The city councillor who suggested the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts should be torn down does not believe spending $300,000 to add a two-way bike path to the latter bridge is a waste of money.

“The decision hasn’t been made,” Vision councillor Geoff Meggs told the Straight, referring to the potential removal of the viaducts. “We’re studying whether it could be torn down....In the meantime, we’re years from having that report. Later in the spring, we’ll ask for the RFP [request for proposals]. Hopefully this year we’ll get something back. Still the decision would be some years away.”

Meanwhile, Meggs said, you can “simply do some rearranging there and create a better route into the downtown core from one of our most heavily used crosstown bike routes, which is the Adanac route”.

At its city services and budgets meeting on Thursday (February 4), council will vote on whether to proceed with the two-way separated bike lane into the downtown core.

The bike lane would fill what Meggs calls the “lost lane”, which he said was removed from the viaduct several years ago and not replaced.

Council will also vote on the adoption, in principle, of a plan to connect separated bike paths on the Burrard Bridge and Dunsmuir Viaduct with the city centre.

Meggs said it is by no means certain the viaducts are going to be torn down.

“No, we’re trying to determine the feasibility of it,” Meggs said. “That report hasn’t even been commissioned yet, although council’s agreed to commission it. It was a post-Olympics proposition.”

The Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition issued a press release on February 2 in support of the plan.

Earlier, city bicycle advisory committee chair Kari Hewitt had also written to council to back the proposals.