Time for Vancouver to Tear Down Its Viaducts?

[Zassk]

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

For example, as much as Downtown is alive after 5PM, if you look at some areas of the CBD, they are dead. If our CBD was a lot bigger and contained more of the jobs, wouldn't that create more open dead spaces after 5pm?

If the CBD is allowed to grow upward, then I don't think this will be an issue. The CBD can grow through densification rather than sprawl. It is the same argument that we apply to residences in Vancouver. Greater density would lead to diversity and vibrancy for a CBD just like for a residential district.

Is it really likely that the downtown peninsula would remain a desirable place to live if most of the jobs were located elsewhere? Transit is great, but even better is having a population that needs no transit at all. Work-live-play goes out the window if the jobs are not co-located with residence. Remember that we plan to build high density neighbourhoods near those other job centers; presumably so that people will live-work-play in those places as well.

I don't think it is desirable we cram lots of people into one peninsula and then spread their jobs across the region. We need a healthy high-density CBD downtown.

[twoNeurons]

Originally Posted by Zassk

Is it really likely that the downtown peninsula would remain a desirable place to live if most of the jobs were located elsewhere? Transit is great, but even better is having a population that needs no transit at all. Work-live-play goes out the window if the jobs are not co-located with residence. Remember that we plan to build high density neighbourhoods near those other job centers; presumably so that people will live-work-play in those places as well.

I don't think it is desirable we cram lots of people into one peninsula and then spread their jobs across the region. We need a healthy high-density CBD downtown.

Exactly my point. And it applies not only to Vancouver. Downtown has a limited capacity for people. If Downtown currently has 25% of the region's jobs, then MOST jobs in the city are commuted to from outside it. It's better to locate more jobs where people live, then. Places like Richmond, the Tri-Cities, Burnaby and Surrey.

Some who live in Downtown will reverse commute, but the addition of higher paying jobs in teh suburbs will have a majority of people who LIVE in the suburbs working in the suburbs.

Concentrating all the high-profile jobs in Vancouver gives people no choice where they want to work.

If you have high-paying jobs in both Surrey and Vancouver's downtowns then you have people who have choice. People in Surrey take the job in Vancouver. Lowers the load on the transportations infrastructure, frees up a job downtown for someone who lives there.

Concentrating head offices used to be necessary before the internet.

The only problem is if cities set up office parks in farmland, which taxes the infrastructure... however, the ALR and LRSP "should" help prevent blatant abuse.

Ideally, each city would have a mix of industrial, commercial and office work.

[ozonemania]

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

I think what you see with other big "new" cities. Read: "North American Cities" is that the downtown has a much higher percentage of their region's jobs.

Is this a good thing?

Not really. While it boosts the importance of the city proper, it means more people work in the core but live outside of it, meaning transportation usage is polarized ( like Calgary ). It's at capacity during rush hour but barely used outside of it.

I'd like to think that as Vancouver grows we can get a reverse commuter flow going. So people live Downtown and work in Surrey or along the Canada Line or the Tri-Cities.

Sure, there are advantages to centralizing the work-force, but disadvantages as well.

For example, as much as Downtown is alive after 5PM, if you look at some areas of the CBD, they are dead. If our CBD was a lot bigger and contained more of the jobs, wouldn't that create more open dead spaces after 5pm?

I much prefer Vancouver's model which has jobs outside the downtown core.

Also remember, in time, "shiny new condos" will be old. People who are yuppies now will have families that outgrow their bachelor pad or 1 bdrm place suite.

Many will not be able to afford or have no desire to live in downtown with growing children. Some will stay, of course.

At that time, the place that commands a high premium now should be more affordable.

Ahhh, I respectfully disagree with alot about this post. There are truths in there for sure, but not absolute truths.

All successful cities need a healthy CBD. There are advantages in terms of critical mass and economies of scale that are achieved by having a concentration of business activity in one area. Particularly in the context of the North American style city, an impressive CBD means something for businesses, consumers and investors.

