While waiting for my wife to pick me and several friends up after the 1/20/2020 VCDL 2nd Amendment rally in Richmond, VA, we heard somebody shouting into a bull horn. It was InfoWars’ Alex Jones riding in his custom faux armored vehicle. As Mr. Jones rode by — screaming at the top of his lungs —I suggested that he go home to Texas. Virginia doesn’t need idiots like Alex Jones trying to stir up trouble.

So much anime has been made since its origins in the sixties, just in the era when the West caught onto the medium, that you don’t need to go far into it to reach the ninety nine percent that you take the best, the one percent, from. Be it obscurities, the underrated, criminally forgotten, the guilty pleasures, the mediocre, the product and the worst. Even in the UK, before we got a lot of anime now, always behind on the USA of having so much titles get released, we still got some obscure titles on VHS and DVD, probably to be found in a second hand DVD store or charity shop. Virus Buster Serge is amongst this anime, it’s history vague for me – a videogame adaptation, from the same creators of Bomberman Hudson Soft, though I cannot find screenshots of the Sega Saturn game in question, just the PlayStation one from 1999 that proves this franchise did have fans. When the anime starts on its first episode, the first information, the setup, repeated in the opening title credits between a male and female voiceover, immediately reveals why this title has became obscure. Immediately it sets up its crippling flaw, that it feels like a twenty four or so episode anime series crammed into just twelve episodes. You already have complicated dialogue that tries to sound important and throws in words like “Black Valentine” which, while eventually explained, aren’t revealed as early as possible in the episodes themselves or are particularly needed. Already, I’m criticising the anime in the first paragraph, but I’ll give the following statement. It is utterly fascinating in my obsession with nineties anime, but I’m not going to recommend the series except only to those curious with anything I say or the screenshots you see. This is an anime which wanted to be and sound important but comes off as something vague and peculiar instead, as much of its interest as well as its weakness from the fact this feels like it was handicapped before it even got out onto television, not necessarily because of anyone in particular working on it.

As the series doesn’t actually explain its plot as it starts, I’ll simplify it from all the jargon that gets thrown at the viewer immediately in the first episodes for a simple outline. A form of satellite hovers above a future Earth, sending down a form of virus which effects computers and human beings equally, causing horrible mutations and with the clear goal of weakening humanity, to spread and control the population if left unstopped. The problem has been lengthy when the series start, Earth unable to eliminate the satellite, but have kept the virus in some control. Set in Neo Hong Kong, the group employed to eliminate any virus outbreaks are S.T.A.N.D., (the acronym is never actually explained), part of a larger, potentially corrupt organisation, and are effectively the moodier cousins of the Power Rangers. The group is led by the enigmatic Raven, a man who is cryptic and rarely providing information that would’ve helped his group if they were informed of it. Actually, to get to the ending of the series immediately, a lot of problems that take place in the series could’ve been softened if he told someone any of the information of a bleak background story he knows of, furthered by the unexplained prescience of a female main computer hologram named Donna whose interactions with him in hushed tones clearly mean she represents something of importance. He’s has long black hair, he looks pretty when he broods, and eventually even his own group rebel against him in the final episodes. Said team originally starts out as four members, one staying back to pilot their assault ship and provide tech help, the others (literally) melding their power suits, Variable Gears, onto their bare flesh before combat. Marcus the methodical veteran with a penchant for jackets with fur on the neck. Jouichirou, the cocky guy. Mirei, a teenage girl who pilots their assault craft and, a talented computer hacker, makes the perfect tech person for the team. And Erika, the convention of the female anime character – hand-to-hand combat specialist, the sexy pin up figure for viewers, the potential love interest for the main protagonist, and unfortunately given the position of being the one who gets emotional and cry at least once rather than be as tough as the smart male viewers would want her to be. An inexplicable fifth member, titular protagonist Serge, appears out of nowhere during a virus related incident to try and kill Raven. Rather than have him imprisoned, Raven hires him, knowing something secret about the mysterious Serge and his dark countenance.

