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Guest post by Voony: Vancouver’s war on buses

July 12th, 2013 · 28 Comments

Another brave soul has submitted a guest blog. I am back now, but thought this deserved an airing.
It all started with a Trojan horse: The 2010 Olympic games. Granville and Robson have been closed to all traffic. Granville had been closed before due to the Canada line construction, and bus were using dedicated lane on the couplet Howe/Seymour.
We all liked the pedestrian atmosphere and gathered at Robson#Granville (thought city hall, have planed Robson square as the centre for celebration)….but it is not because you have enjoyed your last family reunion, that you must organize your living room as if it was happening every day.
The Olympic games gone, the buses got back their historic routes…short respite…
A war on bus was brewing:
Pedestrian only Granville was considered good, so buses are now routinely demanded to go back on Howe/Seymour which have lost their bus lanes in the interim!
When Hornby received its cycle track, The city ostensibly relocated its curb side parking along Howe: The city made a point to not build a cycle track at the expense of parking: the bus lanes are the sacrificed goats
Granville buses surrendered; stoned by a blitzkrieg attack; the real battlefield is obviously Robson square.
It is a war, and going to war require an army: The purpose of Viva Vancouver:is to occupy the battlefield, which can’t sustain itself, without artificial activation, as has been demonstrated last fall (an attempt to force definitive closure without consultation?),.
Because it is a war, there is no mercy for the adversary: In despite of seasonal closure for more than 3 years. Not a single improvement has been brought to the Robson bus on its circuitous detour: The unnecessary hook via Smythe, to turn left turn on Burrard, from Robson, could have been easily fixed by now… whether City hall, was less contemptuous of the bus riders…
At best, bus riders are not considered differently from car drivers by both city Hall and, unfortunately the VPSN, an advocacy group for aggressive pedestrianization of Robson square.
(both 2012 City hall public consultation, which in fact has been organized by the VPSN, and the 2011 VPSN “petitions”, made sure it was not possible to differentiate buses of general traffic)
Obviously, on the margin of the main battlefields, skirmishes happen routinely, often under the disguise of good intentions:
  • A 30km/h speed limit on Hasting fine!… but without appropriate street design, it is widely ignored…but bus driver dutifully slow down…
  • A cycle track on Union, Great!…nearby business has been promised that parking space will be relocated on Main…in the way of the buses…
Since it is summer, many readers, like the host of this blog, will be visiting Europe. They will eventually witness there that transit usually receives consideration and that an aggressive pedestrianism agenda, is a 70’s concept, which is outmoded by shared spaces, where sustainable transportation mode, including transit, mingle with pedestrians, and naturally activate the place they serve.
They will also discover that it is not by erecting a blockade, as nice and attractive it can be, on a bus route that one will reduce car dependency…and still, it is exactly what Vancouver city hall is currently doing…

 

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  • Boohoo

    You can do better than perpetuating the ‘war on’ garbage.

    Transit isn’t supported because we collectively are a selfish society. Where we put bike lanes or parking or whatever is just a symptom of the bigger issue. It’s entirely unsurprising that we don’t support transit infrastructure when we don’t support transit!

  • Richard

    Well said Boohoo.

    The war on rhetoric is really tiresome. Robson is an obvious pedestrian street. Most other cities in the world would have made it one years ago. Taking transit on Robson is slower than walking. A much better idea would be to improve service on Georgia and add bus routes to Nelson/Smithe. This would provide people with fast efficient transit that is cost effective to operate.

    It is rediculous having buses turn at Robson and Granville, one of the busiest ped intersection in Vancouver (North America?). The buses turning end up backing up buses along Granville.

    On Robson, small pedestrian battery powered electric buses could be used to provide access for those with mobility challenges. These are used in pedestrian zones around the world. No need to run huge full sized buses down Robson.

  • Joe Just Joe

    Funny how the bike lobby argues against bike lanes along side roads arguing that they should be along the streets that people acutally are destined for, yet here we have the bike lobby telling us the buses should be on alternate roads and not the ones that people are destined for.

  • mezzanine

    ^ @3, I re-read voony’s article, and i am not sure where you got that from.

