The Tyee: Vancouver, B.C. May Tear Down Two Viaducts

Both Vancouver and Portland managed to build rail systems by cutting funding to highway projects. If we want a functioning rail system, we need to do the same.

PubliCola knows so little about the great white north. British Columbia and Vancouver invest lots of money for both transit and highway construction. In fact, the Sea-to-Sky Highway, also known as Highway 99, has been significantly widened in the last few years. And guess what, the locals want it to go into a tunnel. A tunnel.

“A preliminary Transportation Review unveiled April 7 shows that almost half of the traffic on the viaducts originates within the city of Vancouver, and there is unused capacity on parallel arterial streets like Expo, Pacific, and Hastings — which suggest traffic could be accommodated if the viaducts were partially or completely removed.” So, in other words, absolutely nothing like the Alaskan Way Viaduct. The State is paying to build us a tunnel, unlike the surface only option which is unfunded, so we get the best of both worlds. Needed capacity is maintained and we free up the waterfront. Pretty good deal.

Great links, including the secondary links to the City's own report to the mayor and council. Looks like the two Vancouver viaducts are in good sturdy condition; that both function as city overpass streets, not bypass highways; that together they carry a little over 40,000 vehicles a day; that advocates suggest it will take twenty years' worth of aggressively funded transit, freight, car and cycle infrastructure mitigation measures before the removal plan could be carried out without significant impacts; and last but not least, that since the City will be in charge, City taxpayers will gladly foot the lion's share of the bill. It's time to play "one of these things is not like the other".

This is nothing like Seattle. It's too far north to even be roughly compared to the Viaduct.

Take heart: don't forget the "syllable rule". Globetrotting planners report that cities whose names have the same number of syllables are comparable in every way, no matter what.

$14 billion in transit investments are under way in this region. Put together a package for more, and I"m sure people will vote for it. This isn't rocket science.

What's also different in Vancouver is that they have capacity on other streets to accept displaced traffic. The same was true for the Embarcadero - before and after traffic counts showed that all of the traffic that had been on the Embarcadero rerouted to city streets once it was removed, but there was enough capacity on those streets that the impact was not severe. That is just not true through Seattle's downtown, period. Transportation is not a great subject to leave to ideologues. The challenge of designing transportation systems is to put the right solution in the right place, not to imagine that there are generic right solutions or superior modes.

The bored tunnel is insanely risky, poorly engineered for managing traffic and incurs egregious environmental impacts to public health and safety. This is fact, not ideology. The only sensible tunnel is a cut/cover. And even the surface boulevard manages traffic BETTER than the bored tunnel. Seattle's traffic is notoriously aggravating, yet many still trust Washington State DOTs. Ten years after the Nisqually quake, and a number of years before that, the Alaskan Way Viaduct has been slated for replacement of some kind, yet Wsdot sat on its frickin hands and did nothing but consort with country club suburbanite motorists to build more freeways. Hmmm. Very interesting.

See above comment--Transportation is not a great subject to leave to ideologues.

Another impossibly irrelevant examble. Vancouver isn't Seattle, just like Seoul isn't Seattle, San Francisco isn't Seattle, and Milwaukee isn't Seattle. Seattle is the unique-est city in the world, and absolutely nothing that works anywhere else would work anywhere near Seattle. Least of all something from that socialist social-engineered pothead paradise that's well over 100 miles away, with completely different geography, demography, geology, chemistry, physics, and weather. Why don't you people to understand? Seattle people like to think they're green. That's why they drive hybrids, old VWs, dilapidated Geo Metros, and Volvos with greenie bumper stickers. And if you make it harder to drive, they won't be able to drive their green cars as much. And that would RUIN the environment!!!

So right. It's the same with nationalized health care and single payer systems, just because they work in about 25 other nations, how can you possibly think it would work here? And the same with this whole notion of an electric system. My god, just because a central grid has proven great in other pplaces, who knows if we should install one here? That stuff causes fires you know! so just because Vancouver has several rrail lines making a system, WE CAN'T DO THAT HERE. No, we have to wait till 2075 for our second in city rail line. Just becaues Vancouver radically changed their zoning and puts towers near rail stations to create density, even allowing condos without parking (you could get a one BR for $120K Canadian in 2005 when I saw one...a block from a sky train stop a few stops from downtown) (walkable to shops, brs etc.) WE CAN'T DO THAT HERE Beacon and Roosevelt must NOT be more than 6 stories and WE MUST REQUIRE PARKING. And just because they take down freeways, don't have a freeway north south thru the city and are a vibrant downtown the biggest urban center for half the freaking nation of Canada and are taking down more highways now, that dosn't mean WE CAN DO IT HERE. Seattle is the most green minded city in America. And doing any of those things, confronting any of those choices, would simply mean we'd have to recognize we are waaaaaay behind in being green, so no, we CAN'T DO IT HERE.

False argument. The DBT carrying just 45K cars a day will only carry a very small fraction of the north south traffic going thru seattle downtown daily from the water to ...well to the water. It's simply wasteful to spend billions to add just four lanes of capacity throughput carrying the same amount as the Ballard Bridge. Therefore: the capacity added in, by the DBT, will not reduce congestion downtown by one discernible iota. Yes, the solution is to put the right solution in the right places, so clearly a $2-3 billion rail line which will carry 100,000 a day without cars and without tolls is superior to a DBT that will carry only 45K cars a day with cars and that expense enviro and otherwise and with tolls thus not even being general purpose. What is the solution depends on what is the problem. The problem is this: how to achive mobility. A DBT is huge, clumsy, expensive, and even when built doesn't add much throughput. A rail tunnel or elevated rail line would add much more throughput and synergize making all the other stations on the light rail line about 5x more useful by creating a city wide system. The reason VANCOUVER can take down highways and you still can get around is they have half a dozen rail lines in the city and raditating out....you can go all over...Seattle shrunk from building its second rail line and now has no real plans to do so for a generation after which time ....Vancouver likely will have about 8 or 9 lines ....like DC now....other cities are way ahead of us and we basically plan on building a retro 1950s megahighway "solution" that is a poor mobility tool thus we are planning on being even further behind ten years from now than we are now. You want solutions? Define the added throughput of the DBT as a percentage of the total north south demand for trips for me. I will be it's like 9% or less. Isn't rail carrying twice as many a much better deal in many ways? Those trips are fast and take you all the way to work and you don't have to pay for parking and you are out of the traffic. Don't lecture us about solutions when you[re proposing a bloated megahighway that adds little capacity for the cost.

