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...

The horrific crash involving a train and an ambulance at the Crush Crescent railway crossing in Langley on Friday should never have happened. An 87-year-old patient, Helena Van Gool, who was being transported in the ambulance, died after the crash. It involved an eastbound ambulance which had pulled across the tracks to the Glover Road intersection. The ambulance, with the patient and two attendants, was struck in the rear bumper area by a CN container train. The train was heading northeast on CP tracks, to join up with the CN line at Rawlison (232 Street). It isn't clear if the ambulance was in its position before the crossing arms went down, but it would have been easy for the driver to activate emergency lights and siren and get across Glover Road. To see how it all happened, see the video of the train running into the rear of the ambulance at this link from CTV News . The resulting traffic chaos was a nightmare in Langley. The train was stopped on the tracks for almost ...