by Carol Volkart, DRA Newsletter Editor
The blocks surrounding the Dunbar bus loop at Dunbar St. and 41st Ave. will look very different in future due to the provincial government’s new Transit-Oriented Areas legislation.
The new rules draw two concentric circles around the bus loop – one a distance of 200 metres and the other a distance of 400 metres.
Any lot within, or touching on, the 200-metre circle, will be allowed to have buildings 12 storeys high. Within the 400-metre circle, or any lot it touches, eight-storey buildings will be allowed.
“If the boundary of a Transit-Oriented Area bisects a parcel of land, the parcel of land is deemed to be wholly within the Transit-Oriented Area,” says a city of Vancouver diagram.
The diagram indicates that 12-storey buildings will be allowed as far as 39th Ave. to the north, 43rd to the south, to Highbury on the west and affects properties as far as Collingwood to the east.
Eight-storey buildings will be allowed as far north as 36th Ave., as far south as Southwest Marine Drive, as far west as Wallace and as far east as halfway to Blenheim.
The impacts of the new rules are already visible: at the corner of Southwest Marine and Dunbar there’s a land assembly sign announcing an “up to 8-storey development.”
The Dunbar and Kootenay bus exchanges are among 29 Transit-Oriented Areas in Vancouver, the result of new housing legislation passed by the provincial government in November of 2023. Most TOAs are centred around rapid transit stations and allow 20 storeys within 200 metres, 12 storeys within 400 metres and eight storeys within 800 metres.
City council’s report on implementing the new legislation, with TOA maps, is at https://council.vancouver.ca/20240626/documents/cfsc1.pdf