https://www.nzta.govt.nz/projects/waitemata-harbour-connections
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland_Harbour_Bridge
https://infrastructurepipeline.org/project/additional-waitemata-harbour-crossing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Harbour_Crossing,_Auckland
https://www.reddit.com/r/auckland/comments/1smxwo7/i_really_like_this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKfTpPA3s5s 9 car trains planned for future capacity. This is possible, because NZ is so far away from the backwards BC mentality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Rail_Link#Capacity_forecast_forces_platform_enlargements
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland_railway_electrification
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland#Transport
https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2026/04/15/for-the-avoidance-of-diesel-and-doubt/
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/skytrain-mark-v-trains-incoming-arrivals-april-2026
While the Montreal Metro can run 9 car trains and Auckland is planning to eventually have 9 car trains, the 1st Skytrain line can only run 5 car trains. The 2nd and 3rd Skytrain lines are still only running 2 car joke trains.
Combine that with mostly narrow regional bridges, and BC is clearly maintaining its congestive transportation agenda.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand#Economy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand#Infrastructure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_of_New_Zealand
While the North_Island is more populated, the South_Island is the largest one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_of_New_Zealand#Listed_by_size
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Island_nationalism#21st_century
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqqfSzQpoFc
How this new railway will reshape Auckland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpcMBDeZo7Y Of course Auckland can eventually have 9 car trains, because they aren't like backwards Vancouver is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI9WJa9Q8dA
Of course many large urban areas around the world have more than 1 or 2 skylines or tower clusters.
For the longest time, no building in Vancouver or BC, was allowed to be as tall as the 1930s CIBC tower, which is now a stump.
https://www.blogto.com/city/2017/05/toronto-lost-observation-deck-commerce-court-north/
https://www.torontojourney416.com/canadian-bank-of-commerce-building/
https://www.25king.ca/the-history
It wasn't until the early 1970s when stumpy, Vancouver allowed a building to be taller than the L.A. City Hall, or the Smith Tower in Seattle.
The 1930s CIBC tower, the L.A. City Hall and the Smith Tower, would still be prominent towers in Vancouver, but stumps in their own cities.
Despite Vancouver being divided by an inlet and a river, the city wasn't able to build a huge wall along Boundary Road. Thus, the KEEP THEM OUT agenda was a little thwarted. The various White city councils tried to do the next best thing. That was to symbolically impose various restrictions as a reluctance to think, plan and build on a BIG city scale. The time especially from 1960 to 2000 had predominantly White City Hall and its councils continually impose several overlapping restrictions.
Since Vancouver can't control immigration or the movements of non-white people, keeping things small and backwards, means that less people will move there than to Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton. However, with a mild winter climate, more and more people want to move to backwards BC, especially small-minded Vancouver and provincial Victoria.
In spite of immigration and Multiculturalism, Vancouver was to perpetually promote its small scale agenda.
While the first Skytrain line can finally run 5 car trains, the stations weren't designed to become long enough to eventually accomodate 9 car trains like the big city Montreal Metro has.
The 2nd and 3rd Skytrain lines are still only running 2 car joke trains. Running 8-10 car trains is what a proper big city would do, but not backwards Vancouver.
Narrow bridges provides strong symbolism of the cities narrow-mindedness. When bridges are too narrow, its difficult to have a proper express or rapid bus system. The reluctance to build parallel bus and HOV bridges helps to maintain the congestive planning approach that is vancouver and the Greater Region.
Vancouver's refusal to build parallel bike bridges has meant that 2 lanes were removed from the Burrard Bridge, 1 lane from the Cambie Bridge and 2 lanes from the Granville Bridge.
Keeping buildings symbolically short when compared to what scenic Sydney, Auckland, SF and Seattle allow, also helps to maintain Vancouver's reluctance to enter the big and tall urban scale. In fact, the scenic setting that Vancouver is in has been used as the main excuse to continually scale the city down. Yet, several scenic cities around the world are either able to have wider bridges, wider roads, longer trains or taller buildings.
The world is mostly composed of non-white people. Canada has less than 1% of the world's population and stubborn Vancouver symbolically remains as a small provincial backwater on the Pacific Rim.
https://centralparktower.com.au Unlike Perth, Vancouver forbids 50 story office towers and Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne size residential towers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/108_St_Georges_Terrace In fact, no office building in Vancouver has been permitted to have a 40th floor. However, since Burnaby and Surrey aren't under the restrictive controls of Vancouver, they will eventually allow office towers over 40 stories.
Despite Australia having less people than Canada, Perth is allowed to have taller buildings, wider bridges and longer trains than Vancouver. Taller buildings, wider bridges and longer trains are even less likely in Halifax than whats in Brisbane or Queensland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q1_(building) To see buildings on a similar scale of what Brisbane allows, one has to get to Greater Toronto. Brisbane is allowed to have some buildings that would even be impressive in Melbourne and Sydney.
