In the News

Yesterday, the Langley Times ran a great article about our transportation workshop last month.

Pachal said some of the key themes brought up in the first discussion were restoring interurban light rail, providing access to local roads for transit users, cyclists and drivers, ensuring housing developments are sustainable and engaging the community in discussions about zoning, transit and development.

“The community has to be involved in the planning aspect,” he said. “Neighbourhoods need to be consulted on all plans.”

Also, the Surrey Leader wrote on how the new Translink mayor’s council won’t be raising taxes to cover Translink’s shortfall.

Both the levy – which is already permitted in TransLink’s legislation – and congestion pricing are mentioned as possible sources in TransLink’s new long-range planning vision.

But Langley City Mayor Peter Fassbender said imposing any new taxes on driving, including the extra three cents a litre, looks politically impossible.

Translink is in a real pickle, they need to improve transit service, but there is no money to pay for it. I would support congestion pricing if that went directly into improving transit.

The situation leaves TransLink where it’s been for years – underfunded and at an impasse with the province over how to solve it.

TransLink gets diminishing returns on gas tax

Since TransLink gets a hefty slice of existing fuel taxes, it must be raking in windfall revenues as gas prices soar. Right?

Wrong.

That’s very scary considering we are in the age of climate change and costly oil.

Carbon Tax and Road Building

I had an e-mail exchange over the past couple of days with a friend on the topic of the carbon tax and roadway expansion. In my morning reading I found this letter to the Vancouver Sun that somewhat matches my sentiments.

I support the new carbon tax, and I fully stand behind the upgrading of old infrastructure. But, I sure wish that before we earmarked billions on highway expansion programs, we would have looked outside our box to see what others are doing. I would have preferred that we upgrade our transit system to include a healthy investment in light rail, to include a re-activation of the interurban and streetcar program. Once viable and popular light rail transit is in place, then you do your best to drive ridership to these green options. Finally, you use road tolling to encourage more people to leave their single occupancy vehicles at home.

Its too late to turn back the hands of time, but I can't help think that we could have realized billions of dollars for transit and related options had the previous Provincial governments spent our money on smart infrastructure. I firmly believe that the price tag for today's Gateway Program would have been much less expensive. The savings could have been used to fund the other elements of a Gateway.

I still hold out hope that people will see beyond the need for roads and to move goods, and expand our Gateway to include things like ideas, technology, knowledge and many other things that make up a true gateway.

Transit Oriented Development

We've published a page on the South Fraser OnTrax website about Transit Oriented Development. Be sure to check it out.

Pretty Charts for Canada Day

The Sightline Institute always has great graphs and charts about land-use, sprawl, etc. And what better way to say Happy Canada Day than to look at some pretty charts and a video.

The first chart is from their Report on Smart-Growth in the Lower Mainland. It shows the percentage of people living in compact neighborhoods. Compact neighborhoods are defined as 20 or more people per acre. Of course this doesn’t take into account mixed-use. There would be no point in living in a compact neighborhood if you couldn’t walk anywhere.

The next is a map of growth in Metro Vancouver of the last 15 years.


Finally this video tries to make the point that we need more transportation options. While this video is about Seattle, it is true of the South Fraser as well. We need transportation options.



Happy Canada Day!