Why are we about to get rid of the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts in Vancouver? It's a complicated and sortof controversial story, but I've tried to boil it down into about... 5 minutes... for you :)
This sounds a lot like the situation in Copenhagen. In the 1970's they wanted to "modernize" the infrastructure and planned a whole network of highway viaducts going through the city. They managed to build exactly one of those streching about 1 km, but the whole project was dropped after a lot of protests when they wanted the highways to go through richer neighbourshoods. Instead Copenhagen shifted strategy to build bike lanes instead of more car lanes and in more recent times, an underground metro system. The one viaduct that was built then still stands today, but they are working on tearing it down, building a tunnel instead and develop the land above. The price tag is about $3 billion.
90% of East Indian do not date other race, I have NEVER seen a Chinese and East Indian together as a couple, and vice versa. 99.8% of Chinese girls WILL NOT date a white men. Tinder, Plenty of Fish, Bumble. Most the girls do is show off there pictures but do not date, there is something very weird when you have a city full of pussy but it doesn’t want to be touched. Our documentary will be done in the spring with special guest star Snoop Dogg talk to me about our dirty streets. God bless be nice to each other STICKY ICKY MUSIC PRODUCTIONS
C. E. Torchia that is like saying flowers do not need sun. A lady needs a man for reproduction of the human race, children can not be made by two men or two lady’s, a lady needs a man for friendship and love. Only the cold hearted want to be alone. People follow what celebrities are doing and that will be shown in our documentary.
Dang, five or six years later we’re still waiting for the viaduct to be torn down-with seemingly no agenda or schedule ahead. I don’t know if the city, in the wake of the pandemic, has resulted in not having the money to tackle this now, or if the new St. Paul’s hospital project has strategically preempted the Viaducts removal to be undertaken. It is interesting thaw shuffle game that is happening with the “new” proposed park, and the Carral Street border of it. The False Creek Residents Association has been outspoken about this.
I'm currently studying Urban Studies in the UK and I obviously enjoy the course and the area of study, but watching this video just granted me the first moment where I have literally gotten goosebumps over how exciting it all is. The editing and information in this video is unbelievable. I don't suppose for future videos you could leave references in the end credits or description? I think this video has just swayed me into writing my essay on exemplary public health on Vancouver lol.
Our leaders continue to describe old neighbourhoods as supposedly blighted and in need of renewal. Except now we replace them with highrises instead of freeways. Note that we are not rebuilding Hogans Alley, but simply replacing it with highrises for rich yuppies.
As bad as some think our traffic is, our traffic is nothing compared to dozens of others. If one does not like the drive, take public transit or move downtown, or work somewhere else. we all have the same choices.
The removal of the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco is one of the most ambitious of the Freeway Removal projects. You can see the old highway in many old TV shows from the 1970s, like "The Streets of San Francisco." It seems like the primary use of the highway was to provide a location for gun battles below the main road.
...also he fails to note that the viaducts were not built in the 70's for the first time ever...they were built to replace a previous Georgia Viaduct built closer to the twenties....I remember driving over th eold viaducts....
I agree with this proposal but Vancouver needs to do more and get their infrastructure together. The roads here are a freaking mess and it seems nothing is being does to address the issue.
Dude I've been binging your videos all morning and I have to say I've learned so much. Also heading to Vancity tomorrow to move all my savings to them from TD
Vancouver continues to plan poorly in the long run. Cars are not going away, transit is not keeping up and the added population will have limited choices to get around. The video can spin you thinking this is a good idea, but without a viable alternate option to traffic congestion, it will be another poorly thought out plan. Developers seem to own city hall. It just will not go away because you will it away. Vancouver is not like or think like other cities who have torn down freeways. They are in a space all their own.
Right? Is this dude getting paid by the city for their propaganda? I mean I don’t care much for the viaducts but to suggest they’re tearing it down cause of earthquakes is a joke! In that case, why build more highrises? Let’s get rid of all the old bridges too 🤦♂️
@@LDeol Many new buildings have requirements for a certain % of units to be affordable housing. If councillors and residents push developers we could fit a lot public housing in this spot. Which is better than an underutilized, partial highway with empty space underneath if you ask me. Plus a park!
