The most important thing that never happened: Vancouver and the Insatiable Auto (4)

More quotes from my InRoads article:

Vancouver, Canada’s most modern city, hired consultants who … suggested that Vancouver should build something rather like the Los Angeles freeway system. What they proposed for Vancouver would have laid concrete on elevated decks, in tunnels and trenches over and through much of the land now occupied by residential towers, parks and the seawall.

In a historic turning point, by the early 1970s Vancouver refused to build any freeways that required demolition of its streetcar neighbourhoods, particularly Strathcona. It was the most important thing that never happened. The city had broken the agreement underlying Motordom: no more roads, no matter how many more cars. Instead, vehicle growth would have to be absorbed on existing streets – an arterial grid, the heritage of the street improvements of the 1920s, on which the trolley buses, successors to the streetcars, would also run.  …

Political ideology changed at the same time: all civic parties proclaimed that there would be no expansion of the road system for single-occupancy vehicles. The new priorities put pedestrians first, followed by cycling, transit, goods movement and cars. And despite the scepticism of the transportation engineers, it turned out the politicians meant it.

Project 200 along the Burrard Inlet waterfront would have required the demolition of everything from Granville Street, including most of the heritage buildings in the Sinclair Centre, to Cambie Street, including most of Gastown to Woodwards.  You can see the remaining W sign at the far left centre.  Granville Square was the only part of the project actually constructed – which is the reason there’s a yawning entrance to a parkade at the foot of what was once our most prestigious street.

The main feature though is the waterfront freeway, connecting the Chinatown Freeway with the proposed Third Crossing, off to the right.  It would have been part of a loop surrounding the entire central business district.  More here.