    I’m no fan of derek corrigan, but one thing he did good on was the transit only lane on willingdon by BCIT. a simple intervention (removing free parking lanes for transit only lanes) has sped things up immensely for buses. 99% of the time a driver would be waiting for the slow traffic to flow thru the intersection at canada way, while buses sail thru. one (rare) example of where a bus has a significant time advanctage over driving.

    Amazingly, this was done with no fuss from “hard-working students getting their free parking taken from them”, AFAIK. Must be that magical corrigan political teflon….

  • Matthew

    “Robson is obviously a pedestrian street”. There are 4 car lanes and only 2 “lanes” for pedestrians. Notice how Richard does not dare to suggest that a lane or two of car space on Robson should be re-allocated to transit or pedestrian.

    There was a time when the bike lobby was an allay of public transit but now they are an adversary. That is why there is a lot of hostility towards the bike lobby. It’s easier to attack public transit and their small numbers of supporters than go against the even larger car lobby.

  • Joe Just Joe

    It wasn’t in Vonny’s post, my comment was toweards a comment on the post.

  • boohoo

    ‘bike lobby’ ‘car lobby’ ‘transit lobby’

    bullshit.

    How about we have adult an conversation about efficient transportation that is, as best as possible socially, economically and environmentally sustainable and benefits us all.

    Every form of transportation plays a role. How can we have a region (yes region!) that moves people and goods around as efficiently as possible? That’s a good starting question, not ‘vision wars with transit’, that’s asinine.

  • Bill Lee

    “The purpose of Viva Vancouver:is to occupy the battlefield, which can’t sustain itself, without artificial activation, as has been demonstrated last fall (an attempt to force definitive closure without consultation?),”

    Yes, I wondered about that. Why this Viva think putting events downtown on the dead street of Granville?
    Will new guest Nordstrom become upset by the closing of Granville every weekend?

    Other festivals, as have been noted elsewhere move out to suburbs, or exurbs rather than be in Downtown.
    Even the Chinatown stuff is livelier in Richmond these days.

    Does anyone not living downtown dare to go downtown where the “parking is not free” these days.

    It is all bread and circuses until one festival leads a (probably drunken) revolution against inequality and festivals. Summertime Occupy Vancouver anyone?

    And the police aren’t downtown anymore. Even the Vancouver Police Credit Union has moved to Victoria and 33rd. A very simple matter to close Cambie street off.

    Viva sponsored festivals seem so fake compared to the somewhat gritty eastside fests at Trout Lake, Fraser Street, Victoria Drive and so on.

  • Bill Lee

    “A 30km/h speed limit on Hasting fine!… but without appropriate street design, it is widely ignored…but bus driver dutifully slow down… – ”

    Yes and there have been two knockdowns in the past few weeks.

    No one puts their cars in second gear to abide by the 30 km (20 mph for some) along the 6 block stretch. The city put a crosswalk last month in the Zeroth block East Hastings with huge 6 metre stop lines before the crosswalk lines, and they are widely ignored too.

    The “Your Speed is too fast KMH” sign up on poles at Gore and Hastings is always flashing 50 or 60 KMH at drivers. Must be the person behind.

    I note in recent stories about the belated (everyone did it, and better, elsewhere) street piano stories on various TV news, that no body is lounging on Robson.
    That is so last year. Bring the buses back to our quadrilinear city streets.

  • Tessa

    It’s a good issue to bring up, the lack of adequate attention paid to transit, but I don’t think this post does it justice. And that’s really too bad.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    buses are for loosers… B-Line is not BRT… trolleys are parked at the Translink Centre that can’t be used…

    The proof that we are still an automobile culture posing as “green-on-transit” is in the pudding.

    VANOC messed up the Robson pedestrianization. The gates that were erected paralleling the curbs made it impossible for people to use the street and the sidewalk at the same time. It was shocking to me. So, a golden opportunity to test pedestrianization of Robson went foul.

    ZURICH allows trams on its pedestrian shopping street (as do countless other cities), so we need to be flexible in our calculus around closing the street off to this and to that.

    VANOC’S GRANVILLE STREET was a bar crawl pure and simple. Good if you enjoy that sort of thing, but a complete failure as far as social mixing.

