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Downtown pedestrian safety revisited
Enter the dragon As close to a hundred teams descend on Victoria this weekend for the annual dragonboat festival, one team takes its first steps into the dragon’s den
Daniel Palmer News staff
arm Ollek’s arms and legs are burning. Gripping her wooden paddle, she plunges it into the water alongside 19 other paddlers, their dragonboat knifing through the waterway. Despite the pain, final preparations for the Canada Dry Victoria Dragonboat Festival are going well and Ollek feels fortunate to be on the water. “It is totally fun. I am higher than a kite, I really am,” she said. “I am experiencing something totally out of my box.” You wouldn’t know it, but the business systems co-ordinator for Maximus Canada had never done anything athletic in her life. Ollek and most of her teammates spend their days at a desk – she doesn’t even remember the last time she felt like part of a team. That all changed a year ago after discovering dragonboat racing as a volunteer. “I couldn’t believe what a wonderful event it was. The energy, it was so positive,” she said of last year’s festival. “I absolutely loved it and I walked away that weekend and said, ‘I really like this. I want to do this.’” Ollek decided to form her own boat, recruiting colleagues at work to form the newly minted Maximus Power, named after their company.
The downtown Victoria intersection where a 27-year-old pedestrian was killed is unsafe for buses, according to B.C. Transit’s CEO. The fatality occurred Monday, when a tour bus was turning left from Humboldt onto Douglas Street around 10 a.m. Yuka Imaizumi was crossing the street legally at the time and was hit by the bus, according to witnesses. “We deemed that as not a particularly safe turn,” said B.C. Transit CEO Manuel Achadinha. “It’s not an intersection we use in our routing.” While commercial trucks are subject to multiple street-use restrictions, tour buses are able to roam freely under city bylaws. The only exception in downtown Victoria is Swift Street near Chinatown. City council downtown liaison Coun. Lisa Helps said the overarching focus should be on creating pedestrian-friendly spaces rather than restricting tour buses. “The proactive approach is that pedestrians are more vulnerable than vehicles,” she said, adding she would like to see tour bus restrictions on two-lane roadways like Government Street.
PLEASE SEE: ‘Dragonboating is the definition of teamwork,’ Page A7
PLEASE SEE: Councillor looks, Page A4
Arnold Lim News staff
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