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Nicholson Road is an ongoing photo project aimed at sharing and celebrating the different communities in Metro Vancouver. Each week Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³» will be featuring an image from the previous week, shot in one of the many 'hoods around town in order to draw your attention a little bit outside of the hyper-focus that we usually have on the City of Vancouver. |
Have you ever ridden the (CVG)? It's the multi-use pathway connecting downtown New Westminster, to False Creek/Science World in Vancouver, via northern Burnaby.
Completed in 2009, the CVG stretches a whopping 24km and connects a number of the regions most interesting sights and communities, including the Seawall at False Creek, the Olympic Village, Commercial Drive, Still Creek, Burnaby Lake Park, and the Fraser River at the New Westminster Quay. Along the way, it links up with 27 different cycle routes/greenways, as well as 10 SkyTrain stations. And the best part? A huge percentage of the greenway is off-street paved paths! Having said that, some of the other configurations have resulted in pretty enjoyable segments, like the stretch along the cut on Grandview Hwy N, or even the on-street lanes on Columbia St.
The Winston Overpass, pictured above, is definitely one of the highlights of the greenway. Spanning 30m across Winston St and the BNSF rail lines, with another 70m of ramps, the overpass wasn't cheap. It came in at $6 million, about $600,000 over-budget, and was one of the last pieces of the greenway to be completed. But the City of Burnaby knew this would be a challenging part of the puzzle, since it needed to cross an important industrial access road, 2 sets of train tracks, and is steps from Sperling Station on the east, with Still Creek and the northern end of Burnaby Lake Park on the west. Safety was key, as was accessibility and ease of use, so the final result was the beautiful investment you see above. It also acted as the centrepiece/backdrop for the CVG opening celebration in June, 2009.
Looking towards the future, the greenway will ultimately continue right on around False Creek and through downtown to Stanley Park, once the is completed sometime in 2013.
If you have a bike/roller blades/pair of runners, definitely get out to the Central Valley Greenway (here's a ) and enjoy exploring Metro Van! And if you've ridden the greenway before, or maybe use it for your daily commute, let us hear your thoughts!
Archives of the Nicholson Road project can be found .