If we took all our current office space and spaced them out evenly in mid-density developments throughout the lower mainland, would this be necessarily better? Sure perhaps for a good portion of commuters (PERHAPS), but not good at all for businesses.

My point is decentralizing commercial business activity just for the benefit of commuters is sort of the wrong way to look at it. The right way to look at it, is to provide workers many different options in choosing how or where they go to work. If we build more office downtown, we build more residential. We also build better transit infrastucture and more choices to get there.

I wouldn't be afraid of a dead downtown after 5pm if you have this kind of philosophy in mind.

This doesn't mean all office goes downtown, we have town centres that would reproduce downtown's model on a smaller scale. I like to think of it like a fractal. You have a dominant feature but these features are mimicked on smaller scales the more you zoom in.

[Metro-One]

Asian and European cities also have strong primary CBD.

While i agree it is smart to have several smaller commercial/business districts in a metro-area, a city still needs a primary business centre with decent access to the rest of the region.

If everything is decentralized, this can actually create more cross region daily trips for travelling from one business to another (which is common in the business world). Not to mention it makes delivery and contract services a lot harder (with more daily, and further trips).

Bottom line is that this viaduct removal study seems to be heavily influenced by condo developers who simply want to make a quick buck, with no environmental or social interests. Also it sounds like they would bulldoze the skytrain guideway to make a quick buck if given the chance. Does this not display their agenda?

We need 1 true east-west corridor into downtown.

Again, has this entire city forgotten that unlike most cities 90% of our downtown is cut off by water????? We don't have the luxury of large areas of a continuous road network into downtown.

It is good to have secondary business districts, Metrotown, Richmond, Surrey, etc... (all those districts are not cut off by water either, and naturally have much better access to the region then downtown), but we need to keep downtown the primary center, and these viaducts help establish just that.

Also, if you want the CBD to stay alive at night, here is what you do, have department stores, restaurants and funk lights at and near the towers bases, making a vibrant shopping/entertainment district at night. you know, true big city mix use!

[EastVanMark]

Originally Posted by geoff's two cents

Vancouver has, and will have for some time, and likely for the foreseeable future, by far the highest jobs:residents ratio in the Lower Mainland. In relation to which city are you suggesting that Vancouver is becoming a mere bedroom community?

Richmond?

Burnaby?

Surrey?

Really, people: This line is getting pretty tired pretty fast. . .

See Officedwellers post. The figures don't lie.

[flight_from_kamakura]

thanks od - interesting that the gvrd's growth averages wouldn't project a million vancouverites until sometime near 2100, and a 3,000,000 regional population sometime around 2025. it really puts a lot things into perspective - appropriate modulation of transportation infrastructure spending, proper pacing of densification, the core vancouver affordability issues that exile people away to the suburbs in the first place, etc. - that i personally generally tend to think about as if vancouver and the regional were more populous.

as for the viaducts, they're relatively new. used to be a single viaduct, and the ramp (i'm almost certain, but not 100%) came on at quebec. the original reason for it was that there was a large trainyard on the site. i think i posted something on it in the historical vancouver thread, though i know that most of those photos went down when my old photo host went out of business.

and i know that people find it annoying that i constantly bring up san francisco, but i'm telling you, between the octavia boulevard project and the complete demolition of the embarcadero freeway (both of which are quasi-unanimously understood to have radically improved their respective neighborhoods) and the lessons we took from those (the primaries ones being 1) that if you demolish it, people will just go another way; and 2) that getting rid of shitty roads radically increases livability), i say go for it, take these suckers down, build it all out, build on the slopes, build steps and vertical parks, reclaim an entire city block between union/venables and main/quebec and finance a good chunk of the project selling that. etc.

[geoff's two cents]

Originally Posted by EastVanMark

See Officedwellers post. The figures don't lie.

