Frankly Speaking

Cloverdale is at a crossroads. This isn’t new, considering that its founding in 1891 as Surrey’s first town was due almost entirely to its strategic position. Back then, it came to life because of construction of Surrey’s first railway, the New Westminster Southern, which brought predictable scheduled transportation to Surrey for the first time. Many Surrey residents lived on farms within a reasonable distance of Cloverdale. The fact that the location of the new town was also on the east-west McLellan Road meant that the new community that had nowhere to go but up. As 2017 begins, 125 years after Cloverdale began, this same logic prevails. Cloverdale remains on major transportation routes – Highway 10, Highway 15 and two railways. All are far busier than the original 1891 routes were. It is located in one of the fastest-growing areas of B.C., and is one of the few places in Metro Vancouver where there is still a reasonable supply of developable residential land. Cloverdale i...

Kinder Morgan photo The Trans Mountain oil pipeline twinning project has been given the go-ahead, but the fallout will continue for a long time yet. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet have decided that the twinning of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain oil pipeline will go ahead. The decision, announced last Tuesday (Nov. 29), has prompted a firestorm of criticism and plenty of political positioning, particularly in B.C. The pipeline decision has a direct effect on Surrey, as the existing pipeline runs through North Surrey from Port Kells to a location near the Port Mann Bridge, where it crosses the Fraser River. The second pipeline will likely follow a different route. Plans call for it to be located adjacent to the CN rail line through Surrey, with a river crossing to Coquitlam near the existing pipeline. This map shows the proposed pipeline route through Surrey for the additional pipeline planned by Kinder Morgan. The Surrey Board of Trade has taken the po...

Frank Bucholtz photo A SkyTrain rolls into the Lafarge Lake-Douglas station at the end of the Evergreen Line on Friday, Dec. 2, opening day for the extension of the rapid transit system. Friday was a day that many Tri-City residents thought would never come. The 11 kilometre extension of SkyTrain into Coquitlam and Port Moody, the Evergreen Line project, was officially opened by Premier Christy Clark and local mayors. Passengers started boarding the trains at 12 noon. The Evergreen Line has been a long time coming. First promised even before the Millennium Line opened in 2002, it was put on the shelf many times. Its history is instructive of the challenges involved in building rapid transit in B.C.'s Lower Mainland, and of the many twists and turns which inevitably occur when a project does finally get the green light. Way back in 1980, the provincial government decided on SkyTrain as the long-awaited rapid transit technology that would be used in the Lower Mainland. I cov...