Understanding Langley City's Transportation Network: Where We Are Prioritizing Walking, Cycling, and Transit

Yesterday, I posted about why we are prioritizing walking and cycling in Langley City and how the region is prioritizing transit to give people more safe, cost-effective and convenient travel options. Today, I wanted to explore how this is proposed to roll out in Langley City.

A protected cycling lane on Douglas Crescent.

Langley City will have two SkyTrain stations—one at the Willowbrook Mall and one at 203rd Street and Industrial Avenue. The areas within a 10-minute walk of these stations will be the priority areas for building high-quality streetscapes and wide sidewalks. The following map shows these areas.

The 5- and 10-minute walking area to the two Langley City SkyTrain Stations. Select the map to enlarge.

Langley City will, over time, continue to complete the sidewalk network in the rest of our community.

Langley City is only 10 square kilometres. On an e-bike, I can get from my place near Sam's Pub to Councillor Solyom's house in the Uplands Neighbourhood (the furthest distance you can travel within our community) in under 15 minutes. Put another way, we have a compact community ideal for cycling.

We want to make it easy for people outside the 10-minute walking area to bike into that area, as shown on the previous map. The City will prioritize building a cycling network to get people safely to our walkable core and SkyTrain stations. The province will also build a safe cycling connection between the SkyTrain stations as part of the SkyTrain project.

Langley City is prioritizing cycling access for the Brydon Neighbourhood, upgrading existing bike lanes, closing gaps in our cycling network, and completing the Grade Crescent Greenway. These priorities also align well with the location of most schools in our community, so kids have safe cycling infrastructure as well.

Over time, the goal will be to have safe cycling infrastructure on all major streets in Langley City.

While most trips people take are under 5km, whether in Langley City, Vancouver, or Maple Ridge, transit comes into play for longer trips. Besides the two SkyTrain Stations, Langley will have Bus Rapid Transit along or near the 200th Street corridor in the coming decade.

Between SkyTrain and Bus Rapid Transit, about 75% of the area of Langley City will be within a 10-minute walk of fast, frequent transit. For everyone else, they will be within a 10-minute bike ride of a SkyTrain station.

Now, we know that driving will still be a way for people to get around, especially for commercial purposes. Giving people more travel options will free up road capacity for commercial traffic.

For more information about Langley City's proposed transportation network plan, please visit our Transportation 2045 page.

As a note, our walking infrastructure must be universal, meaning that people who use mobility aids should be able to use it comfortably. Cycling infrastructure also includes micro-mobility in general, such as scooters and skateboards.

Why we are focusing on walking, cycling, and transit in Langley City and Metro Vancouver

From time to time, I get questions from community members asking why Langley City is investing in cycling infrastructure and how it fits into the bigger picture of enabling people to move around in Langley City and our region. I wanted to expand on this over a few posts.

Young people cycling on Douglas Crescent

The priority transportation investments in Langley City are to make walking and cycling safe and inviting. This is coupled with the regional focus on building fast, frequent, and convenient transit, including building SkyTrain to Langley City. But why?

There are four reasons.

First, as our population grows, we need to be more efficient with our transportation network as we don't have the space or money to widen roads in Langley City and many other parts of our region. Widening roads in urban areas is a destructive process as well. A road with generous sidewalks, protected cycling lanes, and bus lanes can handle an order of magnitude more people per hour than a conventional road, as people walking, cycling, or taking a bus use less space. As more people walk, cycle, and take transit, they drive less, reducing congestion. This frees up road space for tradespeople and commercial traffic.

The second reason is that it offers more cost-effective travel options. Life is expensive, and many households own more than one car. The Canadian Automobile Association has a car ownership cost calculator. Owning and operating a car costs about $10,000 per year in BC. It is even more if you own an SUV or pickup. When people have safe and convenient walking, cycling, and transit options, households could go from two or three cars to one car, which puts significant money back into people's pockets.

The third reason is car ownership's health costs. It is the direct link between high speeds, traffic volumes and increased crashes that cause injury and death, the direct link between air and noise pollution and its negative impact on human health.

The final reason is the environmental impacts of GHG emissions and battery production. The fewer cars on the road, the better it is for the environment.

Focusing on walking, cycling, and transit helps more people get where they need to go, puts significant money back into their pockets, improves their health, and cleans up the environment. This is why we are focusing on this in Langley City.

In my next post, I'll discuss how this will look on the ground in Langley City.

As a note, walking includes using mobility assistance devices. We need to ensure that as we build out walking infrastructure, it is universally accessible to all people.

Why does it cost so much to build transit in Metro Vancouver? Lessons from Continental Europe

Over the last few weeks, I have been on a holiday that took me through parts of France, Germany, and the Netherlands. While I was there, there were several news stories about how it cost way more to build transportation infrastructure in the UK compared to the rest of continental Europe. It costs about double. They included Canada and the US in their comparison, and we faired even worse.

Sam Dumitriu, who works for Britain Remade, detailed this information in the post, "Britain's infrastructure is too expensive."

What contributed to lower transportation project costs in places like Spain, France, and Germany? They used off-the-shelf equipment, no-frills designs, and cost-effective construction.

