The Granville Connector OPENS!

Only 70 years overdue and almost 10 years after planning began, the Granville Connector is now open in a partial capacity!  City announcement here.

8 years ago I attended several nights of panels to discuss the wishlists of citizens regarding this underutilized dinosaur from a half finished highway project. That night people shared some amazing utopian visions of a better future for all but I eventually just spoke up and told them what I wanted: "just a no frills safe passageway from one end to the other", my fear being making it too fancy would cost the whole project.

West 5th connector to new park.

Since that time it seemed like the project was at risk many times. In 2019 there was the big debate about design choices and I posted my opinions about that here.  Unfortunately a key design choice (including the Fir St. off-ramp to carry non-cars to 10th ave with a large elevation drop) was rolled back due to slashing of post-COVID city budgets and the information trail ran eerily cold.
However, in 2024 indications that the project was still moving became apparent but progress was slow.  I made an almost weekly pilgrimage to Fir and 5th to monitor the progress but constantly found it stalled for months.The key impetus for making that gap my main life focus over others is due to the fact it was a huge detour for me. On top of that, a poorly understood set of sustainable transportation principles, to me, were not being weighed into the effort to make more people bike:

• there is a maximum distance a less active cyclist will go out of their way to regularly take a reasonable distance to work
• distance matters in forming a habit, and this interacts with weather (eg. someone will ride in rain for 15 min easily, less so for 30 min).
• the above 2 principles apply even more so to pedestrians
• drivers cannot understand the above principles because they tends to not suffer the distance as much

As it was, without the Granville bridge, 10s of thousands of potential riders on Fairview slopes and in Yaletown were facing too high a barrier to form a habit of leaving the car at home to cross False Creek.  Make all water crossings safe and the barrier factor drops significantly - even more than adding any non-bridge bike lane. In other words, water crossing is where all efforts to provide multi-modal travel matter MOST (people have options once they are back on terra firma).

Before continuing, it is important to disambiguate the "Granville Connector" project from the much larger changes and repairs to the Granville Street bridge overall. People are going to whine about the cost of the bike lane which I'm sure was not cheap, but the numbers they are using already, and will use, are mammoth by comparison to the smaller line items of converting some existing car lanes to be cycle and pedestrian friendly. The high price tag being thrown around most commonly includes:

• massive amounts of overdue repairs to the 1954 built bridge and feeder ramps
• complete removal and car section redesign for 3 cloverleafs (controversial for me as a driver!!)
• traffic lights (which are only partially to accommodate the bridge's east side bike lanes) 

So, here we are, the damn thing was done and I don't even care that those that tried to snuff it are claiming victory even though it all started 2 terms before they were elected. Queue the people that don't understand it takes several years to ramp up new ridership on a new route (for once I'll thank the efforts of Lime riders and food delivery d-bags for their hose clicks!).

What is next?

As a multi-modal traveller (driver, transit, pedestrian, cyclist), I really do travel most by bike and identify as a cycling advocate most.  I've just spent too much time in organizations where this is studied and read too much global data to believe biking isn't a top tier solution for urban travel and a partial solution for our city's growth related woes.

For that reason I'm reluctant to write this next statement publicly: The Granville Connector really was a massive gap for me and with it in place I feel the biggest cycling challenges in Vancouver are no longer "route" based. I'm comfortable riding roads (if needed) and feel our infrastructure gaps to be closing (we're maybe 90-95% of the way there) now that Kits Beach is improved, the Broadway line on the way, and the Arbutus Greenway in place. I cannot easily think of places I find tough to get to by bike for my level or riding. The pain points that come to mind seem addressable:

• Powell Street east of Clark
• Crossing Gastown safely
• Gastown to Burrard at W. Cordova
• Fir Street Off-ramp

I'm confident that the removal of the awesome Dunsmuir viaduct bike lane will have an acceptable solution from what I've seen (just not as cool). Beyond that, the gaps are much further out of the core and unlikely to be built with AAA separation levels.

Bike security is a challenging next frontier - we all have better bikes but crime is the new barrier. Utrecht style bike garages will be a hard sell when a single gas station sells for $72 million, but it is what is needed. That has to be the next priority for CoV

Dream world though:

• bike highways to the ferries
• a ferry corporation that gives a shit about bikes (BC Ferries OR Hullo)
• Fir Street Off-ramp
• making Granville island access from transit hubs shorter (eg. Granville Bridge deck elevator), reducing car access