Vancouver City Council will receive this report Wednesday April 20, in which staff recommend devoting this block to people by closing it to motor vehicles.
There is much discussion of the #5 bus route, but the conclusion is below:
City staff and our partners have assessed the transportation trade-offs for creating a
permanent plaza on this block and have concluded that they are manageable and are
consistent with Council approved direction to provide better quality streets for our highest priority mode of transportation: pedestrians. Therefore, staff recommend converting 800 Robson Street into a permanent pedestrian plaza to create a unique gathering space in the centre of downtown and will report back before the end of year.
Another item of note, among many:
City Transportation staff have also had many discussions with the Provincial Law Courts related to challenges with conflicts on the east side of Hornby Street, immediately south of Robson Street where the Law Courts underground parking exits on to northbound Hornby Street. The alignment of the two-way separated bike facility on the east side of Hornby Street can result in conflicts between people exiting the underground parking by vehicle and people travelling in either direction by bicycle, or by foot. Although this issue is not directly related to the decision of creating a permanent plaza on 800 Robson, the design exercise of creating a plaza will likely present opportunities to improve the intersection of Hornby and Robson Streets and reduce conflicts. These opportunities have not been previously available due to the seasonal nature of plaza.
A good start. Robson would make an awesome pedestrian street. Not sure why just the focus on this one block.
Two major quibbles,
The report doesn’t state that rerouting the Robson bus will affect connections to the rest of the transit network, only that it reduces access to major destinations on Granville. I can support the reroute if the process recognizes this major shortcoming, but it isn’t being fully recognized, only partially.
To reinforce this notion of misconsultation, the supporting resolutions from the Active Transportation Policy Council at the end of the report stresses that this project would be a boon for active transportation. I’m sorry, NO! This is a project that trades placemaking for transportation benefits. There are significant but small benefits for pedestrians with this project that could be largely achieved without blocking access to buses.
That is looking at transportation way to narrowly. By removing motor vehicle access, people walking no longer have to wait at intersections for lights and they can cross the streets wherever they like. They can also cross it at a diagonal. This all increases the predictabily of trips plus decreases travel time and distance. Plus by providing more walking space, fast commuting walkers don’t get stuck behind slower walkers. Also easier to get around people stopped to chat.
By encouraging more people to walk (and cycle) instead of using the bus, car free streets like this leaves more space of buses for those who use transit. This can reduce the chances of getting passed up again increasing predictabily.
Need to focus on the whole transit trip time and reliability including the walking and waiting portion, not just the time in the bus.
I’m not looking at it narrowly. There’s a lot of people crossing Robson in the square, there a significant improvement from not forcing them to wait 30sec to cross. There’s no need to force the also significant number of transit customers trying to get to Granville St buses or the Canada Line to waste 5 minutes circling the block except for the placemaking component of the proposal. This trade-off is being misrepresented by insisting that this project is all about transportation, or even transportation positive in its present form.
That is looking at transportation way to narrowly. By removing motor vehicle access, people walking no longer have to wait at intersections for lights and they can cross the streets wherever they like. They can also cross it at a diagonal. This all increases the predictabily of trips plus decreases travel time and distance. Plus by providing more walking space, fast commuting walkers don’t get stuck behind slower walkers. Also easier to get around people stopped to chat.
By encouraging more people to walk (and cycle) instead of using the bus, car free streets like this leaves more space of buses for those who use transit. This can reduce the chances of getting passed up again increasing predictabily.
Need to focus on the whole transit trip time and reliability including the walking and waiting portion, not just the time in the bus.
@Richard: good point. I was living in the West End when the Lions Gate bridge was intermittently shut down for deck replacement. The striking thing was the near-total absence of traffic whenever the bridge was closed. You could stand in the middle of Denman, at Haro or Barclay, and enjoy looking back and forth between the waters of English Bay and Coal Harbour. I’d say you could have had a picnic in the middle of Denman, honestly—there was just no traffic at all. The same was pretty nearly true of Robson and Davie. That implies that almost all the vehicle traffic on the three main streets in the West End is actually destined for the North Shore, and not local traffic at all. Turning Robson into a pedestrian street would therefore have little or no effect on business—all those cars are just passing by.
As for transit: no one in Europe thinks transit and pedestrians are incompatible. Just run the buses down the middle of the streets, between some plantings, and let walkers dodge them. Crossing a street is only dangerous when you have to dodge hundreds of cars operated by distracted, marginally-competent motorists. Watching out for one bus every three minutes is not a burden.
More votes from me for making Robson like Granville. Run the buses only, make the streetscape on the level, i.e. ped-first. Lyon trolleybus place des terreaux https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trolley-bus-place-des-terra.jpg
Here comes the bus out the square https://goo.gl/maps/SDTsgWiaF7K2
Granville is a great example of how mixing pedestrians and buses does not work. Buses would be much better for both bus service and pedestrians if they were on bus lanes on Howe/Seymour.
Buses on Howe and Seymour so everyone has to walk a block to Skytrain? I don’t see that as better.
Nobody around. It fails as a pedestrian realm. Too big, too wide.
