Bingo!
Again, these viaducts can easily be built under and around, i doubt anyone here finds the stadium and colours area uninviting now (look at what it use to look like in the early 80s).
They are actually quite elegant as far as viaducts go, with nice tall single pillars, again making them easy to build around.
People forget that if they are torn down the most intrusive elevated structure still remains, the skytrain guideway, which is shorter with uglier pillars.
Another thing that people forget is that downtown Vancouver is almost an Island! Again, we do not have the luxury of having a continuous road system connecting the heart of our region to the burbs or even the rest of vancouver itself. So these Viaducts are the gateway for all of eastern Metro vancouver to downtown.
Removing these viaducts will add much more traffic to streets such as pacific and hastings. This will make it much more difficult to increase the pedestrian and transit atmosphere in these streets, which I would love to see.
In fact, I would love to see hastings with a 30km hour speed limit, re done in stone, having the street trams running down it and having wider sidewalks allowing for more cafe patios and having all the industrial and through traffic that once used hastings guided onto the viaducts instead. To me, this would be far better urban planning, sometimes you need the "ugly structure."
Again, not to mention that a new tram system will need an OMC somewhere, and before all this viaduct talk was brought up for no reason the plan was to place it under the ducts.
Also, while these ducts were going to be part of a never built freeway network, they were also built to replace an old viaduct that had been in that there for decades prior.
When people bring up how other freeways have been dismantled, they forget to point out the finer details. First, in some cities such as Seattle and Boston, the elevated structures are being replaced by underground highways. Second, for cities such as San Fran and Seoul, if one takes 1 second looking at these cities freeway networks you will see that the structures taken down were only one of many freeways that connect downtown to the rest of the metro, so they were simply taking down structures that duplicated existing service, not the case for Vancouver. Also, if one were to venture to the SSC site, for every elevated structure taken down in the world there are 10 more being built across Europe, Asia and South America. now i am not saying we need to do the same, but i am just trying to show that using these other cities for examples doesn't really work, because their situations are often far different than ours.
I have said this all before, simply i would way rather see the vehicle reduction in that area of vancouver to be done on the surface streets, and not by removing the ducts, and i would find the neighbourhood far more interesting and engaging if structures and facilities are build around the ducts, even utilizing what they can offer (such as a dry place to be in the winter) than seeing yet another resort style condo land such as Yaletown.
Would i be ok with the Main street span being taken down, yes, as long as an intersection is properly built to move the traffic efficiently.
Also, please dont turn this into a cyclist vs car driver thread. one of the reason I feel the ducts should remain is because doing so will far better service cyclists than taking them down along with drivers.
Anyways, done my rant, i am sure it will be ignored.
Cheers
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