The main arteries of Water and Cordova will remain one-way
Michael McCullough
Sun
Starting this weekend, navigating Gastown will become easier for tourists and other out-of-towners, if a bit of an adjustment for commuters. And for Gastown merchants, it’s all for the best.
On Saturday, Carrall, Abbott and Cambie streets (the latter north of Dunsmuir only) will revert to two-way traffic as part of a city hall initiative to reduce travel distances and thereby cut down on airborne pollution.
“It just makes it that much easier to get into Gastown,” said Gastown Business Improvement Society president Jon Stovell.
For 20 years the historic neighbourhood has been a destination where people have to double back to get where they are going, and usually just end up parking in a parkade, said Stovell, who owns Reliance Holdings.
He expects the reconfiguration to have a similar positive impact to the recent provision for parking on Water Street outside of rush hours.
“People who have been down here for a long time like the Old Spaghetti Factory say this has done more than all the other initiatives over the years to improve the neighbourhood, and it hardly cost anything,” Stovell said of the street-parking experiment.
So far city hall has yet to hear a discouraging word from businesses in the area about the conversion of streets to two directions, echoed Downtown Transportation Plan implementation team member Nicky Hood. It will not result in any loss of street parking, she said, although a few spaces will be lost on Cambie to accommodate tour buses outside the new Storyeum attraction opening in June.
The historic district’s main arteries of Water and Cordova streets, and a single-block section of Carrall between the two, will remain one-way.
However, more extensive renovations than the 16 blocks affected in Gastown are coming this fall, when Homer, Beatty and Cambie south of Dunsmuir will also be changed to two-way traffic.
The Gastown Business Improvement Society wishes Water and Cordova could eventually go two ways as well, though city staff have credited those one-way routes for saving Gastown from a commuter freeway once proposed to access the downtown core.
“They did keep a freeway — it’s Water going west and Cordova going east,” Stovell quipped.
© The Vancouver Sun 2004