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Vancouver May Remove Lanes On Granville Street Bridge For a Pedestrian Pathway

Granville Street Bridge

Photo: Granville Island 2040

Do you support the City of Vancouver’s idea of bike lanes and a walking path on the Granville Street Bridge?

A new city staff report suggests that the centre lanes on the bridge would be reallocated for “the creation of an accessible path so people can comfortably walk, use wheelchairs, strollers and other devices, and cycle across the bridge”.

A barrier would be set up to clearly separate cars driving on the bridge and pedestrians on the centre lane pathway.

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Preliminary analysis shows that the existing traffic could be accommodated by two lanes in either direction, however further analysis is underway.

Granville Street Bridge
Photo: Granville Island 2040

The report also mentions that the timing of this project would work perfectly with planned seismic upgrades to the bridge.

“Construction has started on rehabilitation and seismic upgrades to the Granville Bridge, which are funded in this current capital plan. Coordinating this work with introduction of a new walking and cycling facility will reduce the overall costs and impacts of the projects” reads the report.

“The goal of this project would be to create a safe, comfortable, accessible and enjoyable walking, rolling and cycling experience across the bridge, which would seamlessly connect major destinations and link to the city’s broader network” continues the report.

The city’s engineering department also highlighted that the added bike lanes and walking path would “accommodate the growing number of people living, working, and playing in the city and region”.

Granville Street Bridge

Built in 1954, Granville Bridge is an eight-lane bridge over False Creek. The bridge was designed to connect to high-speed, high-volume freeways that were never built.

As a result the bridge has significant excess road capacity; even if each of the streets feeding the bridge were full, the bridge itself would be relatively empty. It carries a similar traffic volume to Burrard Bridge, which has half the number of vehicle lanes.

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