WEDNESDAY
June 3 2015 Vol. 106 No. 43
OPINION 10
Leaving Vancouver? HEALTH 15
Plaid for Dad SPORTS PROSPECTS 20
Getting a grip on life
There’s more online at
vancourier.com MIDWEEK EDITION
THE VOICE of VANCOUVER NEIGHBOURHOODS since 1908
Transit vote count begins
Results later this month Mike Howell
mhowell@vancourier.com
SQUARE DANCE Sunday’s ninth annual Fair in the Square at Victory Square featured musical theatre from Project Limelight. The celebration, hosted by Central City Foundation in partnership with Vancouver Community College, also featured a free barbecue lunch and arts and crafts. See story on page 8. PHOTO REBECCA BLISSETT
Burrard Bridge losing vehicle lane City calls for $30-million fix Mike Howell
mhowell@vancourier.com
The City of Vancouver unveiled a $30-million plan Monday to upgrade the aging Burrard Bridge that involves removing a traffic lane, adding new sidewalks to the outside of the span and widening portions of the bridge as it descends into downtown. Though two-thirds of the cost will be spent on the bridge, the project includes an $8 million reconfiguration of the intersection at Pacific Avenue and Burrard — the second highest vehicle-to-vehicle collision spot in the city — and demolishing the former Kettle of Fish Building at Hornby and Pacific. “To be really clear, the capacity of this
bridge is not determined by the number of lanes on the bridge,” said Lon LaClaire, the city’s acting director of transportation, when asked by reporters what effect removing a vehicle lane would have on traffic. “If you drive over it today, you’ll know that where you experience congestion is at the intersection of Burrard and Pacific. So the changes we’re making to Burrard and Pacific will address all the traffic demand needs on the corridor.” Standing on a sidewalk at the intersection, LaClaire pointed out the downtown side of the bridge will be widened to accommodate traffic coming into downtown. So a motorist travelling from Kitsilano in one of two lanes will see those two lanes widen into two right-turn lanes, with signals, that will join Pacific, while two other northbound lanes will continue
up Burrard into downtown. To widen the bridge, the former Kettle of Fish building, which is owned by the city, will be demolished. The existing two southbound lanes on the west side of the bridge will remain. But the approach from the downtown side along Pacific, out of the West End, will see two right-turn lanes, with signals, replace the current free-flowing single lane. In June 2009, when the city removed a traffic lane to create a barrier-protected bike lane running from downtown to Kitsilano, pedestrians were restricted to the west side of bridge. The plan calls for pedestrians to be allowed to use both sides of the bridge, which involves building cantilevered sidewalks on portions of the span. Continued on page 3
PARADE • PARK • CARNIVAL
Elections B.C. begins the task this week of processing more than 698,000 ballot packages received from Metro Vancouver voters who participated in the $5.7-million transportation and transit plebiscite, which closed for voting last Friday. But Don Main, a spokesperson for Elections B.C., said results will probably not be announced until later this month. That’s because staff has to first sort through the “certification” and “secrecy” envelopes in each ballot package to verify each voter correctly filled out the information, including providing a proper birth date. “We’re not going to be counting anything this week,” said Main, when asked when the Yes or No votes will be tabulated. “We don’t do any counting along the way, no counting is done until the close of voting.” The process of tabulating the final votes involves a combination of machines tearing open envelopes and staff manually removing envelopes. Ballots received from each of the 23 municipalities, including the Tsawwassen First Nation and Metro Vancouver Electoral Area A, are then fed into an electronic counting machine. Elections B.C. reported May 27 it had screened 698,900 ballot packages, or 44.7 per cent, of more than 1.56 million mailed to registered voters in Metro Vancouver since March 16. The turnout was expected to climb in the final days, as evidenced Friday by a steady stream of voters dropping off ballots at an Elections B.C. depot near Vancouver city hall. Over two hours Friday morning, the Courier observed more than two dozen people hand in their packages at a plebiscite service centre inside the City Square shopping centre at 12th and Cambie. Main said he wasn’t surprised people waited until the last day or week to drop off their ballots, noting the same thing happened with the HST referendum in 2011. Continued on page 9
June 19 ~ 20 ~ 21