From here, S.T.A.N.D. must take on the virus outbreaks while being targeted from their own side as well as through what they face. It’s been possible, with flaws or not, for an anime to cram a much bigger story into a much shorter length then would seem practical. It would common especially in the nineties however for anime to have abrupt endings or none at all. Virus Buster Serge even as a TV series has a frantic tone to getting all its content, including an ending, into just twelve episodes. Twelve episode anime can work, but this story and what it desires to do clearly needed double its length, especially when it’s more concerned with esoteric dialogue rather than action or pushing the plot along. Virus Buster Serge could’ve been as generic and as off-paced as a twenty four or so episode series, but it would’ve spaced out all this series tries to cram in. It’s a series, as someone who usually isn’t a big fan of them, where episodic, one shot episodes would’ve been welcome, needing the four tier plot structure of longer anime series – opening quarter introducing the world, plot and characters; next quarter setting up the main plot; the third quarter the dynamic turn of events; the final quarter the finale – rather than smush it all in as it does. The series decision to try to be mysterious, of conspiracy, secret identities, a psychological drama with people in power suits fighting bio-mechanical monsters, doesn’t help. It clearly wants to be Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-1996).

The comparison makes a lot of sense considering Virus Buster Serge came to be two years after the first episode of Evangelion. Evangelion is one of the most popular anime franchises in Japan and the West, as well as one of the controversial. One which pushed the potential for unsettling content, which would mean a lot of television anime would be made to shown at two or so in the morning from then on, as much because of the production difficulties, of how to end it and how co-creator Hideaki Anno had a psychological breakdown halfway through producing it, thus leading to improvised experimentation and even darker psychological content. When animated sci-fi is usually seen as Transformers in geek culture, Evangelion pushed for more adult, psychologically complicated sci-fi in anime. It meant, after, there was a period where more experimental anime series were given a chance, from Serial Experiments Lain (1998) to Boogiepop Phantom (2000). It also led to imitators, something I don’t criticise as, considering Evangelion is still a gigantic merchandising industry by itself, I wouldn’t blame anyone else wanting a piece of the moody sci-fi pie. I cannot look at Virus Buster Serge and not think someone had been influenced by the popular franchise, only rather than characters and their back stories against the situations taking place, Virus Buster Serge was more interested in a lot of jargon that sounds significant. This series also saw Evangelion’s later episodes, once something went weird, and maybe The End of Evangelion (1997), where everything went to hell, and it throws symbology and freakish imagery around continually. A ghostly woman with angels wings, a white throne in a septic white room, vague swirling colours and depictions of cyberspace like a cybernetic, omninous snowball. Nothing about it has any real depth to it, but God bless the series, it’s poor but it’s memorable for its structurally pointless, but well drawn, symbolism. It even borrows Evangelion’s crucifix imagery, which even Evangelion didn’t depict with any actual depth to it originally.

Most of the series, when it’s not these scenes, or an occasional action scene, are characters in static talking of vague things. Obvious plot points don’t get explained until much later on then they should as already mentioned. Everything, despite the bright nineties, hand drawn colours of the characters, is muted, grey or darkly painted. There are no real background details if you notice, not a lot of background figures or detail, adding a lifeless feeling. The other divisive issue with this series is the character designs by the director himself. I am not criticising his abilities as an animator, as I still need to see his best work which has some pedigree of his behind it from what I’ve read of. He has become obscured in his craft from the early 2000s or so, having ended up directing hentai (porn) anime and steadily directing other work within the last decade, but is someone who has some well known titles in his career, including a few fighting game adaptations. His character designs are distinct, but are exaggerated in a way that feel they could’ve only worked in the nineties, not palatable for many in the last few decades looking on at them. The male character designs aren’t that drastic, barring the lithe muscular figures, but it’s the female character designs that stick out like a sore thumb. It’s not even the proportions, as there have been many an anime you can accuse for female characters with insanely large breasts, waspishly thin waists, and lengthy legs. It’s the faces, drawn and on these stereotypical proportions, which stand out, especially with the character Erika. Unconventionally shaped faces and eyes, snaggletooths and a ill-proportioned mix between cartoonish and attractive. At times, the designs work, but drawn at certain perspectives and angles, they look off in symmetry and quality. I also suspect this series was handicapped in being a television series – unlike feature film or straight to video anime, the former usually high budgeted, the later able to have more time to work on them depending on the specific project, television had a strict deadline, and Virus Buster Serge does feel like one with not the highest budget it could’ve gotten.