Wow. I visited that river in seoul, had no clue that used to be a highway. Btw, great videos! I absolutely love it. I find architecture and infrastructure so interesting and sometimes, they make it physically beautiful too. Keep it up! If you want to really to see peak advancement of infrastructure, just look at Seoul's subways.
i was just about to mention our similar situation here in Halifax! it’ll be a really good spot for a transit hub because there is a major bus stop that’s very busy right by it, but it’s on a busy road so it slows down traffic a lot and gives little room for all the cars and buses going through. Originally, they were also planning to build a waterfront highway in Halifax, but it was cancelled because the people didn’t want the historic properties to be destroyed.
Do developers in Vancouver donate funds to the city government to well get guranteed planning permits? Because wealthy developers can cover that cost of $200 million.
@@mickanvonfootscraymarket5520 technically yes. The city will FORCE the developer as a part of their building permit to fund the necessary works needed for off-site (public) construction. This includes roads, underground utilities like water and sanitation as well as electrical and communications like streetlighting and traffic signals and city comm networks. So essentially, the developers are donating to the city. Just not directly. If I am not mistake the city is covering some of the project too. But it's been mostly paid for by the developers. Which is also why those condos will only ever be used to launder dirty money from overseas because nobody who has lived here their whole life will ever reasonably be able to afford it. My advice, as shitty as it is take the train into downtown still.
This is an idiotic video. You literally ignore what will happen once the viaducts are torn down. It's like you literally work for the city and said, look parks. And then ignore where this traffic is now going to flow to. Spoiler, it's going to flow through streets that weren't meant to handle that much traffic and are already very busy. Looking at you Quebec street. Which also has bikelanes, showing, again the road wasn't designed to quickly pull traffic outside of the downtown core. Not to mention Quebec street just got a new Inersection. Looking at you Switchmen street. Which only slows traffic leaving the core. And then there is Prior street which is a whole different mess. No, this is the most absurd thing, you covered literally none of the impacts all this new traffic will bring to Mount Pleasant and Strathcona. But you were concerned enough for Jimi Hendrix's grandmother and her neighborhood.
When did vancouver city planners ever give a shit about vehicles? They are to busy with their thumbs up their asses and virtue signaling with their go "green" useless bike lanes
@@Mikey-cl7my Vancouver is fucked. Filled with careless Asian investors, uninformed locals that are too scared to leave a sinking ship Best decision of my life was to leave Vancouver, it's a shi1thole
As someone who lives in the Seattle area it is quite a shame that we ever let freeways go right through the city separating neighborhoods. These freeways are bad for property value, create unsafe spaces, and make it more difficult to plan pedestrian friendly areas. Hopefully in the distant future we can possibly put a lid on i5 and reconnect our grid
I disagree I lived in city’s that didn’t have freeways and hated every minute and when ever I’m in a city that has freeways in the middle I love them do like the idea of moving freeways underground
I wish you would have talked more of what a parasite highways are to the city considering how much of a tax sink they are while also creating insane traffic jams on streets they connect to and like you said robbing important strategical land in prime city location from being used as something productive like businesses,offices,parks or homes. I highly recommend Strong Town which is an American advocacy which has fought against poor traffic engineering and city planning practices in US which has caused many of them to go bankrupt. Also some numbers regarding the construction of highway vs these redevelopment plans would be great. For example for context the plans to repair the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto that runs next to our coast is projected to be 2 billion dollars. Compared to that the prices for these highway demolitions (excluding the big dig example which was a shit show) is nothing.
Awesome can't wait for more congestion money grab by the municipal gov and rich folk the ones able to afford and buying these new condos for investment only with zero community development... more tent city space is what those parks will end up like oppenheimer
I was thinking that as well like those parks aren't gonna last long before the homeless move in with tents, but also to be fair if the city doesn't want to help the homeless, they might as well make the city's life hell.
