I was out at Colwood City Hall on Friday, and took a bit of a tour around Royal Bay.
Holy crap, that place is getting positively massive in terms of number of houses ... and well on its way to getting much, much larger.
It's a pretty safe bet that something is going to have to happen in terms of transportation, as little old Metchosin Road isn't going to be able to handle that traffic once the development is completed, two lanes and through multiple school zones doesn't make for an easy transit to Highway 14.
The connection to Veterans Memorial Parkway (to get to Highway 14) is only via Latoria Road, which is no superhighway either.
I could see a large parking/transit hub at Royal Bay (think the "no cars" Staten Island Ferry to Manhattan, albeit on a minuscule scale by comparison), with the ferry making multiple stops at Naden/Dockyard, Workpoint, Inner Harbour, and perhaps Rock Bay (as part of the yet to be planned development) and/or Vic West. Of course transit would have to be planned around each of those docking locations, but that's done everywhere else in the world, so it's definitely not impossible.
Of course being who we all are, here in the CRD and COV, nothing of the sort will ever happen, and over time the traffic from the Westshore will develop into its own traffic jam, one having nothing to do with getting into the COV, all the while the capacity for vehicle traffic between the Westshore and downtown will slowly hit its maximum capacity, and we'll once again be a somewhat gridlocked region (at least at rush hours), with no mass transit strategy, and no real plan for a mass transit strategy.
The CRD is a bus and car extravaganza, and will remain so until most of us are long buried and gone.
Edited by Spy Black, 21 September 2020 - 06:38 AM.