Bike Sense
Bike Sense: the podcast of The BC Cycling Coalition.
Join Host Peter Ladner as he interviews guests to talk about all things related to cycling advocacy, education, and road safety in BC. Listen to stories that can influence changes that make active transportation and mobility safer, more equitable, and more accessible, so we can meet our climate, health, social justice, tourism and economic development goals.
Please visit our website at bccycling.ca to find out more about what the BC Cycling Coalition is doing and how you can join and support us.
Bike Sense
Trailblazers Unite! Connecting the Sunshine Coast from Langdale to Lund
Tannis Braithwaite, retired lawyer and director with the Connect the Coast Society, shares her passionate advocacy for the Connect the Coast Trail — a visionary cycling project linking Vancouver Island, the Lower Mainland, and the Sunshine Coast along the Highway 101 corridor.
Inspired by the success of Cycle 16's Smithers-to-Telkwa trail, we explore how provincial and federal support can bridge the funding gap for this ambitious project.
Explore Connect the Coast's vision HERE.
Hear the inspiration for Connect the Coast on Bike Sense's very first episode back in April 2023: From Smithers to Telkwa with Allan Cormier.
Share your BikeSense with us! Send us a text message.
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The Bike Sense podcast with Peter Ladner is produced by the BC Cycling Coalition – your voice for safer and more accessible cycling and active transportation in British Columbia.
Membership in the BCCC is now FREE! To find out about BCCC's projects and add your voice to the chorus please visit BCCycling.ca
Welcome to Bike Sense, the BC Cycling Coalition's podcast, where we talk about all things related to active transportation advocacy in BC. I'm your host, peter Ladner, chair of the Board of the BC Cycling Coalition. I hope you enjoy the show. Communities all over BC are excited by the possibility of cycle tourism on AAA routes suitable for all ages and abilities, and we've covered some of these on this podcast the Smithers to Telcoir route, tofino to Ucluelet, the Salish Sea Trail from Salt Spring Island around Couch and Valley into Souk, the Lake to Lake route in Penticton and the Okanagan Rail Trail.
Speaker 1:But maybe the grandmother of all these routes and dreams is the Connect the Coast Trail, because it's so close to Vancouver and all the possible people who could come from there and go north along Highway 101 past Sechelt and Roberts Creek all the way, potentially, to Powell River. All these trails have one thing in common, which is very strong local advocates, and one of the strongest of these advocates is Tannis Braithwaite, my guest today. She's a retired lawyer who is a director with the Connect the Coast Society, which is an offshoot of the Transportation Choices Sunshine Coast Organization, which has been championing cycling alternatives and options on the Sunshine Coast for, I'm going to say, decades. Tannis, welcome.
Speaker 2:Thank you, it's good to be here.
Speaker 1:Could you tell us off the top what is your dream Like if all the plans came to fruition and all the funding suddenly, mysteriously and wondrously arrived? What would we see that you're promoting?
Speaker 2:Well, we would see actually a long distance circular cycle route that would connect Vancouver Island, the lower mainland and the Sunshine Coast in a great big circular loop. Probably the worst section so far for cyclists is the Sunshine Coast. It's the Highway 101 corridor and, for people who aren't super familiar with the geography, you get to the Sunshine Coast you have to go by ferry. There's no road connection, but the Sunshine Coast is not an island. You take the ferry from Horseshoe Bay. It's a 40-minute ride over to Langdale and then Highway 101 runs about 160 kilometers north from there to a small town called Lund.
Speaker 1:You're planning on going all the way to Lund.
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean the Connect. The Coast Society itself commissioned a report back in 2021. Back in 2021, we hired a transportation planner to take a look at the Highway 101 corridor and sort of assess the feasibility of building separated active transportation infrastructure along that route between the Langdale Ferry Terminal and the town of Sechelt Scheldt. After that report was published, Sunshine Coast Tourism was so excited about the project that they commissioned their own report that basically continued the assessment of the corridor from Sechelt all the way to Lund.