So what exactly happens in Virus Buster Serge when it’s all put together? There’s a lot of mystery, vague events taking place in the background, but were they worth doing when we could’ve have a more conventional superhero team story which more action, a little of the sci-fi and intrigue? The thing with Neon Genesis Evangelion, for its psychological drama, was that, being inspired by Ultraman, it was an action sci-fi first, with the character building and unsettling content built around this genre core. It’s not even that it had the advantage of more episodes, as for its rocky production history, where line drawings were used in episode previews instead of animation, and probably not out of stylistic flourish, it managed to do well for itself with a giant legacy as a reward. Virus Buster Serge could have worked with what it had. The episodes have to juggle the symbolism, the esoteric and the exposition in a mad cocktail. It should be legitimately weird and interesting for all its intrigue, and in some ways it is as a curiosity of the nineties anime industry. The colours, the genre melding, the view of the future coming up to the Millennium, the hand drawn results certainly for me entertaining to view rather than a good narrative story. The irony is that, despite its trippy symbolism, it never becomes trippy in structure and tone. It becomes fraught between the action sci-fi and the mysterious drama, and its more the conventional action sci-fi in the end, making the intrigue pointless, wasting time that could’ve been somewhere else, and not making it strange enough to get on the Abstract List.

I find more to get from this examining the result as it stands, not good, but to look on at with interest. As stated early on in the review, this is an anime only for the curious. Most people will find it generic and not that interesting. That’s not to say there aren’t fans of Virus Buster Serge online, but I can see many that won’t like it. For me it’s interesting to look at instead.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have a lot in common—elephantine egos, jowls, a post-fact approach to the world. They also happen to run two of the world’s most unequal countries, as major economies go.

The chart below shows the share of national income in three countries—the US, Russia, and France—claimed by the top 10% of earners since the early 1900s. (Income counts as wages, interest, rent, dividends, realized capital gains, pensions, and unemployment benefits before taxes and transfers.)

Elite earners in US, Russia, and France all claimed roughly the same share of income in the early 1900s. But their fortunes diverged dramatically over the next century. That makes it particularly striking that, in terms of income inequality, Russia and the US have wound up in about the same place.

Despite the global prominence of Russian oligarchs, you don’t often see Russia on the top of the income inequality charts. That’s probably because the government’s official data clearly understate the situation. These new data come from pioneering work by the French economist Thomas Piketty documenting more than a century of Russian wealth—trends that he details in a blog post and a fascinating new working paper.

By documenting the share of income pocketed by different ranks of earners, the measure tells us a lot about the distribution of wealth in a given society. For instance, in an egalitarian utopia, where everyone made just about the same amount of money each year, the top 10% of earners would earn only a bit more than 10% of total income.

But when that upper decile is bringing in, say, 48% of the country’s total income, it means that the average person in that top bracket is earning 4.8 times more than his average countryman.

And that, as it happens, is where the US finds itself as of 2015, the last year for which there are data. Elite Americans are now claiming the biggest share of income than they’ve managed in 75 years.

That’s probably no coincidence. It was around 75 years ago that New Deal reforms strengthening workers’ bargaining power began to bear fruit. Along with programs that boosted education and homeownership among World War II veterans, those reforms shifted wealth toward the middle chunk of society. That built the American middle class that powered a virtuous cycle of economic expansion. As the economy grew, so did incomes. And as consumption grew, so did the economy.

That “Great Compression” of incomes, as economists Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo termed it, ends abruptly in the 1980s as the US adopted neoliberal policies, shredding the New Deal social contract. (In Piketty’s home country, where a robust social welfare program endures, income remains far more equally distributed, though France’s economy has also grown at a slower pace.)

In terms of who earned what, Soviet Russia was strikingly—probably artificially—egalitarian. In 1980, the 10% highest Russian earners took home around 21% of total income, compared with around 46% in 2015. That’s almost exactly where it was in 1905, when czars ran Russia.

The country’s swift shift toward inequality begins with the Soviet Union’s collapse. Five years later, the share of income earned by the top 10% had almost doubled, jumping from 25% in 1991 to 48% in 1996, as a privatization bonanza got underway. Since then, that share has stayed in about the same place, ticking up during the epic Russian bull market that spanned from 1998 to 2008, and dropping just a tad after the global financial crisis and the plunge of oil prices.

