Central Valley Greenway opens June 27
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Updated: June 20, 2009 11:27 PM
Next Saturday, amidst balloons, hoopla and celebration, politicians will wax poetic about the opening of the Central Valley Greenway.
They’ll talk about how it will be a wonderful way to go for those who love to travel on two wheels or two feet. They’ll enthusiastically proclaim the 25-kilometre, $25 million route will give walkers, joggers and cyclists a way to commute along fairly flat terrain from the Westminster Quay to Vancouver’s False Creek. And back. If they desire a different view on the return trip they can even take the existing BC Parkway along SkyTrain’s Expo Line.
Despite the hype, however, the Central Valley Greenway is still a work in progress.
Luis Goddyn, Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition’s Burnaby chair, calls the Central Valley Greenway a fantastic facility and an awesome addition to Metro Vancouver’s cycling system. He admits, however, the way it’s laid out, the greenway can’t seem to make up its mind whether it’s for commuters or recreational users.
“That’s a problem with every greenway in Vancouver,” says Goddyn. “Eventually these greenways become so much of a recreational route that it becomes very inconvenient. You get conflict between the commuters and the strollers.”
But he also concedes there’s no way it could be perfect. He’s got that right.
Starts at Hyack
For those heading east to west, the Central Valley Greenway begins at Hyack Square with the Columbia Street bike lane. Once up the hill, there’s a crosswalk to get over to the other side onto a new wide path that goes underneath the Pattullo Bridge.
To help get across the McBride-Columbia intersection, a pedestrian/cyclist activated light has been installed and then it’s on to a double-wide sidewalk in front of the old Woodlands property. The greenway then runs parallel to East Columbia until Cumberland.
“It takes what would be basically an uncomfortable, impossible-to-ride route and makes it quite usable,” says Andrew Feltham, the VACC’s New Westminster chair.
At Cumberland there’s a little hiccup. Cyclists must detour off Columbia, go up the hill a block to Sapper Street and then back down to Columbia to pick up the bike lane on East Columbia.
“It’s very difficult to solve that problem,” says Feltham. “I can’t imagine what else they could do there.”
After cyclists get by Royal Columbian Hospital, they turn right onto Sherbrooke Street and then left onto Fader, a pleasant sidestreet that leads the rider into a pleasant paved path behind Hume Park.
Showcase route
Feltham says it’s the best implemented greenway in New Westminster.
“It’s a showcase for what our bike routes need to be in the city and the region.”
He also loves the European-style yellow arrow signs pointing people in different directions on the route.
The long-term goal, however, is to make the Cumberland to Hume Park portion much more comfortable.
The intent is to have the greenway go below Brunette Avenue through the Braid industrial area.
But the Sapperton “ultimate route,” as Catalin Dobrescu of the New West engineering department calls it, requires a lot of land acquisition.
“It’ll be years before we go there. In the meantime we have a functional route,” Dobrescu says.
Once the path comes out to North Road, however, there is an extremely awkward connection into Burnaby.
A light allows travelers to cross North Road, but then cyclists must ride on a narrow sidewalk for a block and onto a bridge over the Brunette River.
“That’s a very weak link there,” admitted Dobrescu.
Ideally, a bike bridge across the Brunette would be built near where it enters the Fraser.
Ian Wasson of the City of Burnaby planning department says there was some indecision at the beginning of the project because Coquitlam is considering rezoning the land on the north side of the Brunette River for a large housing complex.
That’s why the idea was dropped until everybody made up their minds.
Brunette trail
After crossing the Brunette, the Central Valley Greenway turns onto the existing trail that runs alongside the river to Cariboo Road. Originally Wasson pushed for the pastoral path to be paved, but changed his mind.
“What we’ve found for trails running purely through forests like that, if we pave them then come the fall we can never keep up with the leaves and it gets really slippery. So it’s actually safer to leave them with a gravel surface,” says Wasson.
A contractor has started work on putting an off-street path to connect the Brunette River path to the Government Road and Brighton intersection.
“That’s a pretty scary place for cyclists to ride through without any signage at the moment,” says Wasson.
At Brighton, cyclists ride a bike lane along Winston Street to Sperling. A more pleasant urban trail on the north side of Winston is in the works, but it’s a $5 million project and partnership money from another level of government is needed to make it happen, says Wasson.
“It would certainly add a lot of value to the route because it’s the only piece we don’t have on the books to be building right now even though we hope to get it done one day,” he says.
Curvaceous overpass
At Sperling is the Central Valley Greenway’s signature feature, a curvaceous overpass spanning Winston and the railway tracks. On the south side, it puts cyclists onto a straight, wide gravel path that ends at Douglas Road.
Wasson says it couldn’t be paved because it’s a BC Hydro access road and the soil is so poor it would have meant excavating the road quite deeply and replacing the soil with high quality fill, an additional $1 million expense that couldn’t be justified.
From there cyclists take Still Creek Avenue through the city’s works yard and onto an urban trail near the new Costco. Wasson says the Still Creek Avenue bike lane is temporary until an off-road path is built when the street is extended to Costco in 2010-11.
Eventually that urban trail connects to the Willingdon Jogging Trail system which empties out onto Gilmore Avenue. There’s a short jog north along the west side to a traffic-free, freshly-paved path underneath the Millennium Line into Vancouver and on to False Creek.
Then for those still with enough energy, they can turn around and take the BC Parkway back.
ggranger@burnabynewsleader.com
Central Valley Greenway
What: Bike and walking route from Westminster Quay to False Creek in Vancouver
Length: 25 kilometre
Cost: $25 million
Breakdown: Burnaby portion $12 million, $5 million from the city; costs shared by TransLink, the federal and provincial governments, and cities of Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster.
Opening: Saturday, June 27, noon to 3 p.m., at new Winston Overpass adjacent to the Sperling-Burnaby SkyTrain station.
Opening ride: Prior to the celebrations the New Westminster chapter of the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition will hold a ride going from the new Hyack Square leaving at 10 a.m. that will include historical commentary through the New West portion.
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