Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex Mackinnon
What on earth are you talking about?
The reason Lions Gate remains as ridiculous as it currently is has nothing to do with the north side traffic flows. It's all about the causeway. The Parks Board wants nothing to with a wider causeway. Widening that section of road is a huge uphill battle for any government. They would have widened that to 4 lanes long ago if there wasn't immense pushback about cutting down a small number of trees. The south side doesn't move quickly, but it definitely has a greater capacity than the bridge itself barring a major problem. The single-lane direction will always be the choke point unless they do a huge structural upgrade and double deck the bridge.
I've never been stuck in a jam waiting to get off the Lions Gate Bridge, especially when headed north. The big jams happen when the lanes switch direction, since the primary lane has to "decompress" before the middle lane can merge in. That's when the deck jams up.
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I wasn't actually talking about the bridge, I was talking about New West's tactics in limiting traffic through its downtown by not supporting more lanes into the city being similar to how North Vancouver or West Vancouver would resist more lanes or a full interchange to properly merge traffic before it gets to the bridge.
In any case, we don't blame the Parks Board for not wanting more traffic through the park either... even though it's an area of the park few actually can use. And it's not just the parks board that doesn't want a wider road through the park, it's a lot of people in Vancouver. I think the road should be buried through Stanley Park as well, but that's a pure vanity thing.
The point is... that area is a through point for traffic between the North Shore/Squamish/Nanaimo and the rest of the region. We can't fault New West for doing the same thing.