Business in Vancouver‘s Glen Korstrom reports that Tsawwassen Mills has no intent to change the way the traffic circulates in the mega mall parking lot to alleviate the huge jams of idling cars trying to access and exit the 180 store behemoth on Class 1 farmland. With only three exits servicing 6,000 parking spaces, things can get a little dicey. And a little heated.
The first opening weekend traffic flag people hired by the mall as well as the Delta police and RCMP worked to make traffic flow. However that did not stop anxious car idlers from driving their SUVs’ over landscaping to escape the curvilinear feeder streets, nor did it stop shoppers from parking along Highway 17 and in an adjacent farmer’s field. Coupled with the rain, and some hot tempers it was like watching an outdoors monster truck rally.
Approximately 284,000 shoppers jammed B.C.’s newest mall in the six days following Tsawwassen Mills’ October 5 launch and many of them complained about being stuck in parking lot gridlock that was so bad that it took up to four hours to leave the facility.
“To prevent [gridlock] from happening again, we’ve adapted some of the learnings to the traffic control people we have in place for the busier times,” the mall’s general manager Mark Fenwick told Business in Vancouver October 13.
The Bunt and Associates Transportation Planning and Engineering plan for Ivanhoe Cambridge will not be amended. The mall manager states “What we’re doing is providing some educational material for guests to better show guests how they would exit the parking lot .It’s not as simple as having one exit on each side of the property. As people learn the site, it will flow a lot better, I’m sure.”
No mention of how to get there by transit or how to access the site safely from nearby Tsawwassen by foot. Motordom is alive and well on this farmland floodplain location.
The problem with going all in on this kind if criticism is that if the mall is a success, every principle one espouses runs the risk if being discredited.
Personally I’ll probably go once to check it out. But that’s it.
We have family on the Island and elder care issues. This thing better not block traffic trying to get to the ferry.
Remember that, “we don’t see it as congestion, we see it as regulating the volume of traffic” is quoted when talking about the routes into Vancouver. This should be no different.
I certainly wish there was a decent downtown harbour passenger ferry service to the Island. That would be a much cheaper and environmentally responsible alternative to schlepping 450 cars back and forth all day on the typical ferry. Floating traffic jams indeed, and now the Megamall Crawl.
Business people and politicians take the Helijet to and from Victoria.
30 minutes downtown to downtown (Ogden Point).
That’s why the passenger ferries that have tried, have all failed.
They can’t get the business crowd to buy-in, and they can’t rely only on seasonal tourists.
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@ Tsawwassen Mills, I think there are ample entrances into the mall parking lot.
It’s just that there are fewer (3) exits which are only on the back side of the site – perhaps to remove queuing from the roadways and intersections close to Highway 17?
(i.e. I think there is an entrance off Hwy 17 (i.e. right in, right out), but no traffic light allowing cars to left turn exit from the parking lot directly to Hwy 17).
Having the exits on the back doesn’t make sense logistically, because that means people have to circumnavigate the building to get to the exit, and it’s human nature to exit the same way you came in (i.e. familiarity).
Apples and oranges.
You’re not distinguishing private marine passenger ferry service from public. Of course the private companies will try for the limited tourist and business trade. I’m talking about a regular passenger-only service run by BC Ferries for everyone that connects several downtown harbours together.
The latest private service advertised $80 one-way tickets and a 3-hour Vancouver-to-Victoria harbour trip on a semi high-speed catamaran with a capacity of only 300 passengers (a pretty small boat for year-round service on the Salish Sea) starting last summer. It never left the dock. A public passenger service could offer a regular $30 service on a minimum 600-passenger light-weight aluminum trimaran (a much more stable boat) originating from Waterfront Station with coordinated, improved transit connections on the Island. Even with reservation fees and additional costs for using the on-board lounges, that service would offer a very attractive affordable alternative to those who don’t need to pay for transporting a car, but who are peeved at the horrendous vacuum in current pedestrian and transit service to the terminals.
We currently pay $110 one-way for two people and a compact car on a big slow boat, taking three hours total time inner city to inner city, including the reservation fee but not fuel. With a decent passenger service, we’d pay maybe $50 less for the same trip without encountering one parking lot or megamall traffic jam. Nanaimo would offer even better service times and lower costs because it’s closer.
To calculate the cost to society between passenger and car ferry service you must account for the massive infrastructure (don’t forget the cost of land and access roads) and additional staff currently required to transport 8 million vehicles a year. BC Ferries also moves over 20 million passengers a year (including those who travel by car), 12 million on the two major routes alone. If you could capture even 10% of that passenger traffic, you’d generate probably over $100,000 in total revenue a day on average without the massive costs and energy penalties paid for carrying thousands of tonnes of vehicles.
Actually, make that four hours travel time inner city to inner city using today’s 1950s Wacky Bennett car-dominated model of ferry service.
We could build these fast aluminium ferries right here, in North Vancouver.
Absolutely! And for a lot less than the Glen Clark Navy which made the huge mistake of being engineered to carry cars to the suburban terminals instead of human beings to downtown harbours (Departure bay excepted).
PS – wrt Tsawwassen Mills – I also know downtown Vancouver residents who drive to Riverport to see a movie in IMAX. The only local IMAX feature film screens are at Riverport and Colossus (Langley).
It’s a popular theatre but unlike this mall, it offers something unique compared to other theatres.
WRT planning, the City of Richmond contravened the Livable Region Strategic Plan in siting it and its neighbouring residential space at that remote location.
I think Tsawwassen Mills would still get flack even if a unique draw like an IMAX theatre complex, water slide or ice rink opened there.
The Bass Pro store has the only bowling alley in the area (I heard the bowling alley at Riverport closed recently).
Take the Skytrain and SeaBus and come bowling in North Van! 5 pin bowling in Lower Lonsdale since 1961.
Or walk a couple of blocks from Commercial-Broadway Station to Grandview Lanes.
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Reblogged this on Sandy James Planner.