    The run-away favourite were the lantern trees erected on plywood bases that people could jump on and make sound like the beat of a drum. That really was exciting. VANOC was on the job everyday splicing small patches of plywood where the boots broke through the plywood skin.

    The Mount Pleasant Community Plan as drafted, and the Grandview-Woodlands Plan as revealed this past week—greeted by loud protest at GWAC last Monday night—are Exhibit A and Exhibit B that we are not thinking about urbanism as providing either the infrastructure to sustain social functioning, or the means to implement a complete zero-green-house-gas transit grid.

    Then, there is the fleet of trolleys parked at the Transit Centre, corsage already on, with nowhere to run. Where are the transit-only lanes with signal priority? [I’m going to check Willindgon at BCIT—that sounds exciting].

    I’m not sure we want buses on BRT lanes. Electrified trolleys seem like the entry-level choice for reasons of noise and pollution. Then we can convert to LRT at some time in the future when we can make the case crystal clear.

    However, as guest poster Voony is suggesting, the problem is not this solution or that, but rather our apparent reticence to embrace a comprehensive transit strategy, and get the job done.

    Greenest city? Sure… Green with envy.

  • teririch

    @Lewis N. Villegas #11

    I have a couple of dozen of those ‘lanterns’.

    After the Olympics ended, I was out to see a client in the area and noticed they were dismanteling the trees. For a donation to the group that made them, you could take them.

    Grabbed a bag, donated some $$ and have great keepsakes.

  • teririch

    @Bill Lee #8:

    I agree with you on the closing of Granville to transit for Viva which = absolutley nothing happening – a complete dead zone.

    I feel badly for those businesses in the area – they have to be taking a hit not just revenue wise, but jobs wise as well.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    Street closings are working, though. In Mount Pleasant Car FREE Dayshad about 3x more people show up. At our school, Celebrate Mount Pleasant Daydoubled in size from the first two years. The Mount Pleasant BIAs Shift into Autumn Festivalthis September will tell the tale. If numbers are significantly up there as well, maybe we can call it a “Street Festival Movement”.

    Secrete in Mount Pleasant is the Free Fun for the Kinds and the Entire Family approach.

    Hmmmm… would be great to see some of those Oympics Lanterns teririch.

  • Simon

    Why the battle between transit and pedestrian space? Transit riders are pedestrians too, and pedestrian space needs transit access to make it popular.

    Granville should be for buses and buses only, its a natural route that connects everything, especially as it has a bridge at one end and transit stations on the way. Some sections of Robson are good for buses too, but others would be better as public spaces and shared spaces. Robson Square is a great example of where public space is the best use of the space. Have people actually gone to Robson Square to see it, and sit in it? It is very popular.

    I agree the Robson to Burrard trolley wire should have been put in by now. Also Georgia needs dedicated bus lanes, better waiting conditions and a downtown only bus. Georgia like Granville links to everything with a bridge at one end and passes through the major downtown transit connect (Granville at Georgia). Georgia is a natural transit route that is currently not great for transit because of heavy car traffic.

    The battle should be to get better transit, cycling and pedestrian spaces in downtown, not between these complementary modes. Instead join forces and fight the dominance of the car. Downtown will be better for it.

  • mike0123

    A casual, disinterested resident should be able to predict where he should go to wait for a particular bus route. Temporary street closures make transit less predictable and less useful.

    The occasional and seasonal closures of Granville and Robson to transit greatly inconvenience transit operations and riders. There are, as I see it, at least two satisfactory ways to resolve the conflict over the use of these streets:
    1) permanently change the routes so they no longer run on these streets
    2) accommodate the routes within the design of the streets while holding events elsewhere.

    If we start looking at the former option, we quickly realize that the downtown bus network is in need of a larger redesign. Much has changed in the last 30 years, especially the introduction of rapid transit, and the design of the bus network hasn’t been optimized for that context. Specifically, there aren’t bus capacity constraints on Hastings anymore, there are capacity imbalances on the busy north-south routes east of downtown, and there aren’t many suburban bus routes in general.

    If we start looking at the latter option, we quickly realize there really isn’t another centrally located place to hold those events. Maybe one of the two, Robson or Granville but not both, could become that place.

