Comment 102382

By kevlahan (registered) | Posted June 12, 2014 at 13:28:44 in reply to Comment 102376

I just spent a week in Vancouver, and traffic congestion has actually eased in the last couple of years as more people switch to walking, cycling and transit.

We drove several times from downtown Vancouver to the North Shore over Lions Gate bridge in the afternoon rush hour, and traffic flowed smoothly with no problems. Other people confirmed that traffic indeed has improved recently, at least downtown.

And we drove several times over Burrard bridge, which is being renovated and is down to only one lane in each direction. Despite this traffic flowed smoothly (although fairly slowly) and there was nothing even approaching "gridlock" (which means traffic does not move in any direction at an intersection for several light cycles). Slow is fine in dense urban areas.

The road blockages in the West End largely solved the rat running there in the 1970s.

And, as others have pointed out, free flowing high speed traffic is not a very attractive or important competitive advantage of a City's downtown ... in fact every big successful city has become and stayed big and successful without it. But you do need good options (like high quality transit, cycling and walking facilities).

Comment edited by kevlahan on 2014-06-12 13:31:02

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