Speaker 1:And how feasible is it to build this route? What did the reports discover?
Speaker 2:So the preliminary report is a very high level overview. Basically, the planner took a look at how wide is the right of way, how wide is the roadway, where are the power poles, where are the conflict points with driveways, all of that sort of information, and obviously it is possible to build a route the whole way, but it's not easy. There's places where the geography is very different, there's places where the right of way is too constrained, so there would have to be some private property acquisitions. It's always possible. It's just a matter of how much money you want to spend getting it done.
Speaker 1:Well, you did mention the priority on the first section between Langdale and Roberts Creek. Is that where you're focusing your energy now, and describe what that route would be like if I rode my bike off the ferry from Langdale?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one of the things that the preliminary design reports did was they did a multiple accounts evaluation which looked at things like what is the level of existing demand, what is population density in the area, what would be the cost of building that route, and so what that enabled us to do was to prioritize segments of the route for development. It's not feasible to try to do the whole route at once, or even the route from Langdale to Sechelt all at once. So the first priority section runs from upper Gibsons to the turnoff to Roberts Creek, so it would connect, basically, the town of Gibsons to a lower speed, lower traffic volume road that would lead to Roberts Creek.
Speaker 1:And you mentioned existing demand. What is the existing demand?
Speaker 2:You mentioned existing demand. What is the existing demand? Well, on a sunny, long weekend day, we see up to about 500 cyclists a day using the highway corridor. That's obviously the peak demand. That's also at the busiest part of the route, which is just outside of the town of Gibsons.
Speaker 1:And are those people coming from somewhere else or are they local people?
Speaker 2:You know it's hard to say. I think they're mostly local people. I actually frequently do counts on the highway, where I sit out on the highway for two hours at a stretch and I take notes about all the active transportation users who go by. What are they doing? Are they walking their dog? Are they riding their bikes?
Speaker 1:Just a second. You get out on a Sunday or a Saturday afternoon, you have nothing better to do than count cyclists going by on the highway.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:It's quite a life I lead.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:Well, and I try to distinguish local cyclists from tourists, but, of course, the only way I can do that, because I don't stop people and ask them questions. Uh, if they're carrying a lot of gear they've got tents and sleeping bags they get counted as tourists. If they don't have a lot of stuff, they get counted as local people. So it's an inexact measure.
Speaker 1:But, tannis, this very act of yours to sit by the highway and count is very bizarre. When you think that if we were to treat cycling as a legitimate form of transportation, why is it up to some local activist in her spare time doing this research to get it done, doing this research to get it done when, if it involved cars, there would be all sorts of government agencies that would look after this and build it quickly? I mean, why are these type of routes not considered basic transportation infrastructure by the Ministry of Transportation Infrastructure?
Speaker 2:Well, Peter, I think I'm the wrong one to ask that question to. I have no idea. I have no idea why.
Speaker 1:I'll bet you have some ideas, but share them with us.
Speaker 2:Well, I have no idea why that's not being done. I mean, I know that it traffic. I mean the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure does. Do I mean the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure does do regular traffic volume counts? They have a permanent count station as well as a couple of count stations that I think they rove around. So there are count stations for motor vehicles but there aren't any for cyclists or pedestrians that I am aware of, but there aren't any for cyclists or pedestrians that I am aware of.
Speaker 1:So, aside from counting the cars on the highway, what has the ministry?
Speaker 2:done to help you, if anything. Well, in terms of how we're dealing with the ministry, we're just at a sort of information sharing stage, I would call it so. The ministry's position is that they want to work through local governments on active transportation priorities, and so what we have done is we have a professional project manager. Actually, I would like to give a shout out to the BC Cycling Coalition who, when I reached out for help early on in this project, connected me to the Cycle 16 group up in Smithers, who have not only provided us with a tremendous amount of helpful information on how to go about this, but connected us with their project manager, who is now also our project manager. He's an engineer with WSP and he really knows what he's doing.
Speaker 1:Who is he?
Speaker 2:With respect to these projects. His name is Alan Kindrat.