Indeed, they do not (though it must be admitted that a projection can never "lie"; nor, of course, can it be proven "true" - It's pure speculation). Here's a summary of the results:

Jobs to Dwellings
Vancouver: 1.49 (2006); 1.42 (2041)
Burnaby: 1.67 (2006); 1.36 (2041)
Richmond: 2.05 (2006); 1.57 (2041)
Surrey: 1.05 (2006); 1.02 (2041)
Belcarra (archetypal bedroom community): 0.30 (2006); 0.58 (2041)

Jobs to Population
Vancouver: 0.65 (2006); 0.65 (2041)
Burnaby: 0.65 (2006); 0.59 (2041)
Richmond: 0.72 (2006); 0.67 (2041)
Surrey: 0.35 (2006); 0.39 (2041)
Belcarra (archetypal bedroom community): 0.13 (2006); 0.23 (2041)

In 2041, then, Vancouver's jobs to population and jobs to dwelling ratios will be second only to Richmond, and I'm afraid we must chalk the latter's performance up to the presence of YVR. Even with YVR, the ratio is nearly even by 2041. In any case, I don't see any evidence here of Vancouver being a bedroom community.

If anything, if those numbers don't "lie", the city is more of a bedroom community now (and if you think it is, or feels like one, vis a vis Richmond or Burnaby, then you and I will just have to agree to disagree) than where its development trajectory will take it 32 years from now.

Btw, an interesting index for measuring city vs. suburban status would be to look at specific sectors. I suspect that if we take commercial alone, isolated from industry and agriculture, Vancouver would turn out to be leagues ahead of the rest.

[jlousa]

One of the biggest reasons to have reshaped the viaducts was unanimously rejected earlier this year, with almost no media attention.
The city was pushing the idea of the Kingsway connector, it would create a connector at the end of Kingsway onto Quebec St. Once traffic was diverted onto Quebec St it was much more feasible that something would've needed to be done with the viaducts, at the very least the removal of the Main St on/off ramps. This was part of a plan to reduce traffic on that stretch of Main St and make it more like the rest of Main St. The issue is the citzens of Mt Pleasant were completely against any new road infrastructure, instead preferring the beast they know over that proposed beast. With the Quebec/Kingsway connector now off the table it seems unusual to be pushing this.

[Metro-One]

Originally Posted by flight_from_kamakura

thanks od - interesting that the gvrd's growth averages wouldn't project a million vancouverites until sometime near 2100, and a 3,000,000 regional population sometime around 2025. it really puts a lot things into perspective - appropriate modulation of transportation infrastructure spending, proper pacing of densification, the core vancouver affordability issues that exile people away to the suburbs in the first place, etc. - that i personally generally tend to think about as if vancouver and the regional were more populous.

as for the viaducts, they're relatively new. used to be a single viaduct, and the ramp (i'm almost certain, but not 100%) came on at quebec. the original reason for it was that there was a large trainyard on the site. i think i posted something on it in the historical vancouver thread, though i know that most of those photos went down when my old photo host went out of business.

and i know that people find it annoying that i constantly bring up san francisco, but i'm telling you, between the octavia boulevard project and the complete demolition of the embarcadero freeway (both of which are quasi-unanimously understood to have radically improved their respective neighborhoods) and the lessons we took from those (the primaries ones being 1) that if you demolish it, people will just go another way; and 2) that getting rid of shitty roads radically increases livability), i say go for it, take these suckers down, build it all out, build on the slopes, build steps and vertical parks, reclaim an entire city block between union/venables and main/quebec and finance a good chunk of the project selling that. etc.

Why do people here always leave out the fact that the viaduct taken down in San Fran was replaced with a larger "freeway" standard artery near the area running a similar path.

It was not as if they tore down the viaduct and replaced it with nothing (or just neighbourhood streets), which is being proposed by some here.

Also, Downtown San Fran is far better served by roads, connecting it to the surrounding metro, then downtown Van is to its surroundings.

As I said before, I would support their removal if a 4 to 6 lane tunnel was built to replace them or I would support the removal of one if the other was retrofitted into 4 lanes, 2 each way. But i dont support the idea of taking both down and essentially just building local surface streets after.

