I think Vision's Burrard Bridge bike lane solution (closing one lane, redistributing the car lanes and creating 1.5m bike lanes on each side) is fiscally prudent - it's a "least drastic means" approach to solving the problem.
You don't need a 3m wide bike lane (as was pushed by City staff) when it feeds to and from 1.5m bike lanes on Hornby Street and Burrard Street. If there's a perceived safety issue with proximity, bollards could be installed - as has been done along the Canada Line construction (or used to be along the Massey Tunnel) or was done to demarcate the temporary sidewalk under BC Place when the curb lane was closed (and eventually converted to a sidewalk and bike lane).
I think I recall City staff wanting the 3m bike lane width to accommodate roller bladers as an extension of the seawall path - but I think that roller bladers can share the sidewalk on the bridge.
Traffic will redistribute - look at what happened when Cambie Bridge was shut down to one lane each way during Canada Line construction - and Granville Bridge is closeby to provide a ready alternative.
With a separate pedestrian/bike bridge the price tag would be huge and you would have late night safety issues - I'd prefer not to force people to take a secluded path at night.
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Originally Posted by fever
They really need to fix the north end northbound Burrard Bridge-Hornby bike connection. These cycling advocates should be pointing out these little gaps in the system that non-cyclists don't know about.
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I could see the Pacific St. roadway shifted north by reducing the sidewalk on the north side on the block between Hornby and Burrard to create a bike lane on the south side on that one block to link up with Hornby. The problem with that is that the car lane shift on Pacific (westbound) would have to occur in the Hornby intersection unless a wedge of land is expropriated from Il Giardino.