While Montreal is allowed to have taller buildings than Vancouver, Montreal isn't allowed to have Sydney size towers. Especially not on the scale of what Melbourne and Toronto permit.
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-fireworks-2026-new-years-eve-nye
While Vancouver hasn't been able to get most other cities across Canada and around the world to stop, ban or cancel their NY Eve fireworks, strange Vancouver will retain this part of its NO FUN CITY mentality and agenda.
https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/local-news/fireworks-banned-halloween-vancouver-fire-department-9726922 Why just ban them in October and January, when you can ban them throughout the year?
https://www.ehnewspaper.ca/articles/third-year-of-vancouvers-fireworks-ban
For some strange reason, backwards Vancouver hasn't been able to get other cities around the world to adopt the same bizarre idiosyncrasies.
Officially, there isn't supposed to be a Vancouver+Mind+Virus, but the backwards city is so stunted and strange. Other cities in a scenic setting such as Sydney, Auckland, San_Francisco and Seattle are able to have wider bridges in or close to their city centers.
Despite warm and scenic Honolulu having some very short bridges, they are still wider than what extremely restrictive Vancouver allows. These two short bridges in Honolulu provide 4 lanes each way. Thus, they form an 8 lane crossing and they aren't even part of a freeway.
There is also a very short 6 lane bridge in Honolulu. In addition to its 6 lanes, there is a turning lane and a one lane wide median, which makes it equivalent to being 8 lanes wide. Plus, there are 2 wide sidewalks, which are wider than the original sidewalks on the Granville Bridge in Vancouver. In other words, no bridge in Vancouver is allowed to be as wide as it. Despite regional population growth, the Granville Bridge was reduced from 8 lanes to 6 lanes.
Considering how Vancouver has such a narrow road system, one would think that a regional network of bus and bike bridges would be essential. Of course the backwards city and greater urban region is too cheap to fund such infrastructure and rather opted for a congestive transportation approach.
In contrast, The+Helix+Bridge in Singapore is fine example of what backwards Vancouver refuses to build. No lanes had to be removed from the 6 lane Bayfront+Bridge or the 10 lane Benjamin+Sheares+Bridge. Stubborn Vancouver could really benefit from something like the Helix Bridge.
While Vancouver went backwards after Expo 86, Brisbane really took of after Expo 88. The Kangaroo_Point_Green_Bridge, Goodwill_Bridge, Kurilpa_Bridge, Jack_Pesch_Bridge and the Go_Between_Bridge are all great examples of what strange Vancouver refuses to build. What's really amazing from a backwater Vancouver perspective is that those bike and foot bridges in Brisbane never required any lanes to be removed from the cities road bridges.
In comparison, Vancouver removed 2 lanes from the Burrard Bridge, 1 lane from the Cambie Bridge and 2 lanes from the Granville Bridge. If urban planning in Vancouver was wise and the city never got rid of its trams or streetcars, perhaps something like the Tilikum_Crossing could have been built across False_Creek.
_V2.jpg)
SF is just as scenic as Sydney. They allow taller buildings, longer trains and wider bridges than backwater Vancouver. Unfortunatly, backwards Vancouver keeps going in the opposite direction, despite more people wanting to move to SW BC.
The longstanding argument is that since Vancouver is in a scenic setting, every excuse should be used to scale back or water down the urban prescience.
.jpg)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/False_Creek%2C_Vancouver_%282025%29.jpg
Fortunately, this watered down approach hasn't made it to Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, SF, LA and Seattle. Thus, all of them are able to have taller buildings, longer trains and wider bridges. The Vancouver Mind Virus (VMV) or the Backwards Vancouver Mentality (BVM) is an intertwined horrible concept.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Vancouver_Skyline_and_Mountains.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Los_Angeles_with_Mount_Baldy.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_San_Antonio 10,064 ft (3,068 m)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lions_(peaks)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Mountain_(North_Shore_Mountains)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Harbour_Crossing,_Auckland
https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/5312416/Debate-continues-over-second-harbour-crossing
"With the second bridge in place, traffic lanes would be split and shared, with northbound lanes on the new six-lane bridge and south bound traffic on the eight-lane Auckland Harbour Bridge.
There could be dedicated public transport lanes in both directions, and on the eastern side of the Auckland Harbour Bridge, two of the outside lanes can be freed exclusively for walking and cycling.
