{"id":697,"date":"2006-04-15T22:09:12","date_gmt":"2006-04-16T02:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=697"},"modified":"2006-04-16T23:02:59","modified_gmt":"2006-04-17T03:02:59","slug":"vancouver-impressions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2006\/04\/15\/vancouver-impressions\/","title":{"rendered":"Vancouver Impressions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"VancouverContinuing my series of thoughts about public space in other cities, I visited Vancouver for the first time in years earlier this winter. It’s a beautiful city, lovely to walk in, with a lot of attractive public spaces.<\/p>\n

What struck me the most from a public-space point of view\u00a0were the various initiatives for pedestrian street-crossings.\u00a0 For one thing, as you can see from the illustration at right, their “pedestrian crossing” signs are serious business — big, unmistakeable signs, much more noticeable than our little Toronto ones. They proclaim: this is a city that takes pedestrians seriously.<\/p>\n

There were lots\u00a0of crosswalks, and many\u00a0were simply there, zebra stripes and a sign without lights. As I mentioned in my post about Rome<\/a>, it was hard at first to work out what the local culture was around these crosswalks — when do you step out, and what can you expect from cars? For the most part in Vancouver, drivers were pretty respectful.<\/p>\n

When the crosswalks did have signals, they were really impressive. Instead of a string of lights strung haphazardly over faint painted lines, as we have for the most part\u00a0in Toronto, in Vancouver they are treated as real traffic signals, with lights and massive signs over the driving lane and zebra stripes on the pavement making them unmistakeable to drivers.<\/p>\n

\"Vancouver<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most remarkable feature, though, is the “flashing green” intersections they have on major streets. As we drove along Vancouver’s main streets, we were at first utterly baffled by the number of traffic lights that were constantly flashing green (it was pretty obvious they weren’t meant for left turns — Ontario drivers beware!). It was only when approaching from a side-street that I realized that at these intersections, when approaching from a side-street, cars only have a stop sign — no lights. There is only a pedestrian crossing signal. And the flashing green traffic signals can only<\/strong> be\u00a0changed to red\u00a0by pedestrians pushing a button. Imagine — traffic signals created\u00a0solely for the convenience of crossing pedestrians! All over the city! (Needless to say, when cars had passengers, they would jump out and press the button to change the lights).<\/p>\n

A final interesting aspect of Vancouver’s local residential streets was that, although they were not especially wide, and were two-way, they had parking on both sides. This left really only one lane for driving, and when cars encountered each other, they would have to slow almost to a stop and inch carefully by each other. It was great for creating a calm atmosphere — cars drove pretty slowly on residential streets at all times. The policy contrasts with Toronto, where all streets have to have wide open lanes, supposedly\u00a0for fire trucks. Yet Vancouver’s fire services seem to manage just fine on these tightly-packed streets.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continuing my series of thoughts about public space in other cities, I visited Vancouver for the first time in years earlier this winter. It’s a beautiful city, lovely to walk in, with a lot of attractive public spaces. What struck me the most from a public-space point of view\u00a0were the various initiatives for pedestrian street-crossings.\u00a0Continue reading “Vancouver Impressions”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4006,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[2000,636,21,1730,19,54],"class_list":["post-697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-traffic","category-walking","tag-fire-services","tag-ontario","tag-other-cities","tag-rome","tag-toronto","tag-vancouver"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nVancouver Impressions - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2006\/04\/15\/vancouver-impressions\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vancouver Impressions - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Continuing my series of thoughts about public space in other cities, I visited Vancouver for the first time in years earlier this winter. It’s a beautiful city, lovely to walk in, with a lot of attractive public spaces. 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