By Craig Ollenberger

Not unlike many Vancouver neighbourhoods, Grandview-Woodland is challenged by traffic. The neighbourhood has faced many traffic issues over the years, from the threat of being cut in half by a downtown freeway project in the 1960s to our current provincial government’s highway-building megaproject, which threatens to dump commuter congestion into our residential areas.

For many decades, the Grandview-Woodland Area Council has worked to resolve these challenges and protect the vibrant character of the neighbourhood surrounding Commercial Drive. GWAC acts as a neighbourhood-level quasi-government, and its directors are elected by a membership open to anyone who lives or works in the area. The council holds regular meetings to hear neighbourhood concerns and facilitate action by local citizens. Much of the council’s time is spent liaising with various levels of government, business, and citizens groups to manage local development.

It has become apparent to many in our neighbourhood that it is difficult and often impossible to stop an ideologically driven government hellbent on chasing votes south of the Fraser River by ploughing traffic through vibrant urban communities. The response of our council has been to develop local initiatives to strengthen our community from within, against the forces that would break it apart.

To prevent rat running—that is, commuter traffic trying to escape congested main roads by detouring through adjacent residential streets, often carelessly and at great speed—the council has worked with the city and affected residents to design and implement a traffic-calming plan which makes rat running more trouble than it’s worth, protecting healthy residential areas where many children still play in the streets.

Understanding that our neighbourhoods become stronger by uniting, council members and neighbours have been working with the city to create a greenway extending the Commercial Drive’s character west along Venables Street into Strathcona. By bridging our neighbourhoods with vibrant walkable corridors, we can create a new larger community with a shared interest in livability.

An ongoing effort to protect the culture and character of Grandview-Woodland can be found in Car-Free Vancouver Day. This event began as the Commercial Drive Festival, a project of then GWAC director Matt Hern. Hern, with the help of Carmen Mills and many other friends and neighbours, created the festival in response to the Gateway Program.

Gateway is a sad and backward-looking proposal from the provincial government to replace the Port Mann Bridge with a new span, and widen Highway 1 from Langley through Burnaby and into East Vancouver. The program threatens to dump increasing amounts of single-occupant commuter traffic into East Vancouver. Busy commuter corridors like Hastings Street, and 1st and 12th avenues dissect our neighbourhood, weakening its connectivity.

The Commercial Drive Festival is a lot of things to a lot of people, but at the heart of it is the belief that a community becomes stronger through interaction. With the ever-increasing privatization of space, neighbourhoods have less and less public areas in which to interact. The festival offers a new view of our roadways as usable public space, available for many things beyond cars.

Over the past few years, as the Commercial Drive Festival has grown into Car-Free Vancouver Day and spread to Main Street, the West End, and Kitsilano, our neighbourhood has been able to bring the idea of strength through community interaction to many other vibrant areas of the city. Grandview-Woodland can only find protection by helping to unite other isolated but vibrant areas into a stronger and more cohesive urban landscape.

Further strength can no doubt be found in moving forward with a shared purpose and vision for our community. Thankfully, our neighbourhood is next on the city’s list to receive a comprehensive local area plan. Our first holistic planning exercise in decades, the local area plan will guide the development of our neighbourhood for decades to come. It represents an invaluable opportunity for this community to decide what our neighbourhood should be far into the future.

With the help of many groups and individuals representing our diverse community interests, city planners will facilitate the development of community objectives related to traffic planning, land use, retail and residential character, social and other services, and amenities. This is our chance to enhance the vibrant, welcoming character of our neighbourhood.

Grandview-Woodland will continue to face many challenges to its character and unity, but wherever possible, the council will work hard to chart a course for the neighbourhood on behalf of our community.

Craig Ollenberger is the president of the Grandview-Woodland Area Council.