Sitting at home and suddenly thought about this. Maybe I'm not the first one to bring this up but maybe a way to decrease traffic congestion in the downtown core is to toll roads going into the downtown area (simiar to Singapore's Electornic Road Pricing scheme--ERP).
Perhaps Translink could consider putting gantries with electronic tolls up at several locations:
Map:
1) Lions Gate Bridge (or somewhere along the Stanley Park Causeway Road)
2) Burrard Street Bridge
3) Granville Street Bridge
4) Cambie Street Bridge
5) Expo Blvd (west of Quebec Street)
6) Dunsmuir Viaduct
7) Pender Street (west of Abbot Street)
8) Hastings (west of Abbot Street)
9) Abbot Street (north of Cordova Street)
10) Water Street (west of Carrall Street)
11) Waterfront Road (west of Main Street)
Pricing could be a flat rate per entry depending on time of day. $2 during rush hour? $1 other times, free late night when public transit is not running and infrequent. And of course during special days (e.g. New Years Eve, Canada Day, Celebration of Lights, the tolls could be increased?). Tolls collected would fund road and transit infrastructure!
There would be no gates for roads that lead out of downtown (e.g. Georgia Viaduct). However, a shortfall in this is that no tolls would be collected from traffic generated from and travelling within the downtown core.
Is this a crazy idea? Does anyone see any problems with this idea for Downtown Vancouver?