Ballem makes clear that vehicle trips to the downtown core are dropping steadily. “This trend indicates that as more people shift modes to walking, cycling and transit, less road space is required for vehicles,” she writes. “The question is when can capacity be reduced and by how much?”

The memo is a timely warning to community organizations around Northeast False Creek — many of whom are looking for new ways to create a new sustainable neighbourhood where the viaducts now stand — that they’ll have to be ready to bring forward their concerns when the first phase winds up in February 2011.

Although Ballem says the first phase will produce valuable information on transportation and soils, regardless of the final outcome, “the first phase of the study would not conduct any anlysis of land use, structural costs or review of urban design opportunities.

“It would be a technical study of transportation impact and environmental contamination issues that would inform Council of the some of the major risks associated with alterations to the viaducts, but not the potential benefits resulting from reconfiguration and potential redevelopment.”

Traffic to the downtown peninsula has been decreasing for the last decade, despite perceptions of gridlock. Why? Undoubtedly more commuters are using transit, as parking operators note. Soon, we hope, more will be cycling.

It’s hard to credit, however, the claim here that the new bike lanes are emptying the lots. Would that it were so.

This was a big issue with the Canada Line, when advocates asked rhetorically how much we’re all prepared to pay to cut travel time by five to seven minutes, one way.

That apparently small shift adds up to hours, then days, then weeks and months of life lost for good, never to be regained. Voters are prepared to see big money spent to cut travel time.

It may come as a shock to business leaders, but commuters do not hate gridlock because they want to get to work earlier. They hate it because they have to leave home earlier. During the black hole of commuting, they can neither earn money nor enjoy life in all its splendor.

Exercise, sleep, spend family time — it all beats commuting or working in the findings of this common sense poll.

Think of it as a forced unpaid vacation, about a month long in terms of working days, spent in a car. That’s worse than Los Angeles, which manages an average daily commute of 57 minutes.

The costs in economic and environmental terms defy calculation.

The Board of Trade report, completed by the Conference Board of Canada, triggered an outcry in Toronto about the lost economic opportunity. It also spurred Canada’s big city mayors, gathered at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, to seek a gridlock-busting summit with Ottawa to discuss public transit investment.

The mayors have been asking  Ottawa to commit $2 billion a year to a national transit strategy since 2007, a relatively modest sum given the needs.

Vancouver ranks much better than Toronto, though not great, at 67 minutes a day. That puts us out of the car about 48 hours earlier. (The board averaged car and transit commute times.)

Vancouver’s commute is about the same as this 2006 report, which suggests travel times were dropping in 1992 but steady since then.

The lucky workers of Barcelona won the contest with an average commute of only 48.4 minutes.

But the future holds little promise for riders given the combination of a very tight budget and a deadlock with the BC Liberals over funding for the Evergreen Line. The $130 million annual revenue increase trumpeted in the report simply avoided drastic cuts.

As board chair Dale Parker and CEO Ian Jarvis reported, cuts are under way: three senior executives gone, more than 90 other positions eliminated and a crusade against administrative overhead continues.

More worrisome for riders are the pressures on service levels. Although the Translink fleet now boasts three Seabuses, for example, only two will operate once current refits are completed despite Jarvis’ acknowledgment that demand exists for all three. Why? No funding.

Even more disruptive for some bus riders will be the current “service rationalization initiative,” which will see reallocation of service from low-ridership routes to benefit the main corridors. Some riders will be winners, but those facing limited service on marginal routes could lose service altogether.

Relief can only come from an even larger annual increase in funding, as proposed unanimously by the Translink Mayors’ Council last year. That proposal hit a wall of resistance in Victoria, which was demanding an increase in property tax to fund its treasured Evergreen Line.

That combative stance continued through to this year’s Throne Speech, which promised ominously to “fix” Translink. But Victoria, now facing the HST firestorm and reeling from Kash Heed’s revolving door cabinet membership, is no longer in a position to issue edicts.

Talks are quietly continuing between Transportation Minister Shirley Bond and Mayor’s Council chair Peter Fassbender, of Langley, as well as at a senior staff table that includes representatives of Translink.

If they can find agreement, a new funding supplement may come forward this year under the “new,” more relaxed planning process Victoria has approved for Translink. And if that passes, overall service expansion could resume in 2011 or 2012.

In the meantime, those anxious to recapture the memories of 2009 and the Games can always catch a ride on the Spirit of John Furlong.

With the blessing of Mayor Bloomberg, transport commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan proposes to slice 34th Street in half with a huge pedestrian plaza. All traffic on one side would flow west, on the other, it would flow east, and new bus lanes, which would cross the plaza, should improve bus travel times by 35 percent.

Will Vancouver move, in the wake of the Olympics experience, to do something similar? At the moment, there are no specific proposals under development.

As Sadik-Khan notes, most people travel the street on foot, by bus or by taxi. They will all see improvements. Of course, there are detractors.

Perhaps even more significant: 56 percent said the Games were exciting and not inconveniencing them, up six percent in a month. Thirty-nine percent of transit users say it’s taking them longer to get to work, but only 18 percent of drivers have the same complaint.

Motion to make it unanimous?

Missing from the debate is the hard information the city needs to gather in the coming months as part of a study of the viaduct’s future. In the meantime, I hear anecdotally that neighbourhoods east of the viaducts are much calmer, as might be expected.

The Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts: part of Vancouver's future or relics of a project the city rejected?

In honour of the today’s shutdown of the Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts, for the first time since their construction in 1971, I have created this small archive of background information and history on the lower mainland’s shortest freeway.

More contributions are welcome.

The two-way separated bike lane will be created from a “lost lane” that was quietly removed several years ago and never restored. (Remember the outcry? Probably not: drivers never noticed.)

The report also authorizes staff to analyze other options to improve downtown cycle safety with additional separated lanes, a trickier proposition given the requirement to take space from traffic or parking.

Also percolating behind the scenes at City Hall: a close look at a new proposal emerging from the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition to create a cycle-pedestrian pathway along the Arbutus Corridor. Such a project would need co-operation from Canadian Pacific Railways.