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Pattullo Bridge, viaducts, urban forum: A good week for urban wonks

June 4th, 2012 · 20 Comments

Others may waste their time raising children, tending gardens, or hiking the Coast Mountains, but for true urban wonks, there’s nothing more satisfying than seminars, open houses, and lectures about urban issues. A treasure trove this week.

June 5, 7 and 9: Open houses to look at the Vancouver city staff recommendations on removing the viaducts and re-organizing the land use in Northeast False Creek (and more explanations of those slides from their websites that, to the people like me who score low on visual-comprehension tests, are hard to understand). Evening sessions.

June 6: Also on the theme of older bridge-like structures we could rethink is the community forum on imaginative re-uses of the Pattullo Bridge, with speakers Gordon Price, SFU prof Anthony Perl, and New West city engineer Jerry Behl, organized in part by Daniel Fontaine of CityCaucus and Sam Sullivan chief of staff fame. It’s in the evening, so you could attend it after a full day at the event below.

June 6: The Urban Forum: Fourth Wave Urban Reform being organized by former mayor Sam Sullivan and his Global Civic Policy Society. Speakers include urban thinker rock star Edward Glaeser, former mayor of Bogota and guru of urbanists Gil Penalosa, and more. All day long

 

 

Categories: Uncategorized

  • Roger Kemble

    Oh dear . . . more empty talk . . .

  • Roger Kemble

    PS John Nash was commissioned to design Regent’s Street because the Prince Regent was having an affair with his wife!

    I cannot thinq of a better way to design a city . . .

  • brilliant

    Sad to see the viaduct idiocy spread to the “reimagining” of the Patullo Bridge. When did the inmates take control of the asylum?

  • Michael

    Nice!

  • Bill Lee

    Good to see you mention evening sessions. We can’t all swan around like land speculators and their attendant council poodles to day sessions.

  • Bill Lee

    Concord Pacific to make more billions from city-arranged realignment roads?
    And how much value did Tommy Fung get out of swapping Hazelbridge Way road when he rebuilt Aberdeen Centre (Era or Dynasty 時代坊 ) in 2002.

  • Max

    Why bother going through a ‘public consultation’ sham…errr, meetings.

    Vision will vote to boot the viaducts regardless.

  • Anne M

    According to the CBC blog: Many angry people at viaduct open house. Most opposed to council study into tearing them down.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    I agree with all the disappointment being voiced here, either in the posts, or by the non-posters. We have reached an interesting point in our city…

    Yet again…

    The public consultation process has broken down… Mayor Moonbeam has made it Chrystal that either he doesn’t “get it”, or he doesn’t “have it”…

    The wrong projects are getting the green light.

    That’s why I’m going to share a conversation at MTP Coffee Clutch this morning. A fellow clutcher expressed her dismay that the viaducts might come down since they have, “Always been there”.

    I offered a few facts…

    (1) The viaducts are the end-piece of a failed plan to build a Freeway through downtown.

    (2) The viaducts date to the late 1960’s.

    (3) In my opinion they are not seismically safe.

    (4) We can build a neighbourhood in the area currently blighted by the viaducts.

    (5) It can be a neighbourhood of “affordable housing”, if we so choose.

    While I don’t intend to hijack the MTP coffee clutch into a crucible for urbanist thinking, I’ll be interested to follow up next Tuesday morning to see whether or not my efforts to confront “perception” with “fact” has loosened the consciousness there.

    The city we get is not the city we want

  • jenables

    Lewis, can you please address the reality of the viaducts coming down, namely the number of cars which will be driving on small ler streets in strathcona andthe dtes, and the escarpment which will not disappear with the viaducts. I will not accept an argument based on what people “should” do, or “ideally”. I want you to address the congestion this project will bring.

  • jolson

    In Vancouver “the greenest of cities” don’t we know that demolition of the viaducts will increase carbon emissions? Where is the analysis to back up this beautification proposal?

  • Bill Lee

    “and the escarpment which will not disappear with the viaducts. ”

    And the Georgia Viaduct has ‘always been there’ in the form of a iron bridge from 1915 from Georgia to Keefer [Harris Street] (and you can still see, but they are digging it up this week, the settings on the west side of Main and Keefer next to the Hydro Substation)
    It was a streetcar route over the inflow of the tidal False Creek, and numerous tracks, now filled with detrius to the benefit of Lee Kai-ching’s Concord Pacific development.
    One set of pictures
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/vancouver-archives/5456681379/

  • Bill Lee

    So was the Vancouver Urban forum
    http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23vuf
    worth $250?

    And what do Sam Sullivan’s various charities add up to this year? Madame Bula did a deep profile of the Sullivan as mayor and charity organizer-recipient in Peter Legge’s BC Business magazine back in September 2006
    “Sam Sullivan: Vancouver’s Passive-Aggressive Mayor” by Frances Bula | September 1, 2006
    See virtual page 2 for her Canada Revenue investigations.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    Lewis, can you please address the reality of the viaducts coming down, namely the number of cars which will be driving on small ler streets in strathcona andthe dtes, and the escarpment which will not disappear with the viaducts.

    Great question.

    BTW—I don’t have good information for the escarpment which is clearly on view as you circle around the football stadium, Costco, Stadium Station, and the hockey stadium. Needless to say, I see it as a design problem, rather than an insurmountable wall of granite.

