keep adding buses today while planning for whatever comes next, and it needs to make those decisions before today’s congestion becomes tomorrow’s bottleneck.

There is no answer yet. What there is, however, is a growing recognition that whatever comes after conventional bus service will take years to plan, fund and build.

Buses will remain the backbone of Greater Victoria’s transit network for years to come. But the draft plan recognizes that the busiest corridors won’t be able to rely on conventional bus service indefinitely.

The question now is how quickly the region can plan, fund and build the next layer of its transit system.

If that ultimately means trains, the groundwork needs to be laid long before the first rail is installed.

For a region already feeling the squeeze of traffic and growing demand, the countdown may have started long before the first vehicle arrives.