February 5, 2025

VANCOUVER – Today, the City of Vancouver released a concept for a public square on Granville Street that would affect 80,000 bus trips per day.

Why are we concerned?

This proposal runs the risk of getting buses stuck in traffic, and making vulnerable riders less safe.

If the buses aren’t running on Granville, they’ll be running on Howe (southbound) and Seymour (northbound). Those are streets with narrow sidewalks, poor lighting, and no bus lanes. They are further away from connection points to SkyTrain and other buses. And they are further from the retail businesses on Granville that many are travelling to. 

Some of these concerns can be mitigated by redesigning Seymour and Howe. For example, the sidewalks can be widened, street lighting added, and bus lanes can be added too. But other challenges can’t be mitigated. Right now, transfers between buses and trains at Granville and Georgia are very simple. The stop you get off at is generally beside the stop you’ll want to board at. All the stops and stations are easy to see. 

Moving that transfer point a block away will make things more difficult to understand for occasional riders and tourists. It will add at least 150m of walking or rolling, which will be especially hard for people using wheelchairs or strollers.

What does Movement want in the short term?

1. Movement wants to be engaged as part of the design process going forward.
2. The city is considering implementing the bus ban on a temporary basis during the summer months starting as soon as 2026. If this is going forward, the current condition of the bus stops on Howe and Seymour needs to be improved. That means: a shelter and bench at every stop, adequate street lighting for all transit users to feel safe, and adequate sidewalk space so that people using wheelchairs can navigate past a line of people waiting for the bus. This likely means both a bus lane and a sidewalk extension, narrowing the street from four to two traffic lanes. 

Street view image of the bus stop on Seymour at Robson. This is likely to be the main transfer point between SkyTrain and bus in the downtown core, replacing the bus stop  in front of London Drugs on Northbound Granville at Georgia. That stop currently has 1700 boardings (ons) and 4300 alightings (offs) per weekday, and those volumes can be expected at the pictured stop while Granville is closed.

Why is Granville a crucial part of the region’s infrastructure?

Granville Street’s buses serve nearly 80,000 trips per day. With two bus-only lanes, Granville has more capacity than the eight vehicle lanes on Howe and Seymour. It certainly isn’t perfect, but it does enormous heavy lifting in the city’s transportation network. 16,000 of those trips start with someone boarding a bus in the Downtown segment of Granville.

What should happen to Granville Street instead?

Screenshot from the video of Sydney linked below. Notice the integration of transit and public space. 

Screenshot from the video of Zurich linked below. Notice the integration of transit and public space. 

• Shift the street furniture (lights, benches, etc) and consider shifting the bus lanes over, to create a bigger, more flexible open space. This will allow Granville to function like one of the many great urban streets with integrated transit. Examples include:
  • Bahnhofstrasse, Zurich – video, street view
  • George Street, Sydney – video, street view
• To get more public spaces, the City of Vancouver should consider closing streets on the blocks adjacent to Granville, while leaving Granville itself open to buses. For example, Robson or Helmcken.
• The City of Vancouver should install active traffic signal priority to ensure buses get more green lights and fewer red lights. 
• The City of Vancouver should extend bus-only lanes from downtown at least as far south as 16th Avenue. 

Does this proposal address long-standing concerns about a lack of night bus service?

This new plan does not address the shortage of late-night transit. All it does is make the existing late-night service harder to reach from Granville on weekday nights (on weekend nights, riders are already forced to go to Howe and Seymour). If buses are banned from Granville 24/7, transit users will have to walk at least a block to Howe or Seymour to a bus stop on a street with a narrow sidewalk, few benches, and poor lighting. Notice that this stop, at Seymour and Georgia (which will become a major transfer point) has bike racks where the bus door should be. 

NightBuses should run frequently throughout the night, and the responsibility to fund this improvement lies with the Mayors’ Council and the Provincial Government. 

“Every day, Vancouverites take 80,000 trips on the buses that use Granville Street. Not only is it the most crucial bus corridor, it is one of the most crucial pieces of infrastructure in this region, period. Public squares are incredible and we need more of them. Why on earth would the city target bus riders for removal when there are so many other options? They could choose a different location, or they could re-design the street so that buses and people can share it. There are similar streets in Zurich, Sydney, and they are bustling and beautiful. 

We reject the idea that bus riders have to be removed in order to have good public spaces. We can have both.”

Denis Agar, Executive Director, movement