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OK your claiming that Calgary is more dense than Vancouver and to support your point you assert that Guildford mall (IN SURREY) is 30km from downtown. You've been around a while so I'm going to assume you name has been hijacked.

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The Seattle LINK system (total cost $3.6b) has yet to extend to the airport, but what is built so far (over $2b) is lucky to attract 20,000 riders per day.

I would have liked to see the Canada Line built with Skytrain technology, but it's not the end of the world. The politically driven "hodge-podge" is more the result of classic Vancouver NIMBYism than anything else.

The fact that this is the first rapid transit link to the airport in any Canadian city is an example of forward thinking, not some "Olympic driven mistake".

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So you’re also claiming that Vancouver didn’t time it’s bid correctly for the Olympics to co-incide with an economic downturn to reduce construction costs????

No, I'm claiming that the rapid transit link to the airport was in no way required to host the Olympics, and therefore building it during a time of high construction costs was a bad choice in itself, whatever the link's other merits, which I'm not convinced of either.

I'm also not critical of the bid timing, I'm critical of the bid itself. I'm opposed to the Olympics, period, and voted against it in 2003.

And I'm not engaging in Calgary-worship, just pointing out that it has a rationally planned rapid transit system that is suited to the density of the city and is more cost-effective and comprehensive than the politically driven hodge-podge that Vancouver has ended up with.

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Now you’re claiming that it’s not the density that matters, but the ‘compactness’, ie more dense in the middle than the fringes.

No I'm not. I'm saying that both compactness and density matter for transportation issues. That should be self-evident.

“How many people in metro Vancouver live over 20*1.4 = 28 km (17.5 miles) away from downtown?” – Not very many, since this radius would encompass all of Vancouver, Burnaby, Coquitlam, Richmond, North Van, West Van, North Delta, North Surrey. In other words 90% of the population of the GVRD.

According to Yahoo Maps the Guildford Mall is 30 km from downtown. That's not as the crow flies, but commuters don't fly.

Also of course the GVRD (or Metro Vancouver as it's now called) is not the whole metro de facto. But just within the GVRD, the two Langleys, Pitt Meadows, and Maple Ridge have about 200K people, and that's not counting South Delta, South Surrey, and White Rock. So I don't think the areas you've noted comprise 90% of GVRD population.

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November 24th, 2009 at 7:37 am

“….to the airport for the 1988 Winter Olympics, even though it was only a few km way from the end of the existing line across empty prairie. In fact no host city apart from Vancouver has done so.”

Hmmm, I think Sydney did.

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Err, Sydney did not host the WINTER Olympics.

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Calgary is less dense than Vancouver it is a fact. I've been following this blog since VHB was around and I have to say the level of discussion has fallen pretty low. Is it the fact that the market hasn't dropped like we feel it should that is driving you guys to make (and defend) flat out false points? You know you make us all look bad when you cling to simply false (and easily verifiable) facts.

It seems every time Vancouver is compared to another city a couple of people take it on them selves to praise the other city and heap scorn on Vancouver. I understand this insofar as it is true but when you start holding up Halifax as anything but a hellhole and Calgary as a model of urban planning you have simply lost the plot. Vancouver has its faults but a lack of density and low livability (compared to Halifax) arn't among them.

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"Compare with Calgary which held the Olympics and built its NW and NE LRT legs during the 80’s oil and construction bust." – Huh? So you're also claiming that Vancouver didn't time it's bid correctly for the Olympics to co-incide with an economic downturn to reduce construction costs????

No doubt that Vancouver has made a lot of mistakes along the way, but trying to hold Calgary up as a model of urban planning is laughable. You need to take off the Calgary-coloured glasses, these are some really incredulous claims….

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Now you're claiming that it's not the density that matters, but the 'compactness', ie more dense in the middle than the fringes. Are you trying to say that DT vancouver, and burnaby are somehow 'less compact' than Calgary? Nonsense.

"How many people in metro Vancouver live over 20*1.4 = 28 km (17.5 miles) away from downtown?" – Not very many, since this radius would encompass all of Vancouver, Burnaby, Coquitlam, Richmond, North Van, West Van, North Delta, North Surrey. In other words 90% of the population of the GVRD. And this despite the fact we've chosen the center point in downtown at the very Western end of development (due to the water constraint), not smack in the middle of the population center like Calgary.

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