Island road planners are all ears, so to speak, and Salt Spring residents have a unique opportunity to sound off on crosswalks in Ganges village — what works, what doesn’t and where officials need to focus.
An online survey has already begun, according to Capital Regional District (CRD) officials, looking for islanders’ “experiences, observations and suggestions” to help shape pedestrian safety improvements inside the official project area — 2.5 kilometres of Fulford-Ganges and Lower Ganges roads from Seaview Avenue up to Sharp Road, and on Upper Ganges Road from Lower Ganges Road to Churchill Road.
The goal of the project, as laid out by Watt Consulting Group’s Steve Martin for the Local Community Commission (LCC) back in July, is to analyze and then — hopefully — upgrade the existing crosswalks in the area, as well as possibly propose new ones that could benefit islanders.
“There are eight existing crosswalks in the [contracted study] area,” said Martin. “We’re going to be preparing six functional designs, between existing and proposed crosswalks; that’s six total, so it could be three existing, three proposed, or five existing, one proposed. That’s to be determined as we go through the review process.”
That process will be shaped by the consultants, CRD staff and the public; Martin’s early investigations in Ganges identified some easily-spotted problematic areas — pedestrians standing in the roadway waiting to cross at McPhillips Avenue, for example — but the feedback from islanders will have a significant role in guiding work.
To that end, the consultants will be bringing their review and conceptual designs to an open house Wednesday, Sept. 17 from 3 to 6 p.m. at the Salt Spring Island Multi Space (SIMS) building.
“We’ll bring the data collection summary — so provide some quick facts on vehicle speeds and volumes, and on pedestrians,” he said. “The idea is for residents to provide some initial feedback on what we’re proposing, to see if it works with what they’ve identified and whether it aligns with their needs, goals and wants.”
Part of the open house will include participants helping to complete a “mapping station” activity, meant to organically collect further feedback on problematic locations the experts may have missed — “just putting a dot on a map,” Martin said, “and saying ‘I didn’t like crossing here with my child’ or ‘the vehicles are going very fast here and it’s hard for me to cross.’”
At least two pedestrian crossings in the area were outside the project scope, according to Martin, because they’re already under scrutiny. The Ministry of Transportation and Transit has initiated a design for a new crossing of Fulford-Ganges Road at Seaview Avenue, he said, and the intersection of Lower Ganges and Fulford-Ganges roads is planned for a redesign in the next few years — identified by both the 2022 Salt Spring Island Cycling Safety Strategy and the 2023 Active Transportation Network Plan.
“So our recommendations for the crosswalk there will probably be more focused on safety and some ‘quick fixes’ so we can try to avoid doing significant work at that intersection twice,” said Martin.
Feedback from both the survey and the Sept. 17 open house will inform the functional designs that will head back to the LCC, according to CRD staff, likely during a regular meeting this winter.
For more information and to complete the survey — which closes Sept. 21 — visit getinvolved.crd.bc.ca/ganges-crosswalks.