News in Langley

It has been a busy news week in civicness in Langley. First off, BC Hydro has preserved the passenger right on the Interurban alignment through Langley.

Second, it seems that the 208th Street corridor and the Downtown Master Plan are causing a bit of a storm in the City. I’ll start off with the Downtown Master Plan.

I’m a big supporter of downtown plan as it will help Langley City become more accessible for sustainable transportation. There is tons of underutilized, grayness in the core of the City that is screaming for new development. The site in question that has people upset is the Langley Prairie School site. Last year, the City demolished the heritage school that was on that site. Now they have put out a public offering for the site. I’m sure people still have the memories of last year's demolishing fresh in their minds. It would appear that the main concern is the perceived loss of “view” that comes with higher density developments. That is a valid concern and an issue that Vancouver has dealt with for some time. I also believe there is a bit of we-don’t-want-change-becauseness as well. The City's Spirit Square is the perfect example. Some people got very upset that there was going to be change at Douglas Park. After the square was built, people are happy. I think that once people start to see the benefit of living in a revitalized Downtown Langley, they will be more open to change.

208th Street is another issue. The City staff wanted to restrict left turn access from/to 208th Street at 46A Avenue and 208/Newlands Drive due to a high collision rate. This is now a political no-go, and it's back to the drawing board for City staff. One good thing about the 208th Street improvement will be the provisioning of proper bike lanes.

Stats stats stats

I was busy at the Statistic Canada website pulling together stats about mode share for work/school journeys. I wanted to see the difference between the 2001 and 2006 census. I have tabulated the data for you, with a focus on South Fraser communities. I also put Vancouver and Burnaby in as a comparison for the South Fraser. I wanted to point out a few things.

Click on the graphics to make them bigger!

We all know that there is not enough public transit in the South Fraser, but over the last little while TransLink has improved service in some areas. You can see that all communities have seen gains in mode share. What is interest to see is the difference between the Township of Langley, which only saw a 1% gain, and the City of Langley which saw a 3.5% gain. This makes sense because the City of Langley has seen much more transit service improvements than the Township. Also, you can see that Abbotsford has seen virtually no change in transit mode share. This could be attributed to the lack of investment in transit service. Funny enough, it seems that the more transit service you provide, the more people will take it. It is encouraging to see that we are changing mode share, but I believe there is one area that needs major improvement.

Cycling in the South of Fraser is almost non-existent as a mode of commuting. In fact it has gone down since 2001. You can see that places like Vancouver (that have invested in cycling infrastructure) are seeing people cycling more. In the South Fraser, cycling infrastructure is a patchwork of bike lanes that start and end almost at random. We can do much better to promote cycling in the South Fraser. The Township of Langley has the right idea with their cycling network that is starting to form in newer neighbourhoods.

Finally, I wanted to point of that more people take transit in Calgary than Edmonton. Both Cities are very similar, but the major difference is that Calgary has way more light rail… Maybe light rail does attract people to transit after all. ;-)

SFPR

As I am sure you are already aware, pre-loading work has already started on the South Fraser Perimeter Road/Freeway. Last year the project got the green light from the BC Environmental Assessment Office after being in the system since 2003. What I didn’t know was that there is now an Inter-Agency Environmental Review Committee which is supposed to review and approve the different steps of this project to ensure that it complies with the EA certificate. According the Government of Canada:

A follow-up program to verify the accuracy of the environmental assessment and/or determine the effectiveness of any measures taken to mitigate the adverse environmental effects is considered appropriate for this project for the following reasons:

-Environmentally Sensitive Area/Valued Ecosystem Components
-Nature of Project

The big question is what happens if the measures where found not effective? What will the report say? This follow-up process will last until 2017.