The income grab by Russia’s elite as the country morphed from a Soviet republic to an (increasingly autocratic) kleptocracy was much sharper, and quicker, than that accompanying the US’s neoliberalist embrace.

But perhaps the circumstances and timing of the US shift should make Americans even more uneasy. Russia’s inequality is an unfortunate but unsurprising byproduct of the Soviet Union’s collapse; the epic upheaval that followed gave oligarchs an easy opportunity to seize control of the institutions that distribute wealth. The US shift toward inequality, by comparison, occurred during a period of near-idyllic stability. Unlike Russia, the re-jiggerings of US political and economic institutions to favor the wealthy weren’t by accident. They were deliberate, voter-approved choices.

“isn’t it funny that now as obamagod’s credibility is shaken and his real objective is showing through, we have Tarpley running a campaign in the dissident left urging them to “re-align” and support obama by “denouncing” real independent journalism?” me, today, so there

A reader left me a comment suggesting Webster Tarpley was exposing Glenn Greenwald as a psyop as early as June 9th 2013. That’s not entirely accurate. What Tarpley actually said was that the NSA scandal was being orchestrated by MI6 in order to pressure Obama into attacking Syria. He didn’t know if Glenn was in on the deception or not.

What Tarpley does stress in the hour plus video is that dissident groups have to “re-align” behind supporting Obama and they all need to “denounce” any independent journalists out here trying to expose his criminality.

While blaming everything from Benghazi to the NSA on Romney and MI6 he breezes over Obama’s criminality in Libya, never mentions drones and suggests we should back Obama in our own interests as purveyors of “realism politics” meaning : “hold your nose and vote”, “lesser of two evils”… pick your establishment supporting false left V right paradigm cliche.

According to Webster it’s the pragmatic approach to investigative journalism I suppose but to me it’s also called “controlled opposition” or better still, Cass Sunstein styled pure “propaganda”

Based on his own words, in his own words, you should all understand that Webster Tarpley is in the BUSINESS of carrying water for the criminal Obama administration, trying to convince the dissident left to get in line behind administration policies by ignoring their crimes and attacking those of us who don’t.

What follows after the break is the video left as a link by this reader and my comment that followed it. I felt it was important enough to make this an article on it’s own because what I do here is expose propaganda. That includes propaganda and crimes of the state committed by Bush as well as Obama and that includes exposing operatives in the MSM and the alternative media who back said regimes either from the right or the left.

and here is the comment I left for the reader:

Submitted on 2014/01/20 at 8:00 am | In reply to Daniel Casalaro.

“I don’t need you to support Obama. That’s impossible (not running again). But what you CAN do and what you MUST do is denounce those attacking Obama!” Webster Tarpley

listening to video…

“we should be lucky we don’t have Romney… we would be fighting in Syria and Iran and we’re better off” Webster Tarpley

funny, the fascist dictatorship he describes that we would have had @ 6:30 mark in video (were it not for ObamaGod?) is the exact same thing that happened in Egypt, which he supports as the “real revolution”

then he goes on to absolve ObamaGod for Benghazi, saying it was an attempted “October Surprise” done to put Romney in the White House. Blames Benghazi on Romney (not Clinton?) and fails to notice it was done to justify military build-up in Africa.

he then goes on to say ObamaGod didn’t submit a jobs creating program because he couldn’t “get it through the house”

oh yeah, that’s why…

At the 16 minute mark he seems to suggest that Mubarak of Egypt was a Nasserist leader, populist by nature, and that the “current government” (elected Morsi) was trying to destroy that populist element of Egypt. Remember, he also supports the al Sisi dictatorship…

he focuses on France and Britain’s role in Syrian destabilization campaign while ignoring ObamaGod’s role altogether.

20 minute mark “Whatever he (Greenwald) THINKS he’s doing, this is the tool of the British and the French…” Webster Tarpley

then he proceeds to blame it all on GCHQ.

