Granville Island sinkhole causes traffic disruption

Sinkhole slows traffic to Granville Island City engineers and police tried to keep things moving on a busy Saturday afternoon.

Update: As of noon on Sunday, June 4, crews had finished repairing the sinkhole and the entrance to Granville Island had reopened to vehicular traffic.

Vancouver police closed the entrance of Granville Island to cars for most of the day Saturday after a sinkhole appeared underneath the Granville Street Bridge.

City officials said a pipe under the road burst, and the waste it was carrying to a nearby pump station began bubbling to the surface.

"The sewer station has been shut down and we're having trucks just move the liquid waste manually instead," said Daniel Roberge, director of water and sewer infrastructure with the City of Vancouver.

The 30-foot-wide hole caught the attention of many perplexed people passing by.

“We saw lots of water running that way so we didn’t know what it is,” one woman riding her bike said.

“I'm a little bit concerned about it. We just arrived, (we) didn't know what was happening,” said another woman attending the Vancouver International Children’s festival.

Pedestrians were able to come and go as usual, and vehicles were able to enter the island. They were blocked from leaving, however, until police opened the road for alternating two-way traffic.

The vehicle disruption proved to be a problem for tour buses who take visitors to the popular tourist destination.

“This has absolutely affected us,” a woman who works with a tour company told CTV News. “All tour groups have to drive our buses onto Granville Island so now we're dropping them off and escorting them all.”

Despite all the confusion, businesses on the island remained open.

“This is a busy weekend for us because of the Vancouver children's festival,” Lisa Ono from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Granville Island told CTV. “It's June and Granville Island is very popular when the weather gets better for us.”

It’s estimated 40,000 people visited the area on Saturday alone.

With a report from CTV Vancouver’s Breanna Karstens-Smith.