Time for Vancouver to Tear Down Its Viaducts?

[SpikePhanta]

I would say it's #1 ^^^
No more green flow

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

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.......... ......... .......... ... ...



Anyways, done my rant, i am sure it will be ignored.

Cheers

Not a rant, but rather factual an right on, in my opinion. Total agreement here (if that means anything ...)

[WBC]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

I also trust mine and when I ride the viaduct outside of rush hour there is next to no traffic congestion, certainly no more than any other downtown street. In my observation as someone who rides Dunsmuir daily the factors that are causing congestion are: (1) the overly long pedestrain controlled traffic lights at Citadel Parade which are often out of sync with Beatty Street. (2) much too long a light at Beatty for north-south travel. (3) vehicles getting stuck behind the new passenger/taxi zones for the St. Regis Hotel and the Shore Club.

Spot On. Plus jerks turning right where right turns are banned.

[s211]

Originally Posted by Zassk

You feel safer and more positive breathing all of those extra fumes being generated by the traffic backups due to the bike lane? Surely those extra emissions are dwarfing any benefit that we get from a few cyclists leaving their cars at home.

The only thing more bizarre than tearing down this infrastructure 50 years early is giving a few hundred cyclists priority over everyone's air quality.

QFT. Meggs and his cadre of green shirts can go to hell.

[s211]

Originally Posted by whatnext

The bike lanes exacerbate the vehicle pollution, ergo they become part of the problem. As to the stats, I no longer trust anything spewed out by the politicized bureaucracy under Vision Vancouver. I do trust my own eyes, which tell me that with the possible exception of rush hour, there is next to no bicycle traffic on the viaducts when I travel them.

Like-minded people like us have to get out the vote for the next election. The RIGHT vote.

[Alex Mackinnon]

I've kind of softened my tone regarding the lanes recently. I think the Viaduct part is ok, but the intersections are a mess and the merge lane on Main needs work.

I've highlighted all the parts that I think are poorly designed somewhere around pg. 70. New forum software doesn't seem to list my posts that far back though..

[Stingray2004]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

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.

Oh man. The clear-span viaduct overpasses of Main St. are the neatest part of the viaducts - cool abutments and nice clean lines esp. for clear-spans. I wish all interchange overpasses were constructed in a similar elegant clear-span design these days. Besides, the Malkin Connector, acting as a future natural extension, has also been identified by the CoV as a high priority for decades and, IMHO, will eventually be constructed.



Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/2010-08_Georgia_Viaduct_at_Main_Street.jpg

[geoff's two cents]

Originally Posted by Stingray2004

Oh man. The clear-span viaduct overpasses of Main St. are the neatest part of the viaducts - cool abutments and nice clean lines esp. for clear-spans. I wish all interchange overpasses were constructed in a similar elegant clear-span design these days. Besides, the Malkin Connector, acting as a future natural extension, has also been identified by the CoV as a high priority for decades and, IMHO, will eventually be constructed.

Thanks for posting. Know what's funny? When I first saw the picture, I assumed your post would be a negative commentary on what's happening at street level. I think this more or less sums up our collective disagreements on this particular topic: You look at the picture and see sleek, modern viaducts; I look at the same picture and see a lackluster street-level pedestrian experience.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by geoff's two cents

Thanks for posting. Know what's funny? When I first saw the picture, I assumed your post would be a negative commentary on what's happening at street level. I think this more or less sums up our collective disagreements on this particular topic: You look at the picture and see sleek, modern viaducts; I look at the same picture and see a lackluster street-level pedestrian experience.

As I said upthread - why, for the all-of-30-seconds it takes to walk under that!? The tragic arcade and retail at Citygate are a "lacklustre pedestrian experience" IMHO. And looking at that photo, maybe the city could cough up a couple hundred bucks for some landscaping, instead of blowing $300k on a "study".

[SFUVancouver]

Here's another aspect of the viaducts that is worth considering; they're a wholly unutilised canvas for architectural lighting and interesting light based installations.

A couple of ideas off the top of my head:

(1) Simple colourful uplighting of the pillars as has been done for the columns that touch down in the entry plaza for Rogers Arena at Abbott and Expo Blvd.

(2) Projected images and textures on par with the quality of Illuminate Yaletown.

(3) Interactive lighting that, perhaps, cycles one step further through its colour range with each "pulse" of vehicles that cross the viaducts after the traffic lights change. The lighting changes could even be timed with the average speed of the first vehicles proceeding across the viaduct from a standing start at a traffic light so that what started out blue, for example, would change to purple one segment of the viaduct at a time at a speed that roughly matches that of the vehicles overhead. You could even colour code the lighting with the volume of traffic so that heavy traffic would lead to warm colours while light traffic would lead to muted cool colours.

(3) A graphic and colourful way of displaying the number of cyclists that ride over the viaduct, perhaps some form of graphic or blocks of colour that would inch their way from one end of the viaduct to the other with each segment of the viaduct counting as 100 riders or a fraction thereof. It would display nightly how many people used it during the day and compare it with the previous day's total in a different colour, and the all time record in an additional colour. Street level cycle counter displays would compliment this and be visible to cyclists and drivers alike.

(4) Use lighting to transform the columns of the viaduct surrounding Rogers Arena into a giant, fairly accurate EQ meter showing a representation of the music that was being played in that night's concert.

