zephyreks

Currently UBC has a number of bike lanes that feed into campus. These include the lanes on Wesbrook Mall, East Mall, and University Boulevard. However, they're all basically just paint on the road.

UBC is surrounded by two key areas of density: Wesbrook Village (accessible by Wesbrook Mall and East Mall with a 7 minute bike) and Point Grey Village (accessible by University Boulevard with an 11 minute bike). This is an ideal setup for improving bike infrastructure, especially for students.

Currently, there's a decent route on the pedestrian walkway in between the big sports fields (between Wesbrook and East Mall). However, it terminates before entering the area of the university that actually has buildings. This makes the route between Wesbrook Village and UBC doable, but more challenging than it needs to me. A straight shot up Wesbrook Mall would directly connect Wesbrook Village with the Bus Loop for e.g. trips along the 99 B-Line. Meanwhile, a straight shot up from East Mall would bring people directly to the heart of campus. Currently, these roads have pretty sketchy bike lanes that discourage biking.

Along University Blvd, a similar story holds. The road is actually really nice (even for recreational riding), but the infrastructure isn't there for it.

What I'd like to see is for actual separated bike lanes along these corridors. Given UBC's goals of sustainability (and just the general benefits of micromobility for students), this should be a no-brainer.

The Vancouver 2030 bid was killed by the BC government back in late 2022. It was expected to cost about $1.2 billion in direct costs (38.5 billion for Beijing, 12.9 billion for Pyeongchang, 50 billion for Sochi, 7.7 billion for last Vancouver).

Vancouver already has most of the sports-related infrastructure built. It would facilitate the construction of more density in Olympic Villages, which could help ease the housing crisis. It would motivate the development of better public transportation and would bring attention to the BC interior through Sun Peaks in Kamloops. It would also drive more hotel development in Vancouver, which is already severely lacking in hotels.

Vancouver is uniquely well-suited for an Olympic bid given it already has the infrastructure in place. Such an event could help drive economic growth and stimulate job creation without paying for the excessive costs of having to build everything from scratch. Instead, Vancouver can focus on important projects such as housing development, transportation, and social welfare under the guise of it being Olympic development.