[s211]

Originally Posted by jlousa

One of the biggest reasons to have reshaped the viaducts was unanimously rejected earlier this year, with almost no media attention.
The city was pushing the idea of the Kingsway connector, it would create a connector at the end of Kingsway onto Quebec St. Once traffic was diverted onto Quebec St it was much more feasible that something would've needed to be done with the viaducts, at the very least the removal of the Main St on/off ramps. This was part of a plan to reduce traffic on that stretch of Main St and make it more like the rest of Main St. The issue is the citzens of Mt Pleasant were completely against any new road infrastructure, instead preferring the beast they know over that proposed beast. With the Quebec/Kingsway connector now off the table it seems unusual to be pushing this.

Wow, I never caught wind of that Kingsway connector proposal before. Nice to see that the City can try to push stuff like that without it hitting the radar.

[AlexYVR]

Originally Posted by s211

Wow, I never caught wind of that Kingsway connector proposal before. Nice to see that the City can try to push stuff like that without it hitting the radar.

. . .and funny how much difference one little piece of information makes to this whole debate!

[flight_from_kamakura]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Why do people here always leave out the fact that the viaduct taken down in San Fran was replaced with a larger "freeway" standard artery near the area running a similar path.

It was not as if they tore down the viaduct and replaced it with nothing (or just neighbourhood streets), which is being proposed by some here.

you're talking octavia boulevard?? because if so, that's exactly wrong.

here's a look at the 20 or so lots that'll be built out, notice both the gough onramp (the long one) and the fell onramp (the one on the left) will be completely replaced with buildings and parks and the like:

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by officedweller

From the Courier:

Sounds like Vision has figured out what COPE never could: that if you whore yourself out to developers, those developers won't really care what kind of crazy left-wing stuff you push. Heck, they're probably tickled about being "forced" to save money by not providing parking spaces. Cloak the theft of industrial land or commuter infrastructure from the City's future under a Green banner and both parties are happy.

[Chikinlittle]

Originally Posted by flight_from_kamakura

you're talking octavia boulevard?? because if so, that's exactly wrong.

here's a look at the 20 or so lots that'll be built out, notice both the gough onramp (the long one) and the fell onramp (the one on the left) will be completely replaced with buildings and parks and the like:

I believe Metro-One may have been talking about the Embarcadero Freeway which is now a wide boulevard.

[EastVanMark]

Originally Posted by geoff's two cents

Indeed, they do not (though it must be admitted that a projection can never "lie"; nor, of course, can it be proven "true" - It's pure speculation). Here's a summary of the results:

Jobs to Dwellings
Vancouver: 1.49 (2006); 1.42 (2041)
Burnaby: 1.67 (2006); 1.36 (2041)
Richmond: 2.05 (2006); 1.57 (2041)
Surrey: 1.05 (2006); 1.02 (2041)
Belcarra (archetypal bedroom community): 0.30 (2006); 0.58 (2041)

Jobs to Population
Vancouver: 0.65 (2006); 0.65 (2041)
Burnaby: 0.65 (2006); 0.59 (2041)
Richmond: 0.72 (2006); 0.67 (2041)
Surrey: 0.35 (2006); 0.39 (2041)
Belcarra (archetypal bedroom community): 0.13 (2006); 0.23 (2041)

In 2041, then, Vancouver's jobs to population and jobs to dwelling ratios will be second only to Richmond, and I'm afraid we must chalk the latter's performance up to the presence of YVR. Even with YVR, the ratio is nearly even by 2041. In any case, I don't see any evidence here of Vancouver being a bedroom community.

If anything, if those numbers don't "lie", the city is more of a bedroom community now (and if you think it is, or feels like one, vis a vis Richmond or Burnaby, then you and I will just have to agree to disagree) than where its development trajectory will take it 32 years from now.