“i would submit the actual origins of these stories is these people cus they spy on their own citizens… whatever Greenwald thinks, i think it was these people and the goal of it is, they want the US at war” 22:44 mark

ok, so Webster suggests Greenwald is being USED (not complicit) by MI6 to push ObamaGod into war with Syria, which of course, has been Webster’s schtick all along, that ObamaGod does want war and every scandal is simply blackmail by other elements.

aaaaaand that’s all he said about it aside from closing with…

“I don’t need you to support Obama. That’s impossible (not running again). But what you CAN do and what you MUST do is denounce those attacking Obama!” Webster Tarpley

uuuuh… no. That doesn’t even come close. yeah he “mentioned” Greenwald and Snowden, but not as a psyop, as an attempted blackmail of ObamaGod.

not even close

Yes, Amy Goodman is controlled opposition. That’s a fact. But so is Webster Tarpley. He’s just assigned to a different target market, but still he’s carrying water for ObamaGod and trying to position himself each and everyday as the “leader” of that targeted group. That’s why he’s always reinventing his position…

AND MAYBE THAT’S WHY GREENWALD THREW HIM A BONE ON TWITTER? EVER THINK OF THAT? MAYBE SOMEONE WRITING THE SCRIPT WOULD RATHER HAVE DISSIDENTS FOLLOWING TARPLEY AS HE DENOUNCES ANYONE WHO ATTACKS OBAMAGOD AND BLAMES EVERYTHING OBAMA DOES ON ROMNEY, THE BRITS, SAUDI ARABIA… AND OF COURSE WHILE HE BACKS AL SISI IN EGYPT. HMMMMM……. HOWS THAT WORK?

thanks for the video. very enlightening.

“the goal is watergate (impeachment). the republicans in washington, i watch them quite closely, they talk of nothing else. they say “the irs, benghazi, james rosen, the ap and now, the nsa. is this what you want? you have to make a political decision. is it going to help you to get obama out at this point? the merit obama has is when these people come to him and say we want the war, obama has said no… i speak as the most vehement critic of obama in the world” Webster Tarpley

for the record, obama is as much a warmonger as any of them and the entire syrian destabilization campaign STARTED under obama. for the record… Libya. for the record, obama surged our involvement in Afghanistan and is currently sending thousands of troops into Africa. for the record, obama signed ndaa 2012 in the dead of night dec 31 2011. for the record his death by drone campaign is off the charts. for the record, american gladio under his watch.

this video is a perfect example of the kind of controlled opposition that Webster Tarpley represents. different than Goodman, different slightly, than Di$info Jone$, but OBVIOUSLY, controlled opposition just the same

and for the record, YOU DON’T DO INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM FROM THE STARTING POINT OF A POLITICAL DECISION THAT WILL EITHER BENEFIT OR HARM YOU WHICH IS CLEARLY WHAT WEBSTER IS DOING BY HIS OWN ADMISSION

you don’t “denounce” journalists because they are reporting stories that may harm your favorite president.

and you certainly don’t obfuscate or ignore their crimes because you think the alternative may be worse. think about that for a second. sound like the old propaganda line we heard years ago?

“we can’t impeach Bush cus Cheney would take over”

here’s another…

“i urge you to re-align” Webster Tarpley literally telling dissident crowd to get behind Obama

isn’t it funny that now as obamagod’s credibility is shaken and his real objective is showing through, we have Tarpley running a campaign in the dissident left urging them to “re-align” and support obama by “denouncing” real journalism?

you think this guy is believable at all? trustworthy? it’s a joke

The Burrard Street Bridge (sometimes referred to as the Burrard Bridge) is a four-lane, Art Deco style, steel truss bridge constructed in 1930–1932 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The high, five part bridge on four piers spans False Creek, connecting downtown Vancouver with Kitsilano via connections to Burrard Street on both ends. It is one of three bridges crossing False Creek. The other two bridges are the Granville Bridge, three blocks or 0.5 km (0.31 mi) to the southeast, and the Cambie Street Bridge, about 11 blocks or 2 km (1.2 mi) to the east. In addition to the vehicle deck, the Burrard Bridge has 2.6 m (8 ft 6 in) wide sidewalks and a dedicated cycling lane on both sides.

The architect of the Burrard Street Bridge was George Lister Thornton Sharp, the engineer John R. Grant. The bridge’s two close approach spans are Warren trusses placed below deck level, while its central span is a Pratt truss placed above deck level to allow greater clearance height for ships passing underneath. The central truss is hidden when crossing the bridge in either direction by vertical extensions of the bridge’s masonry piers into imposing concrete towers, connected by overhead galleries, which are embellished with architectural and sculptural details that create a torch-like entrance of pylons. Busts of Captain George Vancouver and Sir Harry Burrard-Neale in ship prows jut from the bridge’s superstructure (a V under Vancouver’s bust, a B under Burrard’s).

