$200 million plan to tear down the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts

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VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – At a cost of $200 million dollars Vancouver City Staff are officially recommending tearing down the Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts.

The city says the cost will be offset through revenue from development and selling off city-owned land. It also claims if the project is not done now, it will only get more expensive. City planner Brian Jackson says it will also become more difficult to do in the future as the land around the viaducts becomes more developed.

The viaducts would be replaced by expanding Pacific Boulevard and bringing in a ramp connecting Georgia Street to the waterfront. The area will be home to a 13-acre park once everything is complete.

Critics say the new road network will not be good enough to handle traffic, but the city disputes that.

“Just like many of our busy arterials today. No different than Cambia or Granville, Georgia through the downtown core. But certainly they’re capable of carrying the volumes of traffic that are required to service not only the neighbourhood but also importantly the downtown,” explains Transportation Director Jerry Dobrovlony.

The predicted cost for the project covers everything. “That’s the cost of infrastructure, that’s the cost of design, relocating roads, building connections, some of the Georgia Street Road coming down to Pacific is unstructured and so that $200 million estimate is the total cost for everything,” explains Dobrovlony.

After getting approval from city council, changes are expected to be completed in five years.

Not everyone’s predictions for traffic in the post-viaducts era are as rosy as the city’s. A former City of Vancouver planner warns we could be in for an eight hour long rush hour without the viaducts.

Pacific Boulevard could become the busiest street in the city with rush hour conditions for 12 hours a day. Former Director of Transportation for Vancouver Ian Adam thinks that volume will also spill into other neighbourhoods.

“People will look for other routes, and the other routes they have available to them are very limited. Basically, they’re into all the city’s historic areas. Gastown, which is where we’re trying to create a nice pedestrian environment, sees about a 30 to 50 per cent increase in traffic. Chinatown sees the same sort of thing. Hastings Street, which has the worst pedestrian safety record in the city where City Hall has put in a 30 km per hour speed limit, is going to again become about an equivalent to an extra lane of traffic.”

The city says their study shows only six per cent of trips into town involved the viaducts and the congestion will be negligible. Adam thinks the only way that would be achieved would be with a tunnel, which would come with a bill for billions of dollars.

“A lot of other cities have done this. The City of Boston took down its viaducts and they put it in a tunnel. The whole cost of that project was $30 billion. I don’t think anybody’s suggesting we should spend that much here. Seattle is doing the same thing. Seattle is taking down the Alaska Way Viaduct. They’re spending something like six or seven billion American dollars to put that in a tunnel.”

That’s why Adam says the best choice is leaving the viaducts and improving them while developing the land below.

The city says they are planning on diverting traffic from Prior Street, which is good news for Elana Zysblat with the Strathcona Residents Association, but she is still concerned about the process the city would take.

“There’s going to be another two years of public consultation. We don’t feel very confident that this configuration of city leadership knows how to do that, or is committed to doing that.”

While Charles Gauthier with the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association isn’t supporting the idea quite yet, he does say the city has quelled concerns over congestion.

“They appear to have done their number crunching. It appears that again, it’s not going to be as much of an issue in terms of getting in and out of the downtown as we originally thought it might be.”

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