Quote:
Originally Posted by retro_orange
so many damn cul-de-sacs' in Burnaby! that will never be a walkable community unless they start to bisect some of those huge parcels of land with right-of-way walking/bike paths and extend the culdesacs with a full road
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I agree that it's a problem, particularly the large block size. But it's not as bad as it looks. Almost every cul-de-sac in within the town centre boundaries (the coloured part of the map) has a green extension: you can walk or bike through to the next street. (Never mind that many of them don't exist yet, e.g. Douglas currently goes through to Lougheed, Buchanan still goes through to Willingdon).
There are some pretty awful areas, e.g.
here, between Delta and Holdom. There are, however, several good pedestrian routes connecting Delta with Springer. There are lots of routes towards the town centre for people living in the high rises south of Halifax.
Here's another bad area, but maybe half the cul-de-sacs have trail extensions. I am sure that routes will be created over time as single family areas are converted to multi-family. If you look at the scale of the main grid, much of it is about the same as in Vancouver, so it's possible to have about the same level of transit service. Burnaby has problems, but it also has lots of gridded streets, and I think many neighborhoods will be fixed as they become denser.
It is true that lots of large-lot single family areas will be left car-dependent. As single-family houses they are fairly ill-suited anyway, as the lot size tends to be larger than Vancouver (about 50'x125' is typical in Brentwood Park). But as they are divided into rental units, as is happening in Vancouver, they will indeed be a problem. Even then, a fair proportion could be easily accessible by bike. I heard one of the planners is making sure more bike infrastructure is built, and I have seen a slow increase in cycling over the past decade (eight years ago I hardly knew how to drive around a bike as I basically never saw one).
As someone who lives in the Brentwood area, I actually find the lack of sidewalks on many streets at least as annoying. The situation around Alpha Secondary is rather shocking, as are several other streets connecting the Heights with the town centre area.
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