I don't currently live in Vancouver, but I'm not too far away. I did live in Vancouver in the 80's when I went to university (and I rode a bike everywhere back then). I do get to the city several times a year.

It's interesting, because just about every move to accomodate non-motorized vehicles that I've seen has met huge resistance and shrieks of outrage, but the city simply had to get people out of cars. Gridlocked traffic at just about any time of day was (and still is) a regular occurence. Parking is difficult to find and generally outrageously expensive. Quite frankly you can probably get anywhere in the city faster by using alternate means.

They still have a ways to go in my opinion, but the progress has been fantastic to date. It is a city where one could easily live car free should one choose to, though that might depend on which neighbourhood one lives in.

The current mayor is something of a controversial fellow, but he's an avid cyclist and he's unapologetically put in loads of separated bike lanes and infrastructure and taken that from motor vehicles (hence the shrieking). The funny thing is that after these changes are in place for a while it's hard to find anyone critical of the initiative as it seems to generally correlate with improved livability, more commerce for local businesses (who are usually the first to freak out) and fewer pedestrian/cyclist fatalities.

I like what they're doing. There are a few gaps in public transit that should be addressed, but on the whole it's a great direction they are moving in.