Bus lane statuses updated as of June 2026
New bus lanes in the City of Vancouver since July 24th, 2024:
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Vancouver is missing nine bus lanes, but you, dear reader, can help us find them. Read on to solve the mystery and get all the bus lane updates as they come in.
In 2023, Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung brought forward a motion to bring bus priority to four corridors, and in 2024 Councillor Christine Boyle brought forward another motion, which built off the original one to add five more corridors to the list. These corridors are some of the most congested in the city, where transit riders experience over 7,000 cumulative hours of delay – every day!
Last summer, we “celebrated” a year of inaction on bus lanes with our Bus Lane Motion Anniversary Picnic, and today we’re still waiting on a single new bus lane to actually be installed. Progress is finally underway on Granville, but the others are in the planning and consultation phase.
Click this link to see how much time you and your fellow bus riders have spent delayed by traffic on each of the corridors identified in the 2024 motion since it passed. Last we checked, there was over 432 years of cumulative delay!
We know bus lanes can be delivered quickly – sometimes in a matter of days.
So why is it taking so long for these bus lanes to be planned and installed?
Signs and paint don’t cost all that much! Our elected leaders are rarely transit riders themselves, and they usually don’t view transit riders as important votes to win, despite there being one million transit riders in Metro Vancouver.
This is why it’s so important for city council to hear from transit riders instead of just transit priority naysayers. And it’s important that transit riders vote for politicians who follow through on making transit better – at all levels of government. Bus lanes are the jurisdiction of municipal government, which had voter turnout of only 36% in the 2022 election.
Read below for the status of each of these corridors and be sure to sign up for our mailing list to stay up in the know.
Broadway
Broadway carries the busiest bus route in Canada and the US, with ridership high enough to justify a SkyTrain. However, that line won’t open until late 2027. In the meantime, Broadway still has no dedicated all-day bus lanes. The city recently added some extra hours to the existing bus lanes, but our request to make them all day hasn’t been actioned upon.
Hastings Street
The city’s plans for Hastings St are disappointing and we encouraged folks to send in letters to ask for better! Ultimately, the city ended up postponing bus lanes on Hastings St and doing even more consultation on the Hastings corridor in 2027.
With the number of buses that go through this corridor on a daily basis, having bus lanes along the corridor would speed up tons of riders’ commutes and improve reliability for SFU Students.
49th Avenue
If you’ve taken the 49, you know the struggle. Long stretches of slow-moving traffic with frequent stops and packed buses are not fun for anyone. The city is planning to extend bus lanes on 49th Ave in 2026-2027, and it’s long overdue for such a vital corridor with countless schools and destinations along it.
In the meantime, we called upon the famous Langara College graduate, Hudson Williams, to appeal to city council for bus lanes.
Image credit: City of Vancouver
Main Street / Kingsway
Main St and Kingsway are home to frequent stops, tons of traffic, and some of the slowest bus routes in the city. The city’s plans for the corridor will only speed up trips by a measly 3%, so we asked them to do better.
Unfortunately, even the lacklustre plans for 7 AM–7 PM bus lanes were cut back near Main Street-Science World station, a crucial section where bus routes 3, 8, and 19 all converge.
Granville Street
Marpole has some of the highest transit ridership in the region. Despite this, the city’s initial plans for bus priority faced major pushback from local businesses. We fought to keep strong bus priority in Marpole, but it was rolled back. Consider sending a follow-up email!
West 4th Avenue
West 4th Ave had bus stop balancing and right turn pockets completed in 2022, which helped make trips faster, but nothing new has been done since then.
In 2026, staff at the City of Vancouver recommended postponing work on this bus corridor due to reprioritization of resources 🙁
Downtown to the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge
We haven’t seen any plans for the bus corridor between downtown and the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge.
In 2026, staff at the City of Vancouver recommended postponing work on this bus corridor due to reprioritization of resources 🙁
King Edward Avenue
We’ve been keeping an eye out and petitioning for improvements to King Edward Ave and “The Amazing 25“, but there has been nothing announced yet for this corridor. King Edward Ave is prone to construction-related delays, and the 25 is a really long bus route, which makes every minute of delay even more unbearable.
In 2026, staff at the City of Vancouver recommended postponing work on this bus corridor due to reprioritization of resources 🙁
SE Marine Drive
Frequent riders of the 100 and the 80 will know that those buses are heavily prone to traffic delays along Marine Drive, causing trips to take even longer when it already takes too long to go from one end of South Vancouver to another.
Bus lanes for the 100 and 80 were anticipated in 2026, but have been pushed back with no new public timeline for completion.