Close more of Robson, shift the bus to Alberni and add a community shuttle on Nelson that then meanders through the parts of Downtown that the No. 5 now serves.
Fbfree nailed it: it is about place making,not transportation, active or not. pretending otherwise require a serious dose of dishonnesty.
He is also right to raise concerns on the city report, beside his quibbles and the distorted history account of the square (everyone can verify at the Vancouver archive that the architect envisionned bus service on Robson square), the report omits to mention that the rerouting will translate in $300,000 additional yearly annual cost for Translink. Who gonna pay for that?
https://voony.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/placepury2.jpg
The rational to not consider the bus on the model evoked by neil21 (or as above) is simply disingenous to not say ludicrous:
Sunday, many buses will be detoured (but not the bus 5), as it is the custom for specific events here and there (and the report fall short to name what kind of event could require to close the square to Transit for more than a week-end or so): that is acceptable and accepted (what is not is to detour the bus for months, because someone has decided it was a good idea to have some transats in the middle of the road)
As illustrated by the neil21 link: Nice has not been foolish to the point to ruin its transit day to day system because its square could be close on special event.
Ironically, for the next Vancouversun run, the bus 5 will be probably discontinued altogether.
One could also notice, that the redesign of the North Plaza, will make this place much more suitable to host specific event such as festivals (so relieving the need to close Robson), and by the way the 2009 VPSN competition identified this square as the central sqaure …not Robson…a report imprecision issue): so the city report argument doesn’t hold water.
The active transportation committe is a curious body which seem seriously singled minded. In Europe, we are more familiar with Sustainable transportation commitees which usually encompass transit, as well as person with mobility issue…
Here, we will end up to a “place making” which will provide no tangible benefit to a situation where the bus could continue to go through, but with much more transportation deficit (especially in term of accessibility),. and worse, we will have a place making excluding people with mobility challenge.
To be fair the lack of concern for disabled people by the city council is not necessarily surprising: the Vancouver mayor is chairing the Translink Mayor council, which was seeing no issue at barring the Skytrain access to the most vulnerable of us
Ironically, the report takes example on 3 “central” squares (Trafalgar square in London, Pionner Square in Portland, Yonge#Dundas sqaure in Toronto): all are abundantly serviced by Transit…right on the squares.
Why not have taking an example of a sucessful “central square” not serviced by transit? does that even exists (I mean in a city the size of Vancouver)?
Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Koln…
Prague -> Staroměstské náměstí -> bus 192
Budapest -> Vörösmarty tér -> Metro M1
Vienna -> Stephansplatz -> Stephansplatz U bhan
Koln -> Alter Markt -> RatHaus tram station
(there is another one just beside, Heumarkt, Heumarkt station)
try harder!
It’s hard for me to square, so to speak, the benefits with the costs on this idea. The gain is an additional ~500 m2 (1/12th of an acre) of permanent pedestrian space, which seems to be the only criteria for the closure, and a pretty meagre one at that for the core of Canada’s third largest city.
So, you’re adding the floor area of two medium-sized suburban houses to a heavily-trafficked urban pedestrian through route that has already been carved up and greatly weakened by the subterranean access on either side of the Robson road allowance. The space was compromised as an exclusive pedestrian and gathering space the day it opened, then further compromised by bus and car traffic.
We need to understand what high quality pedestrian spaces really are. The best examples are generous squares that are not sliced and diced by traffic and grade changes, and that are edged with — as Jan Gehl puts it — “human staying activity”, that is, shops and cafes and structures offering seating and visual access facing directly into the space without any separation. By this criteria, only the Art Gallery Café terrace and the various steps offer this.
In this light to make it worth it, the below-grade access to the UBC campus below Robson will have to be closed off along with all Robson traffic and a level space created for a 100% pedestrian space designed with an intensely detailed activity program. The square should be a continuous space of at least 5,000 m2 with no traffic interruptions whatsoever.
If that cannot be achieved, then the status quo should reign at least with transit, and the new design for public gathering space on the Georgia frontage should continue to fruition. Though it’s imperfect, you’re getting more bang for your public buck than closing Robson.
The City report talks about the rehabilitation of the Court House steps, and the creation of new entryways for UBC. It is my understanding that these two projects, as well as the construction of the square on the north side of the Court House, meant that the 800 block of Robson was going to be blocked for some time. The issue with transit seems to be as much about repeatedly opening and closing, thus constantly changing the routes, as much as the permeability of the block once all these projects are done.
It would be useful to understand more about the changes planned for the Court House steps and the entrance to UBC. Perhaps the design of the changes to the entranceway depends on the decisions about opening or closing the 800 block.
We have to start with something and this space has the advantage of no shops/cafes/restaurants with which to get major pushback. The more inviting it is to linger the more merchants will finally figure out that the crowds would be welcome in front of their shops.
Then it will be easier to close the rest of Robson as we should be doing right away if it wasn’t for the unfounded fear of merchants along the rest of the street. I think we should close much of Hornby as well to create the beginnings of a pedestrian network. And Water Street of course.