Commercial Drive is one of Vancouver’s oldest roadways and today serves as a high street for the Grandview-Woodland neighbourhood and a commercial destination for the entire region.
Bus route 20 on Commercial Drive ranks in the top 10 busiest bus routes in the region, with over 11,000 daily boardings in 2021. The route provides service to the Commercial-Broadway Station, a key exchange between the 99 B-Line and Millennium and Expo lines, including the future Broadway Subway Millennium Line extension.
In 2021, Council passed a motion prioritizing Commercial Drive as a pedestrian-first high street PDF file (40 KB). The goal was to promote business viability in the area while designing pedestrian-friendly streets that are vibrant and accessible.
While bus route 20 remains one of the busiest routes, there was a lot of bus delay and unreliability throughout the Commercial Drive retail area. This project work aimed to prioritize bus transport through the retail area and inform future updates related to the Commercial Drive Pedestrian-First motion. Future phases may include similar bus priority measures north of East 1st Avenue.
Changes to Commercial Drive
We worked with TransLink to implement targeted bus priority measures for more reliable and faster bus service. This included moving the southbound East 2nd Avenue and East 4th Avenue bus stops to create a consolidated stop at southbound East 3rd Avenue, to match service in the northbound direction.
The bus stops at East 3rd Avenue became the location of new interim bus bulbs, which bumped out the sidewalk into the curb lane (see Figure 2). Using interim materials for the bus bulbs lowered costs and allowed faster delivery, similar to the bus bulbs on West 4th Avenue. Bus bulbs provide expanded space and comfort for pedestrians on the sidewalk and improved bus speed and reliability. Buses can stop in the travel lane, reducing delays from pulling in and out of the curb lane.
Additional improvements include an expanded right-turn pocket at the approach to East 1st Avenue in the southbound direction. This measure will remove a few part-time parking spots so that vehicles can pull over to the curb lane to make a right turn safely without blocking traffic. The curb lane for the northbound bus stop at this intersection will also be painted red to improve the visibility of the no-stopping zone.
Note Because of the change in project scope, the northbound bus stop zone at East 1st Avenue will not be painted red and no sign changes will be made at the southbound approach of East 1st Avenue.
Figure 1. Bus stop and curb lane changes
Impacts to businesses and residents
We worked with the Commercial Drive Business Society to make sure the bus bulbs were integrated with the street and are well-maintained. Construction began in late spring 2023 and took approximately 3 to 4 weeks. We anticipated minor traffic impacts while signage and bus bulbs were installed; there was minimal disruption to residents and businesses.
Figure 2. Interim bus bulb
Granville Street is the tenth most delayed transit corridor in the region, with some of the slowest average travel speeds and the most bus bunching (when two or more buses arrive at the same time), in the region.
