What dynamic would you change about American cities if you Sabrina the teenage witch gave you a wand?

[Champ le monstre du lac]

Originally Posted by Natnasci

I always ask the proponents of connecting Highway 1, through to downtown Vancouver, where is it going to go, and what do you do with all the extra cars once they reach the ocean? Expanding the causeway and Lions Gate Bridge isn't an option or a tunnel.

Lions Gate is a pretty bridge, but the drive over it is a PITA on both sides. A Skytrain extension to the North Shore would be a nice option. I know getting a subway tunnel under the Inlet would be a monumental cost of engineering and environmental studies. However the North Shore suburbs strike me as NIMBY land and perhaps wouldn't garner a lot of support.

I always wondered why Stanley Park never had a Skytrain stop. It's a center of gravity for activity in the city and generally the first place I ever went to when I visited. It would keep more cars off the peninsula.

Originally Posted by Natnasci

We certainly aren't going to give up any coastline of parks and the seawall for it. Although early plans that never happened would have seen a freeway along False Creek, continuing through English Bay, Stanley Park and off the the North Shore.

That would have been a disaster for Vancouver, as part of our charm is the seawall and the communities it serves...plus less pollution and quiet.

Oh wow! I had no idea the freeway plans were that aggressive. That would have been tragic for Vancouver to have all that waterfront cut off and the parks sliced up. Glad that never manifested.

[Natnasci]

Originally Posted by Champ le monstre du lac

Lions Gate is a pretty bridge, but the drive over it is a PITA on both sides. A Skytrain extension to the North Shore would be a nice option. I know getting a subway tunnel under the Inlet would be a monumental cost of engineering and environmental studies. However the North Shore suburbs strike me as NIMBY land and perhaps wouldn't garner a lot of support.

I always wondered why Stanley Park never had a Skytrain stop. It's a center of gravity for activity in the city and generally the first place I ever went to when I visited. It would keep more cars off the peninsula.



Oh wow! I had no idea the freeway plans were that aggressive. That would have been tragic for Vancouver to have all that waterfront cut off and the parks sliced up. Glad that never manifested.

Yes Lions Gate Bridge when busy is a gamble. With only 3 lanes ( years ago it was two wider lanes ) and the middle one changing direction depending on which side is backing up the most. However, on the North Shore side, when you're unlucky enough to get only one lane going downtown, seeing how seamlessly four lanes merge into one, gives me hope for humankind.

Skytrain to the North Shore would be fantastic. Although I do love the Seabus. However, Skytrain growth is needed out in Langley. So it's probably years away. We are currently extending westwards towards Arbutus Street, one day to UBC. As for NIMBY's, yes, but if it's all underground like downtown stations are, they'd might go for it.

As for why it hasn't gone to Stanley Park? The very first bit of Skytrain was built for the Worlds Fair in 1986. It went from the main Expo Site to Canada Place where the Canadian Pavilion was located. The station is Waterfront. As the system grew, it grew where it could serve the most people, and that was eastward at first. Waterfront Station, by the Pan Pacific Hotel is right on the seawall, so it is a nice and short walk by the Convention Centre, from there to the park, so it's a nice have, but really not a must have.

That said, I think an extension from Vancouver Centre or Granville station down Georgia Street to the park entrance would be a great idea.

Vancouver dodged a bullet in regards to freeways. You can still see the start of the plans. The Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts, look very much like a piece of lonely freeway with both ends being surface roads. Plans are in the works to remove them.

Having visited some US cites, well, the answer all comes down to will and money. In Seattle's case, I find the I5 to be a scar. However it's a scar that has to be lived with. Fantasy, would be to cover it, and then have parks, offices and residential towers fill in the space. Connect the neighbourhoods back in some way.

[mhays25]

There's a pretty implausible idea to expand Seattle's Freeway park by several blocks (the convention center and park mostly cover 1,000 feet or so of I-5), but, well, that's implausible. Even the less-ambitious version would need a $1b subsidy. That's not happening in a city with lots of needs. I'd love to see 10% of that spent on a couple pedestrian crossings with a little greenery.

I-5 is the West Coast's main thoroughfare and it's not going anywhere. I have some hope that in 30 years we'll either have flying cars (seems unlikely) or we'll build a tunnel through First Hill and Capitol Hill to serve the through traffic, allowing the I-5 ROW to become a lesser corridor. We've built soft-earth deep tunnels for SR 99 and I-90. Unfortunately First Hill has poor soils (not sure where), which is why there isn't a Link tunnel through it.

[Natnasci]

Originally Posted by mhays25

There's a pretty implausible idea to expand Seattle's Freeway park by several blocks (the convention center and park mostly cover 1,000 feet or so of I-5), but, well, that's implausible. Even the less-ambitious version would need a $1b subsidy. That's not happening in a city with lots of needs. I'd love to see 10% of that spent on a couple pedestrian crossings with a little greenery.

I-5 is the West Coast's main thoroughfare and it's not going anywhere. I have some hope that in 30 years we'll either have flying cars (seems unlikely) or we'll build a tunnel through First Hill and Capitol Hill to serve the through traffic, allowing the I-5 ROW to become a lesser corridor. We've built soft-earth deep tunnels for SR 99 and I-90. Unfortunately First Hill has poor soils (not sure where), which is why there isn't a Link tunnel through it.

Remember, this thread is all about having a magic wand

[Chriscross309]

Originally Posted by Natnasci

Remember, this thread is all about having a magic wand

Even Sabrina's ambitious ideas were discouraged by that frugal cat Salem.

If I could wave a magic want and improve things, It would definitely involve a robust high speed rail network.

[Phil P]

I'd make them smaller. More towns and small cities, less mega metros.

People, especially historically, did not just get to choose to live wherever they wanted. They lived where the employment was. From the 60s-2010s, it was the corporate leaders that largely dictated where people lived, that's how we ended up with these mega metros, it was most economical for the companies. It was NOT the preference of the typical American.

And to a certain extent, these mass agglomeration metros are a rapidly created phenomenon that came about in the last 70 years where you have people that live in cul de sacs and commute to an office park or CBD on a highway. Other urban designs had hundreds of years to iron out kinks.

People always say that if you had trains, this model works, but Denver is case in point of a metro that went heavy on transit funneling everything to a central walkable downtown, but that model has fallen flat on it's face with a bankrupt transit and dead downtown in 2024. If you don't have trains, you end up being Atlanta which is on it's way to becoming a worse and worse spiral of never ending congestion.

The particular problem with mega metros is that if they screw up, that's multiple millions of people affected. And right now we have a lot of screwed up mega metros. If smaller cities screw up, the damage is less widespread.

The jist of it to me is everyones been whiteboarding to figure out affordability, noise pollution, congestion, and greenspace for 40 years, and no ones figured it out with any reasonable solution. If you scale down to below 500K people, these issues largely go away (with the exception of affordability at times), so until the urban planners can make any progress on a major metro that actually addresses these issues, the simplest solution is just go somewhere smaller if you have the option.