irwinloy

With less than two weeks to go until voting day, the Non-Partisan Association is placing its bets on the voting power of disgruntled motorists.

Vancouver's centre-right civic party is promising to cancel the controversial plan to close two lanes of the Burrard Bridge to traffic next year, if it gets elected.

NPA Coun. Peter Ladner says the party's doing it because the lane closure "has the potential for pitting a group of very angry drivers against cyclists, and causing a lot of traffic problems."

But Ladner downplayed the traffic concerns back in April when he voted in favour of the lane closure. At the time, the avid cyclist said motorists would adjust to the disruption, shifting over to the nearby Granville or Cambie bridges. Ladner also liked the fact the lane closure could save the city the $13 million city staff had recommended be set aside for sidewalk widening.

So what's changed?

"Since the vote I have been deluged with outraged comments from both cyclists and drivers," Ladner said in an interview yesterday. "If you've got a lot of car drivers who are angry at cyclists you are risking losing political support for cycling improvements in the future, which I think are pretty important."

But the NPA isn't the only party that realizes how divisive the bridge issue is in the leadup to next Saturday's vote. In September, Vision Vancouver mayoral candidate Jim Green made the unusual move of promising to revisit the issue through public consultations - after the election.

Green now says the consultation process last April wasn't "thorough".

"There's a lot of people involved that didn't have an opportunity to speak to us," Green said yesterday, citing various business and community groups. Green also said council hadn't taken into account what impact RAV line construction on Cambie Street would have on Burrard traffic.

A 1996 experiment that closed only one lane of the Burrard Bridge was aborted after just one week.

Next year's trial lane closures will see the two outward lanes of the Burrard Bridge closed to traffic and re-dedicated exclusively to cyclists.
CITY OF VANCOUVER photo illustration