Did I miss something? I thought we just finished converting a lot of Granville back to allowing traffic and parking as the 70’s ped. mall made Granville Moribund for the last 30ish years. The retailers wanted this. One great party and we are going the other way already?

I’d also just like to note that “festive pedestrian-only streets” require a significant number of festive pedestrians to be successful. We just don’t have that on a regular basis. I spent alot of time roaming the streets downtown and enjoying the atmosphere during the Olympics, but I think it’s incredibly myopic to extrapolate that experience into the everyday Vancouver experience. Likewise, I don’t think the closure of the viaducts is all that worthy a goal. It may have facilitated safe pedestrian access and egress to Canada Hockey Place/BC Place and LiveCity Downtown throughout the Olympics, but walk around that area today and tell me the continued closure of the viaducts would be beneficial in any way. I could possibly be persuaded that there’s a case to be made for bringing down the viaducts to free up development opportunities at the False Creek level, but I’m not sure those outweigh the significant hampering of vehicular and bus access from the east to downtown.

I was at the Railway Club on Tuesday night to see Carolyn Mark, who normally plays to a pretty full room when she’s in town (on a weekend, at least.)

There were 10 people there.

Yeah. That lingering Olympic Spirit is great.

It was a great show though.

@Jon
I suggest taking a wonder down Granville. Things have changed a lot in the past 30 years. The portions that are closed to cars are pretty lively. It is only the sections that are open to cars and have parking where the businesses don’t seem to be doing well. The Canada Line has brought more people onto the street. Granville hasn’t had buses for the last 4 years and this seems to be working fine for the buses and the businesses.

In the section with all the bars, they close it to traffic on Friday and Saturday nights because they found that really cut down the number of fights.

As Burrard Bridge proved, sometimes you have to try something and see how it works before people will come on board. The Olympics and the Canada Line construction have essentially been that trial of a pedestrian only Granville and it worked very well.

Granville Street is a perfect bus/taxi route. Not competing with cars allows them to be more reliable and efficient, and connections to the u/g lines is direct, which should be a priority. The new street redesign is fantastic and comfortably accommodates lots of pedestrians and patio seating on the wide sidewalks. I think we should look at extending south the bus/taxi only zone maybe to Davie, but I think that transit should definitely return to Granville. I have no dog in this fight, I just think that coexistence of pedestrians and transit is the best solution for Granville Street.

I, too, like the redesign of Granville. But nowhere in memory was it ever closed to all vehicular traffic and opened exclusively to pedestrians until now.

This is a totally new experience worthy of considered study and debate on making it permanent, and I now see bringing back buses and taxis as a quick way to defeat it and make people forget.

Transferring from one bus or train to another has to be analyzed. I suspect that the majority of transfers can be accommodated on the same street (Seymour or Howe). And just how many transfer are there compared to downtown being the primary transit destination in the Lower Mainland?

And if buses are bogged down by the turning movements of cars, then I suggest bus stops be bumped out (like on Main Street) with the buses occupying the second lane from the curb, therein avoiding turning cars. Buses should also be given signal priority and their own exclusive lanes off Granville where possible. Buses do generate their own congestion on whatever chunk of road they occupy.

These are the kind of questions & ideas that need to be answered with a study. I’d volunteer at cost to be part of the consultant team if they decided to tour Europe to see how they do it in several cities, like the 6 km pedestrian-only Stroget in downtown Copenhagen.

@Ian

From what I have heard from TL is that the buses work fine on Granville. Passengers say they are quicker on Howe and Seymour than on Granville. I suspect this is because pedestrians are allowed to and due cross Granville anywhere in the street so buses have to travel slow. I know when I used to take the bus on Granville it always seemed like it was faster walking.

Anyway, the bus priority measures could be improved on Howe and Seymour to make the buses even faster.

“And from a pedestrian point of view, I did not realize until the Olympics how much better the experience is when one can wonder down the middle of the road as opposed to being forced on the sidewalks. The views of the mountains are spectacular from the middle of the road.”

The experience of place is central to understanding urbanism.

I also took note of the view from the center of the road vs. the sidewalk. Granville Street is an 80-foot right-of-way. Redesigning it with four lanes of cars take up 50% of that space, relegating the pedestrians and the cafés to 20-feet on either side.

I miss the old curving pavement with a 2-lane carriage way, and the trees that by now had reached mature scale.

I noticed a couple of other things, too.

First, the lack of “destinations” or “places to go”. I don’t mean establishments, bars, cafés, etc., but actual “places”: You could go to Yaletown; you could go to Robson Square or Robson Street. Some of us made the pilgrimage to see the “Olympic Cauldron”. But, there was nothing to experience there.

The urban planners failed the test of stitching together for us a “meaningful sequence” of public open spaces. By closing the street to cars, the created public space, and the public showed up to use it. However, once you got there it became clear how much of an empty gesture that really was. There was nowhere to walk to.

The second point has to do with solar penetration. There we were in the middle of February, in a city we should not recognize because the usual lush greenness had not yet sprouted, two full months past the shortest day of the year… Yet, by 3 p.m. Granville Street was engulfed in shadow.

It was only when one approached Davie on Granville that the old buildings were low enough to let the sun reach sidewalk level.

… And from a pedestrian point of view, this is a problem in urbanism of the first order.

Angie: What do you wanna do tonight?
Marty Pilletti: I dunno, Angie. What do you wanna do?

This is a no-fun city unless you drink to excess. Rationing drink units, anyone?

Legacy? Give us free entertainment on the streets, odd foods, and enough public washrooms.

Unfortunately Translink was one of the major funders of the Granville redesign (paid for 1/3rd of it I believe) so the buses will be coming back. The street is looking great right now without the buses, it is vibrant and people are free to use the entire right of way just like in most European cities or Santa Monica’s promenade. But if you’re going to open it to buses it defeats the whole purpose. With a bus coming every 30 seconds pedestrians will not be able to stroll freely off the sidewalk. In which case you might as well open it up to cars too. A huge planning miss for the City of Vancouver that was dictated by Translink’s mandate to keep Granville as the “spine” of its bus system (their words). So sad.