Posts from — July 2011

The groundbreaking report on the Viaducts and False Creek Flats going to council next week shatters five myths about the Viaducts that stand in the way of a better city.

Chief transportation engineer Jerry Dobrovolny and chief planner Brent Toderian stand the issue on its head, challenging Vancouver citizens to help them design the future of the city in the key area from BC Place Stadium east to Clark Drive that now sits under old freeway, asphalt or simply abandoned behind the Pacific Central Station.

They’ll make sure the traffic needs are met.

The report gives us permission to consider the city in new ways, with shorter Viaducts, a single viaduct, or new connections from Pacific and Expo to Georgia and Dunsmuir. Here are the five myths they busted to open the door to a new plan:

Myth No. 1: the traffic now on the Viaducts has nowhere else to go

Fact: “Due to the reduction in vehicle volumes entering the downtown over the past 15 years, there is available vehicle capacity on adjacent streets to accommodate some of the diverted traffic . . . A 20 percent reduction [in Viaduct capacity] would have minimal diversion of traffic. The 100 percent reduction scenario would require additional transit infrastructure.” [Read more →]

Vancouver residents will be invited to brainstorm about their vision for the city’s critical eastern core — all the way from the Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts to Clark Drive — in the second phase of a review of the viaducts’ future that comes to council Tuesday.

It’s a remarkable sequel to the 1970s debate on the future of our city that resulted in the defeat of freeway construction in Vancouver — except for the viaducts themselves.

Having confirmed the city can move goods and traffic even if the viaducts are partly or completely removed, city planner Brent Toderian and head traffic engineer Jerry Dobrovolny are challenging voters to imagine a new future for the city’s strategic eastern core, including the False Creek Flats between Main St. and Clark Drive.

Driven by an “ideas competition” that engages the broad public, and a “special urban design team” of local and international experts, the ploanning processed, called the Viaducts and False Creek Flats Eastern Core Strategy,  will open up debate about the last major area of undeveloped land in the city.

But it will also give residents in Yaletown, the Downtown Eastside, Strathcona, Citygate, Chinatown and Grandview Woodlands a chance to seize a new future for their neighbourhoods before the city makes final decisions on major rezonings around BC Place Stadium. [Read more →]

News that South Korea’s Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympic Games will ring up a numbing $8.4 billion construction bill suggests that Vancouver’s efforts to embed environmental sustainability in the Games was a failure.

During the bid preparation phase in 2002, Vancouver made a virtue out of our efforts to use existing facilities and reduce environmental impacts. International Olympic Committee experts demanded the Games be “greened up” and the Vancouver Bid Committee did everything it could to comply. The result: Vancouver narrowly edged out Pyeongchang to host the 2010 Games.

The London Games, to be held next year, did much to build on the Vancouver philosophy, but there was little of the recycling spirit obvious in Russia’s successful Sochi 2014 bid, which is carving an entirely new resort out of the landscape.

Now, here comes Pyeongchang, using the Olympics as economic stimulus for the construction sector. Sure, there’s a high speed rail line thrown in, but $1.4 billion is earmarked for new venues, villages and much more. Bulldozer drivers, start your engines!

Ominous reports of potentially-devastating viruses raging through BC’s wild salmon stocks, perhaps linked to the salmon farming industry, seem no closer to resolution despite the countless hours logged in a Vancouver courtroom by the Cohen Commission inquiry into the decline of Fraser sockeye.

By this time last year, the unprecedented return of Fraser River sockeye salmon was dominating the news. This year’s much smaller forecast has resulted in a complete collapse of news coverage about what used to be a major source of income in coastal communities.

But there is much to be concerned about. In Chile, where Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) crippled the salmon farming industry several years ago, the debate continues about how to avoid a repeat of the fiasco, which required a bailout of the aquaculture sector.

Chile, unlike BC, had no wild salmon stocks at risk. Nor did Norway, despite its once large runs of wild Atlantic salmon, have any truly wild stocks left to suffer when ISA broke out in its farms.

As the 2010 bonanza demonstrated, however, BC has much to protect. Is the ISA virus here in BC?

There is growing evidence that it is. If so, the threat to BC’s wild Pacific salmon is very real.