Viewer from Hong Kong here. I think my opinion is in two parts: It's surely a positive act to release the waterfront and restore public space to the city. A swift from a car-oriented policy to a mass transit oriented one also do favour to commuters, traffic and long term urban planning. But I am wary of the idea of redeveloping the waterfront into private buildings or shopping complexes. These examples are all too familiar to Hong Kong citizens.
I honestly think cities need to design cars to be as little car dependant as possible and connect areas by high speed electric rail, buses, subway, rail etc. Bike lanes too. Easy walking
@T Wilson Honestly if the municipal govts in the LM were dissolved for a spell and management put in the hands of a provincial govt ministry to sort out the jumbled mess of problems would anyone even notice? Most people dont even care to vote in the municipal elections in the LM anyway
You mention earthquakes right off the bat but little did you know that everything built today and for the last two decades is built to barely survive a M7.0 earthquake. Homes and businesses that do survive the initial quake will most likely be lost to gas line ruptures setting whole neighbours on fire. Water supply lines will fail in more than 90% of built up areas and bridges like the Lions Gate, Second Narrows, Granville Street Bridge, Burrard Street Bridge, Oak Street Bridge, Knight Street Bridge, Queensborough Bridge, Pattullo Bridge, 99 tunnel between Richmond & Delta and a majority of highway and railway overpasses will fail killing thousands. Current proof of how useless Vancouver is at dealing with an emergency is being seen as I write this. A fire on an under construction six story wood apartment building that caused the construction crane to collapse across West 41st is going to take them 'weeks' to remove. One tiny little fire in the grand scale of the destruction a M7.0 or greater would cause in Vancouver is too much to deal with in a few days. Just imagine the how screwed we all will be when a real problem occurs. Remember Vancouver rioted just because they lost the Stanley Cup (twice) and stupid people bought up all the toilet paper during the pandemic of stupidity because that was more important than the food and water you'd first need to have a use for said toilet paper.
Vancouvers city hall planners are way out of touch with reality all these dumb bike lanes in a city that always rains the they are in their own world we need more infastructure to carry traffic into the next decades these city hall employees and elected officials are high or maybe just dense
I think viaducts or sky roads that are above ground level kind of look cool. But the street level underneath them never looks as pretty as it does in the concept art or film. They look more blighted and dilapidated than the "slums" they replaced. But I never seen that kind of decay under elevated railways. Why? Is it because elevated roads need more space or too much support pillars to have anything useful directly under?
I'm Arthur Bhutic! This viaducts and epwys, must go to ground level, with complete feeder rds! Intersections at this epwys depress below grade level, including feeder rds at grade level! Buildings, must be raised above grade level sitting on top of epwys! The epwys double deck, with upper deck grade level local lns and lower deck underground 🚇 express lns! With the feeder rds, be sidewalks with sidewalk ramps at intersections! Waterways at epwys have hike 🚶 and bike 🚲 trails 👣 running 🏃 under bridges!
The problem here in North America is, we still wanna sell cars like it's the 50's and 60's while adopting city planning practices from friggin' Amsterdam! This would be a great idea if the city planned alternate transport for people from outside Vancouver so they don't have to drive their vehicles to town, whether for work or pleasure. Our public transport infrastructure is just incomparable to that of European cities that we so insist on comparing ourselves to. Bottom line, if a major artery for transport is being torn down to make way for more development and $$ without providing alternative modes of transport, then it's creating more traffic congestion, emissions and stress. Take for instance the WestCoast Express train, it connects a select few communities to Vancouver and it's schedule hasn't been updated since the Flintstones. It runs 2 services in the morning to Van and 2 in the evening from Van. That would pretty much classify as a joke anywhere in Europe. Nice Clip!
Sigman Floyd it was three each way and actually needed more capacity than it does now because it served the downtown community. Now the 99 tunnel just bypassed downtown all together. The 99 was rendered obsolete when the I-5 was built anyway.