Unifying the long approaches and the distinctive central span are heavy concrete railings, originally topped with decorative street lamps. These pierced handrails were designed as a kind of visual shutter (stroboscopic effect), so that at a speed of 50 km/h motorists would see through them with an uninterrupted view of the harbour. The effect works at speeds from about 40 to 64 km/h.

The Burrard Street Bridge, opened July 1, 1932, was built to provide a high-level crossing from Vancouver to the southwestern neighbourhoods in Kitsilano, by connecting Burrard Street to Cedar Street. After completion, Burrard was extended through to the base of downtown and Cedar Street disappeared.

At the opening ceremony, entertainment was provided by two bands, the Kitsilano Boy’s Band and the Fireman’s Band. An RCAF seaplane flew under the bridge and later a sugar replica of the bridge was unveiled at the civic reception in the Hotel Vancouver.

G.L. Thornton Sharp, of Sharp and Thompson, was the architect responsible for the distinctive towers on the bridge and its middle galleries. “Both central piers,” Sharp told a reporter, “were designed and connected with an overhead gallery across the road. This helped to mask the network of steel in the truss from the two approaches, and has been treated as an entrance gateway to the city.” Along their other axis, the full height of the piers above the water also serve to frame a sea entrance gateway, notably for pleasure craft: “by sea and land we prosper”. The piers have provision for a rapid transit vertical lift span beneath the highway deck, never installed.

Burrard Street Bridge has been assessed by heritage consultants retained by the City of Vancouver as being in the top category of historic buildings in Vancouver. The bridge appeared on a stamp issued by Canada Post in 2011, in a series showcasing five notable Art Deco structures in Canada.

When constructed, the Burrard Street Bridge did not have dedicated lanes for cyclists, who shared the bridge’s six vehicle lanes with motorists. Later, as traffic volume grew and speed limits were increased on the bridge to 60 km/h, cyclists were directed to share the bridge’s sidewalks with pedestrians. Over time, the volume of pedestrians and cyclists on the 2.6 m (8 ft 6 in) sidewalks created a dangerous situation, with several accidents occurring, which resulted in at least one successful lawsuit against the city.

Since the mid-1990s, the city of Vancouver has investigated various options to rectify the situation. The two most prominent options were 1) to introduce bicycle lanes on the bridge’s vehicle deck by reallocating one or more vehicle lanes, and 2) to build horizontal extensions on the outside of the bridge to create additional sidewalk space. Other options have included building an entirely new pedestrian and/or cyclist only bridge, and building another deck on the bridge below the existing deck.

Heritage advocates have been strongly opposed to the construction of outside sidewalk extensions, which would likely alter significantly the historical character of the bridge. Fiscal conservatives have also been opposed to high costs associated with this option.

Many motorists and others have opposed reallocation of vehicle lanes to bicycle lanes, believing that the reduction in vehicle carrying capacity would create excessive traffic problems both on the bridge and on and around alternate crossings, such as the Granville Street Bridge.

Beginning March 26, 1996, in a six-month trial by the City, one commuter lane was closed to automobile traffic and made into a temporary cyclist lane. However, after one week, the City was forced to revert the lane to its original purpose, due to outrage by some motorists.

On May 31, 2005, a detailed engineering and planning report was presented to Council, reviewing the situation broadly, presenting alternatives, and offering recommendations.

That day Vancouver City Council voted 10–1 not to follow the recommendations of the report, but to reallocate the two curb-side lanes to cyclists for another trial, as part of Council’s plan to increase cycling in Vancouver by 10 percent for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The issue was carried into the municipal election of November 19, 2005.

On December 20, 2005 the newly elected Council voted 6-4 to cancel the lane reallocation trial and to proceed directly to widening the bridge sidewalks as promised in that election.

In 2006, the City considered removing the concrete railings and widening the bridge deck by outward (‘outrigger’) sidewalks, at projected cost of over $40 million. To preserve the bridge’s heritage value, such cantilevered structures would not include the bridge’s central piers, or towers. Critics of this plan argued that the resulting “pinch points” would defeat the purpose of widening the bridge by creating bottlenecks, through which a greater number of cyclists, skaters and pedestrians must pass over coming decades.

