Comment 105925

By RobF (registered) | Posted November 04, 2014 at 14:28:29 in reply to Comment 105917

Jason I agree completely with your first point ... having grown-up in East Surrey/Cloverdale where the proposed Fraser Highway LRT is planned i can say to H1, that it must traverse a floodplain/agricultural land reserve between 168th Street and roughly 180th Street. It must descend and ascend hills on both sides ... not quite the escarpment in height, but the existing roads make the grades there comparable, if shorter in distance. The existing SkyTrain must cross the Fraser River and make it up a steeper hill/grade between Scott Road Station and Gateway Station ... dealing with the grade on that hill was a technical challenge and the cable-stayed bridges crossing the Fraser River on that line and the new Canada line weren't cheap to build.

Boy what i would have given to have had that LRT line on the Fraser Highway growing up there in the 1990s ... the BC Transit bus wound all over the place and took 60 minutes to get to the end of the SkyTrain line, which took about 10-15 minutes by car depending on traffic. The SkyTrain ride to downtown Vancouver was another 40-45 minutes. Here I can take a GO Bus or Train and be in downtown Toronto in 60-70 minutes and the distance is much further.

Ever noticed that Vancouver doesn't have a single freeway. Not one. We have 7

This is deeply misleading. It is only true that the City of Vancouver doesn't have a limited access freeway like a 400-series highway running through it, though technically Highway 1 runs for a brief distance within it on city's eastern edge. Elsewhere in Metro Vancouver, there are multiple highways and the province government has invested billions in new highway capacity in the last 10 years ... read about the Gateway Program / Port Mann and Highway 1 improvement / South Fraser Perimeter Road. Also if we are considering King and Main et al freeways the City of Vancouver has those too ... Seymour, Richards, Howe, and Hornby as north-south one-ways and Dunsmuir, Cordova, Smithe, and Nelson as East-West one-ways ... the only difference is Vancouver seems more aggressive in addressing the need to change/tame them and add protected bike-lanes, though i would add their public debate started in the 1990s and change has hardly happened without a struggle ... advocates there also had to fight for changes (Hamilton is not so distinct in this regard).

Comment edited by RobF on 2014-11-04 14:34:42

Permalink | Context

Events Calendar

There are no upcoming events right now.
Why not post one?

Recent Articles

Article Archives

Blog Archives

Site Tools

Feeds