> No highways in the city (loud, dangerous, take up lots of space)
The Grandview Highway cuts through half of Vancouver.
The Grandview Highway cuts through half of Vancouver.
If you're thinking of the Georgia Viaduct (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Viaduct), it is slated for removal and is only about <1km
Vancouver's not a particularly well-designed city; its lack of a fully through highway is more a circumstance of indecision than design. It's still a city hampered by office districts and bedroom communities, linked with stroads, like many North American cities.
Glad I left.
The 400 series highways don't go anywhere near Toronto's downtown either. The 401 skirts around Toronto's suburbs, far to the north of what anyone would consider the city.
The urban Toronto road you're probably thinking of is the Gardiner Expressway, which is owned and managed by the city itself, not the provincial government.
For decades, there have been calls to remove the elevated downtown section which cuts Toronto off from its waterfront. Something that would not only remove a source of blight and open up the development potential of some significant tracts of prime land, it would also save the city a fortune in maintenance costs!
There's only so much money that (is politically viable) to spend on this stuff at any given moment. As soon as the line to Langley is done we're gonna see a pivot to building out to UBC or North Shore.