[dangwu]

It’s nice that Vancouver doesn’t have a highway cutting it in half like Seattle, but it also takes longer to drive anywhere.

From my experience, many of its neighborhoods/dining districts feel really cold/loud/unwalkable due to the high speed 4 lane roads everywhere. Traffic noise still seems like a huge issue, trying to parallel park when cars are buzzing by at 50 mph isn’t fun, and the unprotected left turns are pretty gnarly.

[ripley12]

> many of its neighborhoods/dining districts feel really cold/loud/unwalkable due to the high speed 4 lane roads everywhere

Yeah, this is an unfortunate aspect of Vancouver's city planning; our zoning forces nearly all shops and restaurants onto busy, loud, polluted arterial roads. Changing this isn't really on the political landscape right now, and I don't think it's going to change anytime soon.

[rtlfe]

> but it also takes longer to drive anywhere.

Great. Driving should not be convenient in cities.

[nfca]

Driving is just one mode of transportation. Buses can take 3 or 4 times as much time to reach any destination, which is far too much to be a viable alternative to people with a choice.

Ask yourself if you would like to spend 45 minutes aboard the bus system as opposed to 15 min. in a car

[klyrs]

Public transit is significantly slower than driving, unless both endpoints are immediately close to a skytrain station.

[dan-robertson]

I feel like LA and Amsterdam are both evidence that having a big highway cutting a city in half is neither necessary nor sufficient to make journeys (even car journeys) faster.

[dleslie]

It's not immediately apparent from the street names; but the Grandview Highway and Georgia St effectively act as parts of a bifurcating through-way, albeit with a congestion nightmware between them.

[Tiktaalik]

Not really comparable to a highway. I mean, yes it's a wide street, but you can just walk across Georgia Street as a pedestrian. Can't do that with the sort of highways that scar the landscape of so many North American cities.