More quotes from my InRoads article:
Given its confining geography, absence of freeways, reasonable transit, limited parking and 30 years of traffic calming (roundabouts, speed bumps and miniparks – right), 
Vancouver has constrained the car – and has coincidentally turned out to be one of the most livable cities in the world. Actually, that is not a coincidence at all. …
As people substitute walking trips for car trips, there are now 25 per cent fewer vehicle movements downtown than a decade and a half ago (below), even as the population has doubled and employment increased by a quarter. In other words, congestion can decrease as density increases – but only if there are constraints on the car, alternatives that work and good land-use planning and urban design. …
Some would give no ground to the car; others would take no ground away. The challenge is to find a limit on capacity that ultimately benefits the users of the transportation system and the communities affected, without gratuitously punishing those who accept the limits.
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A paltry 10% increase in trips downtown over 11 years when Metro Vancouver’s population has boomed? No wonder many downtown businesses are hurting.
Ah, but these are based on screenline counts across the bridges and neck of the peninsula, so they don’t capture people who don’t cross it (i.e. the 75% increase in downtown population are people who are already there).
Really there are a couple different comparisons going on here, and “25% decrease in vehicles” vs “10% increase in people” entering downtown is the most apples-to-apples.
Why hasn’t job growth in downtown Vancouver kept up with population growth?