This plan would reduce the loading on the existing bridge." https://reseturban.co.nz/news/fresh-thinking-needed-on-second-auckland-harbour-crossing
Wow, this would be a duplication on the scale of what Brisbane did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Leo_Hielscher_Bridges#Duplication
https://briscycle.com/moreton-bay/gateway-bridge-cycleway/
https://www.brisbane-australia.com/sir-leo-hielscher-bridges.html
https://www.railway.supply/en/aucklands-city-rail-link-sets-sustainability-benchmark/
https://www.cityraillink.co.nz/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Rail_Link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Rail_Link#Capacity_forecast_forces_platform_enlargements
https://at.govt.nz/projects-initiatives/city-centre-projects-and-initiatives/city-rail-link
Auckland, NZ, along with Perth, WA and Seattle, WA have no problems with taller buildings and wider bridges than what Vancouver allows. Established cities like London & Paris, NYC & Chicago, big L.A. and even smaller Singapore, all seem to plan, spend & build more infrastructure than backwards Vancouver does.
Cities like Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne-SF-Boston-and-Toronto are all on a much larger scale, simply because they don't have anything like the overlapping restrictions that backwards Vancouver & BC has imposed for itself.
https://x.com/CityHallWchVAN/status/1517347123225718785?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Eembeddedtimeline%7Ctwterm%5Escreen-name%3Acityhallwchvan%7Ctwcon%5Es1 What seems big in little Vancouver is small or just average in many other cities.
https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne-Toronto
https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=Brisbane+Airport+Railway+Line
Auckland & Seattle and especially Sydney and SF are very scenic cities. Yet, none of them has taken a watered-down approach to the extent that Vancouver has. Indeed, a mandate to thwart, restrict & limit things, has been part of the water-down Vancouver agenda for generations. This watered-down approach or agenda, has become a clever way to hold back all kinds of infrastructure in the Metro_Vancouver_Regional_District. The mentality to keep things small & backwards is all part of the horrible symbolic desire to not build for a big future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Vancouver_Regional_District#Geography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Vancouver_Regional_District#Regional_planning Not planning to have trains as long as the Montreal Metro or the Toronto Subway, was an utterly foolish and inept decision. However, it makes sense from a congestive planning perspective.
In the meantime, a short train system can still work efficiently. Thus, there is no good reason as to why the SkyTrain can't be upgrades to the same level as the 24hr Copenhagen_Metro. However, BC is so stubborn & isolated with its approach to things, it would be quite a challenge to get to the standard of the Copenhagen_Metro, but it should be possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Metro#Route Eventually, backwards Vancouver will require proper long trains like on the Stockholm_Metro and the Montreal_Metro.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_Metro#Rolling_stock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Metro#Models
Not planning & building a regional network of express bus and HOV bridges, was also foolish and inept decision. However, that also makes sense from a congestive planning perspective. Indeed, bottleneck or chokepoint planning is something that commuters don't like, but BC urban planners seem to perpetuate it every year. Of course the lack of infrastructure funding is also a big problem.
Unfortunatly, with Greater Vancouver having such an anti-bridge mentality, it makes it difficult to have a proper regional Bus_Rapid_Transit network. Yet officially, the region isn't against having a proper BRT network. Funneling busses onto the same narrow bridges with cars & trucks is idiotic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_transport#Environmental_impact
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/320-granville-bosa-faria-flooding-dispute
It's a nice looking building, but once again, it's only a half-size figurine, or a stump.
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/bosa-waterfront-centre-320-granville-street-vancouver-office-tower
Unlike scenic Auckland, NZ & especially Sydney, Australia or SF, California, Vancouver continues to cut off the top 15-30 floors of any office tower development.
https://bosadevelopment.com/project/320-granville , https://320granville.com/
https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/320-Granville-St-Vancouver-BC/27653032/
https://storeys.com/vancouver-bosa-waterfront-office-complete/
Even no residential tower within little Vancouver has been allowed to be as high as the tallest condo tower in Seattle, Calgary, Edmonton & Toronto. Especially, Melbourne, Sydney & Brisbane.
https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne-Toronto-SF
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-view-cone-shadowing-opinion-public-amenities
While there are some taller residential towers, Vancouver has never permitted an office tower to have a 40th floor. Victoria has never permitted any office building to have a 20th floor. In recent years, office tower demand isn't what it used to be. However, short, stumpy buildings & narrow bridges help to keep Vancouver & Victoria as perpetually stunted cities. Melbourne & Sydney are about as far away from the BC backwater mentality as one can get. However, even today, there are people that would have liked Sydney to not be much bigger than Hobart & Melbourne just a little larger than Adelaide. Even Auckland was never interested in adopting the very restrictive Vancouver & BC backwater approach to things.
https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=the+Vancouver+view+corridor+agenda
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_Tower
https://www.lxcollection.com/property/skytower
http://www.oneyongeskytower.com , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinnacle_One_Yonge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brisbane_Skytower
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_Tower_(Auckland)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Skytree
