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I had a short meeting with Dianne Watts, the Mayor of Surrey, today, and boy what a character she is! It’s quite easy to tell why she’s developed such a great reputation in both the community and through the media. She’s extremely open, upfront, and approachable. Not to mention, her personality is absolutely vivacious! 

I immediately understood that she truly is non-partisan. Her heart is in the right place, and she is doing this for the betterment of the city. Dianne works together with groups to make things happen, and it’s her collaboration with all sorts of people that has made her first term as Mayor so successful. 

Furthermore, she’s a lady of creative solutions, which is unquestionably marvelous to see. For example, in speaking with her about light rail and her support for the technology over SkyTrain, she made it clear that one cannot simply make attacks. That is to say, she can’t just say “SkyTrain is not the right choice here”, but she has to come up with various alternative options and develop proposals around these aptly-named creative solutions. 

The meeting has solidified in my mind my support for Dianne as Surrey’s Mayor. She is a sensational human being! I’m delighted to have met her, and if you ever get the chance, I highly recommend you speak with her sometime!

During the Surrey Mayor’s State of the City address, while discussing transportation in BC’s second largest city, Dianne Watts said:

“I for one am a firm believer that instead of SkyTrain expansion in Surrey we should be looking at At Grade Rail. At Grade Rail is significantly cheaper, easier to build and much more aesthetically pleasing than Sky Train. Surrey cannot wait until 2020 for improved rail transit. At Grade Rail can be completed much faster. I have great confidence in the potential of At Grade Rail, and I am currently having City staff analyze this option so that we can move it forward.”

This is a terrific move on the part of the Mayor. It great to know that she understands the added qualities that LRT presents to Surrey over SkyTrain - not just cost efficiency per km, but also aspects like the streetscape asthetics.

While I understand the reasoning for SkyTrain to UBC and to Coquitlam, I am a vehement supporter of the development of a new rail transit network based on LRT. Surrey is in the perfect position to be the beginning spot for this new network and will set the city apart from the North of Fraser’s transportation planning of the past few decades. It’s saying “We will chart our own path, learn from your mistakes, and build the best rail transit we can”. And that rail transit will be based on LRT!

Hopefully Surrey City Council will take a nod from Vancouver, and continue to push forward on the Heritage Rail Project. It would be a fantastic business case for LRT South of the Fraser if we can have a demonstration up and running in the next few years!

Good job Dianne! You just got my vote for November!

There’s a story in The Province today about Surrey continuing it’s so-called “made in Surrey” approach to regional growth, although this time the city has a leg to stand on.

There’s a strong possibility that following the LRSP update, Metro Vancouver will gain stronger powers to enforce cities in the region to play along properly with the regional growth strategy - something Surrey has a reputation for “derailing” due to it’s sprawled development.

One of the current large problems in the region is a growing lack of industrial land. As most should be aware, Vancouver and Burnaby are actually making the situation worse by rezoning industrial land for high density condos. Just take a look downtown: False Creek North and South, Yaletown, Coal Harbour - all former industrial lands. Burnaby is playing a similar game, building condos along the SkyTrain lines, usually on land that is or was industrial.

Now, it’s perfectly debateable whether or not these rezonings were justified and are actually improving quality of life. Certainly, it’s a very complex debate, ranging from the Province building rapid transit along industrial corridors in the first place (in an attempt to avoid NIMBYs), to Vancouver pursuing a word renowed smart growth strategy for the Downtown Penninsula.

The fact remains though, that industrial land is disappearing quickly and cities north of the Fraser are doing nothing to replace the lost plots of industrial lands.

This leaves Surrey is a difficult situation. Jean Lamontagne, General Manager of the City of Surrey’s planning department:

“Many municipalities have converted large areas of industrial land to higher uses, such as residential,” Lamontagne said in a report to council.

“Surrey is now being expected to make up for the shortcomings of others.

“It is expected to provide storage, distribution and truck storage for the region. It is clearly not acceptable . . . as they do little for the tax base of the city,” he said.

In the article, Dianne Watts, Mayor of Surrey, outright dismisses the option that Metro Vancouver will be able to overrule the City’s land use authority:

“The pressure to convert industrial land to residential is very high in Surrey, but we’re saying no,” she said.

“The region is looking at other communities to pick up the slack. It wants to fix mistakes of the past, but one community can’t supply industrial land for the region.”

Then, Vancouver Councillor Suzanne Anton steps in and completely misreads the whole situation with this statement:

“Surrey wants to be able to upgrade industrial land to commercial land [and produce more tax revenue]. Surrey is saying more loudly than others that they don’t want to be told what to do,” said Anton, who sits on the Metro planning committee.

