Time for Vancouver to Tear Down Its Viaducts?

[xd_1771]

Originally Posted by Canadian Mind

Even in that case, I don't think reducing viaduct car-carrying capacity in order to support a pair of bike lanes is the best idea. Rather, could an outrigger system be hung off the side of the viaducts to keep the cyclists safely away from and not interfering with vehicular traffic?

Or you could use the directly adjacent at-grade roads called Pacific Blvd, Expo Blvd and Keefer Street. With roads like these already in place I don't even see why there is a need for bike lanes on the viaduct. Though a few adjustments may need to be made to the area to support cyclist travel, what with stairs in the international village and skytrain stations

[Canadian Mind]

Originally Posted by xd_1771

Or you could use the directly adjacent at-grade roads called Pacific Blvd, Expo Blvd and Keefer Street. With roads like these already in place I don't even see why there is a need for bike lanes on the viaduct. Though a few adjustments may need to be made to the area to support cyclist travel, what with stairs in the international village and skytrain stations

Just as the viaducts are (or were) an efficient mode for car and truck traffic to get into downtown, there is no reason why the same option shouldn't be available for cyclists who want to avoid travelling through Chinatown, DTES, and Gastown to get to the downtown penninsula. Just as cars may save 5-10 minutes avoiding the stop and go traffic, cyclists could save a similar amount.

[twoNeurons]

Just saw a cool bike:

infant seat on the handle bars
toddler seat on the back
basket in the front
Riding on the [wide] sidewalk without a helmet

Until we get stay-at-home moms riding their bikes to the grocery store, in my opinion, we will not have succeeded in making the city bicycle friendly.

If the viaducts in some way help the city reach this goal, then they should stay...

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by Canadian Mind

You equate specific riding events as good use? They are the exception, not the norm.

I was merely trying to point out that lack of a bike sighting doesn't mean that the bike lanes aren't being used. There was plenty of use on the day in question, and the poster didn't see it. The fact that he didn't see many bikes is not evidence that they're not being used.

Originally Posted by Canadian Mind

If you had hundreds or thousands of cyclists using the bike lanes on the viaducts, you'd have a case. Hell, if the daily ridership over the viaducts was 1000+ I'd be in support of maintaining bike lanes, and would use that as another reason to keep the viaducts.

I posted the stats below a few pages back, that's what started this bike discussion. My exact point was that daily usage on the Dunsmuir bike lanes appears to be between 1000 and 2000 riders, and most of those also use the viaducts. My point was the same as yours - there are plenty of bike riders on the viaduct, it's another reason to keep them, and no electable city council is going to claim that this isn't a good use of the viaducts.

For some reason I can't fathom viaduct proponents seem reticent to rally the cyclists to their cause. Why they wouldn't want another ally is a real mystery to me...

[Metro-One]

Again, the benefit to cyclists the viaducts add (both potentially on them and / or by removing surface traffic to them, making streets such as Hastings and Pacific the targets for reducing vehicle capacity, therefore making them much more cycling friendly) is one of the reasons I want the viaducts to remain.

And again thats why it angers me that both sides seem to view the viaducts as a black and white topic and turn this thread into another bizarre bikes vs. cars debate.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by xd_1771

Or you could use the directly adjacent at-grade roads called Pacific Blvd, Expo Blvd and Keefer Street.

None of those roads takes you into the downtown core - they all skirt the easternmost edge below the bluff. From those roads you'd have to turn onto Pender or Smithe to get downtown. Those are both busy streets without a physically separated bike lane.

The viaduct is a perfect conduit for cyclists because it's an as-the-crow-flies direct link between very heavily used Union Street bike route and the Dunsmuir bike lanes. And because of this the bike lanes are IMHO a perfectly good argument to keep the viaducts.

[dreambrother808]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

And again thats why it angers me that both sides seem to view the viaducts as a black and white topic and turn this thread into another bizarre bikes vs. cars debate.

It's more like one person who decided to incite this same old debate in a topic for which it is largely irrelevant.

I have ambivalent feelings about the viaducts. I certainly, however, don't see why their removal is such an emotional powder keg for some. Being for or against the issue doesn't make anyone a 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵, even though that seems to be the crux of a few arguments here.

[Canadian Mind]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

I was merely trying to point out that lack of a bike sighting doesn't mean that the bike lanes aren't being used. There was plenty of use on the day in question, and the poster didn't see it. The fact that he didn't see many bikes is not evidence that they're not being used.



