VANCOUVER—The City of Vancouver and police are considering a permanent barrier system to prevent traffic along Granville St.

An April Police Board report cited the Vancouver Police Department’s regular use of vehicles and personnel to barricade the Granville Entertainment District (GED) from vehicular traffic on Friday and Saturday nights.

“Funding sources are being sought by the (city) for the potential of installing permanent bollards in the area, or for the acquisition of movable barricade structures,” the report says.

Although both the city and police offered few further details, VPD Sgt. Jason Robillard confirmed via email there were changes under consideration.

“We are working closely with the City of Vancouver and are in the planning and development stages,” he wrote to The Star Vancouver.

“We will carefully consider several urban design options to help deter vehicles attacks, including permanent and temporary solutions. One option we will explore is the use of bollards. We actively examine options to help enhance public safety in areas that have increased volumes of pedestrians.”

Read more:

Why barricades and heavily armed police are the ‘new normal’ for street festivals

Granville St. was first closed to vehicles in 2007, during evenings over three weekends in August and September. The measure was taken up on recommendation of VPD members with “extensive public order experience … as an experiment to determine what result this type of initiative would have with regard to reducing disorder and violence in the area,” according to an October, 2007 administrative report from the VPD’s chief constable to Vancouver’s city council.

At that time, police statistics show the GED had seen a 139 per cent increase in fights between midnight and 6 a.m. since 2001. The area was also facing a steady increase in stabbings, assaults and emergency calls year-over-year.

Since then, members of the VPD’s “LIMA” squad — officers deployed to police public disorder in the entertainment district — have become a weekend mainstay along the GED, both on its perimeter in support of police vehicles meant to stop traffic from entering the pedestrian-only area, and in its midst. Roughly 1,000 officers were deployed over 115 shifts in service of the LIMA initiative in 2018, according to the police board’s April report.

Police are now present in the GED year-round on weekend evenings, and sometimes on Thursday and Sunday nights, depending on statutory holidays, according to Robillard. The LIMA team is also deployed for events which draw large crowds to Vancouver’s downtown, he said in a follow-up interview, such as the summer fireworks events or concerts.

The team, he added, is flexible and can be deployed fairly quickly to respond as needed, meaning “nothing is set in stone,” and even weeknights may see a police presence along the GED.

In recent years, Vancouver has also seen the deployment of “heavy vehicle barriers” at the city’s several car-free festivals and other public events, during which major thoroughfares are closed to traffic for neighbourhood celebrations.

This more conspicuous vehicle-control tactic involves using large, heavy-duty city trucks as movable barricades, manned by a VPD officer toting firearms including, in many cases, a tactical patrol rifle.

Brian Kinney, associate director of graduate programs at Simon Fraser University, told The Star last June the VPD’s “heavy vehicle barrier” strategy laid bare the “tension between safety and the appearance of a police state,” which suffuses modern urban safety tactics.

But the proposal for permanent bollards — stout posts anchored into the ground to prevent traffic from entering a pedestrian-only zone — presents an opportunity for the city to develop a design which blends more seamlessly into the “urban fabric,” said Andy Yan, director of The City Program at Simon Fraser University.

“Part of it is actually making sure the bollards, or whatever the design, really fit in,” Yan said in an interview.

“That it brings a sense of safety as opposed to fear. That when you look at it you think, ‘OK, I’m safer.’”

Design which too baldly reflects its own function as an effort to mitigate threats “elicits a certain level of anxiety,” he said. This anxiety disrupts what Yan called the “sidewalk experience” — the implicit feeling of pedestrian safety and priority that traffic-calming measures are, as much as public safety, meant to encourage.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Close consultation with emergency providers such as the Vancouver Fire and Rescue Service will need to figure prominently in any conversation about a design solution, Yan pointed out — a consideration reflected explicitly in the police board report. Reflecting on how people who use wheelchairs or may live with other mobility issues are able to access a more permanent pedestrian mall needs to likewise be a priority, he said.

Finding a way to avoid hamstringing transit routes will also be key, he added.

There is currently no projection on when potential solutions might become public.

Read more about: