Congestion--the city planner's friend
Date: 2002-09-07
"Congestion is our friend," says Vancouver city councillor Gordon Price. He's talking about the city's policy of deliberate congestion as a way of keeping the downtown livable. The aging Lions Gate Bridge, for example, acts as a barrier to suburban traffic, pushing suburbanites to take to alternative means of transportation to get downtown. It has performed "brilliantly" in helping preserve a downtown that's the envy of the world, Price told the Vancouver Sun newspaper recently.
The Provincial government's 1998 decision to fix the Lion's Gate Bridge instead of building a bigger bridge or a tunnel linking the city centre and the North Shore has been hailed as "by far the most important transportation decision of the '90s." However, while Price is exuberant about the effectiveness of congestion in fostering a livable downtown community, the city's business community, particularly the Vancouver Board of Trade, criticizes it as being well-intentioned but it not reflecting commercial interests.
The board and the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association criticize the plan's "obsession with bicycles," saying they represent a minuscule percentage of the population. Chief city planner Larry Beasley acknowledges the city's explicit policy against cars and says the city's new Downtown Transportation Plan will improve the facility for the 80,000 downtown population to move around using bicycles, walkways and public transit, while maintaining ease of use for automobiles.
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