|
Transportation News
Surrey Board of Trade Transit Development Points
-for South Fraser Rapid Transit Stakeholder Meetings
There is a transit deficit for communities south of the Fraser (Surrey, Langley, White Rock and Delta). Despite having to pay a variety of property and gas taxes to fund TransLink, this region, along with those of the northeast are greatly disadvantaged compared to those services enjoyed by the people of Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster. As the population of the south Fraser continues to explode, and is acknowledged to overtake the population of Vancouver, the economic and social problems arising from the lack of services and even planning for services for this area are exacerbated.
There seems to be an attitude, fueled by influences from the transit rich downtown core, that nobody needs to drive, and those that do are simply being difficult about parking their vehicles and taking transit. To enforce that perspective there are policy proposals that would penalize those in Metro Vancouver who drive vehicles. This does and will continue to heavily impact the South Fraser, as there simply isn’t any alternative to driving here. Transit, for most purposes, does not exist here, and where it does, is substantially inadequate.
There appears to remain, a substantial belief that the region still functions on a hub and spoke system: that all travel is to and from the suburbs to the downtown core of Vancouver. This is no longer true. While a substantial number of people still work in the “downtown” core:
- 40% of the traffic that crosses the Port Mann bridge goes to the Tri-cities and east toward the Golden Ears catchment area
- 80% of the trips taken in the south Fraser region are within that region.
The former CEO of TransLink, Tom Prendergast, said that in order to be accepted, the utility had be perceived as being fair. It is time to hold the corporation to that standard. This applies particularly with respect to the use of any resources for the development of the so-called UBC Line, downtown streetcars or anything other than maintaining the system that exists there now. It is time to apprehend any further transit expansion/improvement downtown until there is equitable transit development to serve the rest of the region.
The Surrey Board of Trade supports, along with current development projects in the area, the following projects:
- Build Evergreen Line, while developing the transit plan for the south Fraser
- Expand capacity on the Expo SkyTrain line using longer (six car) or more frequent trains
- Develop rapid transit services on King George Blvd, Fraser Highway from King George to Willowbrook, 104th between Downtown Surrey and Guildford and 200th Ave from Willowbrook to Willowby
- Modernize the former Interurban line for Community Rail across the south Fraser
- Plan, resource and implement a major increase in the number of buses and substantially increase the frequency of services as well as routes to service more of the population
- Relocate a substantial part of TransLink administration from Metrotown to a second centre in Surrey to ensure TransLink staff have a greater understanding of the region
An Integrated Regional Signal Sytem (IIRS) South of the Fraser.
Plans are a-foot to build an IIRS linked to jurisdictions south of the Fraser. The goal is to coordinate traffic signal operations and make the flow of traffic and trains through the region more efficient. Translink has outlined the plans for IIRS in a presentation you can view here.
|