Btw, an interesting index for measuring city vs. suburban status would be to look at specific sectors. I suspect that if we take commercial alone, isolated from industry and agriculture, Vancouver would turn out to be leagues ahead of the rest.

Thanks for providing those figures. Look no further than the "second to Richmond" part. That is all the "evidence" needed. It shouldn't be second to ANY municipality; now or for anytime in the next 100 years-at least. Secondly, I wasn't comparing them directly to other municipalities anyways. As Officedweller got from my post, I was simply speaking to the general dilution of downtown Vancouver's importance in the region. Also, when comparing specific sectors, remember Vancouver had decades of a head start on its neighbours. For example, when considering "new" office space, Vancouver's growth in recent history has all but stagnated, while other municipalities have seen theirs grow dramatically. Those figures also include the many "coffee shop/grocery store jobs" that have sprung up in the downtown (Vancouver) core over the last decade (which are traditionally more of a suburb job) while the new office jobs tend to head outside the downtown core. That reversal in trends is alarming

[geoff's two cents]

Originally Posted by EastVanMark

Thanks for providing those figures. Look no further than the "second to Richmond" part. That is all the "evidence" needed. It shouldn't be second to ANY municipality; now or for anytime in the next 100 years-at least.

Again, I'd be curious what the result would be if one took the airport (Canada's second largest, btw) out of the equation. My hunch is that the Pearson airport would likewise give Mississauga a jobs to population proportionate edge. Burnaby, mind you, would be the more "worrying" statistic if, indeed, spending any amount of time in both cities would cause a person to worry that it was usurping Vancouver's rightful place (this has not been my experience). However, I would be very surprised if the ratio didn't turn out very differently if isolated to commercial sector employment.

Originally Posted by EastVanMark

Also, when comparing specific sectors, remember Vancouver had decades of a head start on its neighbours. For example, when considering "new" office space, Vancouver's growth in recent history has all but stagnated, while other municipalities have seen theirs grow dramatically.

Again, I don't see much of a difficulty with this. Over the past two decades, suburban office space has, say, doubled, tripled or quadrupled (I don't have the figures). However, they were essentially starting from scratch. If a suburb like Burnaby, Richmond or Surrey can, say, double or triple its commercial sector employment by building a couple towers, that doesn't make them a force to reckon with by any means. By comparison, Vancouver, as you show, has had a formidable concentration of commercial activity in its core for decades. Its growth would naturally seem static by comparison. Manhattan's would appear even more so.

Originally Posted by EastVanMark

Those figures also include the many "coffee shop/grocery store jobs" that have sprung up in the downtown (Vancouver) core over the last decade

It's worth pointing out the those figures also include the burgeoning growth in big box store employment in metro suburbs.

Originally Posted by EastVanMark

Secondly, I wasn't comparing them directly to other municipalities anyways. As Officedweller got from my post, I was simply speaking to the general dilution of downtown Vancouver's importance in the region. . . That reversal in trends is alarming

I think our perspectives diverge here in two ways. 1) I argue that Vancouver's place as commercial hub of the Lower Mainland is still quite secure, and suggest that it will remain so for the foreseeable future. 2) To the extent that the future sees a more diffuse spread of jobs throughout the region, concentrated in regional hubs where people actually live, I don't necessarily see this as problematic. Would having another urban centre in the region be a bad thing? I, for one, relish the notion of one day having a worthwhile Lower Mainland destination outside of Vancouver proper.

Again, I just want to point out that my concern is with any type of alarmist scenario that suggests Vancouver is going to the dogs if those viaducts are removed or if they stay (or, for that matter, if any relatively localized, superficial piece of infrastructure or lack thereof can have such an impact). My particular concern is with the misconception that making a downtown livable (with or without viaducts) is somehow "suburbanizing" it.

There's my bias again, however: For me personally, a suburb is the opposite of livability. You'd have to drag me kicking and screaming to pry me away from this city's high density commercial, residential and intellectual synergy. Take away any of those three, and I'll move at my nearest opportunity to a city that keeps these aspects humming together in perpetual harmony.