I posted the stats below a few pages back, that's what started this bike discussion. My exact point was that daily usage on the Dunsmuir bike lanes appears to be between 1000 and 2000 riders, and most of those also use the viaducts. My point was the same as yours - there are plenty of bike riders on the viaduct, it's another reason to keep them, and no electable city council is going to claim that this isn't a good use of the viaducts.

For some reason I can't fathom viaduct proponents seem reticent to rally the cyclists to their cause. Why they wouldn't want another ally is a real mystery to me...

I'm still going to argue that using a bike relating event as proof of bike lanes being used is silly. A one time event where 10 000 cyclists use a lane doesn't justify maintaining the capacity for that many bikes when the daily ridership is only 1000-2000

However, if daily ridership on the viaducts is between 1000 and 2000, then I support the bike lanes on it, and maintaining the viaduct. But I don't believe bike lanes should come at the expense of car lanes, and as I said before, should be cantilevered off the side of the viaduct to isolate bicycle, pedestrian, and vehicle traffic... both for safety reasons and transportation network capacity reasons.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

I was merely trying to point out that lack of a bike sighting doesn't mean that the bike lanes aren't being used. There was plenty of use on the day in question, and the poster didn't see it. The fact that he didn't see many bikes is not evidence that they're not being used.



I posted the stats below a few pages back, that's what started this bike discussion. My exact point was that daily usage on the Dunsmuir bike lanes appears to be between 1000 and 2000 riders, and most of those also use the viaducts. My point was the same as yours - there are plenty of bike riders on the viaduct, it's another reason to keep them, and no electable city council is going to claim that this isn't a good use of the viaducts.

For some reason I can't fathom viaduct proponents seem reticent to rally the cyclists to their cause. Why they wouldn't want another ally is a real mystery to me...

What I was saying with my snide comment was that you were discrediting whatnext's observation of bikes on the Viaduct at an average, random time, with your observation during a very specific, once a year bike centric event. Whatnext's random observation is indicative of what most people observe, while your observation was very non-random.

I'm not going to say the bike lanes are useless, but even your evidence shows that in the winter-spring whatnext's observations are pretty accurate. Only around 1200 bikes per day really means about 600 individual users, assuming most trips over the viaducts are parts of a round trip commute. Let's assume all that travel is limited to 10 daytime hours, that's only 120 bikes an hour, or 2 bikes a minute. Now, assuming that it is heavier around the peak hours than regular hours, it becomes even more lopsided, and Whatnext's casual observation is very much the norm and the average observation of most motorists.

So to a lot of people, I don't know if even in the best months when almost 2000 bikes use the viaduct in a day, and for the occasional special event, is worth the traffic problems that the bike lanes cause at Dunsmuir and Beatty and along Dunsmuir, and the access issues to businesses that are a result. You are disrupting travel for thousands of cars and impacting the utility of businesses for the benefit of at most 1000 individual bike users (in the summer months). I don't know if it is really ethical to lower overall social utility of people and businesses downtown for a slight increase in bike users. That is IF there really is an actual increase in total bike riders now vs before the segregated bike lanes as there are no accurate pre-bike lane numbers. We could just be making life easier for 1000 people that were already riding their bikes on sunny days, but it is impossible to know for sure.

Now, I'm not against bike lanes, but it just seems like it could have been done better, in a way that allows special bike lanes while not sacrificing Dunsmuir as an arterial road.

While I usually hate conspiracy theories, I can't help but think that this boils down to sabotage. To me it just seems like they are trying to make the Dunsmuir viaduct a hassle to cars, so that cars start using other roads as a result. That way, in a year, the city can come out and say "Hey look! there are no cars on the viaduct and the cars that are there are just stuck in horrible traffic. They are useless so we will tear them down!"

Sure, there will probably (hopefully) be more users on the bike lane, but it won't be enough. The city will tout the success of the bike lanes, but say that without cars, the viaducts are not needed. The city will say that bike lanes can just as effectively be added to Expo and up the new access road to Dunsmuir or that Pender can be altered to have segregated bike lanes.

While I really would like to see the Viaducts used for both bikes and vehicles, it just seems that right now the Dunsmuir viaduct is intentionally handicapped for cars in an artificial effort to reduce its functionality, so that the city can write reports about how the functionality of the Viaducts has been reduced, thus showing they are not needed. It is like the report and decisions for the viaducts are already made and they are manipulating the situation to make the them valid.

