Ken Ohrn:
I detoured through the Point Grey Road area. As usual, nothing was going on — even the construction people had packed it in for the day.
All that I found of photographic interest was this wonderful scene at Volunteer Park. Note that there are two bikes in the scene.
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I did speak for a minute to a 50-year-long resident of Point Grey Road who was walking by. He told me that as far as he was concerned, this project and its changes were all about safety. He said that a friend had been killed on Point Grey Road, and his disabled companion (may have been a son) was in deadly danger each time he crossed the road. Like me, and without coaching, he spontaneously wondered how it could have ever become a high-speed, high-volume commuter route in the first place. He sees the road as a narrow residential street.
As I rode on, I crossed 4th Avebue and Broadway at about 3 pm. Motor vehicle traffic was light to non-existent.
On the way home at around 4 pm, I crossed Broadway at Stephens. Acres of empty asphalt stretched east and west from there.
So anecdotally at least (the gold standard in many quarters) the so-called traffic nightmare exists only in certain agenda-driven and fevered minds. And not on the streets.
exactly. Many roads are far too wide in Vancouver and could be narrowed.
a 6 lane highway called Broadway (or Granville, or 4th or 16th) with 20 m of Asphalt and 2 meters for pedestrians on either side ? Some priorities, eh ?
Jeez we’re in deadly danger on Prior St. and the so called Mayor PROMISED to lower the speed limit to 30 approx. 1 year ago. Now …nothing. My lane is in shambles, there is garbage everywhere, ma
gots crawling out of the new green bins and Pt. Grey Rd is a priority?
Keep pushing for the 30 km/h speed limit! I hope you are able to get it.
Just a note that 4:00 pm isn’t rush hour (except maybe for school teachers).
Most people don’t leave work til between 5:00 pm amd 6:00 pm.
I’m not sure about Vancouver, but in little old Victoria, the PM peak travel period starts at 3 PM and runs through to about 6. I suspect the PM peak in Vancouver starts at least that early but Translink and COV traffic data would say for sure. There are a lot of people apart from teachers who don’t work a standard 9-5 shift in a big city like Vancouver.
Victoria is full of civil servants that can take it easy at 3 pm .. not so in the real world.
Take a peek at the Viaducts Study Summary, page 24. This shows vehicle counts by hour for the viaducts, and the pattern should be similar for south and west-bound traffic over Burrard Bridge. It seems to me that 4 pm outbound is very close to the peak.
http://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/viaducts-study.aspx
How did Point Grey Road ever become a commuter route? That’s easy, there’s no cross traffic. No cross traffic means never having to slow down. That’s utopia for drivers.
No cross traffic is also bliss for cyclists. The existing 3rd Avenue route crosses 8 streets between Highbury and Macdonald. That’s 8 locations where a cyclist may be obliged to stop or at least slow down significantly. The York Avenue route also crosses 8 streets between Stephens and Burrard and both are lined with parked cars.
Regular bike commuters who are confident in mixed traffic zip down the big hill on 4th Avenue instead of bumping over traffic calming devices on 8th. They play leap frog with the buses on Cornwall instead of dodging car doors and cross traffic on York or 3rd. Their low-stop route gets them downtown faster than the #44 express bus. Point Grey Road may or may not help them, but it will encourage many less aggressive cyclists to get on their bikes more often and that’s a good thing.
The George Affleck driven protest is all about scoring political points, but I don’t know who he thinks he’s serving. It’s certainly not the crème de la crème living along Point Grey Road. He knows, or should, that people along there have been fighting against commuter traffic for decades. Prior to the road closure they’d succeed in getting the city to post playground signs where no playgrounds have ever existed, lower the speed limit and install semi-permanent radar speed indicators. This “playground for the rich” has gotten everything they ever dreamed of: city owned land to use as private parking, the removal of almost all non-resident traffic and a really nice boost to their already stratospheric property values. Why would they vote against that?