Seaside Greenway ‘missing link’ close to completion

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – It was one of the most controversial projects when it was first announced, and now the Seaside Greenway in Kitsilano is almost finished.

After a winter of sewer work, the route from Alma St to MacDonald St along Point Grey Rd should be finished in the next week.

Things are much different since traffic patterns were changed.

“It’ll look dramatically different from the last time you went down there just because of the width of the sidewalk and the treed boulevard,” says Lon Leclair with the City of Vancouver.

“First of all, the sidewalk is much, much wider. In many sections it was as narrow as a meter. They will be out there and they’ll experience two-and-a-half or three metres. They’ll also have a treed boulevard separating them from the roadway and in most sections that wasn’t the case.”

He says paving is done and the final touches are going in, completing the walking and cycling link between Jericho Beach and the rest of the seawall path.

“By doing this last bit of work, it does bring it up to a similar standard that you experience on the rest of the system. So you should feel quite comfortable taking your kids out, even if they’re very young, and bike this whole stretch.”

He says it’s the final piece of the puzzle.

“It was a missing link in our system. We have a really wonderful recreational seawall system that took you pretty much all the way around and there was this one link which was the Point Grey Road stretch, where you had to walk on those narrow sidewalks or bike in pretty heavy traffic.”