[Rusty Gull]

Originally Posted by jlousa

One of the biggest reasons to have reshaped the viaducts was unanimously rejected earlier this year, with almost no media attention.
The city was pushing the idea of the Kingsway connector, it would create a connector at the end of Kingsway onto Quebec St. Once traffic was diverted onto Quebec St it was much more feasible that something would've needed to be done with the viaducts, at the very least the removal of the Main St on/off ramps. This was part of a plan to reduce traffic on that stretch of Main St and make it more like the rest of Main St. The issue is the citzens of Mt Pleasant were completely against any new road infrastructure, instead preferring the beast they know over that proposed beast. With the Quebec/Kingsway connector now off the table it seems unusual to be pushing this.

That is wild and wacky stuff. I had never heard of this, and I follow these kind of stories pretty closely.

[jlousa]

Here is a pdf from the city that discusses the Quebec connector, it's been on the engineering depts radar since 1989 to give you an idea of how long it's been around. The city owns all the property needed to make it happen. The city was prepared to go ahead with it but it was soundly defeated by the Mt Pleasant community vision group. If it had gone ahead changes to the viaduct would've made more sense to me.

http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/planning/cpp/mountpleasant/shopping/pdf/saw3kingswayquebec.pdf

[flight_from_kamakura]

Originally Posted by Chikinlittle

I believe Metro-One may have been talking about the Embarcadero Freeway which is now a wide boulevard.

hm, well that's also completely wrong. outside of major events (4th of july, etc), the embarcadero boulevard is only lightly used by automobiles. i'm not finding any comparative numbers online (probably just don't know where to look), but i'll wander down on monday morning to take some rush hour photos, which will give you a sense of how much automobile traffic this area is getting. emphatically not a "larger freeway standard", think of it instead as an out-of-the-way pacific boulevard, with rail (and trees!) in the centre median. imagine that vancouver had gone ahead with the waterfront freeway idea back in the day and then pulled it down some years later, that's what you've got here: sf demolished the freeway and rerouted traffic along 3-4 other arterials and away from the waterfront. bay bridge traffic (which the embarcadero freeway served primarily) actually can't get onto the "larger freeway standard" without an unlikely and inconvenient detour that would actually take them far off from any but embarcadero destinations (which, as outlandish as the suggest once must have seemed, since the freeway disappeared, the waterfront is growing into its own, one of sf's nicest emerging hoods). basically, the point is that the freeway was emphatically not replaced with a street-level freeway equivalent serving the cbd, and that the intention was that this would definitely not happen. so yeah, not to belabor it, but "larger freeway standard" = no.

as a further sf cbd aside: 1) a vastly more important arterial cbd-serving arterial, market street, literally the spine of the city, is having non-transit/taxi traffic removed going into the cbd (think a burrard bikes lane test run with cars instead), and the test has gone pretty well; 2) geary, the major east/west arterial into the cbd, is to get two lanes lighter with dedicated brt going in (plan is by 2012); van ness, which serves as highway 101 and the major north/south is slated to lose two lanes with brt going in there too.

so i guess it's not just the loony cyclists-uber-alles hippie nimby regime up in the vanistan working to strangle all business in the cbd! jk.

as for the quebec exchange - jesus, it's a shame it wasn't put up to a more public debate, it would have been nice to have taken a look at what they were envisioning and gotten more voices into the mix.

[s211]

Originally Posted by jlousa

Here is a pdf from the city that discusses the Quebec connector, it's been on the engineering depts radar since 1989 to give you an idea of how long it's been around. The city owns all the property needed to make it happen. The city was prepared to go ahead with it but it was soundly defeated by the Mt Pleasant community vision group. If it had gone ahead changes to the viaduct would've made more sense to me.

http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/planning/cpp/mountpleasant/shopping/pdf/saw3kingswayquebec.pdf

Hi. I tried to find schematics for this scheme on the city website without success. Do you know where I can locate same?