[SFUVancouver]

We are less than one year into the life of separated cycling lane on Dunsmuir, so we don't even have the benefit of year-over-year figures for comparison. Plus the Hornby separated lane is only about four months old, so we are a long way away from having the benefit of year-over-year figures for comparison on that route too. I suspect that if one were to have started measuring usage of the two major routes on the city's bicycle network back bones, 10th and Adanac, less than a year into their lives the results would also have been less than dramatic. But fast forward a few years, let alone a decade plus, and you have very heavily used corridors that only get better and have have more utility as intersections were upgraded and additional routes began to intersect with it. In this same respect the Burrard Bridge lanes improved in its utility when the Dunsmuir lane opened, and both gained utility when the connecting Hornby lane opened. It's the network effect.

I am confident that use will continue to grow over time, especially when signage is added to direct people from the different points on the Seawall to the new downtown separated bike lane network. Plus it is longstanding City policy to grow the cycling network and at some point that was going to come to downtown. The original painted bike lanes on Burrard, Hornby, and Pender saw use but limited appeal due to their perceived (and actual) risk. On Pender one shared a lane with buses and cyclists were required to routinely merge with the main travel lane to pass stationary buses. Burrard was very off-putting because one had to ride with traffic on either side of the painted bike lane and one had to contend with many vehicles turning right without regard for cyclists. Hornby was a successful one-way bike lane due to the relatively low traffic volumes on that street and its limited number of popular right-turn routes. But it was one-way, did not connect the Seawalls, had on-street parking with its door prize risk on one side and traffic on the other, and the lack of any vehicle separation all combined to put a low ceiling on the route's appeal. The bottom line, for me, is that for cycling routes into and within downtown to have a broader appeal beyond the dedicated 🞵🞵🞵🞵 🞵🞵🞵🞵 who would ride the existing painted lanes or on streets without any cycling infrastructure at all, there had to be some form of separation and the intersections had to be upgraded to handle cyclists. There is no way around the fact that to add two way separated bicycle lanes downtown there had to be a re-purposing of asphalt from on-street parking and sometimes general travel lanes and tweaks to the signals.

Lastly, I think that there is near consensus, or as close are we are likely going to get, that the largest factor that is affecting automobiles on Dunsmuir is the re-sequencing of traffic lights from a 'green wave' to a more conventional pattern. It has been pointed out by many that the Dunsmuir viaduct was already down to two travel lanes for more than a year prior to the addition of the bicycle lane. Moreover, the re-purposed 'missing' lane on Dunsmuir was previously used primarily for on-street parking and bus layovers, so no genuine travel lanes have been lost. What has been 'lost' has been the ability to race through downtown without hitting a red light, though from ample personal experience I can attest that the only way to actually achieve this was to do 60+ kph. This is rightfully why Dunsmuir was a dangerous street upon which to cycle, especially when drivers swung right without signalling or shoulder checking to make their turn at speed; cyclists and pedestrians be damned.

Now, for my opinion on changes that will improve Dunsmuir and Hornby. (1) Get rid of the passenger and taxi zones in front the St Regis Hotel and the Shore Club. The development of The Hudson, the building which houses the Shore Club, included the expenditure of a lot of time and resources on making St Regis Mews a pleasant non-alley like space, complete with room for u-turns and access to and from Seymour. With some additional lighting, enhanced an cleaning program, and good signage there is no reason why the hotel and restaurant could not use this space as their passenger/taxi zone. (2) Reinstate right turns at Helmckin from Hornby. (3) Longer right turn phasing onto Howe Street from Georgia and a longer right turn signal from Hornby to Georgia. (4) Signage directing cyclists onto the Burrard Bridge from Hornby via Drake Street. (5) Right turn signal phasing for cyclists (cyclist activated) at Hornby at Drake to make the right turn onto Drake en route to Burrard easier. (6) Signage and maps on the Seawall at either end of the Hornby bike lane and one on the Seawall near Columbia Street to direct people over to the Dunsmuir Viaduct, plus similiar signage and maps at intersecting points of the city's bicycle network.

[Stingray2004]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

I'm not going to say the bike lanes are useless....

While I usually hate conspiracy theories, I can't help but think that this boils down to sabotage.

Now, in that vein, I just hadda respond by including this latest Vancouver bike lane spoof:

• Video Link

[jlousa]

Since the current situation is is still only a trial... I'm curious if the viaducts are wide enough to that with thinner seperation barriers all around (and perhaps narrowing the driving lanes a little bit) if the lost lane could be returned to Dunsmuir while retaining a single directional bike lane and sidewalk and adding a single directional bike lane on the Georgia Viaduct. If no alterations are made to the rest of the Dunsmuir lane they could still have the two lanes come together via either Citadel or Beatty as both have the space/capacity to give up.
What do the cyclists think?