  • teririch

    @Lewis N. Villegas #14:

    Some of the laterns are currently decorating my balcony… 🙂

    (I will snap a pic and throw it up on my tweet feed @teririch)

  • teririch

    @mike0123 #16:

    I don’t think the city thinks through just how badly transit is affected when street closures are put into place – especially when there are mulitple street closures throughout the city.

    When Greek Festival took place on W. Broadway, there were other street closures happening throughout the city that day as well. It took me roughly 3 hours to get to Surrey, via transit and the better part of it was waiting for a bus and trying to get onto a bus.

    At one point, I thought screw this and tried getting a cab – good luck on that one as well.

    Folks were trying to get to destinations, lots of elderly trying to get home and people with samll kids/strollers, of which the few busses that did show up could not accomodate as they were already loaded.

    The #22 was virtually non-existant heading south, a few #2’s showed up, and the 99 B-line – what a mess. It was re-routed down West 4th, which has construction on it which holds things up…. it was a shear lesson in frustration.

    So if the city wants to promote tranist to fesitval goers, they really need to rethink multiple reroutes and how it affects the people they are trying to promote usage to.

    If people have to stand for hours trying to get a bus, well then, it is just not worth it.

  • Voony

    First thank Frances, to publish my post.

    People could not like the narrative. That is because it exposes an unpleasant truth:
    The facts exposed in the post undeniably demonstrate that the Vancouver policy has translated in a much worse transit service in the last 3 years.

    If you disagree with that, you would like bring some counter examples.
    I have questioned Geoff Meggs at the Broadway Subway rally in last April: he was unable to give a single one -­the only thing he was able to come is that Vision cut the ribbon on the Canada line! That speaks volume!

    In fact as noticed by Mezzanine, even Dereck Corrigan has a better record that Vision on this topic.

    Boohoo says nice generalities in his comment @7, but when the president of the BC cycle coalition wholeheartedly endorses an anti transit tirade, you will have to admit we are pretty much off a bad start.

    When the president of the BC cycle coalition advocates for some privileges for cyclist, which it exactly deny to others, mainly bus users, as astutely pointed by Joe Just Joe @3, you will have to admit we have a problem.

    Some people will call Richard the representative of a “bike lobby”, a “selfish” one considering the above: The “bike lobby” will often touts a new york study, measuring the street, stating the retail sales have increased by 39% along bike lanes… and that has become one of their key rational to sale bike lanes on retail arteries in Vancouver…the very same NYC study states that retail sales has increased by 71% along corridor with improved bus service, and still the “bike lobby”, not only see no objection at rerouting bus service away of retail strip, but advocates for it! Go figure!

    What kind of “bike lobby” we are facing there?

    Yes, boohoo, it could be nice to have an adult conversation…

    Richard’s view on transit and pedestrian are rather weird, but hopefully some education can correct that:

    He believes buses on Robson are too big, and little electric shuttle (like the green shuttle in Old quarter of Hanoi, Vietnam, mainly used by tourist) should replace it. The victims of the 2000 passups along the Robson bus could beg to differ.

    He believes there is too much pedestrians at Robson/Granville to put a bus, and still want to put it at Robson/Burrard where there are even more pedestrians.


    Furthermore, if you believe like Richard that the pedestrians load is too heavy for a bus on Robson/Granville, then you should also believe that all European and Asian cities should scrap their surface transit, Toronto and New York as well. (by the way, what is “ridiculous” is to think that Robson/Granville is the busiest intersection in NA! Seriously?)

    He also believes that most other cities could have made Robson pedestrian only years ago…
    but do we have specific examples to support this assertion?

    Zürich’s bahnhofstrasse? Ever wondered where pass transit lines 2,3,4,6,7,8,9,11,13,14,15…?
    Barcelona Ramblas? Ever wondered where pass buses 14,59 or 91 ?
    …
    Ever wondered why Sydney decided against full pedestrianization of George street?
    Ever wondered why Wellington scrapped a pedestrian only mall, to restore bus service on it?
    ….

    So, in fact you could have very hard time to find a city in the world leaving the equivalent of Robson street without any transit access.

    I am cycling and I enjoy pedestrian spaces, but Transit is the backbone making both possible and successful, and believe reasonable compromises can be achieved…like its has been in countless cities not only taking transit seriously, but taking transit seriously because taking mobility needs and accessibility seriously. We still have to see that to happen in Vancouver.

