Langley City enthusiasm for SkyTrain understandable
Langley City councillors are enthusiastic about SkyTrain
coming to Langley - and why wouldn’t they be? Transit service to and within
Langley is probably the most inadequate service in the entire region.
Even Abbotsford and Mission, which are part of a separate
transit service with minimal links to TransLink, have better service than many
areas of Langley do. There is no bus service to Gloucester Industrial Park, no
bus service along 16 Avenue, and east of Murrayville, there is only the 503 to
Aldergrove, which gets a lot of use, despite many challenges for riders. One of
those is the very long time it takes to get from Aldergrove to SkyTrain in
Surrey.
Langley City council recently heard from Daryl Dela Cruz,
who has been spearheading a drive to have a SkyTrain line built between King
George Station in Whalley and Langley City. He says it is a much better and
faster technology than the LRT line that the City of Surrey wants built along
Fraser Highway.
Councillors like what they heard. They agreed with Dela
Cruz’s contention that the Fraser Highway SkyTrain line should be built first,
before an L-line LRT system is built between Newton and Guildford.
Langley City plans to do a study of the comparative advantages
of the two systems, SkyTrain and LRT, following completion of a similar
TransLink study. Dela Cruz applauds that initiative.
"Langley City's staff study will be an important opportunity to
consider the facts and see through the smoke and mirrors of LRT supporters, who
have gone too far in stretching the truth to claims that are awash in
fear-mongering and divisiveness," Dela Cruz told council on July 4.
The at-grade LRT system is cheaper to build than SkyTrain,
and is considerably less noisy. If Fraser Highway is to remain a four-lane road
for most of its length, building a LRT line will require considerable widening
of the right-of-way, which means that residents and businesses along the road
will lose some of their property for the line. It also means that hundreds, if
not thousands, of trees in the Green Timbers urban forest will be cut down.
Perhaps the most important difference between the two
systems is travel time. LRT trains travelling along Fraser Highway would likely
have the ability to advance through traffic lights more quickly than regular
traffic, but trains will get caught up in traffic congestion at times.
SkyTrain is not affected by traffic. Trains only stop at
stations, which typically are about two kilometres apart. Dela Cruz says LRT
will be only marginally faster than driving or taking the bus. If that is the
case, it will be hard to attract new riders to transit.
Boosting transit use in Langley is crucial. The number of
Langley residents who use the transit system is minimal, and even though a
number of community feeder routes have been established in the past 15 years,
very few people use transit.
The biggest single boost to transit use in Langley came with
the opening of the Carvolth park and ride lot. The 555 bus from there to Lougheed
SkyTrain station is well-utilized and actually offers people substantial time
and money savings.
Langley City has had transit service since the early 1970s.
Initially, there was only one bus route connecting to Langley City. The City
has a higher percentage of more residents who depend on transit than the
Township does.
If a SkyTrain line is built, it will be a significant boost
in service and will attract many more Township and City residents to the
transit system.
The reality is, no rapid transit line will be built without
significant levels of funding from other levels of government. The federal
government appears quite receptive to pouring large amounts of funding into
transit. The province is prepared to put significant capital funds into transit
expansion, but has been insistent that TransLink come up with at least 17 per
cent of the capital funds.
The transportation agency simply does not have that kind of
cash available for capital projects, so it is quite likely that construction of
any rapid transit line south of the Fraser will be delayed. The L-line was to
be the initial line built, but it is no closer to being started than it was two
years ago, when Linda Hepner, campaigning for mayor in Surrey, said work would
begin by 2018.
Langley needs better transit service now, but rapid transit
is likely many years away.
When Linda Hepner was campaigning for mayor, she said that no matter what the outcome of the transit funding referendum, she would have the L-line up and running in her first 4-year term if elected. You were there Frank and even questioned her on her self-serving transportation vision on ShawTV in Oct. 2014. She is full of it - not only is her LRT proposal along Fraser Highway to Langley utterly stupid, she fails to listen to any of her thousands of critics. At least she'll be turfed in 2018 before any of this nonsense comes to fruition.
ReplyDelete