Crews starting construction on the Hornby Street bike lane Wednesday mere hours after council approved the project has prompted NPA councillor Suzanne Anton to claim Vancouver city hall is home to a “kangaroo council.”
“It is crystal clear to me now that Tuesday’s council meeting was a mere formality and pure political theatre,” Anton said in a statement Thursday morning. “Businesses on Hornby Street cannot have faith that their concerns will be properly considered.”
The $3.2 million project will create a two-way separated bike lane along the east side of Hornby Street (See “Hornby bike lane approved over business community objections ” – BIV Business Today, October 6).
The project will take approximately 10 weeks to finish, but Anton argues it will have an adverse effect on businesses in the area.
Now, she plans to request a full report from city staff to explain how construction could begin so quickly after council’s Tuesday night vote.
“It’s clear to me from prepared signage and work plans that logistics for this project were not done overnight, and that staff was given direction to undertake this work weeks ago,” Anton said. “Furthermore, I’ve learned that the road had already been marked in preparation for the work as early as Monday, a full day before the public meeting took place.”
Charles Gauthier, executive director of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association, said he’s not surprised.
“I knew the moment it was approved it would start just based on the experience we had on Dunsmuir Street,” Gauthier said, explaining that construction work for the Dunsmuir Street bike lane started before council approved it.
Gauthier said last month he thought the city was rushing into the Hornby Street plan without knowing how well the Dunsmuir bike lane has worked for all stakeholders (See “Business owners blast bicycle lobby’s influence at city hall” – issue 1088; August 31 to September 6).
Gauthier said he hopes city hall will work with business owners along Hornby Street to minimize the impact construction will have, but even the best efforts may still come up short for businesses.
“It’s going to be extremely disruptive,” he said. “And based on our experience over the last few years with both the Canada Line construction downtown and the Granville Street redesign there was a lot of time and effort put in to trying to minimize those impacts. Even with all the best effort we all put in it we know that it was disruptive.”