This Sunday, at Commercial Drive’s Car Free Day, Streets For Everyone will build a life-sized installation to demonstrate some of the changes they are campaigning for on Commercial Drive – widened sidewalks, all-ages-and-abilities bike lanes, better transit and transit shelters, more marked or signalized crosswalks, more seating, and additional landscaping.
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One of the core focuses of the Streets For Everyone campaign is on how designing streets for human traffic and leisure can benefit the business environment and economy. Through fun, positive media and events the group hopes to reframe the conversation around streetspace to one that is optimistic and grounded in research on economic, environmental, and social realities.
They should keep it in place after the event to see how it works out.
Parallel streets Lakewood and Woodlands are bike routes, one minute away east and west. Why interfere with busy bus route on a 4 lane street? Odd.
Maybe the cyclists want to go to the pubs, restaurants, and shops.
Why single out the bike routes? “Car free day” is for everyone who doesn’t use a car – there will be a lot more pedestrians there than cyclists.
Seriously? Lakewood is several blocks away and is very hilly.
Also, as Jeff said, no shops, cafes, etc on Woodlands or Lakewood. Try shopping by constantly biking over to Woodlands. It’s a real pain and time consuming. Even when going to a place I’ve been to before, I have a tough time recalling which street to turn on and end up back tracking or riding a block or two on the busy street anyway.
Plus, most not like Lakewood and Woodlands are bike only streets, they are car routes too as people need to use them to get to their homes and other destinations along them.
It makes a lot of sense to “interfere with a bus route and 4-lane street”. Currently, the sidewalks and road are quite congested and there is basically a “no-cycling” sign on the street. By improving conditions for pedestrians and bike riders, the street will become more vibrant and way more efficient for moving people. And shops will love the increased business. What’s not to like?
Not sure what they call “better transit”, since there is no transit on Commercial today Sunday June 15th.
This sunday, the bus system is in fact unusable citywide…virtually all the buses are rerouted, God knows where…driving a car is certainly the best option to move around on “car free day” which is in reality a bus free day.
And Vision councillor explains they want to put a B line on Commercial ???
I have to admit that I often don’t follow what you are saying, but this time I just have to ask.
First you criticise that bus service isn’t good enough, and then you criticise Vision for wanting to improve bus service? I just don’t get it….
Vision talk a lot about transit but don’t walk the talk. Indeed, it seizes any opportunity to wreck havock on the city buses, so what kind of credit you can give to them when come transit?
Before calling for more tax to put more bus on the road, start to to respect the current buses and their rider!
Furthermore, closing Granville mall and calling the event a car free day is nothing more than an insult to common sense.
Vision has plan to put a bike lane on Commercial: great! widen sidewalk: great! and then Vision proposes a Bline doubling the bus 20 in the referendum plan…How all that together can work?
BTW, The mayors plan proposes lot of additional bus hour service, but a missing piece of the transit plan was “qualitative improvment of the bus service” (because 20 buses stuck in traffic or on a detour instead of 10 doesn’t make the transit twice better, but certainly cost twice more)
That is a plan, where you go beyond drawing lines on a map and raising money to buy new buses (letting your successor figure out how to pay to operate them), It is a plan where you make sure the buses can move efficiently and reliabily (making the service attractive and cheaper to operate).
And if this last part was missing, it is largely because Vision (among other) simply don’t care about that: It is a sad observation, noone can objectively counter it.
Seems like you want to have your cake and eat it too.
TransLink already has headway and schedule targets. Why would they need to spell these out in the Mayors’ Council plans? Now is not the time to get caught up in the weeds.
“Before calling for more tax to put more bus on the road, start to to respect the current buses and their rider!”
You’ve got your underwear in a bunch over a few streets one day a year?
I may agree with you on some of the finer points (e.g., Granville Street), but your indignation is a bit out of proportion.
It does seem strange to mix one of the streets most eager to get rid of motorized traffic with a B-Line bus unless they’re planning to do the “unthinkable” and roll the clock back 90 years to a time when transit and pedestrians ruled Commercial. The street as currently configured is a terrible bottleneck for everyone. While that’s arguably a good thing for pedestrians for whom lingering equals socializing and shopping, an express bus with an average speed of 10km/h is an oxymoron.