    This http://voony.wordpress.com/2013/07/02/the-downtown-vancouver-bus-service-vision-in-1975/ , lay down a good basis for that (including pedestrian orientation of Robson)

    Today, what is effectively curious is that what should be natural Transit allies, public space advocates and some cyclist advocates tend to take an anti transit stand as we have seen here. That is unfortunate, and may be it is because there is no organized “transit lobby” per sei, in Vancouver; locals transit fan usually devoting more time at despising/advocating certain technologies, rather than promoting transit at large; offering a counterweight. The consequence is that it is easier for other group to axe transit to advance their own cause..
    but do that is good for the city has a whole?

    I, by the way, kind of agree with the Bill Lee and teririch observations, which are corroborated by Stephen Rees.
    In despite of tremendous effort, and very clement weather, the pedestrian spaces stay curiously empty – a failed party in the living room, become a success in the kitchen in other word, the pedestrian only spaces could be too big…
    …And that also could have to be recognized.

  • Simon

    @Voony I don’t think broad sweeping statements like “In despite of tremendous effort, and very clement weather, the pedestrian spaces stay curiously empty” are very helpful. It sounds very similar to complaints about bus or bike lanes we hear all the time in the press – that because someone drove past on Sunday afternoon and saw no bus or bikes in the designated lane, the lane must be a failure, a waste of space and money, and should be removed. These comments ignore that the bus and bike lanes work really well at the times they are supposed to, like commuter rush hours.

    Robson Square like English Bay, Vancouver beaches and Granville Island, are full of people when they are supposed to be full of people. For Robson Square this is at lunchtimes and weekends. Just because Robson Square is not packed with people in the morning commute or on a rainy day, doesn’t make it a failure. Saying the square has to be full of people all the time, leads to seasonal openings and these are bad for transit and public space.

    Applying your criticism to Granville Street pedestrianization though is much more valid. Even when Granville Street is supposed to be busy, such as programmed weekend events, it doesn’t seem to work that well as a public space. Which is why I think Granville should be left as a bus only street all year round. We should be honest about where the successes and failures are.

    Don’t judge all public space by the worst examples you can find, that’s what the auto lobby do to suppress transit, bike lanes and public space.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    Transit is the backbone

    Voony 19

    Boy, I like that. Let’s do it again….

    Transit is the backbone

    … of ‘good’ urbanism.

    Why? Because it extends the pedestrian’s reach. EVERY transit trip begins and ends in a pedestrian trip. Thus, pedestrian trips outweigh transit by 2 : 1!

    However, pedestrians are dead in the water without transit! What is the fun of living in a place where you can’t walk far enough to see something new?

    On the success of pedestrian spaces in our city… I count four: Gastown, Chinatown, Granville Island, and (with much protest owing to the poor design of the public realm) Yaletown.

    Granville Mall doesn’t qualify. And Robson just misses out.

    When it comes to ‘Urbanism in Vancouver’ outside the West End we have to admit that the Molson Lans is about as close as we’ve gotten to it

    But, the so-called Arbutus Walk—gaud, I had to google to get that name —just AINT urbanism!!

    Voony would well point out: Where is the transit at Arbutus Walk???

    Mothballed.

    Who in their right mind wants to put odds on the re-implementation of transit on the Arbutus R.O.W.??

    Greenest city? Sure… Green with envy.

  • Voony

    Simon,

    your points are well taken, but one could argue that a public space doesn’t work as a transportation infrastructure (be a bike, transit, car lane):

    At the difference of the above, it is well accepted, even among promoter of public space, that a public square to be sucessfull, need to reach a certain level of crowding, hence my analogy with the failed party in the living room, which become a success in the kitchen.

    It is by the way what happened to Melbourne’s City square: it used to be a failure, but once halved by 2 it has morphed into a celebrated public space.

    The shrinking operation, has allowed to redefine the square’s edges: as pointed by Rob Adam, director of city design in Melbourne, a square is as good as its edges are- a square is activated by stuff on its edge, not by the stuff you put in the middle.

