Finn Kreischer

Jets in the sky, bikes in the street

Yesterday was an exciting day for transport and public spaces in Victoria, due to the RCAF Snowbirds' final performance over Vancouver Island. It was a massive, widely publicized event, centered over a car-free Dallas Road. Victoria estimated between 20,000 and 30,000 people would take part. There were also closures reaching into James Bay and Fairfield that restricted car access to everyone except residents, creating a nearly-car-free environment close to the event, which helped to stem some of the inevitable traffic chaos.

Cycling there with my family, we came across unusually high numbers of cars on Moss St and Linden, and on Linden we rode past a block-long line of stopped cars. Over the crest of the hill was a barrier and a couple police officers directing traffic at the intersection. From there, we entered the nearly-car-free zone and it was a breath of fresh air. The only noise you could hear were the many people walking and rolling there, excited kids, and the whir of bikes, wheelchairs and scooters.

We rode past a family where a girl demonstrated to her sister the newly learned ability to ride without hands, and mom didn't complain. The mom went off to pick up grandma on the back of her ebike. There were many moments like this that exemplified the gradual change in our cycling culture. Even 5 years ago, with our growing cycling network, not nearly as many families would have thought to bike to this event.

A lot of people think the road closures could have been handled better, and I agree. Dallas Rd should have been closed at St Charles, not Memorial, and the closures should have extended further - allegedly, every neighbourhood street in Fairfield outside the zone was full of cars. Douglas St was also in bad shape, with major delays for transit, underscoring the need for Downtown bus lanes, and making the case for making Douglas bus-only during events like these as a stopgap measure. Walking, cycling or taking transit to this event was strongly encouraged, but I think we could have gone one step further and explicitly asked people not to drive. With the heavy congestion lasting into the evening, a lot of people regretted choosing to drive that day - not to mention the impact of all this driving on the safety and comfort of all the surrounding streets.

Had I known about the cycling spectacle that was going to take place, I would have come prepared to take many more pictures. With that being said, even low-quality video captures can speak a thousand words.

A picture taken close to the centerline on Dallas Road, looking west towards a u-haul truck in the background. In the foreground are a handful of older folks on upright ebikes, with more people cycling and walking along the road in the background.

The view from up on Beacon Hill, looking down on the tall grass on the slope towards Dallas Road, with the trees, ocean and Washington's mountains visible in the distance. In the foreground are a dozen people sitting and walking on the hill, and a bike laying on its side. On Dallas Road are a few food trucks, portable toilets, and about 14 people cycling east, plus lineups near the food trucks and a golf-cart shaped 'Hey Ya' vehicle ferrying people through the event. During the entire lead-up to the air show, there were consistently people cycling along Dallas Road in both directions.

An image taken from the normally 'vehicle' side of Crescent Loop in Beacon Hill Park, a two lane wide road divided by a low concrete curb with a treeline visible on the right side and the tall grass of the Garry Oak Savannah on the left side. Along all of the road is a crowd of pedestrians heading north. Behind the camera is a clump of people waiting to bike through.

9 people on bikes riding southbound on Vancouver at Fort street. Most of them are in a line in the southbound protected bike lane, a few are using the street. This is a still from a video where a few dozen people cycle through this traffic signal, with a large number of people coming from further down Vancouver to repeat the same events during the next light cycle.

Steven Barre also snapped this pic of the bike valet, run by Capital Bike, which certainly hit capacity.

Hundreds of bikes parked in the grass on Dallas Road near Cook St. In the foreground are rows of ebikes parked on their kickstands, behind that is a dozen rows of portable bike racks with regular bikes hanging by their seats. In the background is a large stone and beige stucco heritage house, a crowd of people walking on Dallas Road, and the treeline on the southeast corner of Beacon Hill Park.

Do you have inspiring pictures from this day? Send them to me and I'll include them.

I'm very grateful for the decision to restrict car access on and away from Dallas Road - not only did it make getting around easier, but having pedestrian and cycle streets was itself a wonderful experience that opened up a lot of people's minds to how space in our city could be distributed more fairly, just like Ciclovias, 'Open Streets' and 'Summer Streets' (the NYC term) have done. Events like these create support for more frequent closures, for permanent changes, and for more radical car-free changes. They're also a great opportunity to cycle through wide open shared spaces, something human-scale that's essentially like fluid dynamics. The only other space like this in Victoria exists when UVic is in session, from 20-30 and 50-00 of every hour, particularly on Monday and Thursday mornings.

Victoria used to have a "car-free day" event on Douglas St, with lots of amenities, a concert stage, and tons of vendors, for a few blocks downtown. However, it usually had the side effect of attracting huge amounts of cars to every other street and filling all residential parking within a 10-block radius. The event ended with Covid-19 and hasn't come back yet. I propose we reinstate car-free day, but run it more like a true Ciclovia. Pause motorized traffic in and around the downtown core for a day, and let people enjoy our city the way they did on August 4th 2026.