March 6, 2026
Vancouver and TransLink recently announced some major changes to the transit system for the duration of the FIFA World Cup. We’re working on finding out exactly what impacts – both positive and negative – this will have on transit riders of Metro Vancouver.
We’re pleased to see plans for an additional 600 bus trips and increase in transit service including SeaBus and SkyTrain, and even weekend West Coast Express trips on local game days. But we have some questions and concerns about bus detours and effects on locals, and long overdue delays to transit priority plans in Vancouver.
Bus Detours Due to the Granville Pedestrian Zone
We’re generally big fans of pedestrian-only spaces, and the city is planning a five block pedestrian-only zone downtown. However, the Granville Mall, the street that has been selected for the pedestrian-only zone, is also a major transit route and home to buses with 80,000 passenger trips each day. We like that the city is planning 24/7 bus lanes on Seymour and Howe from Drake to Hastings to offset the disruption, but we have concerns about how transit riders will be affected by this detour:
- By detouring all these buses to Seymour and Howe, transfers to and from the Canada and Expo lines will be more complicated, negatively impacting riders, especially those with limited mobility.
- Seymour and Howe are more hostile places for riders to wait for the bus. The sidewalks are narrower than Granville, and the bus stops are missing shelters and benches, the lighting is poorer, and the road is much louder due to high volumes of vehicles moving fast on the one-way streets.
- More on our concerns on Granville in our press release from February 2025.
Connecting Vancouver Residents and Downtown Visitors to the FIFA Fan Zone
Additional service on the R5 will help link the PNE FIFA Fan Zone with the many tourist destinations and hotels downtown, but will buses be forced to crawl down a Hastings Street congested with Ubers? Tourists and locals alike deserve a congestion free-way to get to the Fan Zone and that means all-day bus lanes.
Transportation to Hastings Park doesn’t necessarily need to be on Hastings. City staff should engage with the DTES community to find a solution that considers their needs, which may involve bus lanes on Cordova/Powell or Georgia/Dunsmuir instead.
Questions for the City of Vancouver and TransLink
- How will closing off Yaletown-Roundhouse and Stadium-Chinatown to BC Place on local match days affect transit riders? What is the reasoning for this closure?
- How much of the area surrounding BC Place will be closed off to the public on match days and non-match days? The maps of road closures don’t fully convey what is public space and what isn’t.
- How will bus detours on routes like the 23 affect riders? Should we expect other detours?
- Will the elevators at Stadium-Chinatown be fixed before FIFA?
- Will there be accessibility measures in place, for example an alternative entrance at BC Place off of Beatty that can be accessed from Stadium, or a shuttle from Main Street to BC Place? Stadium-Chinatown Station to BC Place along Beatty is 400m, whereas Main Street-Science World Station to BC Place is over a kilometre. We’re pleased to see HandyDART designated pick-up and drop-off locations but we hope that there is more to the accessibility plan than this.
- Will there be enforcement of the Seymour and Howe bus lanes?
Where are the bus lanes for locals?
It’s great that there will be bus lanes on Seymour and Howe. But where are the long overdue bus lanes and bus priority measures that were promised in council motions from 2023 and 2024? It’s been years and we are still waiting for bus speed and reliability improvements on Granville (south of downtown), Kingsway, Hastings, 49th Ave, and Marine Drive. The bus priority measures on Powell, King Edward, 4th Ave, and Broadway have been indefinitely postponed despite the unanimous council vote in support.
The bus lanes planned for Seymour and Howe prove that bus lanes can be implemented quickly, so where is the urgency for the transit riders of Vancouver?