The traffic going thrught that area will be slowerr than a snails pace. Just imagine all the lights they are going to have to install for the pedestrians and the new residential properties. Vancouver is a shite hole to drive in now and it will just become worse with this plan. I'm so glad I don't live or work there anymore. It would be a better idea for the city to bulldoze the East Hastings area and build it there and then improve the road system where the viaducts are now.
The highway itself (highway 1A and 99A) is not being gotten rid of it is just being returned to its original routing. When the viaducts are gone just go up main to Hastings and make a left turn which was what the highway did for years before it was put on the viaducts to give them something to do.
Chengdu double decked their inner ring roads over the last 12 years, with integrated bus lanes in the middle. I think the speeds are only 60 kph. I loved riding my bicycle under/ beside them for 13 weeks in 2015. So few bikes now, so the lanes are a pleasure to ride, though I also lament the passing of the way it was in 2006. They are not ugly or noisy at all. A lot of it has artsy touches and now vines are on some of it. There are also crazy complicated flyover intersections of course.
its such a bizarre and useless piece of road. very much looking forward to the new false creek. Fingers crossed they build alot of social housing as they have been doing in olympic village. Anything would be a nice addition to bridge the divide between normal people and seemingly olygarch's.
You are wrong. The land was sold (Chinese money), for one purpose. Build more apartments to make a few people very rich. Like every city in the world where it is greed and getting as many apartments in one area and increasing the population more.
Interesting. So the city is going to tear down these highways so the can build super dense populated areas. Boy Vancouver is going to be a super city to drive in one day. I know how much I love to drive in stand still gridlock traffic😁
NO. The point is that these super dense populated areas are going to decrease car traffic. The movement today, unlike in the 1950s, are car-less cities.
@@LadyJay114 Yeah that ignores 2 things: 1. cost of living in Vancouver. Yeah in an ideal world people would live close to where they work but people cant afford to live downtown because of how fucked the real estate market is however thats where the jobs are. And no transit isnt always an option look up "langley to vancouver on transit" its an even longer journey. This whole "livable walkable cities" stuff doesnt address the root problem of WHY people live so far out and drive in in the first place aka cost. No this dense building of apartments wont lower costs because the real estate market is corrupt and driven by flipping and speculation much of it by people not in the area. If car traffic decreases its because people will have finally had enough and left the lower mainland altogether which is ultimately a good thing BC is massive and having a single giant densely packed city is illogical places like Kelowna need to be built up to even the population out. 2. Cities are hubs of commerce and business and thus not just traveled in by people who live there. People from other places are driving in and out of cities all the time to bring goods in and out or to do business and they need to be able to drive in the vehicles that theyve used to get to the city. In the same vein people who live in the city need or want to travel outside it sometimes and they need to be able to drive to do that. Sure car less vancouver seems like a utopian dream until you realize people from elsewhere in BC need to be able to get in and people from inside need to be able to get out. People would still have cars that need to go elsewhere. The problem in Vancouver is the majority of people complain about how stupid the municipal governments are and then a majority of people didnt bother voting last time the municipal elections happened.
Because I guess we should be buying electric cars. I have to fill up in North Vancouver at the PetroCan on Marine and Capilano, and I live in the library district.
Why? Because of real estate interests. A link between the downtown escarpment and false creek existed long before there were freeways in Vancouver. In fact, two of them...
maybe if cities didn't half ass transit people would use it. either go all in on transit and make it not worth it to have a car or leave the cars alone. they just opened an lrt here and it crosses every major street in my city. you'll have literally 50-100 cars waiting at rush hour for 20 train passengers to go by. real environment saver.
Memet Rush you cannot see all the pax that go on the Canada line as it is below ground, so how do you get those numbers. Plus thousands are travelling by bus and sky train.
Really one- sided video. Offering some counterpoints to your reasons would have created a way less bias video which would be more honest and more interesting to watch.
@@JB-yb4wn how dumb are you? I didn't agree or disagree with the video. Im just saying offering some other points for the viaducts would increase the quality of the video
Come down to San Francisco some time. Freeways have been coming down for decades, due to either earthquakes or popular opinion. The results are pretty good.
