Traffic areas in vanocuver.?

Question

Am moving to vancouver after a couple months. I have narrowed the areas I wanna buy/rent in to 4 places which are:

1) Downtown

2) North Vancouver

3) West Vancouver

4) Vancouver ( Between UBC and Main street and no lower than 41st avenue west)

Can someone please tell me the traffic conditions in these areas ?

Answer 1

The part missing from the other answers is none of these places are bad for traffic until you want to leave them.  So if you don't have to leave the area any is fine.  But you do want to leave for some reason or another and then North and West Vancouver become hard to escape with only a couple of options (bridges) of getting out.  The 3 lane, Lions Gate bride can be h**l.  3 lanes means 1 lane going one way, and 2 the other.  It means that going against rush hour traffic is worse than going with it.  

Downtown is better because you have more directions to head in, and a lot more options if traffic is busy one way or another.  Also, a lot fewer reasons to leave.  Lots of bars, concerts, and sporting events are here.  Actually, that can make the downtown traffic it's worst, when there is a big concert or hockey game.   Or when one just finishes and you have 1,000's of people walking on the street and heading to their cars.

UBC and Main is about second best, but again, bridges are the bottleneck if you want to get downtown.

Answer 2

1) Downtown traffic is not too good. Best to take Skytrain or Bus if you plan to live there. Alot of one-way streets.

2)North Vancouver has good traffic. Not too crowded, but the Second Narrows bridge and Lions Gate bridge out to vancouver will be crowded during rush hour.

3) West Vancouver is about the same as North Vancouver.

4) I like Vancouver traffic conditions. Not too crowded in regular hours, but can get crowded during rush hours.

Answer 3

All these places have bad traffic in the rush hours.

Worst: Probably downtown with all the traffic coming in from West/North Vancouver.

Answer 4

Traffic in downtown Vancouver can be terrible.  Go onto BC Highways traffic cams and have a look for yourself.  North Vancouver isn't too bad but realize there are only two bridges to take you there so if there is an accident etc. you will have no choice but to sit it out.  The same goes for West vancouver and it will be very busy in 2010 because of the Olympics.

Vancouver between UBC and Main depends on where you plan on working.  If you will be working in downtown Vancouver, again, you have to cross bridges and if there is an accident etc. make sure you get a coffee to go.

Good luck on your move to the big city.

Answer 5

Downtown is busy almost all the time. So is the area of Vancouver that you describe, on the main streets, though out toward UBC is generally very quiet once classes have stopped for the day. Side streets there can be very quiet, depends on exactly where you are.  North and West Vancouver are usually pretty easy to get around in, few traffic jams except for the line-ups going over the bridges into Vancouver at rush hour, morning and evening, which can add 15 minutes to a half hour or more to the drive, and which can be hard to predict on any given day. If you want peace and quiet, I'd recommend North Vancouver away from major streets, and West Van just about anywhere.

Answer 6

Downtown is a h**l hole of traffic usually

I dont know about North or West Vancouver

UBC and main street are terrible. You have to go on the UBC highway and then Southwest marine drive. Terrible.

Answer 7

Cityhall is planning to eliminate cars from the downtown core altogether. A car is a hinderance in the downtown area because of all the one-way restrictions, and you can walk anywhere across the downtown area in about 20 minutes.

North Vancouver is nice, but you have to depend on horrific traffic during rush hour on a very narrow 3-lane bridge.

West Vancouver is the same as North Vancouver, since it is next to North Vancouver.

Vancouver traffic is always busy on major corridors.

Houses have become unaffordable in Vancouver.

A fixer-upper in East Vancouver will cost you around $600,000. A luxury apartment downtown recently sold for $14 million.

Rent for a 1-bedroom basement suite starts at around $800/month. 2 - bedrooms over $1000.

Answer 8

Most people who live Downtown just walk to were they want to go, of course rush hour is the worst but if you are not leaving it would not matter.

Most traffic is from people coming  downtown in the morning and then out to the burbs in the evening.