Langley City’s Social Streets - Neighbourhood Party

Last week, Langley City held its first Social Streets event at Linwood Park. This was a casual drop-in event for people to hang out, get to know their neighbours, enjoy some low-key, family-friendly music, free food, and live entertainment.

People were dancing, relaxing in their lawn chairs, and enjoying a chef's cooking demo.

There are two other neighbourhood-scale Social Streets events scheduled to take place in about a month, so be sure to mark your calendars.

The next Social Streets event will happen at Hunter Park in the Alice Brown Neighbourhood. This will be one of the first City events in this part of our community in a long time.

Date: Wednesday, August 27th
Location: Hunter Park
Time: 3pm to 8pm

The Social Streets event after that will take place at Rotary Centennial Park.

Date: Wednesday, September 3rd
Location: Rotary Centennial Park
Time: 2pm to 8pm

I look forward to seeing you at your neighbourhood event!

Langley City’s Crime Severity Index and Total Crime Rate at Lowest Level in Over 25 Years

Recently, Statistics Canada released its latest annual Crime Severity Index and Crime Statistics, which cover the period up to 2024. Langley City’s overall crime rate and Crime Severity Index are at their lowest levels since 1998, the earliest year available on the Statistics Canada website. The following chart shows the overall and violent crime rates over the last decade for Langley City.

Within the overall crime rate is the violent crime rate. Langley City’s lowest violent crime rate occurred in 2014, with a rate of 1,439.85. It was trending up, but is now trending down. Violent crime means crimes against a person, which include incidents such as bar fights and threatening people to murder.

The crime rate is determined by the actual number of police reported incidents per 100,000 population.

The Crime Severity Index can be considered an improvement over raw crime rates, as it takes into account both the volume and seriousness of crimes. One homicide would impact the Crime Severity Index of a community 1,000 times more than one instance of “causing a disturbance,” for example. Statistics Canada determines the weighting for each type of crime based on the length of convictions people receive. The Crime Severity Index is calculated on a per capita basis. The following chart shows the Crime Severity Index over the last decade for Langley City.

Between 2015 and 2022, there was a data entry issue where a large number of “Making, or distribution of child pornography” incidents were misidentified as coming from Langley City. This error was corrected in the 2023 data going forward.

Langley City participated with other western Canadian municipalities to change how the Crime Severity Index data is reported. You can read more about this on a previous blog post and on a press release on Langley City’s website. The short of it is that crime rates and Crime Severity Index data should not be used to rank municipalities against one another, as it is an incorrect use of this data. Crime Rates and the Crime Severity Index are useful to understand trends within a municipality or jurisdiction.

July 21 Council Notes: One-Way Update, Housing, and School Sites

July 21 was the last Langley City Council meeting before Council takes a break for the month of August. Our next Council meeting will be on September 8th. In previous posts, I wrote about the 200th Street watermain project that Council approved a tender for, and Langley City’s on-street parking and public parking lot management strategy. Today I’ll post about the remaining items addressed at the meeting.

David Pollock, who is the Director of Engineering, Parks, & Environment, provided a brief update on the Fraser Highway One-Way Project. The project remains on time and on budget. The new sidewalks and first layer of asphalt will be completed before August 16, which is when the Arts Alive Festival takes place. At this point, people will be able to walk, roll, drive, and park on the one-way.

The second (and final) layer of asphalt will be applied at the end of August. Street trees and street furniture (chairs and tables) will be installed in the first few weeks of September.

Council also gave final reading for rezoning the property at 20256-20272 54A Avenue and issued a development permit for a 6-storey 114-unit apartment building. You can read more about this building in a previous post.

Finally, Council approved the Langley School District’s Eligible School Sites proposal. This is a rolling 5-year plan that outlines where the District plans to allocate the School Site Acquisition Charge, a $600-$1000 development charge applied to each new unit of housing in the City and Township. The District submits an updated proposal annually.

The District estimates that, over the next decade, approximately 900 new student spaces will be required in Langley City and 6,300 for the Township. The current plan for the City is to accommodate these students in expanded existing schools, as well as in expanded school and new school sites within the Township. As such, the School Site Acquisition Charge collected in the City and Township will be used to acquire new sites in the Township.

The City and School District are working together on identifying a potential future school site within the City that may be necessary after the arrival of SkyTrain. Council approved the Eligible School Sites proposal.

Parking in Downtown Langley City and North of the Nicomekl: More Options (2-Hour, 4-Hour, All-Day) in Downtown. Better Wayfinding. Residential Permit Parking.

This is the final post in my three-part series about Langley City’s on-street parking and public parking lot management strategy. Part one discussed the public feedback received regarding parking, and part two examined parking demand by block and street. Today’s post examines proposed actions to help manage parking north of the Nickomekl River and in our Downtown.

In our Downtown, based on feedback and parking demand, we need to shift longer-term parking from high-demand areas, such as on-street parking along the Fraser Highway One-Way, to areas with extra supply, like the City-owned parking lots around the Fraser Highway One-Way.

The following map illustrates the proposed changes to parking times, with shorter 2-hour parking on most streets and 4-hour parking in public parking lots.

Proposed changes to the on-street and public parking lots time limits. Select the map to enlarge.

The proposed changes also include rolling out shorter-term parking/loading spaces (30 minutes or less).

Langley City currently provides a limited number of reserved monthly parking spaces for rent in our public parking lots. The proposed changes include expanding the number of these spaces for people who work in our Downtown.

In the future, the City may consider implementing paid parking in high-demand areas to help manage parking turnover, if needed, once SkyTrain is operational. Paid downtown on-street parking isn’t proposed for implementation at this time. The City will explore securing on-site public parking as part of redevelopment projects near our two SkyTrian stations.

Finding our public parking lots is a challenge even for locals, so one of the big moves will be to develop and implement better public parking wayfinding.

For areas outside of our Downtown, north of the Nickomekl River, the City is exploring on-street permit parking in high-demand locations to help ensure that people can fairly share limited on-street parking spaces. Consultation will take place with the community regarding residential permit parking this fall.

To help ensure that people park appropriately, the City will also modernize its parking enforcement. An example includes implementing automated license plate readers for bylaw staff.