Surrey has never wanted to replace industrial with commercial. Frankly, industrial lands provide better jobs in the long term for residents. In fact, Surrey has pursued a very intense strategy of protecting or expanding industrial lands in the city.

But it gets better. Anton then goes in for the knockout:

She admitted Vancouver recently converted industrial land in Southeast False Creek for a future residential community of 15,000. But she said Surrey shouldn’t point fingers.

“Do we want to get into who shoots up on the Downtown Eastside and where they come from?” she asked.

BAM!

How dare Anton try and claim that all the homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicted in Vancouver are somehow Surrey’s problem?! How dare she reinforce a negative persona on both Surrey as a city and claim to define it’s type of residents?!

That type of verbal attack on a neighbouring community should not be occuring by any mayor or councillor in the region.

In fact, it’s quite debateable, but if it wasn’t for the SkyTrain, Whalley wouldn’t have even gotten half the problems it did in the 90’s. And where do you think those people were coming from - oh, right, VANCOUVER!

Well, just as I recommended they do in a previous post (not that I’m saying they are reading, though if they are I’d love a shoutout :P), the Mayors of Surrey, Delta, White Rock, Langley City, and Langley Township, have unianimously rejected TransLink draft South of Fraser Transit Plan. They are simply calling it too little, too late:

Watts says the main issue is that 80 per cent of the trips taken south of the Fraser do not cross the Fraser. “We are very underserved and there has to be a recognition to that fact. We can’t wait until 2031 to catch up to where the rest of the region is today,” states Watts. She says what is needed now is an additional 300 buses south of the Fraser, especially as there is an international airport in Abbotsford with no cross-connective routes on transit.

Watts says while the plan calls for increases to bus service, it doesn’t meet the immediate or long term transit needs of the region, whose combine population is already 650,000.

[News1130]

I commend the Mayors for making this move. It’s typical of Watts’ style - a very democratic process. Unlike the Tri-Cities mayors, who, at one time, were clamouring heavily for the Evergreen Line, or the always raucus causing Sam Sullivan, the SoF Mayors simply wrote a strongly worded letter of rejection to TransLink. In addition, they notified the media of the unacceptablility of the draft plan, putting a bit of pressure on TransLink to improve it.

It has always been important that the communities SoF stand strongly united on this front. It is quite clear that TransLink doesn’t have enough funding to provide us with the system we need, at least not while they are putting down hundreds of millions for other capital investments at this point. However, that doesn’t mean that perhaps priorities can’t be shifted, or timelines moved to possibly see some improvements. In addition, this clear message that there’s not enough transit will notify the public of the situation, and provides a perfect chance for Mr. Falcon to jump in and provide funding to vastly expand the transit system in his own constituency’s area.

I found it interesting how, although all these Mayors are now on the new Mayors’ Council of TransLink, they still decided to get this point out to the public. It seems to me that the place to discuss these needs is at the Mayors’ Council and perhaps reflects their lack of control of transportation issues with the new TransLink.

This news release brought out another interesting point for me. I wonder, how much leeway or influence will Mayors have on TransLink staff. It’s my understanding that all along, the former Board relied very heavily on reports and plans put together by the professional staff. So, if the new Board is simply taking this executive look at this and just rubber stamping most projects, then I would assume that local politicians could go rub shoulders with staff to get improved service plans heading their way. In a sense, creating a loophole, whereby staff are doing specific municipalities biddings…

In any case, support and cheers go out to the five Mayors of the South of Fraser region. Let’s keep up the pressure to fix this major issue.

This is a copy and pasted version of TransLink’s latest press release: 

Mayors’ Council meets – TransLink’s governance transition begins 

The Mayors’ Council on Regional Transportation is meeting for the first time today, following the passage of the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority Act yesterday in the legislature. In its first act, the Council, which is comprised of all 21 mayors in the Metro Vancouver region, has selected Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts as its first Chair.

TransLink will officially adopt the governance model prescribed in the Act on Jan. 1, 2008 when the new Board of Directors assumes its duties. But the Act constituted the Mayors’ Council effective today so that it can immediately perform some of its key functions including selecting the new TransLink Board and starting a process to recruit the Regional Transportation Commissioner.

Governance Transition

The new Act will change TransLink’s governance structure in a number of key areas:

Directors and terms: 

Currently, TransLink has 12 directors who are either mayors or who are municipal councilors serving as directors on the Metro Vancouver Board. These directors, some of whom represent more than one municipality, serve one-year terms and are selected by the Metro Vancouver Board.

The new, nine-member Board of Directors will be appointed by the Mayors’ Council on the basis of their qualifications to oversee the organization. Directors will serve three-year terms to provide greater continuity of governance.

