Northwest Arm Crossing

[Hali87]

I've mentioned this before but I've always thought a gondola (the ski resort kind) would work well as an Arm crossing. Land and clearance issues would be easier to work around (much less is needed in the way of supports), and it would be an interesting attraction as well as being practical. It could have stations at Shirreff Hall and on Purcell's Cove Road near the entrance to Fleming Park with a stop in the park itself. This would increase access to and from the Peninsula without adding more vehicles to the Peninsula road network. Running a gondola through/over Fleming Park seems more politically feasible than running an expressway through it. Portland, OR has actually had a transit-gondola for a few years and there are plans to implement them in Burnaby and Edmonton, so it's not as far-fetched an idea as it would have seemed 10-15 years ago.

Failing that, I think a realistic scenario (and one that I would support) would be a bridge crossing the Arm at or near Fleming Park that is only for use by pedestrians/AT, transit, and emergency vehicles. This would again restrict the number of vehicles being dumped onto the Peninsula street network while also improving access, and people who need to drive would benefit since many other trips could be diverted from the Rotary (so traffic there wouldn't be as bad as it otherwise would have been). It wouldn't make sense to me to optimize a bridge here for vehicular capacity - it's already limited by the established hard-to-widen road networks that would be at both ends of it basically no matter where it crossed the Arm.