Are extensive public battles over viaducts contagious? Vancouver, B.C., residents might soon find out. As Seattle trudges along on it meandering journey toward a replacement for the Alaskan Way Viaduct, a debate has broken out between Vancouver political leaders on the future of the city’s Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts.
The dogs of discourse were unleashed by an Oct. 16 op-ed published by Vancouver City Councilmember Gregory Meggs in online magazine The Tyee. The viaducts will be shut down for security reasons during February’s winter Olympics. Meggs thinks Vancouver should use the occasion to reconsider the viaducts' purpose: “Are the viaducts pointing to the future or holding us in the past?” he asked.
By questioning the need for the viaducts, Meggs has opened the door for other local leaders and activists to present their own ideas. Former city councilmember Jim Green thinks the viaducts ought to remain up, but with a new purpose. According to an article in Straight, a Vancouver lifestyle and entertainment weekly, Green envisions the viaducts as parks, along the lines of New York City’s new High Line.
“One of the things that we could do is to make bicycle lanes and pedestrian park space up there,” said Green. “It [the viaduct] would stay there, and you would have the park up there, elevated three stories.”
In the same Straight story, activist Barbara Lee has a third solution: reroute the viaducts so that instead of neighborhoods, the bridges run over railroad tracks for traffic reasons.
And what would a viaduct debate be without further, complicating city issues? The City of Vancouver is currently considering plans to develop underused land beneath the viaducts. The fate of that development could certainly impact future viaduct decisions, the timing of which are not especially urgent because—unlike Seattle’s—Vancouver’s viaducts are not quite crumbling.
