Category — Traffic

First the BCCLA hailing the respect for civil rights during the Games, now this Angus Reid poll showing 70 percent of Metro and Sea to Sky residents now believe the event will have a positive impact on Canada, British Columbia and Vancouver. That’s up 10 points in a month.

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?

A CBC interview in which I said once more what I have been saying for months — that it’s time to consider the possibilities of a new north False Creek neighbourhood with good traffic links where the Georgia Viaduct now stands — has provoked an uproar from CBC News readers.

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 drive to expand and improve Vancouver’s separated bike routes will continue next week as council debates this proposal to create a new downtown connection on the Dunsmuir Viaduct.

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.