It doesnt cut through what most people would consider the “city” part of Vancouver which is the denser part of downtown. It’s also not really like a highway that most people refer to. It’s nothing like the 400 series in Toronto, or the I5 in Seattle.
It's interrupted in its path by the viaducts, but the highway begins again to cut through Stanley Park and cross to the North Shore.
Vancouver's not a particularly well-designed city; its lack of a fully through highway is more a circumstance of indecision than design. It's still a city hampered by office districts and bedroom communities, linked with stroads, like many North American cities.
Montreal is nice. Most people, even as far out as Outremont, have a grocery store within walking distance. Metro map could be improved but is decent for the core. Transit runs decently during peak times. Main issue is lack of bike lanes, but there's always a shortage of bixis so apparently people do cycle. Easy access to parks, I've got two within walking distance. Unfortunately the metro does stop at around 1a, so going on a downtown bar until closing means you're taking a night bus back.
There aren't any, really; because we didn't spend the 20th Century thinking of alternatives to commuting via personal automobile from bedrooms to offices.
Yes, just like with communism, to which I alluded in my comment, with urban design we also have a problem of figuring out what people want, where, and how much of it. The “urban design” people often have the similar mindset to communist planners, who knew better what people should want than the people themselves.
The 400 series highways don't go anywhere near Toronto's downtown either. The 401 skirts around Toronto's suburbs, far to the north of what anyone would consider the city.
The urban Toronto road you're probably thinking of is the Gardiner Expressway, which is owned and managed by the city itself, not the provincial government.
For decades, there have been calls to remove the elevated downtown section which cuts Toronto off from its waterfront. Something that would not only remove a source of blight and open up the development potential of some significant tracts of prime land, it would also save the city a fortune in maintenance costs!
