The following are extracts from "Review of Transportation
Plans - Metropolitan Vancouver, B.C.", prepared for
by Stanford Research Institute and Wilbur Smith and
Associates, September 1964.
INTRODUCTION
The Role of a Transportation Plan
Metropolitan Vancouver has undergone dramatic change and
tremendous growth over the decades of the current century. In
1921 it comprised little more than the City of Vancouver
itself. Since that time the city has more than doubled in
population, and a true metropolitan area has emerged. The
changes are portrayed in the tabulation below.
[Table shows population in 1921 and 1961 and estimates
population in 1981 to be 450 000 in the City, 1.25 million in
the metropolitan area]
The projections to 1981 indicate that further substantial
growth in the metropolitan area can be anticipated. The
realization of this growth potential and the quality of
living that will prevail in the area are both dependent upon
the services that the area provides for its residents and
businesses. Among the most important of these services is the
operation of the internal transportation system. ..
The creation of a metropolitan transportation system is
accomplished by investments in transportation facilities,
primarily highways, roads, streets, and mass transit. For any
area, these investments will be very large. In 1961, the
Provincial Government of British Columbia spent $88 million
on roads and other transportation facilities in the province.
This was 27 percent of its total expenditures for the year,
and represented an expenditure of $54 for each resident of
the province. Additional expenditures were made by many of
the municipalities.
[..]
In 1959, a Technical Committee representing the interests
of the cities and municipalities that comprise the Vancouver
metropolitan area and the Province of British Columbia,
produced a transportation plan for the area designed to
correct transportation deficiencies as of 1955, and permit
the maintenance of a relatively free flow of traffic to about
the year 1976. The plan consisted principally of a network of
freeways to be supplemented by a system of bus rapid transit.
..
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
To avoid congestion, unreasonable delays, and
unnecessarily high costs of urban transportation, it will be
necessary to undertake a substantial program of constructing
freeways and crossings in the Vancouver metropolitan area
over the next twenty years. Even a minimal program, designed
to relieve only the most extreme congestion comprising no new
freeways would cost approximately $110 million.
Substantial net benefits over costs would be provided
road users in the Vancouver area by the construction between
now and 1985 of a substantial freeway system. The system
recommended in this report would comprise a continuous
freeway route through the Vancouver downtown peninsula,
linking the Trans-Canada Highway and the North Shore, plus a
second east-west and a north-south freeway.
1985 Recommended Freeway Plan
