May 16, 2017

Tenth Avenue Health Precinct Bikeway

There has been some cute analogies in the press about how time is “running out” for the parking meters on Tenth Avenue in the hospital precinct on Tenth Avenue between Oak and Cambie Streets, which is going to Council today. This street is a designated bikeway, and will be getting separated bike lanes. It is also the street that must accommodate access for the terminally ill, the severely disabled and infirm from across the Province that come for specialist appointments on this street. Many of these people are in their last months of life, do not have disabled passes for their vehicles, and cannot walk up the steep side streets from Broadway to Tenth Avenue. It is a complicated scenario and City of Vancouver staff have been working with the Vancouver General Hospital and other parties on creating some solutions.
The Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) does a great job on some things, but have been lax at following up (and being told by the City to follow-up) on some commitments. With the creation of one of the new Cancer buildings, VGH was required to put in at grade parking in the empty lot at Tenth Avenue and Ash. That was 11 years ago, and VGH ignored their commitment.
The new plan will take out 72 metered parking spaces on Tenth Avenue in front of the building frequented by the infirm and by seniors. There are two metered parking spaces west of Ash, with other spaces requiring disabled permit placards. The City’s report shows that there will be 228 metered parking spaces available, counting the 116 “spaces” not yet built by VGH on that empty lot at Tenth and Ash, and another 62 spaces on the side streets adjoining Tenth, many which have grades too steep for disabled or vision impaired to negotiate.
There is no doubt that Tenth Avenue is a bikeway. There is also no doubt, for anyone familiar with this Hospital Precinct that the most vulnerable and elderly will also be using this street. The compromise must be sensitive to both.
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Thomas Beyer
May 16, 2017 at 8:44 am

A one way street with angled parking on both sides and a bike lane is not an option ?

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1. Jeff Leigh
  May 16, 2017 at 9:15 am
  
  No. The health agencies want bidirectional traffic for circulation between their various facilities. Angled parking is more dangerous, particularly with emergency vehicle access. Might want to read the staff report and recommendations.
  http://council.vancouver.ca/20170516/documents/rr4.pdf
  We should stop referring to this as a bikeway project, as the post headline does The City has done so. The project is focused on street improvements. If you look at the priorities listed in the report, bikes are way down the list. It is about making the street work better for all users, especially vulnerable users.
  
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Sandy James Planner
May 16, 2017 at 9:27 am

Reblogged this on Sandy James Planner.

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Sean Nelson
May 16, 2017 at 7:36 pm

In my many visits to the VGH area for the eyecare clinic, Mary Pack Arthritis Centre, Diamond Centre, etc. etc. I have never even attempted to try to find parking on 10th Avenue – it’s just too busy. IMHO the answer isn’t in preserving 10th Avenue parking spaces, it’s in creating reasonably priced off-street alternatives. The reason that 10th Avenue is always so crowded with parked vehicles is because those alternatives either don’t exist or are priced at insane levels.

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1. Anonymous
  May 16, 2017 at 7:46 pm
  
  I think it’s a really stupid idea to remove parking but the city will do what it wants, regardless of what the citizenry want. True that VGH is clearly not interested in making it easier for patients either. I didn’t even attempt to find parking when I had to go in for my 20 minute cancer radiation treatment. I just parked in the parking lot and paid the price. Otherwise I’d have to dodge bikes, people, ambulances. I had enough to worry about so I sucked it up and paid the oberfuhrer his pound of flesh.
  
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  1. William Ferguson
    May 19, 2017 at 12:09 pm
    
    Was it a pound of flesh? Or was it simply a fair price to park your giant metal box? I pay to park my car, just like i pay to park my bed and my couch. In a large city you generally pay for the space you take up. Why is that offensive?
    
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    1. bob tanner
      May 19, 2017 at 4:19 pm
      
      Parking user fees are below market which is why its hard to find one.
      
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ChangingCity
May 16, 2017 at 10:55 pm

In some ways it’s odd that the City would want a piece of empty land to be turned into temporary parking. In the Downtown Eastside they’ve recently refused an application to allow temporary parking uses on a future development site.
The parking lot that has not been constructed on the site of the old bakery on West 10th Avenue was not a directly VGH related project. It was part of the BC Cancer Agency research building parking requirement, and so was never contemplated as public parking. If there as many as 236 people driving to work in those labs, obviously 116 of them are parking somewhere else, reducing the available spaces for other drivers. It’s equally possible that with only 120 spaces available under the Cancer Research building, more employees bike, walk or take transit to get to work.
Once the second phase of the Cancer Research development goes ahead, whenever that might be, those spaces would be lost during construction anyway. In the not too distant future VGH plan to add a lot more underground parking. Phase One has an anticipated start of 2019 and will see the development of a new facility which will include research and collaboration space, corporate offices, a hotel and underground parking proposed to be located along the 10th Avenue corridor between Heather and Willow St. Phase Three, expected to be completed in about 10 years time, would see an additional 1,300 underground spaces under the Heather Commons.

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Frank Ducote
May 16, 2017 at 11:33 pm

Two aspects of this plan bother me, but I’ve given up on the loss of (much preferred) street parking. The other intractable issue is assisting a passenger out out of a car essentially in the bike lane. I fear many conflicts will occur there.

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1. Jeff Leigh
  May 17, 2017 at 7:50 am
  
  That is why the passenger loading zones have wider areas in between them and the bike lanes, so people aren’t unloading in the bike lanes.
  
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Eric Doherty (@Eric_Doherty)
May 17, 2017 at 9:11 am

Looks like a good initiative. But complementary actions seem called for. The City should consider putting in 24/7 bus lanes on Broadway as a way to get more hospital employees and others in the area onto transit. This would reduce the parking available on Broadway, but the increase in transit capacity and quality (with the same number of buses) would far outweigh this. The Hospital should also consider providing low-cost/free priority parking for patients and visitors.

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1. Arno Schortinghuis
  May 17, 2017 at 10:26 am
  
  Eric, I am surprised by your suggestion to have low cost/free parking fir patients and especially for visitors. Who will pay for this? Are you willing to have health care dollars going toward free visitor parking?
  
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Alex Botta
May 17, 2017 at 2:43 pm

All the more reason to get the damn subway built on Broadway. Getting people out of their cars in the inner city has to count for something, especially in a busy precinct like VGH.

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1. Alex Botta
  May 18, 2017 at 10:00 am
  
  I made that comment with the knowledge that this plan does in fact offer on-street parking for the HandiDart and for disabled persons.
  
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