Surrey City Council rejects Transit Plan! :D
Posted on November 13th, 2007 in politics, rants, surrey, transportation |
Surrey City Council is rejecting TransLink’s new vision for transit expansion here as one that’s far too slow to meet local needs in the decades ahead.
City staff and council members say the timelines in the newly released South of Fraser Area Transit Plan need to be dramatically accelerated.
But a staff report notes the number of bus service hours per capita in Surrey and area is less than a third the regional average and less than a quarter the level of service enjoyed in Vancouver and Burnaby.“
This has got to be a joke,” said Coun. Linda Hepner.
“When a child born today is 25, they’ll be getting the same bus service as Vancouver.”
She said Surrey and the South Fraser region will be unable to meet greenhouse gas emission targets because the slow phase-in of improvements will fail to offer a real alternative to driving.
“We need help now,” Mayor Dianne Watts said. “I’ll either be an old lady in my rocking chair or dead by the time they implement all of these changes.”
Council has refused to endorse the plan, which calls for 375 more buses by 2031, boosting the South of Fraser fleet to 600. The city report notes that’s an average of just 15 new buses a year – actually less than the 22 new buses that came to the South Fraser area in 2007.
The top spending priority, at $443 million, is construction of 36 kilometres of new busways – lanes where dedicated express buses would run between stations much like a light rail line only on wheels. [The Leader]
Council has been harsher than me, and it’s about time! Surrey holds a lot of clout, and while a few residents have been speaking up recently about our lack of transit (see VALTAC or Rail for the Valley), Council has generally been very mute. It is imperative to make sure Surrey, and the South of Fraser, gets on the priority list and with the right projects - and our local politicians making noise about this issue with ensure it moves forward (look at what the mayors and councillors of the Tri-Cities were doing when the Evergreen Line was dying).
I agree with Council. The simple fact is we need real rapid transit - NOW! There is absolutely no reason why we cannot buy 20 articulated buses and throw them on newly-designated HOV/bus lanes on King George/104 Ave, and Fraser Highway. A B-Line can be implemented in six months. So why does it take till 2012/2013 to make it happen?! There’s no excuse!
Heck, the funding is apparently reserved for BRT in five years. Why can’t we fasttrack this? Isn’t that the whole point of using buses - their flexibility and quick introduction on the system?!
I commend Surrey City Council for their stance on this issue. I hope to see Delta, White Rock, Langley City, and Langley Township show solidarity and refuse this plan as well. Start playing regional politics. Withhold property tax funding from the GVRD and TransLink. Make a ruckus. BRT is a minimum and it’s more than realistic for today. Let’s make it happen.
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8 Responses
Hear, hear!
Here’s the flaw…
Without density, transit is ineffective and not cost effective at the scale you are talking about. And we both know Surrey has not developed in a way that is condusive to a BRT system.
Yeah, the old “we-lack-density-so-why-don’t-we-learn-to-walk” argument. BRT is the very minimum this city should get starting yesterday. Surrey’s hours of bus service per pop is 0.4, while Burnaby and Vancouver enjoy 1.6 hours for every person. Surrey is at the bottom of the list on this measure.
Bus every hour is the norm, while in peak hours, you can catch a 9 Broadway or a 22 McDonald every three minutes or so.
Council, and this city’s residents, have every right to be choked.
Yes and unfortunately, if we wait until it’s “dense enough,” it will be too late. I wonder how many of the residents of townhouses/condos going up at ~160th on Fraser Hwy will use public transit? 5%? 10%? 25%? Surely not many despite frequent buses and decent proximity to a fast SkyTrain. Add to that how full the 502 and 395 are by the time they get there. I can think of 4 new housing developments (2 in dirt-pushing stages and 2 in near-completion stages) from 134th St to 164th St alone. It must exist before people can use it, and if we don’t get our act together soon, those new developments will house drivers, not transit users. The impact I’m sure will be felt tenfold in Cloverdale and communities east of Langley center.
Yes, there is a chicken and egg scenario here, and that is why one of the suggestions TransLink received for it’s new long term strategy was identifying clear “transit corridors” with set frequencies and timelines for major upgrades (i.e. to BRT, to LRT) that will enable the municipalities to increase density to fit with the transit frequencies.
However, I must make it clear that Surrey is very quickly densifying. There was an article I read the other day that stated the majority of new housing construction in the city was either towers (in Whalley), or townhomes. And we musn’t forget the Newton area residents, mainly South Asians, who usually have a whole family living in one large house (lots of density there…). Furthermore, many European suburbs have fantastic light rail transit to whisk them into the city, and with far worse density than Surrey.
Besides, back to the catch 22. You can’t just “punish” Surrey for not having the ideal grid road network Vancouver has (enabling nice rowed housing), or being quite a bit younger of a city. For a population of almost 2/3 Vancouver, Surrey really has the worse end of the stick here, and there’s no reason for it.
And just to respond to Erika’s comment. The new townhomes/apartments going up along Fraser are wonderful, but just like you said, there needs to be transit there, otherwise people will just use their cars. And for the perfect example of terrible development, far worse than anything in Surrey, check out the Willowbrook/Willoughby/Walnut Grove area of the Township of Langley along the 200th St corridor. It’s traffic mayhem, designed completely with cars in mind, and yet even the cars have a hard time getting around. Certain sections of that road are so bad in the summer that I can’t bear to keep the window in a car open, the fumes are that bad! Part of the problem there is complete lack of transportation choice - it’s only the car. What’s worse is this area is one in which a growing suburb of residential housing, separated from work, all travel at the same time to the same place: the commercial core that is Willowbrook! Ideal situation for rapid transit, altough better multi-use planning would’ve resulted in a more ideal situation. So if you thought Surrey was bad, go “take a drive” around this area of Langley.
Great points, Paul! Yeah 200th St is quite intimidating and I’ve never even been there in rush hour. The housing on either side look pretty decent but lacking a good connection, I wouldn’t bother trying to live there. In other areas I’m sure it would be easy to get a direct route to the SkyTrain without having to sacrifice quality of life (green space, reasonable quiet, privacy, pedestrian safety, cleaner air and calm traffic), but out there, with only one direct bus, forget it. Sigh.
I really must read your site more than I have. You’ve got the good news. ;)
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