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If the viaducts come down, will cars disappear? Or does there need to be a plan for them?

September 7th, 2011 · 104 Comments

A really thoughtful email came to me over the summer from Frank Ducote, a former Vancouver planner who now lives in a neighbourhood near the viadcuts, about the proposal to take down them down.

As I’ve said on CKNW in the past, this is a trendy idea that has spread from Seoul, Korea, and San Francisco, to every little burg with a highway on stilts. New York and Paris didn’t take theirs down, just transformed them into city walks. But there are consequences to removing part of the road system, as Frank details here.

He is not a believer, as are Peter Ladner and Gordon Price, that if you remove part of the road system that traffic will just disappear. (See Peter’s column here for more details on this.)

This is what Frank has to say:

I’m of two minds on this subject. First, as an urban designer, I’d like to see them removed completely, but there is a huge caveat involved. There has to be replacement vehicular capacity (i.e., streets) built to offset the loss. This is because there is absolutely no vehicular connectivity between the downtown “plateau” street grid and Northeast False Creek, between Pender and Smythe Streets. This forces surface traffic onto streets not intended for high volumes, like Keefer and my street, Abbott. (Carrall has been effectively removed from the network due to its conversion to a bike-oriented route.)

On the other hand, as a resident of the 500 block of Abbott Street, I witnessed what happened during the Olympics when the viaducts were closed and so were Pacific and Expo Boulevards. We had virtual gridlock 24:7 during that time. This is not a reasonable impact for residents of International Village and Chinatwon to suffer. So, again, if the viaducts were to be fully or partially eliminated, replacement streets (not just transit) will have to be created. Not an easy task given the grade issues noted above.

In additon, the elevted SkyTrain guideway should be reconsidered, since its low dip around Carrall Street is the sole reason Carrall Street had a “fishhook” curve put into its alignment in the 1980s. Ideally this street should be straight, which would require the guideway to be reconfigured somehow, presumably elevated a few feet, to provide clearance for the new (actually original) Carrall Street alignment. I don’t think TransLink will find this a compelling use of limited transit dollars, however.

So, unless something is also done with the guideway, there will continue to be a physical barrier betweeen those who, like me, live north of the viaducts and guideway and the False Creeek waterfront.

Relevantly, as a COV planner I collaborated with traffic engineer Lon LaClaire and fellow planner Richard Johnson to come up with the idea to reconfigure the Granville loops at Pacific. 10 or so years later that work hasn’t yet been achieved because it is to be paid for by recouped development income. I fear the same decision-making will occur with the viaducts – that there will be an unavoidable appetite for high density development to pay for all the infrastructure costs. The net result could be/would be simply be another major barrier (highrise condos) – perhaps even a more symbolically objectionable one – to False Creek for those communities north of the viaducts.

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