Originally published in the Bird’s Eye
By Melissa McKinney, editor/owner of the Bird’s Eye.
If you’ve ever white-knuckled it past a cyclist on Heriot Bay Road, wondered why there’s no bus on this island, or tried to find a path to the beach that doesn’t cross someone’s lawn, then we’ve got just the meeting for you. THIS Wednesday, April 15 at 6 p.m. at the Community Centre, Meeting 4 of our Area C Official Community Plan (OCP) series covers Transportation & Parks.
Transportation
The 2007 OCP gave transportation three objectives: roads should meet safety needs including pedestrian and cycling paths, keep with the natural environment, and maintain rural road standards. A lot has changed since then, and this meeting is where residents weigh in on what the next version should look like.
In March 2026, the SRD board approved Quadra’s first-ever comprehensive transportation plan — the Active Transportation Network Plan (ATNP), developed with extensive community engagement. The ATNP was built to inform exactly this kind of community planning process, and the OCP is where that direction becomes official. As with other topics in this series, many of the issues raised will cross multiple jurisdictions. Roads on Quadra, for example, fall under the Ministry of Transportation and Transit, not the SRD. The SRD’s role is to advocate on our behalf — and a strong OCP is the document they bring to that table.
Community surveys during ATNP development named the problems most locals know firsthand: both ferry terminals are unsafe for drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians alike; Heriot Bay Road’s blind corners, narrow lanes, and steep hills; and the lack of sidewalks near Quadra Elementary to name a few. Then we have the Harper Road pathway — initiated by former Area C Director Jim Abram and connecting Q-Cove village to the school and seniors housing — the plan’s own example of what good infrastructure looks like. Not everyone agrees on what “better” transportation looks like here. In the ATNP community sessions, 34 out of 35 respondents wanted more infrastructure — paved shoulders, pathways, and safer crossings. Another group made it clear they want rural roads left exactly as they are. One resident put it plainly: “I love my dirt road.” The ATNP reports that Quadra’s senior population doubled between 2011 and 2021. We have twice the national average of seniors in our community and ensuring safe transportation for them matters.
Transit is perhaps the most talked-about gap in Quadra’sransportation picture. Buses have been attempted here before, but none found lasting success. Neighbouring islands like Gabriola, Denman, and Hornby now have services that work, funded in different ways through their regional districts and tax bases. The common thread identified by the Island Coastal Economic Trust (ICET) in a 2023 regional study: government funding is the necessary ingredient — private operators alone cannot make island transit financially viable.
What form that could take on Quadra, and whether it’s something the community wants to pursue, is exactly the kind of question the OCP can speak to. With federal funding for rural and remote transit expected later this year, having an expressed community interest on record isone step on a longer path.
Parks
The 2007 OCP called for a Quadra Island parks plan to be developed — and for specific areas to be protected through park or reserve status. The only parks plan on record dates back roughly 30 years — a regional document that included Quadra as a subset and has long since been overtaken by time. A parks plan is how a community puts its intentions on the official record —what to protect, where trails should go, what’s missing. Without one, those decisions get made reactively, one project at a time.
The OCP isn’t a binding legal document, but it is the formal record of what the community wants. It already includes a map of existing and potential trails, parks, and beach accesses — last updated in 2012 — and the Local Government Act requires the updated version to include anticipated future ones too. That means residents can identify where they want trails extended, new parks developed, and beach accesses established — and have it on the official record.
Former Area C Director Jim Abram identified 60 Crown-owned gazetted road right-of-ways leading to the shoreline, narrowed them to 40 feasible sites, and got 14 formally established as public pathways before retiring from office. These aren’t informal trails — they are statutory rights-of-way owned by the Crown. He faced resistance along the way, as some of these rights-of-way had been built upon over the years, and some signs were even removed shortly after being installed.
We hope you’ll join us THIS Wednesday, April 15 at 6 p.m. at the Community Centre. Come with your questions, your opinions, and your dirt road feelings. Previous articles in this OCP series are available online in our past issues.
Top image credit: Cycling on Quadra Island by Fil.AI via Flickr (CC BY SA, 2.0 License)