In Strasbourg, they were debating building a SkyTrain-type system or a tram network in the 1980s. Many people wanted to build the SkyTrain-type system because it would have less impact on driving and parking.

I had a chance to ride their tram network in Strasbourg, France. It opened in 1994 and has been continually expanding. It was four times less costly than their originally proposed SkyTrain-type system.

The first picture shows the Landsberg Tram Station in Strasbourg.

Landsberg Tram Station in Strasbourg. Select the image to enlarge.

The second picture shows how they adopted four-lane roads for transit, walking, and cycling.

Mother and Child Crossing Street with a Tramway on Bikes in Strasbourg. Select the image to enlarge.

So, what does this have to do with Metro Vancouver?

While I'm proud of our SkyTrain system, it is one-of-a-kind, which means that compared to other rapid transit systems, it does cost more to build.

The TransLink Mayors' Council wants to get more high-quality transit to more people and places in our region over the next decade than ever before. While we are committed to building SkyTrain to UBC and Langley, the future of rapid transit in our region will be Bus Rapid Transit.

What makes transit networks great isn't whether it is built with rails or rubber (buses) but whether it is fast, frequent, and convenient.

We will build more transit per dollar using off-the-shelf buses, traffic light prioritization, high-quality but no-fills stations, and existing road right-of-ways.

Building cost-effective rapid transit is the way to go, but change management challenges exist. We will have to change some general travel lanes to bus-only lanes along many bus rapid transit corridors. While most folks in our region support building high-quality transit, there will be opposition to reallocating road space. In some communities, this opposition may give elected representatives pause. I remember that RapidBus didn't continue to Ambleside but stopped at Park Royal in West Vancouver due to the opposition to reallocating road space.

While we can build cost-effective rapid transit in Metro Vancouver, there will be tough political decisions to be made in some communities.

How we actually lower the cost of housing in Metro Vancouver

Over the past few weeks, I've been out of town and taking a break from blogging, but I have been thinking a lot about housing and how we seriously move the needle to return housing prices to a normal level in Metro Vancouver.

The first question is, what is a normal level? In the CMHC report, "Housing Shortages in Canada: Solving the Affordability Crisis," the authors note that households in BC historically spent no more than 44% of their pre-tax income on housing.

Using Langley City, the average income for a household in 2020 was $89,400. About 50% of the households in Langley City make this income or more.

These households should be able to buy or rent housing at market rates built by for-profit developers. This isn't the case today, with many households spending 60% or more of their income on housing.

So, how do we drive down the cost of housing in a meaningful way in Metro Vancouver?

The first is to lower the cost of land. Most land within our Urban Containment Boundary is zoned for single-detached housing in Metro Vancouver. This zoning restriction puts a premium on land zoned for higher densities.

I did a straightforward search on Reator.ca in Langley City. The property at 20196 48 Avenue is selling for $149/sq. ft. Meanwhile, 20214 52 Avenue, a 5-minute walk down the street, is selling for $278/sq. ft. The 48 Avenue property is in a single-detached area, while 20214 52 Avenue is in a low-rise attached housing area.

Building a townhouse, excluding land, costs about $233/sq. ft. in Metro Vancouver. Increasing the land supply to accommodate townhouses will lower the land cost, driving meaningful savings for people buying or renting a home. This is simple supply and demand.

The provincial government understands this is a concern, so they will be requiring municipalities to allow up to four housing units per residential lot in BC. While I understand this, a much better approach to driving down land costs would be to enable a minimum FAR of 1.4 for all resident areas within the Urban Containment Boundary of Metro Vancouver. This would enable cost-effective land assemblies and the typical three-story townhouse format we see in Metro Vancouver. Municipalities cannot do this piecemeal, so it would have to be mandated or strongly encouraged by the provincial government to drive meaningful cost savings across Metro Vancouver.

We also know that borrowing money impacts the cost of building housing. The provincial and federal governments should help developers to get lower-interest loans for building market rental and ownership townhouses and apartments, not just below-market housing.

Another significant cost driver for housing is municipal parking requirements. Looking at the typical three-storey townhouse, about 1/3 of the square footage is for parking. We must remove minimum parking requirements. I know this can be tricky as parking is a third-rail issue in some communities. Still, many North American municipalities are removing or reducing parking requirements to reduce housing costs.

As they say, time is money, and waiting a year to go through the approval process at City Hall wouldn't cut it. The provincial government must set service-level targets that municipalities should meet and work with municipalities through UBCM to help us achieve those targets by providing support.

The home construction industry needs to become more productive. Simply put, the same amount of people working in the industry will need to build more housing units faster. The province must work with the industry to help improve productivity.

The final piece of the puzzle is to add transparency to buying new homes. Many people tell me, "Nathan, for all the cost savings you're talking about, developers will just take that as profit." This is why we should have updated disclosure statements for every new home. These statements should show the land costs, construction costs, development fee costs, financing costs, and profit per square foot for a new home. The province should also centrally track this information and make it publicly available to ensure developers are not exploiting folks.

I didn't talk about non-market housing in this post. We must build more of it, but lowering the cost of market housing will help the most people, the faster.