Because the structure calls for terms to end for one-third of the directors each year, three of the directors on the first Board will be appointed for one year, three will be appointed for two years and the remaining three will be appointed for three years. Subsequent directors will be appointed for three-year terms.

Regional Oversight:

Under the current structure, the Metro Vancouver Board of Directors has the authority to ratify or reject TransLink’s strategic transportation and financial plans.

In the new structure, instead of having 12 elected municipal officials on the TransLink Board, all 21 mayors in the region will sit on the Mayors’ Council and will have the authority to ratify or reject transportation and related funding plans and increased on TransLink’s borrowing limits.

The new structure will also include a Regional Transportation Commissioner whose focus will be to monitor and advise TransLink and the Mayors’ Council on customer service and satisfaction processes, the appropriateness of any cash transit fare increases above inflation and any sale of major TransLink facilities or assets.

An Expanded Service Area:

To date, TransLink has focused its attention on the road and transit system in Metro Vancouver, formerly known as the Greater Vancouver Regional District.

The new Act allows TransLink to expand to communities in the Fraser Valley or Squamish-Lillooet regional districts that opt to join its service area.

A “Shared Agenda”:

In its current form, TransLink has planned and funded Metro Vancouver’s transit system, major arterial roads and programs that provide commuters with travel options, all in support of the Livable Region Strategic Plan.

The new structure requires TransLink’s long-term strategy and its rolling ten-year plan to support both Metro Vancouver’s growth management strategy as well as the provincial government’s vision for the region’s transportation network.

The pilgrimage by Metro Vancouver mayors heading to Victoria to kiss Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon’s ring is a sign of things to come. Now that TransLink is on the verge of disintegration, with one more meeting left before the new provincial legislation is put in place, politicians are reverting to form. That is to say, in a manner reminiscent before 1999 when the NDP turned responsibility for transit over to the GVRD, mayors are directly lobbying Victoria for transit favours.

Once TransLink was set up, negotiations with the province and Ottawa were usually handled by the TransLink chair and included consultations with the mayors of affected municipalities. I gather that’s how the Canada Line project advanced under the chair of TransLink.

But the new transit board will have no elected officials. It will have instead merely a council of mayors who approve the most general of plans for the transit authority. As a number of soon-to-be-former TransLink board members have grumbled, local politicians will inevitably lose control.

In his monthly newsletter, TransLink board member and Vancouver NPA Coun. Peter Ladner said of the new structure: “It will add two extra layers of bureaucracy, provide less accountability and transparency, sever the formal relationship with Metro Vancouver, and lead to higher administration costs.”

From TransLink vice-chair Surrey Coun. Marvin Hunt’s point of view, power is “migrating back across to Victoria.”

There are two recent Falcon pronouncements that Hunt puts forward to support his theory of what is about to befall us. Last summer, a propos of nothing in particular, Falcon announced that it would be a good idea to have a SkyTrain line running all the way to Surrey. The idea had never been discussed with regional politicians, and it was not part of TransLink’s plans. But it was obvious to the board that with Falcon at the wheel, all its planning was heading for the ditch.

Falcon’s second fiat was delivered a few weeks ago when the minister returned from Europe and declared all SkyTrain stations would have gates and turnstiles. There was much gnashing of teeth at the regional transportation board room table while staff and elected officials tried to figure out just who would pick up the multi-million dollar bill for this bright idea. There were no immediate answers.

What was not in doubt was who was clearly in charge. Hence the pilgrimage of mayors, from Langley District, Abbotsford, Surrey and Vancouver, to visit our pope of public transit. Instead of the planning and horse trading that has gone on around the regional table for many years, it is every mayor on their own.

This new world order, according to Hunt, is aggravated by Mayor Sam Sullivan. “If you are going to criticize Sam for anything, it’s his timing,” he says, regarding Sullivan’s lobbying of Falcon. No one would be more annoyed by this than Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts. On a per capita basis her municipality gets one quarter the transit services of Vancouver.

Sullivan has never been seen as a team player regionally, provincially or nationally. His aggressive noises (and so far they have only been noises) about the extension to the Millennium Line down Broadway have made regional mayors all the more nervous about their transit needs being funded.

They thought there was a deal in place: first finish the Evergreen Line to the northeast sector and then work on the Broadway line in Vancouver as well as Surrey’s plans for better transit. That deal remains unchanged, at least on paper. But nobody can figure out just what Sullivan is trying to prove and how Falcon may respond.

What is going on, says Hunt, is “not good for transportation in the Lower Mainland.” And he isn’t the only guy who holds that view. [The Vancouver Courier]