    (that is something Vancouver seems to stubbornly ignore, and so all the Vancouver public square are basically failure due to this)

    Back to Robson square: here are the observations of Stephen Rees:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_rees/9212838378/in/photostream/

    The picture seems to have been taken on July 4 around 3pm (it is what say the jpeg meta data)…
    hardly a rainy morning commute.

    There are some people lingering – but what the picture says, is that they just prefer the wood benches under the umbrella to the concrete ones in full sun – and to many people, it will simply looks empty …
    …may be at lunch time it could be more people…

    may be with another “activation” type, it could work better (that is what Lewis seems to suggest, and I could agree this one could lack the interactivity element, at the difference of the last year one)

    Still , the above seems hardly able to justify to inconvenient 10,000 transit patrons, since it appears, there is still ample room for a bus to pass every 5mn or so, at basically all the time.
    (you will find on internet lot of much more crowded place sharing space with transit):
    It is not to say it is ideal for any party, but it is the best compromise for all, and one could even argue a better one that an empty, hence dead, pedestrian space.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    On making spaces smaller…

    Happens all the time in Roma. Through centuries of experimentation the Romans (including present day citizens) seem to have become experts at re-sizing public spaces.

    In some cases (as at Piazza Navona) a chariot race course was converted into the public room and heart of the longest-inhabited neighbourood in the western world.

    In other cases we can witness a building acting as a “plug”: built at the end of a piazza or square to adjust the proportions of the space. My favourite example is at Santa Maria in Trastevere. There the main square in front of the basilica, as well as a side square that aligns with the church’s apse, are headed by barroquish buildings that look suspiciously as if they are just in the right place!

    on buses on Robson

    We’re talking theoretically until we study the place, and Robson is not just one place but two or three places strung together in a row. Those are just some caveats. However…

    There are so many examples the world over about trams running in pedestrian priority places that it seems extreme to rule them out right off the bat.

    The Robson-Denman-Davie horse shoe is the former tram footprint (connecting to Burrard, I believe). One person who grew up in the West End 50 years ago mentioned how Nicola (the spine of the horse shoe) was used by the neighbourhood children to go to and from school. He also chided that the other favourite thing for the kids in the ‘hood was to ride the trolleys for free.

    We need to create People Places to anchor our neighbourhood centres and generate pedestrian trips. And we need to be agile in our imaginations about the many ways we can use to get there.

  • Simon

    Voony,

    Some great points. Agree that a square is only as good as it edges. Also agree that Vancouver appears to ignore this. Robson Square doesn’t have especially good edges at the moment, but it is more successful and does have more potential than most other squares in Vancouver. The introduction of food carts on Howe has helped improve one edge. Nordstrom opening with some windows that interact with the square will help when completed. Other changes would improve the edges too such as improving and relocating the tourist information booth. More drastically improvements of the edge could include reinstating the courthouse/art gallery steps as an entrance, especially if the art gallery does move. Robson Square’s potential is there, and the removal of the street through the middle will open up more options, such as adding shade and seating.

    I think experience already shows that Robson Square is a better public space without transit passing through the middle of it. Adding the bus through the middle doesn’t help animate the square like your Melbourne example.

    Although I agree the reroutes currently inconveniences a large number of transit riders, the winter time route through Robson Square isn’t that convenient for these transit riders either. As others have pointed out the turn onto Granville is far from ideal, and major destinations like the central library still aren’t accessible in both directions. I suggest rather than saying Robson Square ruins the transit network and should be opposed at all costs, it would be better to use Robson Square to get much needed transit improvements. Adding the wires at Burrard and Robson and making other suggestions in the downtown bus review would be good starting points.

    This could be a win win for all.

  • Voony

    Simon,

    I think Lewis@23 provides very good answer to your comment @24.

    He noticeabily says:

    “There are so many examples the world over about trams running in pedestrian priority places that it seems extreme to rule them out right off the bat.”,
    It is exactly my position.

