City of Vancouver extends Granville Street closures
A seven week addition to the pedestrian zone in the downtown core has been approved. Critics are cautious about the $5 million price tag and changes to transit services.
Mayor Ken Sim and the Vancouver city council recently greenlighted an extension to the pedestrian zone on Granville Street until September 7, after the Labour Day Weekend. This will preserve the ongoing pedestrian zone, keeping it car and transit-free in continuation, and will cost the city almost $5 million to uphold until September.
The closure of Granville originally began on June 11 for the FIFA World Cup tournament in anticipation of tourists flocking to the city. The original closure and the newer extension are done in partnership with the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association (Downtown Van).
Sim and the ABC party voted in favour of extending the pedestrian zone after the FIFA tournament concludes on July 19. This is part of an initiative called the Granville Street Plan, which was approved last year and is a 20-year process to develop a pedestrian-oriented Granville Street in the centre of downtown Vancouver.
Costs
In a statement to Coastal Front, the City of Vancouver confirmed an estimate of $4.75 million in costs for this extension. The engineering costs will be around $2.1 million in total estimates.
Weekly, “enhanced sanitation” will cost $150,000, traffic management around $100,000, and other costs, including washrooms, will be $50,000 per week. This is a total of $300,000 a week to keep Granville Street a pedestrian zone.
The total costs for the Vancouver Police Department are $1.4 million, with $200,000 a week required for law enforcement in the zone. The city has also given Downtown Van a grant of up to $1.25 million for “activation and programming.” All of the above costs total to $4.75 million for a seven-week extension.
In a post on Instagram, the ABC party said that the “extension gives businesses the opportunity to continue building on that momentum while giving Vancouver families and visitors even more time to enjoy an affordable day out and experience the city at its best.”
The post also noted “disappointing opposition from Councillors Pete Fry and Rebecca Bligh,” with their vote against the extension in the council.
Fry told CBC News, “Yes, [the] Granville pedestrian zone has been awesome. It’s been a fantastic experience.” He added, “But $5 million to keep it going for another month and a half without the benefit of the World Cup excitement … is a different matter altogether.”
Fry believes that Sim and ABC are “playing fast and loose” with taxpayer money, noting how many organizations have been defunded due to a freeze on property taxes passed by the city, but now they are asking for almost $5 million from the “public purse.”
Further details
A Translink spokesperson told Coastal Front that moving buses off Granville Street would increase walking distances and lead to more inconvenient transfers for customers. “The corridor currently features significant bus priority measures,” they said. “Without permanent comparable infrastructure on alternate streets, transit speed and reliability would be reduced.”
TransLink noted downtown Granville Street as the second-busiest bus corridor in Vancouver, surpassed only by Broadway.
In a public document, Sim and ABC propose that city staff look at a temporary reactivation of the pedestrian zone in November 2026 for a “Christmas Market,” which presumably would extend into December and is part of the Granville Street Plan approved last year.
The City of Vancouver said, “We have no details at this time on a Christmas Market,” in the statement to us.