April 8, 2020

Road Reallocation: Two Down, More to Come?

The City is now moving on reallocating road space for safe movement of walkers and cyclists:

Oddly, the City is calling this announcement “temporary road closures”.  Um, no.  The roads aren’t closed; they’re being reallocated for the safe use by more users.  Closing a road to vehicles doesn’t mean the road itself is closed.

But hey, good move, City.  Definitely necessary to provide more space to cyclists heading to Stanley Park along Beach this weekend, and to take pressure off the seawall.

But don’t stop there.  Here again is the list of possibilities from HUB Cycling’s Jeff Leigh:

DONE:

  1. Beach from Thurlow to Stanley Park to relieve pressure on the seawall paths and to provide access to Stanley Park

TO DO:

  1. Nelson and Smithe from Richards to Thurlow to connect the West End To False Creek
  2. Cambie Bridge northbound to ease congestion on the MUP
  3. Quebec near Terminal, in both directions, to ease congestion in front of Science World
  4. Pine from 1st to 7th to connect the Arbutus Greenway to 1st
  5. 1st from Creekside to Cypress, to connect the Arbutus Greenway and link the Seaside Greenway via the 1st Ave bypass, avoiding the tight spot at the end of Creekside
  6. Main St, to replace the unsafe shared lanes (sharrows) from 14th north
  7. Pender or preferably Hastings from Burrard to Cardero, to ease congestion on the Seawall path
  8. Georgia from Cardero to the Causeway, to ease congestion on the Seawall path (Georgia Gateway project)
  9. Adanac overpass at Cassiar, a known trouble spot since the removal of calming related to the Fortis gas pipeline construction
  10. Pacific at the Granville loops, a dangerous intersection
  11. the Granville bridge, to ease congestion on the narrow sidewalks
  12. parallel routes to the Arbutus Greenway, to ease congestion.
  13. Ontario, from 16th to 1st
  14. Expo Blvd in front of Costco (room to queue candidate) where the painted bike lane is often blocked with vehicles, pushing bikes on to the sidewalk.

 

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Comments

Leave a Reply to Jeff LeighCancel Reply

  1. Thanks Gord. I agree that these are road allocations, not road closures.

    I posted the following in the Stanley Park thread, but will repost it here.

    #1 of the suggested road reallocations down (Beach towards Stanley Park), and the City took it to Hornby instead of Thurlow as I had listed, which makes a lot of sense.

    Full credit here to the Park Board as well, for their actions on Stanley Park roads.

    https://vancouver.ca/streets-transportation/covid-19-coronavirus-road-closures.aspx

    Do any Price Tag readers have additional suggestions? I have heard requests for this approach on Commercial Drive recently, and on Hastings, and I am sure there are more. How about the south side of Vancouver, along Kent, or East Van, perhaps along Wall?

  2. Hi Jeff. I’ve been wondering if they could close off 1/2 of the parkway streets (e.g., 16th and 24th Ave for most of their length). That way there would be some local and through access with the rest open for cycling and walking. I think the boulevards would provide a nice experience and some feeling of protection/separation.

  3. You can’t promote social distancing by encouraging masses of people to head outside. This is just a reinforcing the growing feeling that urbanism is going to take a big hit from Covid-19 with centres like London and New York being some of the biggest petri dishes. Look for the outflow of residents from them to pickup speed.

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