In just under two weeks, the City of Vancouver will hold three open houses on the future of Cornwall Avenue and Point Grey Road. The City has identified these streets as a target in 2013 for a triple-A (“All Ages and Abilities”) cycling route as part of its Transportation 2040 action plan.
There are a number of good background documents you can read to familiarize yourself on why these streets are being targeted. There’s the city’s presentation last year at West Point Grey Community Centre (pdf), there’s the HUB (formerly the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition) report from October 2012 on riding along the route (pdf), and the UBC report on safety and accessibility on Point Grey Road from 2011 (pdf).
The TL;DR version of these reports is:
- A large of vehicles use these roads all day
- The average speed of the top 15% of vehicles using the road exceeds 50 kph all day long yet the speed limit is 30 kph
- There is high transit volume along these roads, reaching a peak of a bus every 3 minutes during rush hour
- A large number of cyclists use these roads all day
- The road passes through the area of the city with the highest bike-to-work population
- There is a gap in the cycling network between Jericho and the Burrard St Bridge
- Cornwall is a “high cyclist collision corridor”
- The area is “uncomfortable” for pedestrians
- There is a gap in the seawall between Jericho and Kits Beach
The UBC report provides three proposals on what modifications might be made to the route. In particular, one suggests removing parking to provide for a separated bike lane, and another suggests traffic diverters at Alma and Macdonald to reduce traffic to local traffic only. The diversion proposal was previously backed by local residents.
We’ve discussed cycling on these roads a fair bit in the past too. See here, here, here, here, and here.
The open houses are:
- Tuesday, 29 January 2013, 4-6 pm, Maritime Museum (TK Gallery), 1905 Ogden Ave
- Thursday, 31 January 2013, 7-9 pm, Queen Mary Elementary School (Gym), 2000 Trimble St
- Saturday, 2 Feburary 2013, 10am-2pm, Kitsilano Community Centre (Snowy’s Lounge), 2690 Larch St
I suggest you attend one of the open houses and familiarize yourself both with the problems with the road, and the proposed solutions. This change is likely to be a hot-button issue in local politics, but the difference in this case is that instead of a groups of NIMBYs opposing the change, the local residents seem to be on-side right from the get-go.