Pretty good? San Francisco traffic becomes an absolute nightmare during rush hour. If only there were a high-capacity way to move a large number of vehicles over long distances with minimal stopping intersections.
Relocating > redesigning the highway strikes me that the motive isn't to make Vancouver more people-friendly. No, instead I suspect it's simply to justify residential redevelopment (special interests, perhaps?). After all, like he said, they never looked great.
Tearing down the highways and building more residential is a noble goal in and of itself. Highways are, in general, a terrible thing for a city's livability. HOWEVER, if the city council doesn't also decide to improve public transit and bicycle facilities alongside, it'll probably end up terrible. Higher downtown density provides more opportunity for a living city where people want to be, but it does, of course, need to be planned out properly. There is, however, also an effect called Induced Demand, which causes traffic to become worse when highways are opened. Closing down a highway may just improve traffic, even without building a replacement highway. But of course, people still need to get from A to B, so again, infratstructure for public transit and bicycles will need to be improved alongside the removal of the highway.
Its all about the real estate tycoons. Id like to see the real estate profession killed brutally in BC. Im not a socialist but if we must put real estate into governments hands so be it. These greedy real estate developers have been a thorn in the ass of the good people of BC for too long
Thank you sooooooooo much for making videos about Vancouver. I’ve been living in this city since 2007, I love Vancouver and since couple years ago, I began to interested in the history of Vancouver. Your videos are so helpful. Hoping forwards to see your new video!
Wasn't that bridge in Deadpool as Ryan's tribute to his city? (Yes I know it's also it's cheaper to film there.) Getting rid of a national landmark if you ask me. lol
another example of area bad due to unfinished product. while yes we shouldn't be doing LA but roads and highways are great and you can have a good mixture of both walking and roads. I do miss the old days when we just build and no protest over things but ofc i do like how we do more community outreach but yah, stupid to start something and not finished and stupid to remove it later because it wasn't finished
@@donkey7921 How about we replace Concord Pacific and other real estate cartels with a crown corporation? Wed end a lot of political corruption too and these realtors are becoming like oligarchs
Sheast z It would be. I’m not a socialist like I’ve said but the real estate cartel has been a thorn in the side of the good people of B.C. for far too long as well as a source of corruption who’ve worked against any good governance in BC
Sounds like a grand idea, except that ... traffic in Vancouver is abysmal. The viaducts are one of the major arteries, and unlike the Granville & Cambie bridges which are redundant in nature, there is no real parallel path that compares to the viaducts. Also, the claim of "the viaducts are under-utilized" is also a false statement because it fails to note the efficiency of the viaducts. Don't get me wrong. I am all for the new City Planning paradigm (non-suburbia, satellite centers, walking downtown etc), but Vancouver's city council consistently ignores the problem of traffic. "Get a bike.", "Live downtown", "Use public transit". etc. (To which I say, "not everyone can do that") Also note, for accuracy - Boston didn't bulldoze and obliterate it's highway; they just built it under-ground. Vancouver city planners need to stop talking about "utopia" city layout. Fix the traffic problem first, that is in front of all Vancouverites, before you even start talking about utopia. News flash to Vancouver city planners - we have been driving cars for the last 50+ years and guess what? we are still driving cars, whether you like it or not.
