Vancouver City Staff Recommends Removing The Downtown Viaducts!

Vancouver's city staff created the following slide show recommending the removal of the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts.

Vancouver Viaducts Open Houses

Selling features include more parks and bike lanes and raising the amount of buildable land, which should in turn, garner extra tax revenues for the city, all of which sounds great.  

The slides tell us how much it would cost to maintain the Viaducts and that it's 10 times more expensive to maintain them than to maintain similar on ground roads.  What they don't mention the cost to remove the viaducts nor to build those new roads/off ramps in the first place.  There is no costing of the parks or the bike lanes either. One would expect, however that those costs will be significantly higher than leaving the viaducts in place and maintaining them.

The biggest concern of most people who work downtown and don't live there, is how will the traffic that these two viaducts carry be affected?  The slides show how the traffic will be re-routed onto existing routes, but there is no mention how much traffic those routes currently handle, nor if they can handle the increased load created by the removal of the viaducts, without creating additional traffic problems for commuters.

You have an opportunity to find out more, air your concerns, or give the City a pat on the back, at the Public open houses June 5th, 7th and 9th.