Bare-bones Granville Bridge plan cheaper, better option: city's transportation head

Vancouver's Granville Bridge Connector project, green-lit this week by city council, wasn't staff's first design choice and it may appear spartan in the short term, but it was popular with residents in its long-term guise and it will come in relatively cheap for the cashstrapped city.

What the mayor and councillors approved Tuesday was an interim design that came with a $12.5-million price tag. In that form, the project should get people on foot, bike or wheels across the bridge safely, and that's about it.

On Wednesday, Paul Storer, the city's transportation director called it “the minimum transportation solution that would close the gap.” The Non-Partisan Association's Colleen Hardwick was the only councillor to vote against the project, calling it “a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have.”

Once complete, pedestrians, rollers and cyclists will be protected from vehicles on the west side of the bridge by a floating concrete barrier like that on the Burrard Street Bridge, and they'll be able to cross ramps with help from new traffic lights. But they won't do it in style, with the upgraded lighting, art work, special seating or weather protection that the longer-term design yearned for in staff's presentation to council. That may come later, along with additional signal lights, an improved walkway on the east side of the bridge and a higher total price tag.

The decision to run pedestrians and cyclists along the sides of the busy downtown bridge, rather than along a raised lane in its centre as staff had preferred, will produce a space that people feel more comfortable using, Storer said.

“I feel really good about where this landed,” he said. “Honestly, we jumped to the centre option too quickly and it was really important for us to hear how people felt about the various trade-offs of the two plans.”

What the since-abandoned centre lane option did deliver was a straightforward means to move people across the ramp and loop-laden bridge. It allowed planners to avoid detailed design work at each crossing and “an awful lot of complexity,” Storer said.

The option that city council ultimately went with will demand more detailed work and more traffic lights. Storer said staff don't have a lot of concern about the signal lights affecting the flow of traffic because they could be tightly co-ordinated with upstream and downstream signals.

Two of the bridge's eight lanes will be shut to traffic under the plan, though the presentation to council showed there was significantly less traffic per lane per hour on Granville Street Bridge compared with the neighbouring Burrard and Cambie bridges.

The option as approved by council is far cheaper than the up-to$50-million centre lane plan. But $12.5 million is only the first part, and longer-term upgrades could cost as much as an additional $26.5 million, according to a report to council.

The scope of the plan — and its budget — was narrowed down due to “the financial pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to a news release from the city.

“We had a number of people who were concerned about the cost, and that was even pre-pandemic … and we heard a lot of people who were really interested in it being kind of a landmark — a high-quality public realm design,” Storer said. “From a transportation point of view, we're getting the thing out there right now that closes this really important gap in the network. In terms of what we do for that longer-term design, that's really going to depend on when we move ahead and what the priorities are at that time.”