Non-Partisan Association mayoral candidate Kirk LaPointe says adding counterflow lanes to major arterial roads in Vancouver could help relieve traffic congestion.
“It’s something I’ve thought about for a long time, we do it in the Massey Tunnel,” LaPointe told Business in Vancouver. “I’ve seen counterflow lanes work in other cities.”
The counterflow proposal is one of four parts of a transportation plan LaPointe revealed today. Other commitments include building a subway along the Broadway Corridor all the way to the University of British Columbia, increasing capacity on the Broadway B-Line and involving communities more when new bike lanes are put in.
Lawrence Frank, a transportation planner and professor at the University of British Columbia, said he welcomes creative ideas for moving people and vehicles around busy cities. Frank currently works closely with planning staff at the City of Vancouver on transportation issues.
However, he said there are many things to be considered when thinking about putting a counterflow lane on an arterial road. Broadway and Georgia Street are two Vancouver roads he can think of where a counterflow lane might be possible.
A typical road with a counterflow lane would have a lane in the middle that can be reversed depending on traffic flow. It only works on streets with heavy traffic in one direction in the morning, and the other direction in the late afternoon (the Lion’s Gate Bridge is another example).
Left turns must also be eliminated, which can sometimes cause confusion for drivers.
“There is an argument. You have to first have directional flow,” Frank said.
“But … counterflow lanes can be difficult for people to understand and they can be dangerous. They’re certainly not an easy fix. I’m not sure how easy it will be in reality to apply them.”
LaPointe said he had spoken to transportation experts about the idea, and if elected, would not put the plan in place without community consultation. He declined to say which roads might be good candidates for counterflow lanes.
The NPA candidate also pushed for an underground subway to UBC, and said he would do a better job lobbying other levels of government for funding.
In June, TransLink’s Mayors’ Council released a transit vision for the Metro Vancouver region that called for rapid transit along Broadway from Vancouver Community College to Arbutus Street, as well as a rapid transit system that would pass all the way through Surrey and end in Langley.
“The Mayors’ Council has only approved an above-ground extension of the millennium line. It has not approved underground burrowing … The Mayors’ Council has said that if the City of Vancouver wants to do that it has to reach a new form of partnership in order to finance it.”
The plan came at the request of the provincial government, which is requiring the mayors to hold a regional referendum to get public approval for any new source of funding to pay for transit, such as a regional carbon tax.
Regional mayors have publicly portrayed the process of coming up with the plan as extraordinarily cooperative. However, LaPointe suggested that Surrey mayor Dianne Watts has “outflanked” Vancouver in advocating for a rapid transit system for her city.
“I want Metro Vancouver to thoroughly explain why it is a much smaller project in Surrey wound up with $300 million more,” LaPointe said.
The Mayors’ Council plan includes a 27-kilometre long light rail system for Surrey, while the Broadway project would be 5.1 kilometres.
A subway on the Broadway Corridor would cost hundreds of millions of dollars more, but LaPointe said he would ensure tunneling would be done as cheaply as possible for taxpayers.
@jenstden