    Traffic on the Viaducts is about 40,000 vpd last I checked, mostly in the form of single occupancy vehicles driving to work. We had a reaction to that at the MTP coffee clutch as well…

    “I refuse to abandon my car!”

    Another perception vs. fact issue that would soon fade away as most will gladly choose the path of least resistance to get around.

    However, I agree with the expressed concern. Tearing down the Viaducts without a concomitant transit implementation would be a mistake.

    (1) BRT on Hastings;

    (2) False Creek Street (see post #9 http://francesbula.com/questions/why-do-the-denser-forms-of-housing-get-stuck-on-the-busiest-streets/);

    (3) BRT on both Broadway and Main.

    (4) In fact, I don’t see why the rational next step to the bike lane experiment should not be to deploy a full range of HOV lanes for BRT on every trolley-served arterial.

    So “jenables”, the answer to your question is: the congestion never shows up!

    If we convert trolley routes to BRT, revitalizing the neighbourhoods in the process through the redesign of the arterial cross-section, then we add so much trip capacity that even my fellow coffee clutcher will be saying:

    “To hell with it, I’m riding the (fast, efficient and clean) BRT! ”

    Convenience, efficiency & cost are on my side. So is the significant potential to redevelop some very mis-shappen urban land and reap significant space for the kind of housing that may not get built otherwise in NE False Creek.

    The extension of Carrrall Street south to meet Expo Boulevard ranks as about the worst piece of urbanism I’ve seen built in our city (the park on either side is not much better).

    That land below the viaducts could be platted to great advantage, and Expo Boulevard re-purposed as a neighbourhood spine with doors fronting on both sides onto a median carrying a streetcar named Desirée with joggers trampling down the route on weekends and holidays.

    Further, the size of those new blocks will play a key role in determining whether or not there is grid-lock (super blocks), or platting for traffic dispersal (human-scale blocks).

    The city we get is not the city we want.

  • jenables

    Ok, no, but seriously you do realize brt is really not something everyone is capable of doing for a variety of reasons, that is a fact much more than your opinion which seems to be if you want it badly enough, everyone else will too. I understand where you are coming from but it’s very fanciful, I don’t think being realistic is pessimistic or aiming low.

  • jolson

    regarding 14
    So “jenables”, the answer to your question is: the congestion never shows up!
    So “lewis”, you are wrong yet again! You should read the Cities own Traffic Consultant Report which clearly states that congestion will result if the Viaducts are demolished and that transit rides will take longer. The question is what are the additional resulting carbon emissions? Or to put it another way will the traffic cops have a hay-day passing out tickets to drivers idling engines for more than 2 minutes, an enforceable Bylaw currently on the books. Is this the new green economy we are all expecting? Or is this all just another folly in pursuit of a beautiful world while we ignore the natural one all around us?

  • CraigsM6

    You know Lewis, it would help if you would just tell the TRUTH.

    The TRUTH, as I am sure you well know, is that the viaduct is not the end piece of a failed freeway project. As you well know, there has been a viaduct there since 1913 (Model T was not freeway capable) and for exactly the same reasons THEN ( carrying horses, wagons, bikes) as now ( carrying cars, bikes and people) quickly into and out of downtown.

    What you fail to be TRUTHFUL about is that all the window dressing about the wonderful things that COULD be done with the land under the viaducts could be done anyway if there was a desire to do so.

    What you fail to be TRUTHFUL about is that removal of these roadways WILL produce traffic congestion and I submit that is one main reason that they are being removed… to manufacture more congestion and make it so unpleasant to drive a car that people use other means. Of course mostly what happens is that they dont use other means if they are going and coming for work, and they just stay home if they were going to the Symphony or the Queen Elizabeth. The continuous ( and intentional) erosion of cheap, easy parking downtown no d0ubt contributes to the difficulties cultural institutions in the downtown area have in maintaining a loyal audience. Further traffic restriction will certainly make things worse and Vision knows this and they like it.

  • The Other David

    @Bill Lee #12… Great photo, but those tracks are *below* the viaduct, It had tracks, but no service … to quote http://www.explorevancouver.net/articles/bridges-of-greater-vancouver

    Georgia Viaduct 1915-1972 This was built in 1913-15 for the City of Vancouver to extend Georgia Street over the CPR’s Beatty Street yard. It was named the “Hart McHarg” bridge for a World War I hero, but the name did not last.
    A classic product of low bidding ($494,000) and meagre supervision, it was never a sound bridge. Streetcar tracks were laid but never used. Every second lamppost was removed to save weight. Much blacktop was used to fill mysterious sags and hollows in the deck. People passing below were injured by falling concrete, and concrete spans were propped with timber. The bridge was replaced by the parallel Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts in 1972, each carrying three lanes of one-way traffic.

  • Bill Lee

    I remember the sags and hollows. And interesting rough ride, but common on the poor city streets, (even today, many potholes on residential streets)
    There was a photo in online archives of one streetcar on the Georgia Viaduct from the old days (double ended, not the wonderful PCC cars of later years).

  • Bill Lee

    Short summary of session 2 above, about the Pattullo bridge , at: http://www.newwestnewsleader.com/news/157878305.html