Time for Vancouver to Tear Down Its Viaducts?

[EastVanMark]

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

shame they never built the freeway down into the Grandview Cut. wasted potental.

the viaducts could have gone down into the Grandview Cut, keeping traffic off streets so they could be calmed for people/bikes. then they could have built a deck overtop of the Cut, creating a linear park. placing cars, trains, trucks below ground with a direct freeway connection to Highway 1.

such a missed opportunity. it would have literally benefited everyone from pedestrians, to bikes, to transit, to home owners, to neighbourhoods, to commuters, to the movement of goods.

That makes way too much sense to actually happen. We prefer socially engineered options that don’t work for everyone or in some cases no one.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by officedweller

Good point about St. Paul's and residential demand in the area.
Hopefully St. Paul's will be a catalyst for the area.

Yeah I don't know why it doesn't get mentioned more. With the associated clinical buildings you are planting thousands workers down there, with some of the best paid jobs in the province. A good portion will want to live nearby.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by MIPS

What is more valuable to the city?

Unleashing a potential traffic hell

There is no traffic hell. You vastly overestimate the viaducts' contribution to vehicle movement in Vancouver.

I was once again stuck in Langley/Surrey traffic yesterday in the afternoon. That place is an absolute nightmare of inefficiency.

Traffic was smooth flowing after I got back into Vancouver. It's comical.

[MIPS]

The viaducts add character. As simple as that. This isn't some nightmare like New York, Chicago or LA. This is not a really stupid and inefficient design like the Halifax Cogswell Interchange. This is an entirely manageable piece of infrastructure that people want removed because it clashes with what they want to build in the area. They lack the far-sighted visions of what traffic would need in 30 years time because people are throwing money at them to let them build what THEY want and really do they need to care? You are in the condo business and and once the suites sell it's not your problem. You tear it down and we're not getting a replacement. That connection over false creek is gone for good. A connection that if the viaducts didn't ultimately connect to the north shore, yes I would agree it's no longer needed.

Also in general I just hate Vancouver's breed of cyclists. They narrowed our arterial routes and took seats out of the Skytrains because just how smug and entitled they are, even compared to Seattle cyclists they are a level above that I cannot translate into forum-appropriate language but that is not relevant to the discussion about the viaducts.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

shame they never built the freeway down into the Grandview Cut. wasted potental.

the viaducts could have gone down into the Grandview Cut, keeping traffic off streets so they could be calmed for people/bikes. then they could have built a deck overtop of the Cut, creating a linear park. placing cars, trains, trucks below ground with a direct freeway connection to Highway 1.

such a missed opportunity. it would have literally benefited everyone from pedestrians, to bikes, to transit, to home owners, to neighbourhoods, to commuters, to the movement of goods.

Had you considered changing your handle? VancouverOfThePast seems much more appropriate.

I've only ever seen one undated illustration of the Grandview Cut idea for the freeway link, and as it doesn't show any other freeways, I assumed it was a last-minute attempt in the early 1970s to find a way to get some of the freeway system back after the 1968 plan to take out a chunk of Chinatown, and everything between Prior and Union, was dead in the water. I'm sure the potential cost, and the views of the railway company helped sink it.

If it had been built it would have meant that SkyTrain couldn't have occupied that space, so unless the 'lid' was engineered to take the weight of the transit system (which would have been expensive engineering) that would have had to go somewhere else. Vancouver taxpayers agreed to replace old the viaduct (which was literally falling down). I'm not sure how they would have viewed funding another expensive road.

And of course if it had been built in the 1970s then we'd probably be facing a huge bill for seismic upgrades today, just as we will be if we keep the existing viaducts.



[Viewpoint Vancouver]

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by MIPS

The viaducts add character. As simple as that. This isn't some nightmare like New York, Chicago or LA. This is not a really stupid and inefficient design like the Halifax Cogswell Interchange. This is an entirely manageable piece of infrastructure that people want removed because it clashes with what they want to build in the area. They lack the far-sighted visions of what traffic would need in 30 years time because people are throwing money at them to let them build what THEY want and really do they need to care? You are in the condo business and and once the suites sell it's not your problem. You tear it down and we're not getting a replacement. That connection over false creek is gone for good. A connection that if the viaducts didn't ultimately connect to the north shore, yes I would agree it's no longer needed...

Let's save the "neighbourhood character" stuff for the NIMBYs, shall we?

As for long-term commuting problems, that's what an eventual North Shore and Hastings SkyTrain are for; five lanes of 46k vehicles/day is going to be pretty irrelevant against 100k+.

Originally Posted by MIPS

Also in general I just hate Vancouver's breed of cyclists. They narrowed our arterial routes and took seats out of the Skytrains because just how smug and entitled they are, even compared to Seattle cyclists they are a level above that I cannot translate into forum-appropriate language but that is not relevant to the discussion about the viaducts.

Militant cyclists also make it harder for buses and pedestrians. But that's neither here nor there.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by MIPS

The viaducts add character. As simple as that.

Didn't you just tell us it was about traffic flow? Which is it?

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by MIPS

The viaducts add character.

I'm all for keeping the viaducts for as long as they're economically viable, but romanticizing them is going a little overboard IMHO.

For me, the biggest plus in their favour is that they provide a very nice bike route into and out of downtown Vancouver.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Yeah, we'll still have the Expo's roller coaster segment for "character."

[MIPS]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Didn't you just tell us it was about traffic flow? Which is it?

