Highways in Vancouver

This was prompted by a (possibly disingenuous) question on Reddit as to why, unlike Seattle there isn't a highway to downtown... and why don't we just add one. Fortunately this was one of those Reddit moments that gives faith in humanity as people pointed out how terrible that would be.

Like most North American cities, Seattle has huge highway going through its centre. If you look at this map 👇 you'll see Highway 90 coming in from the east and Highway 5 running north south through Seattle and almost through downtown. It's huge, congested and keeps getting wider.

Let's take a look at a Vancouver map 👇

The only highway is Highway 1 and comes in from the east, heads north and circuits the city.

If you come off Highway #1 at Hastings, you've got a roughly 8km drive to Downtown along normal roads. That's not to say that Vancouver doesn't have major car arteries, #99, #7, #1A are key examples. At 3 lanes wide #99 is as wide as a UK motorway, but it has slow speed limits, traffic lights and intersections - not characteristics of a normal highway.

Let's go back to 1967 and Vancouver was a city growing fast and approaching 1 million and car ownership was growing. Highway 1 was being built and building a highway to downtown seemed like an obvious thing to do. It would go straight through Chinatown and straight into downtown cutting Vancouver in half, destroying some of the poorest neighbourhoods, altering mountain views and cutting off the waterfront.

The city simply looked south of the border and adopted what Americans did, 10 years later. There was no critical thinking, no consultation. You only needed to drive to Seattle to see how freeways choked the life out of neighbourhoods.

Dr V Setty Pendakur. Source.

Public outcry, protests and political pressure from Mike Harcourt amongst others stopped the project.

What resulted was the Vancouver we have today.

I often refer to it as the most important decision Vancouver ever made from a city building perspective.

Brent Toderian. Source

Vancouver has the highest density in Canada at 18,837 residents per sq km ¹. It has a liveable downtown, with parks, bike lanes, an open waterfront and accessible beaches. There are many different studies and surveys each year - but you'll often see Vancouver rated as one of the most liveable cities in the world ². Although Vancouver has a long way to go, it's become a model around the world and that's partly due to not building highways.

Meanwhile, people are starting to realize that the terrible decisions by many US Departments of Transport in destroyed cities, often at the expense of minorities.

It's also worth noting that Vancouver rates highly in terms of traffic congestion ³, because way too many people drive their cars. That's why sometimes this drum beat of continual demand for building roads continues and it continually needs to be fought against.