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It’s nice that Vancouver doesn’t have a highway cutting it in half like Seattle, but it also takes longer to drive anywhere. From my experience, many of its ne
by dangwu 4y ago
It’s nice that Vancouver doesn’t have a highway cutting it in half like Seattle, but it also takes longer to drive anywhere.
From my experience, many of its neighborhoods/dining districts feel really cold/loud/unwalkable due to the high speed 4 lane roads everywhere. Traffic noise still seems like a huge issue, trying to parallel park when cars are buzzing by at 50 mph isn’t fun, and the unprotected left turns are pretty gnarly.
- dleslie 4y agoIt's not immediately apparent from the street names; but the Grandview Highway and Georgia St effectively act as parts of a bifurcating through-way, albeit with a congestion nightmware between them.
- Tiktaalik 4y agoNot really comparable to a highway. I mean, yes it's a wide street, but you can just walk across Georgia Street as a pedestrian. Can't do that with the sort of highways that scar the landscape of so many North American cities.
- dleslie 4y agoYou can walk across Lougheed Hwy as a pedestrian; it doesn't make it any less of a highway.
- dan-robertson 4y agoI feel like LA and Amsterdam are both evidence that having a big highway cutting a city in half is neither necessary nor sufficient to make journeys (even car journeys) faster.
- rtlfe 4y ago> but it also takes longer to drive anywhere. Great. Driving should not be convenient in cities.
- klyrs 4y agoPublic transit is significantly slower than driving, unless both endpoints are immediately close to a skytrain station.
- rtlfe 4y agoIdk if you think that statement somehow refutes my point, but it certainly doesn't.
- klyrs 4y agoIn general, I agree with you. In specific, I drive almost everywhere despite being a supporter of public transit, because I can't afford to live near a skytrain station and the 'last mile' adds an hour to a trip. If we had more buses, and most routes had dedicated lanes, sure. But since we're half-assing it all, more gridlock is just more gridlock. Which, among other things, means more pollution. edit: compare to a city like Seattle, which has similar weather, hills, density, etc. A notable feature of the transit centers there is a Park & Ride: a place where folks can park their cars (for free, when I lived there) and get into transit. Vancouver does not have anything of the sort. If you want to park somewhere and take transit into the downtown core, there are extremely limited options. So you get too many drivers. Disincentivizing cars usage is great when there is a viable alternative -- in the absence of such an alternative, it's just flagellation for its own sake.
- Phrodo_00 4y agoHuh? The only park & ride in Seattle is in Northgate that's pretty new. They're only really seen outside the city in the suburbs
- klyrs 4y agoIt's not that new, there's been a park&ride there since the 90s[1]. And, my apologies, I'm referring to the greater metropolitan area as Seattle. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northgate_station_(Sound_Transit) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northgate_station_(Sound_Tra...
- ripley12 4y ago> many of its neighborhoods/dining districts feel really cold/loud/unwalkable due to the high speed 4 lane roads everywhere Yeah, this is an unfortunate aspect of Vancouver's city planning; our zoning forces nearly all shops and restaurants onto busy, loud, polluted arterial roads. Changing this isn't really on the political landscape right now, and I don't think it's going to change anytime soon.