[Porfiry]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

While I really would like to see the Viaducts used for both bikes and vehicles, it just seems that right now the Dunsmuir viaduct is intentionally handicapped for cars in an artificial effort to reduce its functionality, so that the city can write reports about how the functionality of the Viaducts has been reduced, thus showing they are not needed.

Adding the bike lane increased the functionality of the viaducts, in that they now serve two functions instead of one. I've said it before, the addition of the bike lane has made it politically more difficult to propose removing the viaduct, because of the simple fact that you now must persuade two camps of people of the benefits, not just one.

I mean, I know the existence of the bike lane has changed my opinion of the matter entirely.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by Porfiry

Adding the bike lane increased the functionality of the viaducts, in that they now serve two functions instead of one. I've said it before, the addition of the bike lane has made it politically more difficult to propose removing the viaduct, because of the simple fact that you now must persuade two camps of people of the benefits, not just one.

I mean, I know the existence of the bike lane has changed my opinion of the matter entirely.

If that was the case, then that is what the city would promote. If bikes lanes increased the the usefulness of the viaducts, we would not be spending tens of thousands of dollars on examining their removal. The city would promote the viaducts as a useful resource for facilitating multi-modal travel. The city would not spend money on reports that focus on removing them.

Maybe you are right, maybe it is backfiring on the city. But it is clear from their attitude that they are serious about removing the viaducts. Would they really spend money on contradicting end games? One hand makes the viaducts useful with bike lanes while the other hand plots their demise? So either they are incompetent or they are conniving. Either they have no idea what they want to do and are spending like drunken sailors on everything, or it is all part of a convoluted plan to get them to their goals.

You are right that adding bike lanes have made the viaducts more useful to other people. So either the city is incompetent and foolishly spending money on opposite goals of the same project, or their attempt at sabotaging the viaducts is backfiring by making them desired by a second group of users.

But the number of bikes is still low enough, that if the viaducts experience reduced vehicle traffic, the city council could still just say that a bike lane on Expo will be of the same quality/functionality as the bike lanes on Dunsmuir and Hornby streets. Car traffic is still the overwhelming majority of users, so if the number of cars drop due to manufactured traffic difficulties, they become less useful overall. If they want to tear them down while they are useful to tens of thousands of cars, why would they leave them standing for a couple thousand bikes?

[Alex Mackinnon]

I don't see how you can say that. It's less functional for 50000 users a day while more functional for an average of 928. Sure another group may complain, but I really don't think you can say thats more function.

CoV has its raw data files out for all the bike lanes right now. I don't have the link handy, but I'll summarize the results. I pulled out all outlying data since it's statistically irrelevant. There were a few days of 0 recorded cyclists and some where many thousands more than the surrounding days are recorded. All those got the axe.

Viaduct: Min = 51/day, Max = 2099/day, Average= 928/day
Dunsmuir Hamilton to Cambie: Min = 263/day , Max = 2519/day, Average = 1427/day
Dunsmuir Richards to Homer: Min = 19/day, Max = 2309/day, Average = 1095/day
Dunsmuir Granville to Seymour: Min = 58/day, Max = 1938/day, Average = 790
Dunsmuir Hornby to Howe: Min = 35/day, Max = 1689/day, Average = 847

There are a few things skewing the data though. The data from the Richards/Homer section stops at December, skewing the numbers upwards while the data from the other all the downtown sections don't start until June skewing their values downwards.

Meanwhile Burrard Bridge sees on average 2705 users per day. The data from Hornby is pretty sparse, so I'm not going to summarize, but daily it takes about 33% of what the Burrard Br. carries.

I've said it before, I think most people biking on Union bike St. aren't headed downtown.

[tybuilding]

Originally Posted by jlousa

Since the current situation is is still only a trial... I'm curious if the viaducts are wide enough to that with thinner seperation barriers all around (and perhaps narrowing the driving lanes a little bit) if the lost lane could be returned to Dunsmuir while retaining a single directional bike lane and sidewalk and adding a single directional lane on the Georgia Viaduct. If no alterations are made to the rest of the Dunsmuir lane they could still have the two lanes come together via either Citadel or Beatty as both have the space/capacity to give up.
What do the cyclists think?

It would have to be a combined pedestrian/cyclist sidewalk which are not super as they get narrower. I figure if you narrow the lanes down to 3.5m width (width of old centre lane on Google) you would have 3m for barrier/street lights and sidewalk left. I would suggest all of the street lights/signs could be cantilevered on the outside of the structure. I think to have a combined one way cycle/pedestrian lane you would want 2.5-3m for it to be not substandard. The barrier would take at least 0.6m so you are left with 2.4m.

