The Arbutus Greenway is a new transit corridor that has been enabled by the City of Vancouver buying lands associated with an old CP rail line. Although detailed planning is to extend over several years, with lots of public consultation, the city put in a paved 9 km multi-use trail as a preliminary “demonstration”.
The trail runs from about 5th and Fir all the way south to almost the north end of the Arthur Liang bridge to Richmond. My understanding is that it went in fairly recently.
Here is the north end of the trail.
This is the first time I’ve seen one of the bike share stations. The rates seem to be similar to Toronto’s.
One quirk of this local system is that there is a helmet law, and so each bike has a helmet attached to it.
The overall configuration of the trail is pedestrians on one side, and a bi direction bike path on the other.
It might have been just the fact that it was Canada Day weekend, but there were tons of people on the trail. What was particularly striking was the large number of families with kids.
I found it amusing that there was this billboard along the trail.
After a relatively short east-west section, the path turns south.
Some of the road crossings are not finished. This is the non crossing at Broadway, where people were walking their bikes along the sidewalk to the intersection nearby.
Smaller intersections have the cross traffic controlled by stop signs. You can also see concrete curbs that slow traffic on the path.
This railway crossing sign was cute, but it looked like a recent addition.
There were also a few bits of public art along the trail. Here are a few sections of rail beside this bench.
The placement of the concrete curbs was a bit inconsistent. Here, the curbs are blocking the bike portion of the trail.
At this intersection, the bikes and pedestrians are explicitly directed to an adjacent crosswalk at the intersection.
Old power line poles remain along the pathway.
A rainbow of painted rocks.
Existing pedestrian trails that cross the corridor are clearly marked.
Here just south of Kerrisdale, there is more space at this intersection so that foot and bike traffic are separated for the crossing.
On this section of the trail, there were a lot of community gardens. This one had a shed and several scarecrows.
There was only one remaining crossing that looked like it was still being built.
Here is the south end of the trail. You can see the old rails continuing further. I had a nice chat with the fellow in the yellow shirt. He said that the right of way will eventually also include a street car line, and that there is still much planning to be done before the plan is finalized. In the meantime, Vancouverites can enjoy this great path.
Coming back north, I note the marked turn off to connect to the Canada Line bridge that has a bike path on it.
I do realize that the West Toronto Railpath is a more complicated project, but it seems like it is going to take forever to complete, in comparison to what Vancouver has managed to do in less than a year.
Update: posted to the HUB cycling FB page:
“Arbutus Greenway Temporary Path Construction June Update We’re building a temporary path that everyone can enjoy while the future Arbutus Greenway is being planned and designed. In June we finished paint line markings and stencils to help visitors share the greenway. We also added project signage, so that visitors know how to get involved. Next month we are making finishing touches to the intersection at West 41st Avenue, adding safety improvements at local intersections along the greenway, and adding signage to either end of the temporary path to help visitors get to the Seawall/Granville Island and the Canada Line Bridge.”
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