Time for Vancouver to Tear Down Its Viaducts?

[Vin]

Originally Posted by scottN

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on this one. Compared to other cities, Vancouver actually has rather poor automobile access to the downtown core and yet also has an extremely vital downtown core. History suggests that it's actually the lack of access that contributes to the vitality - people want to live closer, which puts them within walking distance, because there's a huge barrier to commuting all the way out to suburbia. And transit is more competitive with private automobiles when there are no freeways.

If anything I think further restricting automobile access will make the downtown core more exclusive and ironically a more desirable place precisely because it isn't easy to get there.

Having multiple regional town centres ought to be more sustainable from a transportation perspective than one big downtown core. Ultimately this model should product shorter average trip distances, which puts less load on transportation infrastructure. We just don't quite have the right infrastructure in place yet.

That's ok ScottN. You do have a point there with the freeways. But that only applies to expressways cutting through the city core separating neighbourhoods. The viaducts are hardly like that. The vitality you see downtown today came about from the establishments of good road infrastructure, the West End residential neighbourhood and a solid commercial district with high density office towers, as well as large shopping centres back in the hey days of Vancouver. Subsequently improvements of the West End model created Yaletown and Coal Harbour. With the number of residents residing in the city centre, plus the ease of people entering the city centre to use the services suited for that time after the skytrain was built, the movement of people and traffic within and coming into the city centre created the initial vibrancy.

Now, in order to enhance our downtown core, we still need the current access points to remain in order to support the improvements. Perhaps you are only thinking about private automobiles using these access routes, but I'm thinking more of buses, streetcars, cabs, App-based car-hailing services, transport vehicles for goods & services, emergency vehicles, etc. All these need good and non-congested access points into downtown to enhance downtown's future development and support the movement of people and goods. Taking away some of the vital links such as the viaducts will definitely add to the congestion, and this isn't a guessing game: it will happen. We are going to add a lot more high-density developments around False Creek and making the entertainment district larger. How can traffic be improved that way when we all know that there will actually be a huge increase in traffic, residents and visitors in the area?

Perhaps you and others are right. Maybe there won't be a carmegeddon after the viaducts are torn down. But if we see the same amount of traffic then as now, it can only mean one thing: a lot less people are coming downtown.