Vancouver city council sees too much money coming from foreign interests, most of them from communist countries. The matters of the people fall to the side when its about money. Greedy bastards. They don't care about your commute, they will say this is to help people live closer to the city XD only 5000$ a month right? for a cubicle hahahaha
@@iamcleaver6854 *100%* agreed. Don't get me wrong -> I'm an environmentalist. The younger me used to cycle to work twice a week; I would regularly curse at the smog I had to breathe while going down Lougheed highway, and dreamed of the day when there were no cars on the road and _everyone_ had to cycle. Reality check: cities are not laid out in a public transit friendly way. For example, in Vancouver, heading East-West is not as easy as going North-South because skytrain is not laid out everywhere. If I had a choice, I would take public transit. But there are still times that I drive around Vancouver. And traffic is just _terrible_ . While we shoot for nirvana, we cannot ignore the problem of traffic congestion. But I get your point. Putting in *more* asphalt is not the answer - public transit & bike lanes is. ps, currently living in Ottawa. Traffic is *way* better here (yes, it is a smaller city), and I am truly impressed with OC Transpo and the city's commitment to public transportation (without sacrificing vehicle traffic, besides the seemingly constant heavy construction that goes on but I guess that is the price that one pays)
@@robertlee3778 What do you propose? The city has to improve public transport along with redevelopment of automobile infrastructure, yes but if people still chooses to use cars, let them. There might be huge traffic jams at first, but most will realise that going by public transport is faster and will switch. This is what happened here in Moscow, when city centre streets were narrowed to give way to pedestrians. Granted, this narrowing coinsided with a major bus reform...
And yet, if you go to Tokyo... they have found a way to integrate highways into the urban landscape, separating arterial traffic from pedestrians. And given that it rains 9 months of the year in Vancouver, the viaducts could provide traffic-calmed community pedestrian space with just a little bit of imagination. Instead we're going to plow a super-wide blvd taking traffic from up in the air to down on the ground next to bikes and pedestrians. Genius.
If the overpasses were made with more aesthetics, they could put on something attractive under it for pedestrians. But alas, they were ugly and vulnerable to earthquakes, so nobody wants to go under that...
@@dontgetlost4078 That's why we reinforce them to handle earthquakes. That argument is overblown. Lighting under the viaducts, stores under them etc. You Don't need to make them PRETTY for them to be functional. The part that isn't pretty is the space underneath them. We could get creative but some in the city see this as a real estate deal. Remember, you'll STILL have some viaducts in the proposed plan... and in addition you'll bring all those cars down to a super wide street... ground level. That's not exactly smart, is it?
Do you know what we called it back in 1960? We had Chinatown...Japantown...and...well A town I wouldn't mention in the BC lions locker room... I'm not sure when "slum" became "vibrant community" But...I'm not sure the viaducts were a change for the worse
Great video! Montreal did this by demolishing part of the Bonaventure Expressway into downtown, extending a main boulevard at ground level and turning the land the elevated expressway once occupied into a public space as the “entré de ville”. There’s also big plans for a large park to be made where a section of Autoroute 20 once was. The 60s was the era of highways, while today we’re in the era of reimagining areas once occupied by highways.
Hopefully are always there and or expanded over wise this city's growth and economic prosperity will plummet and you'll see a bunch of people suffering for bad decisions.
I'm sorry but I have to drive in this godforsaken city for a living. Consider the report about the use of the viaducts - did that include the killing of several lanes for bikes? Actually Mayor Moonbeam did that through out the city. And what about the wonderful plan to rebuild the St. Pauls Hospital on the original site of the Great Northern Railway station (just north of the CN Station) that just happens to be 1 block from the east end of the Georgia viaduct (the eastern half of the two). I'm sorry but if you think that you can travel from Georgia and Beatty to the new hospital via surface streets as opposed to the viaducts, you are living in LaLa land. Of course, I have not yet heard how they are planning to drop the 2 main east/west streets in Vancouver (strangely enough... Georgia St and Dunsmuir St) down to the surface where the base of the viaducts are at the west end; a height of approximately 50'. Oh, and Skytrain enters into a tunnel right beside the west end of the Dunsmuir Viaduct. I could keep going on but my wife says I rant too much as it is but until businesses move out of the core into the suburbs vehicle traffic needs to be accounted for in any plans as transit will not ever be able to keep up with the need to bring people into and out of the core. Of course, given the absurd cost of doing business in Vancouver, that day may not be too long in coming.
Projects is Good but In Canada, Construction takes forever. People just stand there and show no progress. Oh it's windy, oh it's snowing oh take tim horton break....... sigh......
