For Gorge-Tillicum resident Sarah McMillan, it used to take only 13 minutes to ride the number 11 bus from her Saanich home to her workplace in downtown Victoria.
Then the route was changed in June 2022, leading to a much-longer ride that has area residents upset and wondering why BC Transit is making it tougher for them to take transit.
Route 11 changed due to construction that started on the section of Gorge Road that the bus used, but since then, the road has reopened, but the bus service has not returned to its original, faster route.
Since the route change, McMillan now has to walk 15 minutes to a number 11 stop, rather than just down her street, doubling her commute to work. But she isn’t the only one the route change has impacted on a regular basis.
“We’re definitely feeling the impact of it, but there is a lot of people there who are really stuck and in a real heartbreaking way,” said McMillan.
When route 11 changed in 2022, BC Transit started offering the number 25 as an alternative bus route for the Gorge-Tillicum community.
Phil Lancaster, who is on the board for the Gorge-Tillicum Community Association, said that “it takes roughly half an hour,” to get from the Tillicum-Gorge community to downtown.
The 25 bus has to travel through Esquimalt before it enters downtown and only travels between the hours of 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. Compared to the 11 bus that runs 65 times a day, the 25 only runs 22 times a day, Lancaster said.
On top of all that, Lancaster added that the bus is “notoriously late. So it’s not a viable replacement.”
The construction on Gorge Road that caused the bus route change was to do upgrades on storm drains. Along with the storm drain construction, the engineers also designed bike lanes and bus shelters. The two new additions were useful to encourage eco-friendly ways to commute to work, except the only issue was the bus shelters designed were meant for the old 11 bus route, not the 25 bus route, said Lancaster.
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“We’ve got on the one hand, the CRD and our own district of Saanich exhorting all of us to use active transportation to reduce our carbon footprint and directing us towards transit and bicycling and walking and all the rest of it,” said Lancaster. “Then BC Transit is turning around and taking away the service that would make that possible.”
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Lancaster was unhappy with how public engagement was conducted on the issue.
“They talked to the wrong people,” said Lancaster.
The issue has galvanized transit users impacted by the route change.
On Sept. 28, more than 70 people gathered at Saanich Neighbourhood Place for a community meeting to discuss what to do about the lack of bus service.
“I take the number of people who showed up as a representation of a much larger community behind them,” said Lancaster.
After the meeting, McMillan said that “it was just heartbreaking to hear all of these stories of people who might not have the mobility or the options that we have as a family.”
Mauricio Curbelo, who is also on the board of the Gorge-Tillicum Community Association, thought like many others that this was going to be a “temporary route change.”
The Gorge-Tillicum community is optimistic after the meeting, which included a BC Transit official, that more consultation could be coming, Curbelo said.
“As far as we know from them, this is the configuration now and they are willing to engage with us in the process,” Curbelo said. “They wanna have a second consultation actually is what I’m hearing now. So they have shown some openness to listen to us and our concern about this change.”
BC Transit told Black Press Media that “instead of returning the route 11 to its previous routing this September, short-term modifications were made to the route 25 to provide service along Gorge between Admirals and Tillicum, while we work on longer-term service solutions for the corridor. BC Transit is actively engaging with community members in the Gorge-Tillicum area to address some of the concerns related to the recent routing changes. BC Transit is currently developing some service options to address concerns about the recent changes. These service options will be shared with the community in the coming weeks at an upcoming public engagement to ensure that service aligns with community needs.”
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