An international panel of land use experts injected themselves into the hot debate over a proposed Broadway transit line Thursday, saying TransLink’s current bus route to the University of B.C. is so inadequate that the system “is essentially at failure” and the only realistic alternative is a new high-capacity line bored underground.

The Urban Land Institute, a Washington D.C.-based group, said Vancouver also needs to avoid making other cities’ mistakes by trying to pay for expensive expansions by linking land use and density to the form of transportation. Putting highrise developments at every station isn’t a good idea, they said.

“You guys do high rises very nicely. But you are sort of drunk on high rises. You don’t need towers everywhere,” said Dick Reynolds, the chairman of a ULI “governor’s advisory panel,” which spent three days examining the Broadway route.

“Just don’t get caught up in the idea that if you pick an expensive transit system for a whole lot of good reasons, you’ve got to upzone everything.”

Reynolds and four other land use experts issued an interim report Thursday that backs up Vancouver’s preference for a bored tunnel between Commercial Drive and UBC. They met with city officials, TransLink and neighbourhood groups. A full report will be issued in two months.

Among the early conclusions the panel offered were that:

• TransLink should avoid light rail technology or a subway built by cut-and-cover method.

• UBC, the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and other major employers along the line need to help pay for the system.

• Transit should not drive zoning; existing commercial zones should be filled out first.

• The city has lots of unfilled commercial density east of Burrard Street that can generate jobs.

• The city should largely leave low-density neighbourhoods to the west alone.

With more than a million people and 600,000 jobs expected to move into Vancouver by 2041, the Broadway corridor will continue to cement its status as one of the major job generators in the region, Reynolds said.

“It is our sense that the subway alternative does offer sufficient incremental value to warrant being the long-term solution,” Reynolds said. “It would only work if construction could be done financially and physically by boring rather than cut-and-cover. We’ve lived through areas that have been cut-and-cover and we understand the impacts.”

Reynolds said TransLink, the city and the province need to build relations with neighbourhoods that are clearly wary of the proposed line, in part because of the disruption they witnessed during construction of the Canada Line.

“We had a clear sense that there are some pretty good disconnects that exist here,” he said. “Unfortunately disconnects therefore lead to a lack of trust and confidence.”

TransLink has made no decision about when it will build a new line or what kind of technology will be used. Tamim Raad, the director of strategic planning, said TransLink is developing a regional transportation strategic plan of all necessary projects, against which the Broadway corridor will be measured. There is no indication when Broadway construction would begin, he said.

TransLink recently issued a high-level look at the corridor that examined three technologies; light rail, rapid transit (SkyTrain) and a hybrid concept. While no technology was chosen, TransLink thinks a light rail line from Commercial to UBC is workable, Raad said.

Vancouver Coun. Geoff Meggs said the ULI’s findings supported the city’s view.

“I was really gratified their conclusions were fundamentally the same as our technical evaluations by our engineers, which is that given the growth that Vancouver is going to have to absorb, the bored tunnel subway is the best answer,” he said. “Not just for handling the growth but to protect the neighbourhoods along the route that would suffer really serious disruption with light rail.”

Former premier and Vancouver mayor Michael Harcourt, who attended the ULI’s briefing, said he is not convinced TransLink will change from its position of wanting an above-ground system, despite the panel’s findings.

“I have a disconnect with TransLink. They have this thing about wanting to go at surface and I think they are out to lunch,” he said. “It’s just dumb, dumb, dumb. You are going to be moving the equivalent of the Expo line, 200,000 people a day. You can’t do that on a surface street car.”

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