Speaker 1:So you've hired him, the local community activists have hired him. You pay him. Yes, we do.
Speaker 2:You hired him, you pay him? Yes, we do, and he's put together a proposal for all of the things that we will need to have done for our first segment that we're looking at the Upper Gibsons to the turnoff to Roberts Creek that I mentioned and that involves a whole bunch of interconnected steps. You need to do environmental evaluations, archaeological evaluations, stakeholder engagement, topographical surveying and design work, and so we have been working with the local governments to fund that project and we've received some grant money as well to fund that project.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned that MOTI, the provincial ministry, wants to get some leadership from the local governments. How much have they? You mentioned they've given you some money. Are they behind this project or are they just sort of watching with some distant interest?
Speaker 2:I think they're watching with distant interest. So if you look at the BC Active Transportation Design Guide, the only chapter in there that speaks to this active transportation infrastructure in the ministry right-of-way is Chapter F and essentially Chapter F puts responsibility for building and maintaining active transportation infrastructure even if it's going to be in the provincial right-of-way on local governments, and the ministries doesn't get actively involved, as I understand it, until the local processes are at the detailed design stage. So that's at least one or maybe two steps into the design process. You go through multiple phases of design before you actually have a design that's construction ready.
Speaker 1:How much would this cost the regional government if you were to bring it all to fruition? Do you have any ideas?
Speaker 2:Well, I can give you a number and then I can tell you why that number doesn't mean very much.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's do that.
Speaker 2:So the high level cost estimate for the Langdale to Sechelt section is about $100 million. Now the way that that estimate is made is that engineers have a standard per kilometer construction cost that they apply for, say, a multi-use path that comes in three levels. So they look at whether the terrain is easy to build, in medium difficulty or hard to build-in, and the per-kilometer cost. It's about $2 million for an easy area to build-in, $5 million per kilometer in a medium area and about $11 million a kilometer in difficult areas. Now, obviously there's difficult areas and then there's difficult areas. So on the Sunshine Coast, our first segment has at least three, possibly four, stream crossings. We may need major retaining walls, long bridges, and all of that interacts a lot with what the environmental and archaeological findings are, because there's more permitting and regulatory processes that you need to go through if you're interfering with streams, particularly if you've got fish bearing streams, which we do. So at this point it's very hard is what I'm saying to have any kind of accurate cost estimate.
Speaker 1:I can't help but comment that $100 million is the cost of about less than the cost of half a kilometer of Highway 1 widening in the latest expansion estimates. So given what we're spending on cars, this is an almost trivial amount. Now you mentioned the Tourism Association got excited about this project, and you mentioned some involvement from the regional government. What about the local First Nations? Are they?
Speaker 2:involved? Yes, very much so. So our first segment that we're working on is in Squamish Nation territory and they have been very engaged. They're currently reviewing our environmental overview assessment and they will actively participate in the archaeological assessment, and they've been coming to stakeholder engagement meetings.
Speaker 1:Terrific. I once had a conversation with a board member from the BC Ferries who you would know who said that BC Ferries should be looking at the ways people come on the ferries and get off the ferries and if they could shift some of the ferry passengers from cars to bikes, they would effectively increase the capacity of the ferries with very little effort. How much are the BC ferries involved, if at all, in this project, given that it starts at a ferry terminal and, in the longer version, leads to another ferry terminal?
Speaker 2:Well, that's a very good question. I mean, we have not actively engaged with them, with the BC Ferries at all on this project, but I think that's probably our failing. We should be engaging with them.
Speaker 1:Well, we'd like to do a podcast with the BC Ferries, engaging with them. Well, we'd like to do a podcast with the BC Ferries we're having a lot of difficulty getting somebody to come on just about things like their friendliness and wayfinding and so on towards cyclists on the ferries, which I would imagine would have to be built into this project at some level. So what have you learned, tanis, from all of these struggles and tests and studies, other than what section of the of the act is applied to what section of your project? But generally speaking, if you were to share some advice with other advocates in other parts of the province, what would it be?
Speaker 2:well, I think one thing that I didn't fully understand when I started this process is, essentially, what we are trying to do is build a one lane highway, and we're trying to build it without any money, without any staff, without any expertise, on land that does not belong to us, so it is not an easy undertaking to us.
Speaker 1:So it is not an easy undertaking. Just stop there for a second. When you say you're building a one-lane highway, is that because of the width of it, and then there would be two-way traffic on it? That's right, you're not building one lane on one side and one on the other. Okay, so one lane.
Speaker 2:No, yep.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:But when you think about what goes into building a highway, what goes into building a highway, all of those same things go into building a bicycle path.
Speaker 2:It has to be built to a very high standard, and so you need professionals doing the work.
Speaker 2:It's not possible for volunteers to actually do the work, and so that means using what influence you can muster to convince governments to help in ways that they can, and to convince governments to help in ways that they can, and we really try and look for ways to make it easy for governments. So as much of the work that we can do, we do do on behalf of whoever is involved, whether it's a local government or the ministry, to try to move the project forward, because the real problem, I think, is that government is largely overwhelmed with all of the issues that they have to deal with, and so and I think that's true of the local governments as well as the provincial governments and so active transportation never seems to make it to the top of the heap, so it just gets shoved aside and shoved aside, and shoved aside, because it's something that can wait for another day, and so we're trying to make it easier for governments to bring it to the top of the heap.
Speaker 1:Governments respond to public opinion. What's your estimate of the public opinion about this, and is it getting bigger or people are getting less interested?
Speaker 2:bigger or people are getting less interested. Well, we have overwhelming support. On the Sunshine Coast is my sense. We do quite a bit of talking at community events and tabling at community events, and everyone that talks to us thinks it's a wonderful idea. The problem is not that people don't want it. People definitely do want it, but they want to have water infrastructure more than they want to have an at-bike path, they want garbage collection more than they want a bike path, and so I don't think it's a lack of support. It's a lack of prioritization for it, and I'm not sure how we make it people's priority over all of the other things that they have to deal with. Believe me, if I could think of a way I'd be doing that. Right now is a perfect time in the election campaign to be raising it as an issue.
Speaker 1:I would like to think that as GHG emissions become more of a concern, as affordability becomes more of a concern, equity people would be wanting more of what active transportation can offer. But obviously I understand, compared to having clean water when you need it, it's hard to compete with that. But do people ever talk about this during political campaigns?
Speaker 2:Well, it's particularly, I think, a big issue on the Sunshine Coast, because the ministry is also looking at the possibility of building a new highway on the Sunshine Coast, also looking at the possibility of building a new highway on the Sunshine Coast, a four-lane, a new four-lane highway that would run essentially along what is now the power line, which is obviously a I don't know hundreds of millions, possibly billion-dollar project. No-transcript.
Speaker 1:It could actually be a real money saver. That's an interesting point. Is that a point that's widely shared, or is that still a bit of a reach too far for the average voter?
Speaker 2:Well, I would say that it's probably about 50-50 in terms of the people who think that a new highway is needed and the people who think that it's not needed. I guess that we should be doing other things.
Speaker 1:This is the same argument that happens all over the province and we tend. Our go-to position on highway congestion is to build more capacity, which, as we know, is a mixed blessing it works for a while and then it doesn't. But I don't know that we've ever really fully explored all the other options better transit, other safe routes for other means of transportation, all the different new micromobility options coming in. All the different new micromobility options coming in. Does your society work with transit too?
Speaker 2:thinking that getting people out of their cars also requires decent transit. Yeah, we have worked a little bit with BC Transit in terms of how the multi-use path would interact with bus stops, but a huge problem for transit on the Sunshine Coast is that it's very dangerous to cross the highway. The traffic volumes on the Sunshine Coast Highway are over 13,000 cars a day on average, and they're traveling at, you know, 80 or 90 kilometers an hour typically, and so you take your life in your hands to cross the highway. There's, you know, stretches of 10 kilometers just on the section between Gibsons and Sechelt where there's no controlled crossing and so people can't get to bus stops.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Well, tanis, if you were to look at the entire project let's just say the part from Roberts Creek to Gibson's what percentage of and the whole project project would take? Let's say 100, what percentage along that route are you now with these various studies and feasibility questions and negotiations and so on?
