Some Random Good Things
I’ve never seen Water Street in Gastown so lively… That, and a bunch of other good bike and urban realm-based things that I’ve captured in photos recently, some new, some less common than they should be, as well as some new project photos…
Victoria
I always wanted to get some better photos of the Fort and Yates Plaza, which was an ISL project from a few years ago… Not sure I totally nailed it here, but some interesting details including preservation of some old train tracks found during construction… Cargo bikes alive and well as usual in Victoria…
Further down Fort Street, a neat little left-turn pocket filling the gap between an old curb extension and the less abrupt curves of the new bike path… As well as some landscaping to brighten things up…
I took the new Blanshard connection from Fort Street up to Pandora… It’s only been a few months since I was in Victoria, but there’s always something new to see…
Then bumped into an old friend dropping his cargo bike off at what I can only describe as cargo bike parking stalls outside of Bishops Cycles… Very cool…
Cool shot through the trees of the No Right Turn on Red (NRTOR)… Hopefully one day the NRTOR signs are more prevalent, or better yet, the condition becomes law in the MVA…
More shots through the trees… Down on Dallas Road this time…
Vancouver
We took a ride downtown mostly to check out the new Granville Bridge Connector… Any addition of a protected bike lane on a bridge is a win in my book… But I hadn’t been following closely, and apparently the benches have generated a lot of criticism… My first thought was why doesn’t the bridge feature a huge megabench with epic views out over False Creek… But reflecting on this, I could imagine they don’t want people congregating on the bridge and making it feel uncomfortable for those crossing… It’s a decent distance too, so I can also see the need to give people a spot to rest, especially in the summer heat without making it a place to linger too long…
The bridge now connects Downtown nicely to the Arbutus Greenway on the south side. At the south end, a loop ramp brings you out to this diagonal bike crossing…
Coming from the south and heading north into Downtown, you get to the bike path on the west side via an old loop ramp on the east side and cross over here…
Looking south from around the middle and back at the crossing above… You wouldn’t have biked here with your kids before…
The north end still features the southbound on-ramp, so there is another crossover…
Lime scooter share dock at the north end providing people more mobility choices without the scattered all over the place complaints…
Then back home along the seawall, I always stop for a good s-bend in the bike path…
A few days later… On Sunday we stopped by the latest iteration of Gastown’s pedestrianization… It was literally jumping for some people…
On Sunday, it’s closed to traffic fully from 10 am to 6pm and if you’re on smaller wheels, it’s a slow roll zone… And it was truly slow, and almost easier just to walk at times… I’m curious to see it during the week actually… It seems to be some sort of advisory bike lane configuration here, although maybe that’s loading with a shared lane away from the camera…
They don’t make streets like they used too… The bricks and street trees just create a totally different vibe, especially in the summer sun… There’s a bike valet here too at the back… But only on Sundays from 10am to 7pm… At the start I overheard someone say to their friend this is cool… Kinda like Ciclovía… Ciclovía was perhaps the first “open streets” movement that originated in Bogotá, Colombia, in the 1970s and is the name given to the closure of major city streets to motorized traffic on Sundays and holidays, creating a space for pedestrians, cyclists, and other non-motorized activities…
Somehow, the first time i’ve heard the steam clock whistle in 17 years here… I guess I haven’t spent a lot of time down here, but if it were to be like this more often…
Now, granted, Water Street won’t be that busy all the time if the street were to be permanently closed… But as I’ve said many times, I think every city should have at least one or two pedestrian streets… Hopefully, this gets us a bit closer to that… Water Street connects directly to Richards Street, a more recent protected bike lane where families were safely getting around the city…
We took Pacific and the new bike lanes back up to the Granville Bridge…
And back across Granville…
Where at least one bench was being used…
We also stopped by Granville Island, and enjoyed the bike valet there… Top guy working there, and a camera fan…
Some Work Stuff…
There will be more on these projects in official ISL posts soon… But while over in Victoria, I got the team out that worked on the recently completed Gorge Road improvements for some photos… The Victoria team has done a great job supporting the City through detailed design of many of the City’s AAA corridors. On the Gorge Road detailed design, Khal Joyce, Alyne Araujo, and Gordie Walls (all pictured) as well as Ian McKinnon and Ivan Berkholtz (not pictured) played key roles for ISL on the project…
Likewise, on the Guildford Way Phase 2 project in Coquitlam where Gabriel Ataide, Elly Ha, and Carl Bruggeman all played key roles on the detailed design of that corridor…
My own Brompton has been an invaluable tool for a few years now, so it’s great to now have a few ISL Bromptons we can use, whether to do our site visits for new projects, or ride our designs once completed…
The bikes are so useful for throwing in the car for site visits further afield… Or combining with SkyTrain to check out the Guildford Way project that connects directly to the station…
Scott MacDonald was the lead designer for the functional design stage of Guildford Way Phase 2 including the protected intersection by the Lafarge Lake-Douglas SkyTrain station…
It’s not often I make it in front of the camera… TWSI shots… Not always rolling in the city…