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A greenway in the middle of the Granville Street bridge: useful or just symbolic?

June 20th, 2012 · 80 Comments

Amid the 187 recommendations in the Transportation 2040 plan, I missed the idea of creating a greenway in the middle of the Granville Bridge, which I gather would run from Sixth Avenue on the south side to Drake on the north side.

There seem to be rendered images floating around here and there, which I’m guessing are from the city but somehow not attached to their Transportation 2040 information page. Here’s one.

Anyway, I’m wondering what everyone thinks of this. Is it actually useful to have people jog over to the middle of Granville for part of their journey and then jog out again? Or is this something that’s more in the nature of a big advertisement for a green Vancouver that doesn’t really add much to the cycling network?

I truly have no idea what the opinions are out there. I’m still recovering from the sudden discovery that the cycling lobby is opposed to mandatory bike-helmet laws, saying they discourage cycling — a debate I hadn’t heard a word of in the last five years of cycling arguments until this whole issue of mandatory helmet laws and the bikeshare system arose recently. So now I feel as though I don’t know how anyone feels about anything.

 

 

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  • Norman

    THis will only work if there are effective measures to keep bikes out of the pedestrian lane. The seawall is becoming a real mess because of bicycle bullies, and some city sidewalks are no better.

  • Chris Keam

    “Do note the Danes have MUCH stricter regulations with regards to equipment cyclists are required to have, by law.”

    In the link you referenced I only found two rules that applied to cyclists in Denmark that didn’t apply here. One is that a child under six must be accompanied by an adult when cycling, and the other was that bike paths must be used where they exist.

  • Chris Keam

    ” All that is necessary to reveal the true level of usage is a for a traffic problem to appear northbound on Granville or Seymour on any afternoon.”

    If we take the exception to be the rule, then we must do so for all modes of transportation, and roads, bike lanes, and sidewalks should all be built for peak usage. The reality IMO is that given the amount of single occupant vehicles on the road, we are running our transportation system at roughly 25% capacity, assuming the vehicle is capable of carrying four people.

  • Chris Keam

    “Furthermore the argument that helmets disourage new cyclists does nothing to explain the reckessness of exoerienced cyclists who refuse to wear a helmet.”

    You do understand of course that it is pretty difficult to fall off your bike? Elementary physics makes the machine want to stay upright when moving, and the slower you go, the less serious your injuries are going to be.

    The bottom line is that removing the helmet law doesn’t equal abolishing or banning them. Strange to me that people would fiercely defend their choice to sit in a machine that injects toxic gases into their surrounding atmosphere and inflicts them on the populace at large, yet they feel free to criticize helmet choice advocates for a decision that in worst case scenarios is only going to impact their own physical well-being.

  • Tessa

    “I truly have no idea what the opinions are out there. I’m still recovering from the sudden discovery that the cycling lobby is opposed to mandatory bike-helmet laws, saying they discourage cycling — a debate I hadn’t heard a word of in the last five years of cycling arguments until this whole issue of mandatory helmet laws and the bikeshare system arose recently. So now I feel as though I don’t know how anyone feels about anything.”

    Really? Hadn’t heard a word of it? I suggest you add http://www.pricetags.wordpress.com to your regular blogroll.

  • Tessa

    To clear up some misconception: there is good reason to choose the middle lane, and it’s good for drivers, peds and bikes: very few drivers go to Granville street, most take the off-ramps to Senior or arrive via the on-ramp from, I believe, Hemlock, on the north end, so the driving lanes onto Granville Street, in the middle, are very under-used. At the same time, that’s exactly where pedestrians and cyclists currently go, and all of those people now have to cross the on or off-ramp AT-GRADE on a crosswalk, by waiting until there are no cars. That’s dangerous. This plan would get rid of that.

    Secondly, there will never be a congestion problem on this bridge right now. This bridge was built assuming it would connect to highways on both ends, not city streets, and currently the street lights, roads and traffic on either end mean the bridge can never reach capacity without a serious collision occurring. A potential collision is not reason enough to widen all of our roads to eight-lane monstrosities. This space is simply not used, and not needed by cars, and this is the perfect use for it if you ask me.

    Yes, there are plenty of problems to fix, in particular the access points on either end of the bridge. I don’t want to see pedestrians and bikes forced under the bridge into dark, shady paths with poor sightlines, that’s for sure. And a simple crosswalk at the bottom of a bridge seems poor, especially for cyclists who may have to dismount depending on how it’s designed. It would be nice if the greenway could extend up the middle of Granville Street South, but there likely isn’t room to do that without compromising auto and transit traffic. It’s a complicated process, but worth further investigation.

