New study to explore bike lanes on Granville and Cambie to link Broadway Subway stations

City of Vancouver to study pedestrian and cycling links on Granville and Cambie streets to reach future Broadway subway stations

Artistic rendering of the future South Granville Station entrance integrated into the new building at 1477 West Broadway. (Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership/PCI Developments)

Under the City of Vancouver’s Broadway Plan, the future SkyTrain stations of South Granville Station and Broadway-City Hall Station are the only stations on the Millennium Line extension that do not have clearly outlined strategies for optimizing active transportation connections for both pedestrians and cyclists.

In order to address this, City staff will be conducting a feasibility study of creating new north-south active transportation connections along Granville Street for South Granville Station, and along Cambie Street for Broadway-City Hall Station.

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Such a study will consider the reallocation of some road space on Granville Street and Cambie Street in order to establish active transportation links to both subway stations.

These new north-south connections could, for instance, connect with the 10th Avenue cycling route just a block to the south of the stations and/or the future cycling route just to the north along 7th/8th Avenue, in accordance to the Broadway Plan’s prescriptions to greatly expand the active transportation corridors within the area plan over the coming decades.

Broadway Plan’s active transportation strategy, with the missing active transportation links circled for the future South Granville and Broadway-City Hall stations. (City of Vancouver)

This week, the federal government announced $50,000 in funding for the study to augment the $20,000 set aside by the municipal government.

In a statement, Mayor Ken Sim says this funding will “help us explore how to best connect people to the future Broadway-City Hall and South Granville SkyTrain stations. Quality infrastructure for people to safely cycle and walk to subway stations is vital for our growing city.”

In an email to Daily Hive Urbanized, the City says the forthcoming study will also assess the “trade offs between different modes and developing options.”

Both Granville and Cambie streets are major north-south arterial streets, and part of TransLink’s regulated Major Road Network. The segment of Granville Street in the vicinity of the subway is also part of the formal continuous route of Highway 99.

The Granville Connector — the protected pedestrian and cyclist route on the west side of the Granville Street Bridge — is expected to reach completion by Fall 2024. This is accomplished by reducing the bridge deck’s number of vehicle lanes from eight (four lanes in each direction) to six (three lanes in each direction), while also narrowing the lanes. The Granville Connector’s southernmost extent is currently planned at West 5th Avenue, where a link to the Arbutus Greenway will be established.

broadway city hall station millennium line skytrain

Artistic rendering of the expansion of the existing SkyTrain Broadway-City Hall Station entrance building for the Millennium Line Broadway Extension project. (Government of BC)

1477 west broadway vancouver south granville station tower pci developments

Artistic rendering of the SkyTrain South Granville Station entrance integrated into the tower at 1477 West Broadway. (Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership/PCI Developments)

Earlier this year, Vancouver City Council followed the recommendations of City staff by rejecting the installation of east-west bike lanes on the subway station construction blocks along Broadway.

East-west bike lanes on both sides of Broadway accompanied with the original plan for widened sidewalks for pedestrians and patios would reduce the arterial street into a two-lane road (one lane in each direction), with City staff asserting this would cause significant traffic congestion and hinder the street’s ability to handle buses, commercial vehicles, and emergency vehicles. Alternatively, an arterial standard of a four-lane road configuration (two lanes in each direction) could be accomplished by scrapping the widened sidewalks for pedestrians and patios to fit in bike lanes instead. Broadway is also part of TransLink’s Major Road Network.

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