Anyway, the Corporation of Delta has a website that has a timeline of the SFPR project activities and the actions of the Inter-Agency Environmental Review Committee. Accord to a recent report from Delta, they have "concerns with the post-Environmental Assessment procedures have been previously documented by Council and conveyed to the Premier and Minister of Environment. These concerns included that the Environmental Assessment Office should be the lead on the Inter-Agency Environmental Review Committee and also that a community liaison committee, like the one set up for Deltaport Third Berth should be formed to review issues relating to construction and operation of SFPR. The Premier did respond recently advising that the Minister of Environment would be looking into this matter and providing a response to Delta."

Bad Parking

A week or so ago a fellow Vancouver blogger posted on horrible parking practices in Richmond. Not to be left out, Langley too has its share of people that have no respect of other road users. This picture was taken yesterday across the street from my condo.

Streetcars for Toronto

Happy Friday! It looks like people in Toronto will be getting new streetcars according to an article in DailyTech. We’ve been following the story about Toronto light rail future for some time. They now have the funding from all levels of government to start construction of the Toronto Transit City vision to see 120km of new light rail. One of the last remaining issues was finding money to replace their current, aging streetcars which they have apparently found... The federal government refused to fund 1/3 of there replacement cost outright.

That is the current plan for the City of Toronto. The Toronto Transit Commission has just ordered 204 streetcars from Bombardier in the largest single order for light rail vehicles in the world. The contract is valued at $851 million CAD ($735 million USD, €523 Million).

"The contract represents the largest single order ever for light rail vehicles worldwide and solidifies Bombardier's position as the world's leading provider of light rail technology," the company said in a statement.

I also like what this article had to say about light rail and metro rail (like SkyTrain):

New subway lines are extremely expensive and can cost over $1 billion per kilometer to build. They also require high urban densities and heavy passenger volumes to be effective.

Light rail lines are much cheaper to build and operate. They can carry higher volumes than buses, while creating virtually no pollution due to their electric propulsion. Light rail lines are usually built on their own right-of-way on street level, but can also be built underground in dense neighborhoods.

I tolled you so...

With the Pitt River Bridge coming online later this year, I decided to dust off on my readings at the Gateway Program website and found a memo on traffic capacity on bridge. Not surprising to anyone:

Traffic demand forecasts for both the AM and PM peak periods indicate that in the peak direction, three lanes are required across the Pitt River beyond the implementation time frame of the Fraser River Crossing. As a minimum, three lanes would be required in the peak direction with only two lanes required in the opposing direction, therefore implying that a counterflow operation would need to be maintained.

So they found that a five-lane bridge would be fine. We got a seven-lane bridge. What is more interesting is:

Traffic demand forecasts were generated for the 2011 planning horizon for the North Fraser Perimeter Road. These forecasts assume that the new Fraser River Crossing is constructed and tolls are imposed on this new crossing.

So my question is why aren’t we tolling the bridge? The Gateway Program folk even admit that a bridge without a toll will become congested at a much faster rate than a tolled structure. To answer my own question on tolling, the Provincial government has a dusty, outdated policy that says tolls can only be used for new construction and when there is a free alternate route available. This policy should be looked at again, as it was probably put in place to calm people down when they first tolled the Coquihalla. Tolling is proven to help reduce demand on infrastructure. The revenue generated from the tolling should be used to maintain current transportation infrastructure (including transit) and building sustainable transportation options.

I think that people would be willing to pay a toll if they knew that it would help make their travel time faster. The argument that "my taxes already pay for the highway" is not valid in this day and age. User-fees are nothing new to the province. Everything from Township of Langley fields to transit to MSP has a user-fee. People tend to respect a resource more when they have to pay for it directly.

Canada Day News Update

Happy Canada Day! For your reading pleasure: Mayors' Council, Business, Environment and Labour Leaders Sign Regional Transportation Accord

A forum, hosted by the Mayors' Council, comprised stakeholders including John Winter of the BC Chamber of Commerce, Dr. David Suzuki of the David Suzuki Foundation and Jim Sinclair of the BC Federation of Labour. Representative parties signed the Regional Transportation Accord calling on all three levels of government and TransLink to work together to find solutions to achieve adequate funding.