Eastbound cyclists then have 3 additional lights (2 on Citadel which I assume are timed to Beatty? and an additional light at Main Street to cross back over Prior Street.

This probably adds 3-5 minutes.

There would be an additional 275m in length.

What are the pedestrian volumes like?

3 narrow lanes capacity is less than 3 normal or wide lanes. So 2 wide lanes may almost function as well as 3 narrow lanes. (what I learned in Traffic engineering classes)

[Porfiry]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

If that was the case, then that is what the city would promote. If bikes lanes increased the the usefulness of the viaducts, we would not be spending tens of thousands of dollars on examining their removal. The city would promote the viaducts as a useful resource for facilitating multi-modal travel. The city would not spend money on reports that focus on removing them.

One is a short term tactic, the other is a long term strategy.

The study you're bemoaning is looking at how the viaducts fit into the design of Vancouver over the next decades. If you listen to the actual options, you'll note that a complete removal wouldn't take place for at least 20 years, and would be contingent upon long-term shifts in behaviour.

In other words, the idea that there's any precise, near-term political objective in the study is absurd. I imagine the goal is like any other planning study -- to seed the idea that the status quo might not be ideal.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by tybuilding

So 2 wide lanes may almost function as well as 3 narrow lanes. (what I learned in Traffic engineering classes)

I'm no traffic engineer either, but it seems to me that the capacity of the viaduct even at 2 lanes still exceeds the capacity of Dunsmuir with its traffic signals. Surely you can get more cars per hour down 2 lanes with no stops than down 3 lanes with the lights red 40% of the time.

That disparity could be reduced with good signal timing, but even so the turbulence caused by left- and right-turning traffic at subsequent intersections is still going to cause bottlenecks. And even good signal timing won't prevent lineups at that first light because you'll always have idiots who think they'll "win" by driving faster than the pace of the "wave" - and over the distance from Main they'll end up at Citadel or Beatty well before the light turns green. That means they'll have to stop, and on the green light they won't be able to accelerate quickly enough to avoid slowing down and stopping the properly-paced drivers behind them.

I seriously doubt that expanding the whole viaduct back to 3 lanes would significantly increase the capacity of the overall corridor. The viaduct already has 3 traffic lanes at Citadel of sufficient length to store a traffic light's worth of cars, and it has a fourth lane for right-turns at Beatty. That's the real key to optimizing the number of cars that can get through each cycle of the lights - it seems to me that extra lanes prior to that point are a waste.

The biggest choke point on the viaducts right now is the westbound Main Street on-ramp. That was a bottleneck even before the bike lanes as two lanes have always had to merge into one. What's been lost on that ramp is the room to accelerate and merge reasonably smoothly, or at worst to "store" one traffic light cycle's worth of cars from Main Street as they sort themselves out.

If we were to invest in somehow widening / relocating / suspending lanes on the viaduct in order to improve flow, I think that's the most critical place it needs to be done. And it might be that extending the time of the left turn signal off Main street during the problematic morning peak could be almost as effective.

[Porfiry]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

The biggest choke point on the viaducts right now is the westbound Main Street on-ramp. That was a bottleneck even before the bike lanes as two lanes have always had to merge into one. What's been lost on that ramp is the room to accelerate and merge reasonably smoothly, or at worst to "store" one traffic light cycle's worth of cars from Main Street as they sort themselves out.

Indeed, redesigning the inbound ramps at Main is part of the "20%" option that's being included in the study. Makes one wonder why people are so opposed to the study, when the end result could very well be in their interest.

[xd_1771]

The biggest choke point on the viaducts right now is the westbound Main Street on-ramp. That was a bottleneck even before the bike lanes as two lanes have always had to merge into one. What's been lost on that ramp is the room to accelerate and merge reasonably smoothly, or at worst to "store" one traffic light cycle's worth of cars from Main Street as they sort themselves out.

That is a potential issue I see when (if) the Malkin connector is created - it will be a straight shot onto the viaduct, and that movement is also a merge to one right now. You say it's bad enough on Main... well, Malkin is meant to move a lot of that traffic off of the Main left turn. Except with the case of the Malkin connector, it will be now also be serving traffic from even more points of origin (Clark, First, 12th, etc.) as a largely primary connector into downtown. There will be no controlled left turn traffic & movement before the merge as there is today, preventing any long backups (except perhaps on main) from happening; traffic could just keep coming and coming... and the merge there could end up being a rather serious choke point there, with potential for long backups to the east.