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by MIPS

I just don't see why it has to be replaced.
On one side its tree-huggers, bean counters and The Bike Lobby saying its obsolete and a waste of space and resources and to replace it with smaller roads that "fix" the problem that is removing the viaducts but on paper they only look good, and the other side which is Concord Pacific (lets be serious here because saying "Developers" would just play them as the elephant in the room) who has a Grand Master Plan for the area, which doesn't include the viaducts and they are so hyper-focused on this dream that they would pay city hall (remember that in Vancouver it's not illegal to sponsor candidates if you are a conflict of interest and there was a LOT of developers on the lists last election footing money) to make it go away than pay to redesign around it.

Really I'd just love Concord to go pound sand. I'd bet you $100 this is even a discussion because Concord wants the city to pay to clear the site so they don't have to deal with the red tape. It's glaringly obvious they want that land and they'll keep East False Creek a barren land of fenced parking and a showhome until we bend over for them. I don't like the precedence.

Today, it's the City Engineers who want it gone because it's a seismic liability. If we do get a moderate, or stronger, earthquake, the section that goes over SkyTrain is likely to collapse, so we end up with both pieces of infrastructure out of commission for some time. And some columns have been found to have inadequate foundations. So if they're retained, it's a $90m bill (+ inflation since 2018) to give them another 50 years. And the taxpayers have to pay for it.

And The Bike Lobby (both of them) will be losing their elevated link into Downtown and get a replacement a few years later that isn't as direct as the current route. So that argument is a POS.

Concord only gave Kennedy Stewart's party financial support - not ABC (according to their list of donors) so they were pretty half-hearted about 'sponsoring candidates'. Bosas and Beedies however did fund ABC.

Concord already own all the land for their development up to Quebec Street south of Pacific. The City only own the two blocks to the east of that, and have already designed them both.

(And you seem to have had second thoughts about your comment - want this one wiped as well?)

[whatnext]

Like so much in Vancouver the viaduct removal is an unholy alliance between developers and some “progressive” group, in this case car-hating “urbanists”. Since I don’t drive in it out of downtown this route I’m going to laugh hysterically at all the cyclists who will have to contend with some franken-bike lane that tries to make up for the straight shot from Adanc to downtown. Likewise I’ll chuckle at he condo dwellers pain as they are forced to listen to trucks and cars labour up the ridiculous concoction the city has devised to scale the bluff up to Georgia.

[officedweller]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Yeah I don't know why it doesn't get mentioned more. With the associated clinical buildings you are planting thousands workers down there, with some of the best paid jobs in the province. A good portion will want to live nearby.

Shhhh - otherwise someone will cry displacement and gentrification.

[Migrant_Coconut]

^ Hey now, there are dozens of crows who'll have to relocate because of this!

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by officedweller

Shhhh - otherwise someone will cry displacement and gentrification.

Possibly a bit late for that when houses on a 25 foot lot sell for $2m and a room in an SRO with a shared bathroom is $1,250.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Likewise I’ll chuckle at he condo dwellers pain as they are forced to listen to trucks and cars labour up the ridiculous concoction the city has devised to scale the bluff up to Georgia.

You'll be laughing in your straightjacket.

They'll all be electric by then and whisper quiet.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

There is no traffic hell. You vastly overestimate the viaducts' contribution to vehicle movement in Vancouver.

I was once again stuck in Langley/Surrey traffic yesterday in the afternoon. That place is an absolute nightmare of inefficiency.

Traffic was smooth flowing after I got back into Vancouver. It's comical.

You obviously weren't in the downtown core for the Elton John Boomer explosion this weekend.

[FarmerHaight]

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

i would rather these CAC's, etc be used to actually benefit people. tearing down the viaducts does nothing but make developers more $$$, and please the anti-car people. people would rather piss away money on useless 🞵🞵🞵🞵 then actually do something that would benefit people.

Originally Posted by MIPS

What is more valuable to the city?

Unleashing a potential traffic hell that the current mayor and council won't have to worry about because they won't be around city hall in a decade anyways, or several hundred million dollars worth of new developments that Concord Pacific has been trying to get their hands on forever to the point they've just squatted that whole end of False Creek until the land became "available"?

Originally Posted by MIPS

Also in general I just hate Vancouver's breed of cyclists. They narrowed our arterial routes and took seats out of the Skytrains because just how smug and entitled they are, even compared to Seattle cyclists they are a level above that I cannot translate into forum-appropriate language but that is not relevant to the discussion about the viaducts.

Originally Posted by whatnext

Like so much in Vancouver the viaduct removal is an unholy alliance between developers and some “progressive” group, in this case car-hating “urbanists”.

According to this forum, everyone in favour of "bigger and better" car infrastructure is a pragmatist, while those in favour of improved pedestrian connections, protected bike lanes, and public transit is an environmentalist or a "Lycra bro".

There are several points for and against removing the viaducts. Nobody on either side of the argument is some sort of crazed radical because of which points they weigh more heavily compared to others.

[FarmerHaight]

Originally Posted by whatnext

You obviously weren't in the downtown core for the Elton John Boomer explosion this weekend.

Let's just say some demographics haven't changed with the times as well as other demographics have. I, for one, am not surprised that some retirees making their quarterly trip into downtown chose to drive instead of taking transit, walking, or biking.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by whatnext

You obviously weren't in the downtown core for the Elton John Boomer explosion this weekend.

I guess you were?