(5) Use light projections to turn the viaducts into news tickers like those you would find at the bottom of cable news channels. It could write out poetry, local news, historical facts, or the results from timed public events like the Vancouver Sun Run, Vancouver Marathon, Dragon Boat Races, etc.

(6) Intense colour washes at different parts of the viaduct to help delineate spaces. Intense energetic colours on the downtown part of the viaduct transitioning into calmer colours as one enters the residential character of Strathcona. Deep wells of brilliant red light would distinuish the entrance to Chinatown too.

[jlousa]

You could easily build some retail frontage under the viaducts along Main St on both sides. It would obvious be shallow but still much wider (even in the narrowest section) then a certain existing building on Pender.

[Alex Mackinnon]

The backdrop of the BC Hydro Murrin rectifier station, a generally neglected park and the (closed 3/4 of the year) Jimi Hendrix experience house really don't help the street level frontage in the area very lively. A lot could be done shy of tearing down the viaducts to make the blocks on either side to make the Main St. a little less discontinuous.

If you wanted to get a bit adventurous you could probably rework the earth structures supporting the viaduct to fit two roughly 20m wide buildings in the wedges between the viaducts and the off ramps.

[geoff's two cents]

Originally Posted by whatnext

As I said upthread - why, for the all-of-30-seconds it takes to walk under that!? The tragic arcade and retail at Citygate are a "lacklustre pedestrian experience" IMHO. And looking at that photo, maybe the city could cough up a couple hundred bucks for some landscaping, instead of blowing $300k on a "study".

Fair enough, though I stand by my observation that structures like these - in North America anyways (I know it's different in Japan, Metro ) - function for whatever reason as pretty formidable psychological barriers when they slice through neighborhoods. It also takes longer than 30 seconds if you count waiting at the on-ramp traffic light. Just sayin'.

I also agree that the study and many of the hopes expressed at the recent Harbor Centre meeting are of limited utility. Moreover, if the comments on this forum are any indication of the wider political milieu in Vancouver (a lot of forumers are from the suburbs, so it's hard to say), the city doesn't have much to gain by making the viaducts a civic election issue. Those bike lanes cause enough political headaches as it is.

Hopefully the city will moot the issue by at least underwriting some landscaping improvements - or perhaps, as jlousa suggests, even raising the possibility of building something underneath them. I think a move like that would also shift this particular discussion forum in a more amicable direction.

[officedweller]

Originally Posted by Stingray2004

Oh man. The clear-span viaduct overpasses of Main St. are the neatest part of the viaducts - cool abutments and nice clean lines esp. for clear-spans. I wish all interchange overpasses were constructed in a similar elegant clear-span design these days. Besides, the Malkin Connector, acting as a future natural extension, has also been identified by the CoV as a high priority for decades and, IMHO, will eventually be constructed.



Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/2010-08_Georgia_Viaduct_at_Main_Street.jpg

I agree - those are the most elegant overpasses in Metro Vancouver (well, maybe the colourful steel ones on the Upper Levels rate as high).

There are amazing clear sightlines down Main Street. There's no "dark and forboding" feeling of an underpass (think York St., Toronto).

If the viaducts are brought down to grade and terminated in a level intersection at Main street
- what you'd have is a wide intersection that's as pedestrian unfriendly as Main and Terminal.

I think I read somewhere that the overpasses were lit originally - I think the strip under the edge was a lighting feature at one time.

[p78hub]

if the viaducts were terminated at main, wouldn't it be expensive just restructuring the thing to make it end at street level? the trolley wires underneath the viaducts would have to be dealt with too, but that's probably not a major issue.

[huenthar]

Originally Posted by jlousa

You could easily build some retail frontage under the viaducts along Main St on both sides. It would obvious be shallow but still much wider (even in the narrowest section) then a certain existing building on Pender.

The viaducts are quite functional and aren't really in the way of anything right now. As geoff hinted, the barrier is mostly psychological. You could do some creative things here if you wanted. An idea I mentioned before: build a destination retro-futurist-themed restaurant on the east side of Main Street under the viaducts and call it "The Viaduct". Stick a small glass-enclosed second/third story up between the viaducts and a circular platform on top so you have a bright dining area literally floating above the roadway, with views of the area and the feel of being right in the middle of a pulsing urban artery.

The misguided futurist vision of vast urban freeways is part of our past too; I think it'd be neat to celebrate it with a little tribute like that.

[jlousa]

Would be interesting if the Heritage Commission were to issues a SOS (statement of significance) on the viaducts and even attempt to give them a Heritage designation. At the end of the day they certainly are a very important part of our history and are certainly significant as the only piece built from the proposed freeway project which would've vastly altered our city.

I agree with the above comments, there are certainly some issues that could be improved. I do not see any major ones that can not be dealt with keeping the viaducts in place though.

How long until the city starts talking about taking down the Hemlock and Fir ramps?

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by jlousa

How long until the city starts talking about taking down the Hemlock and Fir ramps?

Or those ugly bridges across False Creek...

[jsbertram]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

Or those ugly bridges across False Creek...

I read in last week's Courier (11Apr01 issue) they're being replaced with new Bike-Lane Tunnels.

[Millennium2002]

Seems to me that Granville St Bridge is ripe for reconstruction ^^;

I wonder also if the slight dirtiness of the viaducts from their age, along with their shadows, are contributing factors to the "psychological barrier".