Time for Vancouver to Tear Down Its Viaducts?

[CanSpice]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

I went to a food truck thing a while ago, and the city had a booth setup so city planners can talk about removing the viaducts.

One of the planners said that removing the viaducts will only add 1 minute and 35 seconds onto the trip between Beatty and Main.

I said, it takes like 30 seconds to do that now, so after it will take 2 minutes? So that is in essence a 4 fold increase. How is 400% more time spent not bad? And that was only average, not worst case. He had no response.

And I asked him is that 1:30 more than now, or over original time? Because on the Dunsmuir you used to get into downtown FAST. So is the increase over the design time, or the current modified slowed down time? he had no idea.

So it's only adds a minute and a half? That doesn't sound too bad at all. Nobody drives, starting at Beatty and ending at Main, so your 400% (actually it's 300%) is the maximum average increase. If I'm driving from my workplace on Beatty to my home in New Westminster, right now Google Maps says it'd take 26 minutes. With this 1:30 addition that's up to 27:30, and increase of 5.7%. That's no big deal, I could easily take an extra couple of minutes by hitting more red lights than normal.

Then I asked about the land for the park. I asked that in all the renders, the park is a giant lawn. Like David Lam, Cooper Park, Creekside Park... I asked what happens to the event space, like for Cirque du Soleil? or other events that can't happen on hilly lawn? Like staging for Concerts at the arenas or all the space they used for hosting foreign press for the World Cup.

He said he thinks the area would be better if it were open for everyone, that using it for events shuts out the local community.

But I asked what about Vancouver's standing as the center for not only our regional economy, but also our regional culture? Doesn't having space to host cultural events (even if they are not open for free to everyone) have importance in the city? Are we sacrificing the ability to host in the future cultural activities and events just so local rich people could sit on a lawn? Doesn't losing out on the ability to host something like the Big Top actually harm Vancouver overall? Are we sacrificing diversity so we can have another David Lam, Coopers park, or Creekside?

I'd rather have a park that's open to everybody, like David Lam Park, than a parking lot that's open to nobody. I don't care about Cirque coming in for a month out of a year, I care about kids playing with frisbees 12 months out of the year.

The three parks you mention are always full of people. The parking lot where Cirque goes is empty. I know I'd rather much have a vibrant park than a stagnant parking lot.