Speaker 2:um, we're probably at about 10 completion. I would say, um, we're, we're working towards getting a conceptual design. After that there will be a whole series of engagement processes and then, hopefully, a detailed design, and then we start trying to raise money for construction, which is, things get more expensive as you go along the path.
Speaker 1:When you say we, you mean the local governments have to make that a priority for construction or MOTI or your society.
Speaker 2:Well, it's definitely going to become a priority. It is the priority for our society to get this first section built, but you're not going to finance the construction of it, are you?
Speaker 2:No, no, we're not. It's probably, it's probably going to be. The first section will cost, I would guess, more than $10 million, and so, no, I'm not going to pay for that. And local government, frankly, is not going to pay for it. Money will have because it's you know, Gibsons has a population of 5,000 people. They're not going to be able to come up with $10 million to build this infrastructure. So we'll need to have participation from senior levels of government and hopefully that will be both the provincial and federal governments.
Speaker 1:All in all, it's not very encouraging, I must say, but the dream is so big and wonderful that I can't. I'm sure that's why you can't let it go.
Speaker 2:Well, honestly, I'm not sure that it is that unrealistic, like when you look at what cycle 16 has accomplished. This is exactly the path that we are on has accomplished. This is exactly the path that we are on, but it's actually moving probably 10 times the speed of what cycle 16 was able to move at. I mean, they worked for years to get any traction and I mean I think we've already got a fair amount of traction and the provincial ministry has stepped in and taken responsibility for the path up there and we're very hopeful that they will do the same thing for the path on the Sunshine Coast once we get far enough along in the process.
Speaker 1:That's great to hear. I love the precedent of Cycle 16 and it would be so great if that became a precedent for all these projects like yours.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that was a new thing in the provincial budget last year. I think it was $150 million that was allocated for the ministry to spend on active transportation infrastructure in highway right-of-ways. So historically the ministry has funded grants for local governments to build things, but they haven't actually had their own pot of money to build things in the right of ways. And now they do. And that's only a year old, that program.
Speaker 1:Oh, I didn't fully understand that. That's a very good point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's where Cycle 16's money came from to complete that project.
Speaker 1:Well, tanis, all I can suggest, as a keen observer and someone who would love to see this implemented, is to keep that old maxim in mind sell the beach, not the flight. You keep fanning the embers of the vision of this. As you say, when people hear about it, they get very excited and I think if we can keep the focus on that rather than, oh, all the costs and barriers and problems and things to get there, that's what's going to take, and hopefully it will also engender some shift in thinking from the ministry that these things are add-ons and nice to haves rather than basic elements of proper infrastructure for transportation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say I have a sense that things are starting to shift at the ministry. I think historically they've been very focused on regional movement through traffic basically, and not very focused on the needs of local communities, and I think that is starting to shift and when that shift happens, I think we'll definitely see more focus on active transportation infrastructure.
Speaker 1:Well, that's great to hear, because in your case, as in many, many communities around BC, the highway is effectively the main street of the town and without the involvement of MOTI, you can't really deal with these issues. Tannis, thank you so much. Is there anything more you want to say? Parting words of wisdom or anything?
Speaker 2:Just best of luck to all of the groups out there that are trying to make this happen, and thanks to all the local governments who are supporting that, and I hope soon that I'll be thanking the provincial and federal governments for also supporting it.
Speaker 1:As do we. Thanks so much, Tanis.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Peter.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to bike sense, an original podcast from the bc cycling coalition. If you like the podcast, we'd be grateful if you could leave us a rating. On whatever platform you use, you can also subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. If you have comments or suggestions for future episodes, email me at peterladner at bccyclingca. You can help us amplify BC Cycling Coalition's voice by simply becoming a free member at bccyclingca.