For the third consecutive year, in 2008 Heritage Vancouver listed the Burrard Bridge first on its Top Ten endangered sites in Vancouver. It had ranked fourth in 2005.

Sidewalk expansion was delayed by the Squamish First Nation, which controls the land directly under the south (or west) side of the bridge. For construction to begin, the city would require permission from this group, which has expressed concern that machinery working on the site may affect their land.

The Squamish First Nation erected advertising billboards on their properties, located at that bridge approach, and is proposing the same for similar properties by the Lions’ Gate Bridge and the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing.

In a late April 2008 report to Council, city engineers raised the estimated cost of widening to $57 million, due to reconsideration of the additional weight to the existing bridge structure and rising construction costs. $61 million was set as a more likely figure.

In Nov. 2008 the current Council, which advocated widening the bridge, was defeated and replaced by a new mayor and Council opposed to the widening but supportive of lane reallocation from vehicles to cyclists. In late January 2009, in an economic downturn and anticipating the 2010 Winter Olympics, the City announced plans for trials of three kinds of auto traffic lane closings, allowing bicycle use of the road surface. This would be supplemented by safety upgrades.

In March 2009, the City of Vancouver delayed discussing the Burrard Bridge Bike Lane Trial at least one month. Council rescheduled meeting to May 5, 2009 to discuss the three kinds of possible trials, to begin summer 2009, where one approved.

On May 7, 2009, Council approved a motion to proceed with option 3 of the proposed trials, to begin in June 2009. The proposed trial began on July 13. It saw the southbound motor-vehicle curb lane and the northbound-side sidewalk allocated to bicycles, with the southbound-side sidewalk allocated to pedestrians. The reassigned lane was separated from motor vehicles by a physical barrier. As part of the trial, traffic pattern changes to accommodate feeder bicycle traffic were also completed on Pacific St., next to the North bridgehead, over complaints from local merchants that cited lack of consultation and possible negative impacts on their businesses. Three days into the trial, a local merchant reported a 46% drop in sales compared to the same days the year before. Six weeks into the trial another local merchant reported a 25% drop in sales, and a local restaurant reported a 30% drop in sales.

Regarding effects on three kinds of traffic: two weeks into the trial, the City of Vancouver released a data report showing daily bicycle travel across the bridge had increased by an average of 30%. The same report indicated little change in pedestrian trips, a slight drop in motor vehicle trips, but no change in motor vehicle travel times between 12th Avenue and Georgia Street along Burrard via the bridge.

In July 2009 a website allowing people to register opposition to the bike lane trail was set up by local realtor and former NPA parks candidate Keith Roy at www.unblockthebridge.ca

(On August 24, 2009 the Vancouver Police Department announced a sharp increase in bicycle theft, with the first three weeks of August experiencing a 53 percent increase over 2008, however, VPD spokesperson Constable Jana McGuinness denied a link between the rise in theft and the lane reallocation trial.)

By 2019, the bike lane on the Burrard Bridge had become the busiest bike lane in North America. The Downtown Business Improvement Association, which had originally opposed the conversion of vehicle lanes into bike lanes, stated that it endorsed cycling infrastructure because many employees and customers bike to downtown businesses.

In December, 2009 the Squamish First Nation erected an electronic billboard on their land adjacent to the south end of the bridge on the west side. It is visible to traffic travelling in both directions on the bridge and each screen (one for each direction) measures 9 metres wide x 3 metres tall. The advertisements will cycle every ten seconds. There has been controversy and protest from neighbouring residents who claim the billboard is unsightly, blocks view corridors of the mountains and even that it is a dangerous distraction to drivers. There are at least five other similar billboards going up near the Lions Gate Bridge and Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing as well as near the Stawamus Chief on Highway 99. The billboards were approved by the federal government. Local and regional governments have acknowledged they have no control over what is done on native reserve lands. The Squamish Nation has said that the purpose of the billboards is primarily to make money.

There continues to be a significant problem with PCB contaminants at the bridge; in 2012 Vancouver City Council allocated $14 million in funding over two years to the removal of PCB contaminants from the Burrard and Granville bridges.