Oh please.... get off it. You bored tunnel cheerleaders are like that classic wind-up monkey toy banging cymbols. Add comment that makes sense or shut up.

As usual Gordon Price has some good info: http://pricetags.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/blogging-the-viaduct (this is the Vancouver project, not the AWV)

"The State is paying to build a tunnel, unlike the surface-only option which is unfunded. Needed capacity is maintained and we free up the waterfront." That's a pack of lies. The State is funding a highway replacement. The surface-only alternative qualifies as a highway. Capacity is not maintained with the bored tunnel. And as for freeing up the waterfront, don't count on the current Alaskan Way boulevard design to NOT produce a chaotic mess of trafffic. This Giffy person's has no idea, but trusts transportation planning agencies whose stunning failures are evident in Seattle's traffic nightmare.

More infrastructure for semi-HSR is expensive, though I do support it. Permission to run a couple more daily Cascades to Vancouver on existing infrastructure is cheap, once someone can get around to building coverings for the most mudslide-prone portion of the track.

Just look at what the viaduct connects to: a highway that will soon have the RapidRide E line, followed by SWIFT, and an at-grade arterial that eventually connects to an oft-opened bridge that connects to two more freeways that fizzle out into the middle of neighborhoods. Connection to the E Line and these neighborhoods with a limited-access highway is absolutely essential!

Besides, Canadians know football, and Americans don't. Go Sounders!

Here's another challenge to the tunnel boosters: Name a city where removal of a freeway in favor of transit infrastructure hasn't worked.

Why a duck? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECODePT6VHM

Here's another challenge for anti-tunnel people: name another city shaped like an hourglass, bordered by water on two sides, with a canal running through the middle, and made up of hills and bluffs. Then also find a city where a majority of the residential areas are either north, south, southwest, or east of the small downtown area. Obviously, as I've stated before, anti-tunnel people seem to think that all highways coming into the city, whether north or south, simply end there. Why on earth would anyone want to get from, say, West Seattle to, I don't know, Ballard? Or Greenwood to South Park? Why not just stop and do a leisurely drive through downtown, which is also the narrowest portion of said city. Apparently tunnels are ok for transit but not for cars. Ah, I get it. This either/or concept is maddening; neither side can see the forest through the trees. Building a tunnel would also necessitate changes to the downtown street grid (a la, "the surface option"): bam, everyone's a winner. And yet at the same time, everyone's a loser.

And I forgot to add: if both illogical extremist groups (pro-tunnel and pro-surface) are losers, then we know that that is the best option.

So basically, we need to defeat supporters of the highways now, so we create an incentive for development of good in-city transportation.

We can't put together another package without the legislature giving us the authority - and they're refusing to until they build another round of tens of billions of highways. That kind of defeats the purpose of the transit - to help channel new development into our urban cores, where it's economically beneficial.

The Sea to Sky investment total is less than what we've spent on just 405 in the last few years. We spend an order of magnitude more on highways than Vancouver does.

Actually, that sounds almost exactly like the Viaduct. Most of the traffic originates in the city, and we have lots of unused capacity on parallel streets.

Sure, but the exact parallel would be to recommend that we travel back in time to stop the city building the Highway 99 viaduct at all. Slightly less realistic than your plan, I'll grant you.

San Francisco - have you ever tried getting from the 101 to the Bay Bridge (or North Beach, or Chinatown) by car since the removal of the Central Freeway?

These viaducts mostly move car traffic from downtown to Chinatown. Neither are that important for moving traffic and material that originates outside the city through the city. Both are about moving traffic within the city. Read the article again about where the traffic originates and where it is going. State Route 99 is not simply about moving traffic that originates in downtown Seattle a short distance. This highway handles traffic that originates outside the city, or is destined to go outside the city. SR-99 serves as an alternate for I-5, among other things. BC-1A, while extending outside Vancouver city limits, primarily moves traffic within the city for those vehicles not moving regionally on BC-1 (Trans-Canada Highway), which is a freeway. In many ways, BC-1 makes a good analogy to the deep bore tunnel for SR-99. Both have a similar purpose of moving regional traffic.

Come on Ben, who are you trying to kid? The Sea-to-Sky Highway is just a small portion of the roadway projects in the Van area. I don't have time to list them all, but I'll give you one example: The new Golden Ears Bridge opened in 2009, which in addition to six lanes on the bridge, has 14 miles of new roadway that connects it with multiple highways. My guess is that the $3 billion, behemoth 10 lane Port Mann bridge will also get built, but maybe with just 8 lanes. So in addition to the excellent Canada Line subway that got completed last year (as well as a number of other transit improvements), there are many parallel roadway projects as well. Many. I don't mind you pimping transit, we do need lots of it, but you will be more convincing if you don't a) make up shit b) understand the complexities of transportation. You could learn something from Canadian pragmatism. Canuks shake their heads in disbelief when they look at the petty squabbles that hold up any kind of progress south of their border. Seattle is stuck, and you really shouldn't be one of the turds clogging it up.