  • Frances Bula

    @Tessa. I do read Gordon’s stuff frequently. I’ve also had literally thousands of comments posted on this blog re cycling. Until the last six months, I had not heard a huge upswell of cyclists suggesting that mandatory helmet laws were useless, were actually impeding bicycle use, and should be gotten rid of. Now, suddenly, there is a massive push going on to suggest that helmet laws are counter-productive and I think all of the public, not just me, is only slowly beginning to grasp the pros and cons of this argument.

  • Everyman

    @Tessa 54
    Like those poor souls forced into the dark shady area under the Granville Street Bridge, otherwise known as Granville Island? I think most cyclists could handle that.

  • IanS

    @Charles #39:

    You write: “… am I the only one who is concerned about making Dunsmuir Street a dead-end street for motorized vehicles yet wanting to spend $10 million on a bike bridge to maintain access to Dunsmuir? Why not leave that viaduct as is?”

    Good point.

    I can think of two reason why Vision would take that route.

    Firstly, leaving the viaduct in place does not hurt drivers enough, which is a significant part of the agenda. (To be fair, I’m sure they rationalize it as “encouraging drivers to utilize other modes of transportation”.)

    Secondly, if the viaduct is left up, even if repurposed as bike and pedestrian only, that would leave open the possibility of reversing the planned changes once the real traffic impact becomes known. That, IMO, is why we won’t see any kind of true test of what will happen until the viaducts are gone and it’s too late.

  • spartikus

    Firstly, leaving the viaduct in place does not hurt drivers enough, which is a significant part of the agenda.

    Uh…what?

    I’ve looked through the Vision Vancouver platform and have to admit I did not spot the part about “hurting drivers”.

    As someone who makes a point about being evidence-based and employing measured rhetoric this seems…well…wingnutty.

  • IanS

    @Spartikus #58,

    Usually, when one is trying to cut and paste only a portion of another poster’s statement like that, it works better if you wait until the thread has scrolled down a bit further. That would make it more difficult for people to see the next sentence of the original post. Just a tip.

    (Having said that, I’ll just don my tinfoil cap now and get back to work on my new conspiracy theory! Turns out… Vision was behind 911!)

  • Paul T.

    Frances, to be honest, I can’t believe you didn’t realize that helmet law repeal was one of the bike lobby’s goals. Need I remind you of the picture of their patron saint, Major Robertson, riding across Granville Street Bridge, no hands, no helmet?

    I know sometimes you think that people who opposed the segregated bike lanes are just anti-bike, car-loving nutters, but if you’d take off the green-blinders for just a second you might realize that we actually are trying to make valid points. Some of us use colourful language but the points we make can be used to make a superior transportation system in our city.

  • Silly Season

    @ Chris Keam

    “bike paths must be used where they exist”.

    Indeed. And the poster also stated that laws are enforced there. Will see if I can access that info, too.

  • Silly Season

    Oooh, here’s something very interesting that’s in development: a personal helmet that “pops up” when it senses unususal motion. From Sweden:

  • MB

    @ Guest 28

    … when a second rapid transit line from downtown to Richmond is required (via the Arbutus RoW) the alternative would be a very expensive tunnel – and Granville St. and Granville Bridge have been considered in many of the past LRT plans using the Arbutus RoW to be a logical route to downtown for the trains.

    A second rapid transit line to Richmond? A city that will probably have to learn how to float in future?

    The Burrard Peninsula and Surrey, in my mind, have much higher priority for more rail transit. The King George Hwy, especially if connected to Coquitlam Cente via the Port Mann, would be an ideal candidate for LRT.

  • spartikus

    Just a tip.

    My mistake. So their agenda to hurt motorists is rationalized with other reasons, presumably for public consumption.

    Diabolical.

  • Chris Porter

    Frances, I think there’s a real demand for your “Statistics for Journalists” course. http://www.theprovince.com/news/Statistics+show+helmets+help+save+cyclist+lives+coroners/6814827/story.html
    The first person you should invite is John Coleburn at the Province.

    The BC Coroner’s office went back through the fatality records for cycling accidents and found that over the past 5 years, in fatal accidents with cars 45% of fatal cyclists were wearing a helmet. 55% were not.

    As far as I can tell, that only shows that wearing a helmet doesn’t guarantee you won’t die when a car hits you. Somehow, the conclusion reached by the Coroner’s service and reported by Mr. Coleburn is “statistics show helmets help save cyclist lives”. Huh?

    I think they were trying to show that dead cyclists were more likely to be helmetless cyclists, but without knowing what percentage of cyclists involved in accidents (including the non fatal ones) that wear helmets , that’s an impossible conclusions to come to.

    The Ontario Coroner was very careful not to come to that conclusion.
    “Because our Review did not look at all cycling injuries (both fatal and non-fatal), we cannot state with certainty the degree to which wearing a helmet decreases the likelihood of a head injury. ”

    To put it another way, if only 45% of cyclists involved in accidents wear helmets (I think it’s higher in BC), and 45% of cyclists who died were wearing a helmet, then the helmet likely had no positive effect.

