One of the pleasures of being a guide to Vancouver is the people you meet – like Thatcher Imboden:
… an Uptown Minneapolis native who works for The Ackerberg Group, an Uptown real estate development and property management firm.
Thatcher is the President of the Uptown Association and has served on its Board of Director’s since 2007. … He’s also co-author of the history books
Uptown Minneapolis and Lyn-Lake Minneapolis, engaging in bike advocacy, and baking anything with a dough. His blog is here.
We had a pleasant (and not too wet) walking tour of Downtown Vancouver and the West End. And Thatcher, an experienced urban cyclist, had explored other neighbouroods with his wife.
He was good enough to send back his impressions of our city:
Vancouver surprised me in a few ways:
– I was not expecting as many 60s/70s era towers as I saw in the West End. We walked along Davie Street from Burrard to Denman on our last night before eating at the new Cactus Club Cafe since the view was incredible.
– Vancouver, like other cities, suffers from anti-growth people as well. Aside from that sign that we looked at in West End, I ran into a project that Rize is trying to build over on Broadway in Mount Pleasant. Spoke to them for a while about how they proposed a 26-story building and it got rejected largely due to community opposition. As did the 23-story proposal. Now the 19-story one is likely to get rejected after public hearings took it into the 5th night of testimony. Typical complaints: ruin character of neighborhood, block views, not affordable. But they can build 13 stories per the zoning district.
– Vancouver had a far greater bike infrastructure presence on the street than I anticipated. With the two cycle tracks in Downtown, bike boxes, bike lanes, bike boulevards, and traffic calming devices that allow bikers priority, I was impressed with the effort that has been made with the relatively little discussion on Vancouver as a bike-friendly city back in the States. We hear about Portland, Copenhagen and the Netherlands…along with what is being done in New York City, Chicago and San Francisco.
– The frequent transit network map
came out for Vancouver when we were there. It was very helpful as Vancouver has a lot of frequent transit. Not so helpful was trying to figure out the system connections while actually out on the street. The SkyTrain system didn’t have a lot of bus information, at least not easily found. My hotel gave me a bus guide, which was useful mostly for the map (not all the frequencies were listed).
– The buses on West Broadway were packed during the weekdays, all the way from Point Grey Village to Commercial. The 6 bus on Davie was insanely packed at 6 pm on a weekday. With already high frequencies, I’d be curious as to what in the long term will be done to address these issues. Perhaps the 6 should switch over to off-bus payment, multi-door boarding (which sort of took place), and articulated low floor buses (which may already be used sometimes?).
– The West Side was not as redeveloped as I was expecting. It seemed like many of those properties had been rebuilt/redeveloped/remodeled in the 60s-80s with some new buildings mixed in. I’m thinking mostly about West Broadway and West Fourth.
My other main observation is that the waterfront areas, including False Creek, were very enjoyable for taking in the city and the natural features of Vancouver. The trails were generally good, with a couple of exceptions:
– They need better communication on which path is which. I would recommend a lane stripe down the center too.
– Continue to try and separate the shared trails. It was amazing people were as polite and careful as they were.
– More way-finding signage to nearby destinations and streets.