    You think Robson square is better without transit, …may be at lunch time on a sunny summer day, but we haven’t experimented Robson square with transit only, so the jury is still out on it:

    Robson square with transit only, means only a vehicule passing every 5mn or so, an “empty lane” rest of the time, which can then be used for impromptu, like street hockey (we did that with soccer and tennis where we where kid, and it was very cool), busker,…and obviously cyclists…a dynamic and organic use of a place accessible to people of all age and ability take place…

    a weakness of the transit network in A, doesn’t justify to get rid of B…

    First, as mentioned by Lewis, Robson/Denman/Davie transit horseshoe has been here for 125 years, the city has been built around it, the most recent westend plan is build around it: it is an initimate part of the city fabric

    Second, A good transit network is founded on important principle/geometry, see http://voony.wordpress.com/2013/07/02/the-downtown-vancouver-bus-service-vision-in-1975/ , which readers of Jarret walker know well.

    One important principle is:
    one arterial = one bus route.

    so yes the turn at Granville of the 5 is not ideal, as the turn at Granville of the 6.

    But notice the reason is geometry, not level of traffic be pedestrian or bus, or whatever destination you could have in mind ( I exclude anchor at the end of the line).

    You mention the library- which happens to be on Robson! …but basically, especially in downtown, focusing on destinations is rarely conducting of a good resilient Transit network…

    “destinations” change over time: a good network doesn’t need to adapt to that changing pattern
    ( the 49 diversion at Champlain Mall is a good example, of why it is bad).
    Vancouver transit is organized along a grid, it makes it very resilient. Obviously the horseshoe Robson/Denman/Davie is very important because it is the downtwon transit grid: Robson and Davie are 1/2 mile apart, and ~1/4 mile from the shore…you can’t get better transit coverage of Downtown than that, and this Transit horseshoe is as relevant if not more than a century ago.
    Why break it to satisfy the fashion of the day?

    So, if a win/win solution exist in the case of Robson square, I will be happy to hear about it, in the meantime, I think every party should be open to a compromise.

  • Simon

    Voony,

    Lewis@23 also says the horseshoe connected at Burrard. I’m not sure if this is true, but if it is I assume the historical route didn’t go through Robson Square. But this is an aside to a larger point.

    Some of the historical routes such as Denman, Davie and Burrard are still the only transit route options and should therefore have transit on them prioritized. However a major change to the downtown in the last 150 years was the addition of the Lions Gate Bridge (1938) which now makes Georgia Street the natural network route in terms of geometry, not Robson Street. The downtown has also changed with the addition of Coal Harbour, Yaletown and Skytrain lines, plus a much more dense West End and downtown core. So the geometry is not exactly the same now as it was for the historical tram routes. Robson would appear to be less important in terms of geometry than it was. While Granville, Davie, Georgia, and Nelson would appear to be more important now, as they are direct routes through downtown that connect to bridges at one end and have lots of high priority locations on the way.

    The option of putting trams along Robson and through Robson Square to make transit and public space coexist, is a very expensive option. For the same money imagine the extra transit wires and dedicated bus lanes that could be installed in downtown. For less money Georgia and Burrard could become real BRT routes. However I don’t expect either to happen any time soon.

    For now we have Granville Street as a pure example of transit and public space trying to coexist in Vancouver, and Robson Square as an almost example because it has cars too. I personally don’t think either work as public space, though I’d agree it would be better to only have transit through Robson Square than the current transit and car combination.

  • Simon

    Also having transit and public space sharing the same space, leads to the temptation of rerouting transit when the public space is wanted for an event – Granville Street and Robson Square both provide examples of this happening.

    The resulting reroutes are not good for transit or the public space. So keeping public space and transit routes separate seems to be for the best, in Vancouver at least.

    A permanent Robson Square without transit therefore seems the best option. Maybe it could also help take the seasonal events off Granville too.

  • lisab

    meh. I’m currently living in an old European town centre in Poland and the nearest transit only gets within a few blocks of the pedestrian-dominated core. The streets here are mostly pedestrian-only, with a few that are pedestrian-dominated but do allow cars (slowly). Transit is limited to the outer ring (easy walking distance). So this idea that transit must go to every block and right through our plaza is not borne out here. It’s very quiet and lovely as a result, I might add. (Recognizing that those with mobility issues may find it more challenging.)

    Mind you, it’s a different story outside the pretty, restored core area – there it’s a battle between cars and transit and it’s loud, noisy, and the pedestrian is definitely the loser (cyclists also).