  • Chris Porter

    Curiously, 2 months ago the Coroner’s office did a similar analysis of deaths of horse riders. 24 in the past 10 years. I don’t know how many horse-miles are logged by horse-riders every year, but on the surface that makes horseriding seem like a more dangerous activity than cycling.
    Anyway, the coroner recommended helmet use when horse riding. I’m shocked we don’t have a law making it mandatory yet.

    http://www2.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=0b37327d-40e2-4fc6-b41e-04f1b7f7e7e5

  • IanS

    @Silly Season #62,

    That’s pretty neat.

  • Frank Ducote

    Fabula – putting the Greenway idea and helmet laws or their repeal on the same posting was not the best idea, in retrospect. Obviously there are many pros and cons on the latter subject, as with any other bike-related story, to go on forever.

    Would it be possible for people to discuss the merits of the Greenway idea without getting a tad sidetracked on the helmet law discussion?

    Why? Because spokespersons for the two most directly affected business associations (South Granville and Downtown) are looped into this discussion, and they may wish to hear more on the Greenway idea and how it might affect their consituencies.

    Just a suggestion, folks.

  • Frances Bula

    @Frank. You’re right. I had a niggling feeling when I was posting that I was doing a bad thing. I’ll start a new post now.

  • Sharon

    thanks Frances. My phone is going nuts and I am being asked to wade in to an issue that is total news to me! I suspect Charles is in the same boat.

  • brilliant

    @Spartikus 60-Oh please, it’s pretty obvious Vision’s agenda is against motorists. But its only hurting Vancouver businesses. Like many Vancouverites and even more Metro citizens. I make it a point to avoid downtown. Despite its increasingly ghettoized tesidents belief, it is not some garden of eartly delights. Resisting its unremarkable charms is quite easy.

  • Charles Gauthier

    Sharon @47 Yes, it is not what I have become accustomed to. As you know, we’ve raised this issue with City staff on more than one occasion.

  • spartikus

    Resisting its unremarkable charms is quite easy.

    Fantastic, brilliant.

    So…how do you explain the 75% growth in population for the downtown area between 1996 and 2011?

  • Tessa

    @Everyman 58

    Granville Island was not what I was trying to describe, which should be evident by my description, but rather more like underpasses under highway offramps or highways or things like that. There is one in particular in North Vancouver near the north end of the second narrows bridge that people, including myself, ignore, crossing the offramp without a crosswalk, because that feels safer than going through a small tunnel with a blind corner. Going under the bridge can be done well – it can also be done terribly.

  • Tessa

    @IanS 59
    “I can think of two reason why Vision would take that route.” (that route being the route of dismantling the viaducts)

    Only two? Really? There are multiple other reasons listed in the reports: that removing the viaducts allows better connections for everyone between Chinatown/DTES and the waterfront, that it will allow for more land for parks, that it will allow for more land for development (maybe some people think this is a bad thing – I don’t, not when you’re replacing what I believe is excess space for cars with a neighbourhood with people’s homes). Less often mentioned, it would fix a flaw in our transportation system, which sees a highway cars dumped into thin, tree-lined residential streets on the East Side, clogging streets with traffic that were never designed for it (Prior, Venables, Victoria, and all those little side-streets people use to skip the traffic on First, etc.) It allows for a significant neighbourhood revitalization which simply won’t happen with the viaducts there, regardless of what goes on top of them. Those are substantial reasons.

  • Tessa

    @Frances 57
    My apologies for assuming, but while he’s certainly picked up the issue more often in the last six months, it goes back much further than that. I understand many people haven’t been aware until recently but it’s been a longstanding concern.

  • Guest

    A second rapid transit line to Richmond? A city that will probably have to learn how to float in future?

    … or the downtown streetcar – which is currently in limbo – whatever rapid (or not) transit form that will use the Arbutus RoW the City has in the past fought hard to protect as a transportation corridor.

    RIEG @ 34
    Good analogy wrt University Boulevard in Toronto.

    You can look closer to home and ask whether people use the Cambie Heritage Boulevard, the King Edward Boulevard, 1st Avenue Boulevard or 16th Avenue Boulevard, as “parks”.

    Maybe there should be a movement to “reclaim” the boulevards for picnics and sports activities (rather than doggie doo doo).

  • Lee L

    To those of you who think ‘there has been no serious thought behind it’.. well you are quite wrong. There is a lot of serious thought behind this proposal as it fits in with the overwhelming vision being executed by city council.. namely to choke off car traffic any way it can and in particular any access roads in and out of downtown. Start with Burrard bridge ( tick ), move over to the Viaduct ( tick ), see if you can tear DOWN the Viaducts (… hmm still cooking that cake..), uhh how about Granville Bridge next?

    Vision Vancouver has managed to stack municipal government and, as zealots, really don’t give a hoot if you or I object. They are doing holy work, dont you know?

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